WEDNESDAY, Feb. 24 (HealthDay News) -- The United States could lower the number of uninsured children with asthma by 75 percent by enrolling all those who are eligible for federally funded insurance programs and expanding eligibility, a new report suggests.

At the same time, the report notes health care for kids with asthma costs an average of 50 percent more than for other children.

"Childhood asthma presents one of the nation's starkest examples of what is wrong with the health-care system. Even as more than 1 million children with asthma lack coverage, the nation is squandering health-care dollars on costly treatment while missing key prevention opportunities," Sara Rosenbaum, chairwoman of the department of health policy at George Washington University and co-lead author of the report, said in a news release from the school.

"To date, the knowledge, programs and infrastructure America has amassed about childhood asthma is like an unassembled puzzle. We have the pieces; it's time that we put them together," Rosenbaum said.

The report stated that of the estimated 1.17 million children with asthma who aren't insured, there are 600,000 that are eligible, but haven't been enrolled in Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP. In addition, 180,000 children aren't eligible for coverage but would be if the entire country expanded eligibility to the levels already in place in seven states (that level being 300 percent of the federal poverty level).

"The good news is that significant improvements in childhood asthma could result from better use of existing programs," Dr. Floyd Malveaux, former dean of the College of Medicine at Howard University, explained in the news release. "For those children most at risk, stable and continuous health insurance could lead to greater access to care, controlled health spending and improved overall health."

The report is funded by Merck Childhood Asthma Network, a non-profit group founded by a philanthropic arm of the Merck pharmaceutical company, and RCHN Community Health Foundation.

More information

The Nemours Foundation has details on asthma in children  .

FRIDAY, Feb. 5 (HealthDay News) -- After nearly a year of headlines, worry and confusion, the H1N1 swine flu virus is now out of the news. Is it out of circulation as well?

The latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds no states reporting widespread influenza activity and only five reporting regional activity.

But to say the virus has disappeared is an overstatement, said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.

"We're still seeing activity across the country. It's certainly not at the levels of late October, early November, but activity is still going on, and we have many weeks left in our flu season," he stated. "It's too early to say this is over."

Other experts agreed.

"It certainly seems to have died down in this country. It's gone very quiet," confirmed David Topham, co-director of the New York Influenza Center of Excellence and associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center.

Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said his office still sees the occasional swine flu patient, but fewer than it did last spring, summer and fall.

"It's not completely over. It's just that the number of cases and certainly the death rate and pediatric death rates have fallen so drastically that we're not hearing so much about it," he said.

Topham agreed that the United States hasn't seen the last of this flu strain. "I'm pretty confident that this virus is here to stay with us. It will become one of the seasonal influenzas we'll have to contend with," he said.

But just what form that might take remains a mystery.

Could this be the start of a two-seasonal-flu era? Or will H1N1 assume the mantle of seasonal flu, taking over from H3N2, the traditional strain of "seasonal" flu?

The distinction between H1N1 and the "regular" seasonal flu "doesn't seem to be very useful any more," said Philip Alcabes, associate professor in the urban public health program of the School of Health Sciences, Hunter College, City University of New York. "The flu is very hard to predict and what you think you know is only what happened before. There can always be a surprise."

The surprise this season: Experts are spotting very little of the H3N2 virus they're accustomed to seeing year after year (albeit in a slightly altered form each year) but much more of H1N1.

That, said Topham, "is unusual."

Alcabes agreed. "Up until last year I would have said, of course there's going to be plenty of [seasonal] flu around this time of year, but now we see something different," he said.

So far, H1N1 viruses in circulation remain similar to those in the 2009 H1N1 vaccine, the CDC said.

None of this shed light on whether the swine flu will disappear or reappear.

"We don't know if this is a single one-time anomaly or if the seasonality of the flu is changing in some ways," Alcabes said.

If the swine flu does return, Topham predicted that it would reappear next winter, not in April as happened last year.

One thing is certain, though: Novel H1N1 will be part of the next flu vaccine.

"We fully expect to include the H1N1 virus in next [season's] vaccine along with H3N2," Skinner said. "Whether or not H1N1 is going to be the predominant strain again next season, we'll just have to wait and see," Skinner said.

"We had a global pandemic, but we had a mild flu," said Dr. Scott Lillibridge, assistant dean of the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health in Houston and executive director of the National Center for Emergency Medical Preparedness and Response. "We probably need to begin to look at how deadly the virus is, more than just how infective it is. We need to factor in how virulent the virus is in figuring out what measures we need to implement to control the spread."

More information

Find updates on both types of influenza at the CDC.