Alabama to Obese Employees: Address the Issue, or Pay for Insurance

Alabama already charges employees who smoke. New rules will charge those who don't act to address risk factors such as obesity and high blood pressure.

Sarah Palin on Regulation and Competition in Health Care

As governor of Alaska, John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin has been fighting regulations that determine when new health-care facilities can be developed.

Think-Tank President: ER Access Means No One is Uninsured

John Goodman of the National Center for Policy analysis was recently identified in the WSJ as an unpaid adviser to the McCain campaign. But the campaign says his views are "out of step with John McCain."

When the Doctor Bills You for What Your Insurance Doesn’t Pay

The practice is called "balance billing." It's often illegal, but many patients wind up paying anyway.

Confusion Surrounds Simplicity Bassinet Recall

Using powers from a new consumer-safety law, the federal government issued the recall without the consent of the manufacturer.

J&J Online: Health on YouTube, ADHD and Contact Lenses on Facebook

Online marketing can be tricky for a heavily regulated industry like pharma. But Johnson & Johnson is one of several drugmakers tiptoeing onto sites like Facebook and YouTube.

Report: Medicare Pays Too Much for Some New Generics

When a drug goes generic, the price plunges. But the formula Medicare uses to pay for certain drugs is slow to reflect that price drop, which means the program winds up overpaying for months. Read all about it in this report out today from Health and Human Services’ inspector general.
The [...]

J&J Online: Health on YouTube, ADHD and Contact Lenses on Facebook

Online marketing can be tricky for a heavily regulated industry like pharma. But Johnson & Johnson is one of several drugmakers tiptoeing onto sites like Facebook and YouTube.

Buy! Sell! Analysts Duke It Out Over Amylin

Amylin's share price fell 25% yesterday, on reports the company's diabetes drug Byetta has been linked to pancreatitis. Does that make the stock a bargain?

Amgen to End Controversial Anemia-Drug Sales Practices

Amid rising safety concerns, critics have said Amgen's practices resulted in overuse of Aranesp.

‘Male Sexual Enhancement’ Fraudster Gets Jail Time

The founder of a company that sells Enzyte — “the once-daily tablet for natural male enhancement” — was sentenced to 25 years in jail yesterday. Berkeley Premium Neutraceuticals and other defendants were ordered to forfeit $500 million. The drug was promoted by a guy called “Smiling Bob” (pictured at left, [...]

Report: Medicare Pays Too Much for Some New Generics

When a drug goes generic, the price plunges. But the formula Medicare uses to pay for certain drugs is slow to reflect that price drop, which means the program winds up overpaying for months. Read all about it in this report out today from Health and Human Services’ inspector general.
The [...]

Implant Maker Pushes Back Against Feds’ Kickback Probe

When a company is under federal investigation, it usually puts out a meek statement saying it is cooperating to the fullest. But not always.
Stryker, which makes orthopedic implants such as artificial hips, has filed a lawsuit against the feds to fight a subpoena the company says is “oppressive and overly [...]

ADHD, Johnson & Johnson and Debbie Phelps (Michael’s Mom)

Debbie and Michael Phelps in Beijing. Photo: Associated Press This is how big Michael Phelps is: Even his mom is landing corporate deals. Soon after Michael’s historic last race in the pool in Beijing, Johnson & Johnson named Debbie Phelps its “Mom of the Olympic Games” and had her a New York City studio filming a [...]

WSJ Blog Readers to Obama: First, Fix the Economy

The totally unscientific results of yesterday’s poll are in: If Obama wins the election, he should work to stabilize the economy before pushing to overhaul health insurance or create cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions.
The poll — first-ever joint effort between the Health Blog and WSJ’s Environmental Capital blog — [...]

Lilly, Amylin Disclose More Cases of Byetta-Related Pancreatitis

Last week, the FDA said it had received reports of six new cases of pancreatitis – including two deaths – associated with the diabetes drug Byetta. Today, Amylin and Eli Lilly said that they had reported four additional deaths to the agency as well, which the FDA hasn’t yet made public.
The companies, which co-market the [...]

Did Ted Kennedy Risk His Health By Going to the Democratic Convention?

Ted Kennedy is being treated for brain cancer. Here's what his doctors would have wanted to know before giving him the OK to travel to Denver and speak at the Democratic convention.

As Private Insurance Declines, Medicare and Medicaid Pick Up the Slack

Washington types are furiously debating whether the U.S. should allow more people to buy government-backed insurance. But census data out today suggest the nation may already be moving in that direction.
The percentage of people who got health insurance through work or bought it on the private market declined last year, according to the census report [...]

How the Economy Could Affect Obama’s Health Reform Plans

Obama’s advisers are already pondering which economic issue should be at the top of his agenda if he wins the November elections, this morning’s WSJ reports. The two top contenders: new policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and a big overhaul of how health insurance works.
The shaky economy could tilt the balance in favor of [...]

Stanford Limits Industry Financing of Medical Education

Stanford’s med school is about to stop taking money from drug companies and device makers that want to fund specific continuing education courses for doctors.
In announcing the policy, the school joins a few others that have moved in this direction in recent years, as industry funding of continuing medical education, or CME, has come under [...]

ADHD, Johnson & Johnson and Debbie Phelps (Michael’s Mom)

Debbie and Michael Phelps in Beijing. Photo: Associated Press This is how big Michael Phelps is: Even his mom is landing corporate deals. Soon after Michael’s historic last race in the pool in Beijing, Johnson & Johnson named Debbie Phelps its “Mom of the Olympic Games” and had her a New York City studio filming a [...]

Report: Medicare Drug Fraud May Go Unnoticed

Seems like every time we turn around there’s a new report on Medicare’s ability — or lack thereof — to monitor for fraud.
Last week, there was a hubbub over a draft report that said Medicare directed an auditor to use improper methods in an anti-fraud audit related to durable medical equipment. That came on the [...]

U.S. Inspectors To Monitor Safety of Chinese Exports

Recent problems with tainted products from China, including the blood-thinner heparin and toys with lead paint on them, have meant increased pressure on the FDA to keep an eye on products before they leave that country and head for the U.S. Lawmakers recently pushed to get the agency more money for foreign inspections.
Now, the U.S. [...]

Biden: Expand Medicare and Fill the Doughnut Hole

Now that Sen. Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic vice-presidential nominee, it’s time for a refresher on his views on health policy.
When Biden was still running for president last fall, we noted that, like other Democratic candidates, he wanted to expand the federal government’s role in health insurance.
Biden’s plan called for allowing all families to [...]

When Atlanta’s Grady Hospital Saves Money, Consultants Get Paid

It’s even hard for big consulting firms to turn around struggling hospitals.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has taken on the job of helping fix Grady Memorial Hospital, the public hospital in Atlanta that has been bleeding money for years. The firm had hoped to save Grady $65.5 million in 2008, but the hospital fell $7.7 million short of a [...]

As America Hits the Beach, Medical Residents Hit the Wards

The summer months are anything but slow for recent medical school graduates, who start medical residencies in July. To get a feel for what it's like to work as a newly minted doctor, the Health Blog spoke with a resident working in a New York City emergency room.

Market Likes Alpharma’s Rejection of King’s Rich Offer

More pharma M&A action today, with King Pharmaceuticals announcing that Alpharma rejected a $1.4 billion cash buyout offer King made earlier this month. Alpharma’s decision to walk away from the offer — and the market’s reaction to today’s news — is yet another sign of the strong position held by small drug companies with products [...]

Some Seniors Quit Taking Medicine When Medicare Doughnut Hole Hits

Some 3.4 million Medicare beneficiaries hit the so-called doughnut hole in drug coverage last year — and a sizable minority quit taking their medicine rather than pay full price out of pocket, a new report says.
At last year’s rate, Medicare beneficiaries were on the hook for prescription drugs after they incurred costs of $2,400. After [...]

FDA: Vytorin Not Linked to Cancer Risk

Remember when we said the Vytorin-cancer thing had quickly faded from view? Turns out it hasn’t disappeared altogether.
The FDA said yesterday that preliminary data from two large, ongoing studies of Vytorin, a cholesterol drug sold by Merck and Schering-Plough, and found no link to cancer.
But the agency also said it expects to get a full [...]

Feds Move To Protect Health Workers Who Oppose Abortion

The Bush Administration took out the most controversial language in a proposed new rule protecting health care workers who refuse to perform abortions. But the rule remains ambiguous enough to prompt more debate over whether providers can refuse to provide some forms of birth control.
The proposed rule (online here) requires hospitals, clinics and other entities [...]

Layoffs Update: Abbott to Cut 1,000 Jobs

Abbott Labs punctuated the August doldrums today with this SEC filing describing a plan to “streamline global manufacturing operations.” That turns out to be code for closing a manufacturing plant and cutting jobs, Dow Jones Newswires reports.
The plant, in South Pasadena, Calif., is part of the company’s diagnostics business and will close some time in [...]

Pay No Attention to the Mice Behind the Pallets

We’ve read more than our fair share of nasty letters from the FDA to companies alleging they aren’t living up to federal standards for quality. Most are a pretty thin gruel of citations from the Code of Federal Regulations and observations by FDA inspectors that a company failed to validate this or calibrate that on [...]

FDA Delays Doribax, Rejecting Expert Advice Again

For the third time this month, the FDA has ignored a recommendation from outside experts to approve a marketing application for a drug. This time the setback was dealt to Johnson & Johnson’s intravenous antibiotic drug Doribax. The agency says it needs more information before it can decide on the use of Doribax to treat [...]

Did Medicare Fudge Numbers On Fraud Crackdown?

Medicare fraud manages to be both infuriating and, often, darkly funny. Case in point: Medicare directed an outside auditor to use improper methods to inflate the effects of the agency’s battle against fraud, according to a draft inspector general’s report cited by this morning’s New York Times.
In an audit of durable medical equipment claims (a [...]

State Laws Let Twentysomethings Stay on Parents’ Insurance

A law pushed through this week by the the governor of Illinois requires health insurers to let kids stay on their parents’ policies until age 26, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Twentysomethings make up a disproportionate percentage of the nation’s uninsured — in part because they feel invincible, but also because of other factors, such as job [...]

Is Merck’s Gardasil Vaccine Worth the Money?

Merck’s Gardasil vaccine for cervical cancer isn’t cheap — it’s a three-shot series that costs about $360. Whether it’s worth the money depends on several variables, suggests an analysis in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine.
Assuming the vaccine provides lifelong immunity, vaccinating girls at age 12 costs $43,600 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gained — [...]

Coverage of Vytorin Cancer Data Fades Quickly

Just when it seemed Vytorin was getting back on track, results of a study showing that patients taking the cholesterol-fighter had more cancers than those taking a placebo surprised everyone last month. Merck and Schering-Plough, which jointly market the medicine, delayed their second-quarter earnings announcements so that scientists involved in analyzing the study could present [...]

Illegal Immigrant in a Coma Set to Be Deported By Hospital

A Chicago hospital is preparing to send a 30-year-old patient back to Mexico. Francisco Pantaleon, who is in this country illegally, had a brain hemorrhage last month and is in a coma at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago. The hospital says his immediate family consents to returning him to his home country, [...]

Would Lowering the Drinking Age Curb Bingeing on Campus?

Twenty-four years ago the feds put the hammer to states to raise their legal drinking age to 21 from 18 as a way to cut drunk-driving deaths. Do it, or we’ll withhold 10% of your highway funds, the feds said, and pretty quickly the states fell in line. An unidentified man pours beer from a [...]

Behind Hospitals’ Pretty Facades, Dingy Rooms for Patients

Classic hospital: Beautiful facade; soaring atrium; dingy, cramped rooms for patients and procedures.
“Most veterinarians put their patients in better surroundings than patients who are getting chemo,” Jain Malkin, a hospital-design expert, tells the WSJ.
That’s starting to change, as hospitals and clinics recognize that being in a more comfortable setting can do a bit to ease [...]

Country Doc Supports Online Prescriptions

State medical boards have taken a dim view of doctors prescribing drugs over the Internet. But country doc and WSJ.com columnist Ben Brewer says there are plenty of times when online prescriptions would make sense.
Brewer figures that 20% of his office visits could safely be handled online. But in his home state of Illinois, he [...]

As Washington Ponders Health Reform, Harry and Louise Return

Harry and Louise are back. Fifteen years ago, the phony couple sat at a phony kitchen table in TV ads paid for by the insurance industry, which fiercely opposed the Clintons’ plan to transform the way health insurance worked in this country. The ads were set in a fictional future, when the Clintons’ plan had [...]

As Washington Ponders Health Care Reform, Harry and Louise Return

Harry and Louise are back. Fifteen years ago, the phony couple sat at a phony kitchen table in TV ads paid for by the insurance industry, which fiercely opposed the Clintons’ plan to transform the way health insurance worked in this country. The ads were set in a fictional future, when the Clintons’ plan had [...]

Merck to Docs: Get Reimbursed for Gardasil, or Get a Free Dose*

Dealing with vaccines is a hassle for doctors. Not only do docs have to store vaccines in the office (typically in a refrigerator), they also have to front the money. So it’s no surprise that many physicians have worried about getting reimbursed for Gardasil, Merck’s cervical cancer vaccine that retails for more than $100 a [...]

Obama Says Single-Payer Health Care Makes Sense

Listen up. Single-payer health care might just work. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Barack Obama said he would consider embracing a single-payer health-care system sometime in the future as his plan for broader health coverage evolves, the WSJ’s Amy Chozick reports from the campaign trail. “If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead [...]

Where a Health Fund Manager Is Putting His Money Now

Sam Isaly, founding principal of OrbiMed Advisors and the manager of the Eaton Vance Worldwide Health Sciences Fund, talks strategy in an online Q&A with our colleague Johanna Bennett at Barron’s. Among the bits that caught our eye:
More deals are coming. Isaly lays money on one deal in particular: “We believe that OSI has to [...]

Slim Evidence for Effectiveness of Cellulite Treatments

Plenty of people would be glad to take your money and give you cellulite treatments. But there’s not much high-quality evidence that the effects of any treatment will last more than a few hours or days, the WSJ reports.
Most treatments use some kind of massager that makes the tissue swell. The temporary swelling eliminates the [...]

Was a Vioxx Study ‘Marketing Framed As Science’?

A study of Merck’s painkiller Vioxx may have been published in a reputable medical journal, but it was designed as a marketing tool, not a scientific investigation. That’s the argument put forward in a paper published today — in Annals of Internal Medicine, the same journal that published the study in the first place.
Nonsense, says [...]

UK Health Chief: High Drug Prices Fatten Pharma Execs’ Paychecks

The UK body that decides which drugs are cost-effective is often attacked when it decides new treatments that offer only small benefits aren’t worth a high price. But in an interview published in the Observer this weekend, Sir Michael Rawlins, the chairman of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), comes out swinging.
“We [...]

After a Murder, Looking at Hospitalization and Release of the Mentally Ill

Two years ago, a 24-year-old schizophrenic man killed his mother with a hatchet a few months after being released from a psychiatric center over the objections of his doctors. This weekend’s WSJ tells the story, and uses it as a lens to examine the system in which government-funded mental health advocates sometimes wind up arguing [...]

FDA: BPA in Plastic Bottles Isn’t a Health Hazard

Bisphenol A, a chemical that shows up in some baby bottles, food can linings and hard plastic water bottles, just got a vote of confidence from the FDA. A Massachusetts woman contemplates alternatives to baby bottles made from polycarbonate plastic. (AP Photo/Lisa Poole) “FDA has concluded that an adequate margin of safety exists for BPA at [...]

At the Olympics, Johnson & Johnson Shows Fungus-Free Relics

Fungus free, 2,200 years later.
(Photo: NCImaging/Newscom) Even if you’re a 2,200 year old Chinese warrior assigned to fight demons in the afterlife, athlete’s foot can be a pesky problem. Lucky for you, Johnson & Johnson knows a thing or two about athlete’s foot — and is eager to curry favor with the Chinese government.
Now some of [...]

How Do You Say ‘Retail Clinic’ In Spanish?

A Mexican health-care company opened clinics this week in three Miami-area pharmacies whose customers are mostly Latino. Count that as a national-trend twofer — targeting the Latino market and putting clinics in retail stores. The clinics will be staffed by bilingual physicians (a departure from the standard practice of employing nurse practitioners), and they’re affiliated [...]

Pay for Organ Donation Gains Traction, but Not at Kidney Foundation

The AMA recently backed tweaking federal law to allow pilot projects providing financial incentives for organ donation after death.
As more people die waiting for transplants that never come, we’ve been hearing more support for paying organ donors or their families. Some people are even arguing that we should pay live kidney donors, just as we [...]

In Experiment, Doctors Save Medicare Money While Improving Care

Washington is revving up for a big debate next year over health care — which, realistically, is likely to end up centering around some form of Medicare reform. Everybody wants to somehow save money while also improving care. Proof that trick can be performed consistently in the real world is hard to come by, despite [...]

NEJM Editors Enter Supreme Court Fray Over Drug Risks

In a first, the current and former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine have banded together and plunged into an escalating legal battle over how much FDA’s approval of drugs should shield their makers from liability claims under state laws.
The influential doctors take the side of plaintiffs, arguing that lawsuits are a needed [...]

Court Nudges Along $420 Million UnitedHealth CEO Settlement

Alright already, the Minnesota Supreme Court seems to be saying, let’s get on with the UnitedHealth backdating settlement.
Former CEO Bill McGuire agreed as part of a settlement late last year to give up $420 million in stock-option gains and retirement pay to settle complaints from shareholders and the SEC over how stock options were awarded [...]

Medicare Drug Benefit Premiums Rise, but Less Than Expected

The average premium Medicare beneficiaries pay for prescription drug coverage will rise 12% next year — though in real terms that’s only three bucks a month more than they’re already paying.
Based on bids from the private insurers who provide the Medicare Part D benefit, the feds said yesterday that the average premium next year would [...]

Reassuring Evidence on Merck’s RotaTeq Diarrhea Vaccine

Nearly two years ago Health Blog Jr. was eligible to get a vaccine against diarrhea, but his pediatrician, otherwise a big supporter of immunizations, recommended against it. The doctor wanted to wait for more experience with the new vaccine before making it routine in her practice.
The vaccine was Merck’s RotaTeq, a shield against infection by [...]

The Upset Underbelly of an Olympic Doctor

Being a doctor at the Olympics isn’t all glamor and glory. Scott Rodeo, an orthopedic surgeon who’s part of the medical team supporting US athletes in Beijing, has been blogging a bit about what’s happening over there. Amid posts on watching swim races and meeting athletes, he mentioned this: “On the medical side, I have [...]

The Upset Underbelly of Being an Olympic Doctor

Being a doctor at the Olympics isn’t all glamor and glory. Scott Rodeo, an orthopedic surgeon who’s part of the medical team supporting US athletes in Beijing, has been blogging a bit about what’s happening over there. Amid posts on watching swim races and meeting athletes, he mentioned this: “On the medical side, I have [...]

Medicare Could Save Billions By Cutting Re-Hospitalization

One possible sweet spot for trimming the growing cost of Medicare: repeat hospital visits.
The percentage of patients who return to the hospital with in 30 days of being discharged could be cut dramatically, says an op-ed in this morning’s Boston Globe. A MedPAC study found that potentially preventable readmissions cost Medicare some $12 billion in [...]

Fertility Medicine Arrives in Africa, Easing Childless Stigma

Fertility clinics are cropping up in some African nations where infertility carries a heavy social price, the Washington Post reports.
Besides giving some middle class women a fighting chance to bear children, the clinics are also pointing to a widely unrecognized truth about a problem usually blamed on women: In many cases, the fertility glitch rests [...]

Questions Raised Over Boston Scientific Stent Data

Boston Scientific’s new stent is “backed by flawed research,” according to an analysis by the WSJ’s Keith Winstein in this morning’s paper.
The WSJ article questions the results of a key trial of the Taxus Liberte stent, which is expected to be approved by the FDA in the coming months. The study, which found the [...]

A Curious Change in Legal Horses in Wyeth v. Levine

Diana Levine leans on her baby grand piano with her real arm while resting her prosthesis on her lap. (AP Photo/Times Argus, Stefan Hard) What’s shaping up as one of the most important Supreme Court cases for corporations, consumers and the tort bar this fall has taken a tortured path to the highest court in the [...]

The Michael Phelps Diet: Don’t Try It at Home

Michael Phelps celebrates another gold medal and another 12,000-calorie day. (AP Photo) Swimmer Michael Phelps’s next career may be in competitive eating. Besides grabbing five gold medals at the Beijing Olympics so far, making him the winningest Olympic athlete ever, he’s got to be setting new marks on the chow line.
A New York Post account [...]

Too Much Safety Makes Kids Fat

Look, Ma, both hands! (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez) The drive to render children’s play accident-proof carries unintended dangers, including an increase in obesity. We were saddened to see last month that some kids scorched their feet after scampering shoeless across black rubber safety mats underneath playground equipment in New York. The mats help prevent scrapes, fractures [...]

Genentech to Roche: We’re Worth More Than That

Was Roche’s $89 per share offer for Genentech a true “fair and generous” offer, or just the first move in a long chess match? Genentech’s independent directors seem to believe the latter.
Tasked with responding to the offer, the independent directors said today that the bid “substantially undervalues the company.” But they also made clear that [...]

CVS Goes for Longs, Another Step in Drugstore Consolidation

CVS Caremark’s acquisition of Longs Drug Stores, a pharmacy chain that’s big in California, Hawaii and Nevada, is the latest example of the push by chain drugstores for scale. Longs Drugs Store near the Pali Hwy in Honolulu, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Marco Garcia) As CVS CEO Tom Ryan noted during a conference call with investors, the $2.6 [...]

In More States, Hospitals Stop Billing for Egregious Errors

Hospital across the country are deciding not to bill patients or insurers for the worst sorts of medical errors. Hospital groups in 23 states now have policies against billing for errors such as operating on the wrong body part or giving the patient the wrong blood type — that’s up from 11 states in February [...]

Changes Brewing on Capitol Hill for Health Insurance

Ron Wyden. Photo by Associated Press. Next year could see the biggest push in more than a decade to transform how health insurance works in this country. Obama and McCain have both proposed significant changes, and the Democrats just hammered out a platform plank that says the party is “united around a commitment to provide every [...]

BIO Chief on the Wisdom of Giving Money to Democrats

Biotech execs believe in the power of science to triumph over just about everything but bad public policy.
That’s the view of Jim Greenwood, CEO of BIO, the biotech industry trade group. Unfortunately, he told us during a recent chat at Health Blog HQ, “bad policy comes more easily than good policy.” BIO is doing what [...]

Five Tips for Seeking a Second Opinion

With evidence murky on so many medical treatment options, patients shouldn’t worry about offending their doctor by asking for a second opinion, primary care doc and prolific blogger Kevin Pho writes this morning. He links to this story from the San Diego Union-Tribune, which includes some commonsense tips for seeking a second opinion. Here are [...]

Safety Net Frays as Hospitals Shift Resources From Poor

Hospitals meant to serve the indigent are increasingly looking for ways to shun them.
An increase in the number of uninsured patients and competition from well-heeled hospitals is putting pressure on safety net hospitals to reduce services for the poor, according to a report by the Center for Studying Health System Change published online today in [...]

Abbott Mixes Bunts with Homerun Swings in Drug Research

Drugmakers get dinged all the time for working on “me-too” medicines that offer only incremental benefits over drugs already on the market. Abbott Labs’ head of pharma R&D, John Leonard, is unapologetic. He told the Health Blog during a recent interview that it’s only prudent to include low-risk projects in a company’s research pipeline. A [...]

Drugmakers: We Couldn’t Guess How Much Those Lawsuits Might Cost

Propose an accounting rule that has to do with litigation costs, and you’re sure to get drug companies’ attention. Six major drugmakers protested a Financial Accounting Standards Board proposal to require companies to estimate their exposure to potential losses from ongoing litigation.
Among other things, the proposal says that when a complaint doesn’t seek a specific [...]

McCain, Obama Advisers Spar on Employer-Sponsored Health Coverage

When it comes to health insurance, it’s usually easier to have an employer provide it than to buy it for yourself. So when health-policy advisers for Barack Obama and John McCain participated in an online debate on WSJ.com about their bosses’ respective health care plans, much of the focus was on how each plan would [...]

Doctors Lose Cool, Throw Scissors in Operating Room

When we wrote last month about some new rules mandating better manners among hospital staff, it didn’t occur to us that doctors were actually throwing scissors. But incidents like that are more common than we’d like to believe, according to an article that appeared over the weekend in the Boston Globe. In one case, the [...]

Bristol-Myers and ImClone Tussle Over Follow-Up to Erbitux

The bright prospects for cancer drug Erbitux are a focal point in Bristol-Myers Squibb’s bid to acquire ImClone. But just as important in the long run may be Erbitux’s successor, still in development.
Just how much better would Erbitux II be? The answer to that question matters because the experimental medicine is at the center of [...]

Gene Doping May Be Next Big Thing for Athletes Seeking Edge

The science of genetics has opened up a world of potential new treatments for tough diseases. But those of you who’ve been watching the Olympics may be interested to know genes could become the next “steroids.”
Right out of the “don’t try this at home” play book, the Baltimore Sun over the weekend ran an article [...]

AIDS Anthology Reveals Another India

At every International AIDS Conference, set apart from the meeting halls where science and politics battle, there’s a place called the Global Village.
It’s a fleeting community where HIV-positive people and their advocates create a week-long DMZ free of stigma. The vibe is equal parts cultural exhibition and carnival sideshow. Giant strolling condoms are perennial mascots. [...]

Maggots Are Enough to Gag Superbugs

Evidently we weren’t the only ones to wonder how maggots thrive in some of the most disgusting conditions imaginable.
Why don’t they get sick? Ask Norman Ratcliffe, a researcher on the immune systems of invertebrates, who has been figuring out the defenses that maggots have going for them. Turns out the little buggers secrete chemicals that [...]

Cleveland Clinic Clamps Down on Boston Scientific Stents

Not only do stent giants Boston Scientific and Johnson & Johnson have to contend with weak sales of drug-coated stents, they also have to worry about next-generation stents from Medtronic and Abbott Labs.
We were reminded of the tough market for stents again this morning, when we read that Boston Scientific stents were apparently frozen out [...]

Fallout From Caribbean Med School’s $100 Million NYC Hospital Deal

A board member of New York City’s public hospital system has resigned after a lucrative deal the system cut with a Caribbean Medical School landed on the front page of the New York Times.
Under the 10-year pact, reported earlier this week in the Times, Grenada’s for-profit St. George’s University School of Medicine agreed to pay [...]

More Scrutiny for Triple-Digit Drug Price Hikes

It’s natural for the price of drugs to rise a little every year, just like the price of everything else. But in the first half of this year, the average wholesale price of 17 drugs jumped 100% or more in a single cost adjustment, USA Today reports.
Last year, the price of 26 drugs increased by [...]

In California Hospitals, It’s Nuns Versus Union

The Service Employees International Union has a beef with some California nuns. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange run several California hospitals where SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers-West wants to organize some 8,000 employees, including X-ray technicians and cafeteria workers. The union accuses the nuns of tactics including holding mandatory meetings advising workers against unionizing, [...]

Backlash Brews Against AIDS Support

“Right now we’re seeing a backlash against AIDS,” longtime AIDS activist Gregg Gonsalves declared in a plenary address today at the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.
Some health and development specialists are arguing over the attention paid to the disease. AIDS, some say, is exaggerated as a threat, AIDS gets too much money, and [...]

NIH’s Fauci Finds Hope Amid Challenges in AIDS Research

Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases The NIH’s Anthony Fauci, who once cautioned that there might never be a traditional vaccine to prevent HIV infection and recently pulled the plug on a troubled vaccine trial, sounded a cautiously optimistic note at the 17th International AIDS Conference yesterday.
“The future for AIDS [...]

Legal Battle Over Tysabri Stays in Mass. Court, for Now

The makers of the multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri were dealt a legal setback Tuesday when a federal judge rejected their efforts to move a lawsuit over a patient’s death from state court in Biogen Idec’s Boston backyard to federal court in Iowa.
The decision also is a blow, though perhaps only a fleeting one, for supporters [...]

UK Says Kidney Cancer Drugs Aren’t Worth the Cost

Is extending life by a few months worth $50,000? No, says the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.
In a report out today, the group concluded that several new drugs for advanced kidney cancer aren’t cost-effective.
In the past few years, Pfizer’s Sutent, Wyeth’s Torisel, Nexavar from Onyx and Bayer and Avastin from Roche and [...]

Illinois’s Largest Health Insurer Won’t Pay for Hospital Errors

Another big insurer says it will stop paying hospitals for costs associated with serious medical errors.
This time, it’s Health Care Service Corp., which covers 12.4 million people under four Blue Cross plans including Illinois Blue Cross, the Chicago Tribune reports. Early this year Aetna and WellPoint joined the no-pay bandwagon.
Many hospitals have already stopped billing [...]

How to Take Your Food Allergies Out to Dinner

A tony restaurant can be a health obstacle course, filled with hidden dangers for people with food allergies. Worries about the allergens that may lurk in an innocuous-looking dish are enough to dissuade some allergy sufferers from eating out at all. The WSJ’s Beckey Bright reports on options and precautions for diners who can’t tolerate [...]

Hospitals Charged With Using Homeless to Defraud Medicare

Photo: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times Just this week, we reported that Los Angeles barred the dumping of patients, after several hospitals were caught discharging the indigent to the streets of Skid Row.
Turns out there may have been more going on than we realized.
Three LA hospitals were accused today of paying recruiters thousands of dollars [...]

AIDS Vaccine Strategy Needs a Makeover

It’s time to get over the flaws that felled the early crops of experimental AIDS vaccines and move to more fertile scientific ground, according to Seth Berkley, head of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Berkley (pictured) told the Health Blog it’s time to abandon the majority of vaccines now under development, which copy the failed [...]

Wider Use of AIDS Drugs Could Curb HIV Infections

Setbacks in the quest for a vaccine against AIDS are leading researchers to think about other ways to cut HIV infections. Julio Montaner Some drug experts at the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City say countries should vastly expand drug treatment to all in need. Not only because relief from suffering is a human right, [...]

French Mull Higher Taxes on Salty, Fatty & Sugary Foods

France is considering raising taxes on foods that are “trop gras, trop sucrés, trop salés qui ne sont pas de stricte nécessité” — too fatty, too sugary, too salty and not strictly necessary — reports the French newspaper Les Echoes.
The proposal, which would raise the value-added tax on some foods, to 19.6% from 5.5%, is [...]

Emergency Room Visits Hit Record High

There were 119 million emergency room visits in 2006, the feds are reporting this morning. That’s the most ever, and an increase of 36% in the course of a decade.
During the same period, the number of emergency rooms fell, from 4,019 to 3,833.
The authors, from the government’s division of health care statistics, duly note that [...]

In Canada, Doctors Use Lottery to Drop Patients

Canada’s medical system is radically different from ours, but there’s at least one thing we have in common: a shortage of primary care doctors.
Now comes word from up north that a few overwhelmed primary care docs are using lotteries to kick patients out of their practices, while others are drawing names to choose new patients.
One [...]

As Urgent Care Grows, Watchdogs Circle

The number of emergency rooms has been falling in recent years, as the number of people heading into the ER has been climbing. Urgent care centers — doc-in-a-box outfits that handle urgent health problems that aren’t life-threatening — have been growing to take up some of the slack.
But, this morning’s WSJ notes, urgent care has [...]

Which Drugmaker Will Be Biggest in 2014? Hint: Not Pfizer

The drug industry’s about to plunge off a patent cliff, as blockbuster after blockbuster faces generic competition. But some companies are facing a steeper cliff than others.
That means that when the dust settles a few years from now, the rankings of the world’s top pharma companies will look pretty different than they do now. Pfizer [...]

Prostate Cancer Screening: Making Decisions Without Evidence

You’re a modern patient. You want to look at all the information and make a rational decision about what to do. But when it comes to whether you should be screened for prostate cancer, the evidence is all too thin.
New federal guidelines released yesterday said that for men 75 and over, the risks associated with [...]

Should Drugs Be Studied in More Patients Before Approval?

Researchers from Duke have a modest proposal to catch safety problems with new drugs: Study them in more people before they go to market. Playing what-if with computer models, Shelby Reed and her Duke colleagues found that doubling the size of a hypothetical study to include 4,000 patients in each group treated improved the chances [...]

Clinton on AIDS: ‘We Should Do More At Home’

Bill Clinton, who has made fighting AIDS in the developing world a central theme of his post-presidency, called for more effort to fight the disease in the U.S.
He spoke yesterday at the big international AIDS conference on now in Mexico City. Earlier at the conference, the CDC said it had been radically undercounting the number [...]

GAO Fakes Out Medicare in Undercover Equipment Scam

Medicare is pretty easily duped, we learned from a Government Accountability Office report out today on problems in the cost of wheelchairs and other supplies.
We have to say that we’ve read more than our fair share of wonky reports about health care, and probably found them more entertaining than we should have. But this one [...]

Senator Kohl Asks Questions About Cardiology Pact

When it comes to interventional cardiology, we wouldn’t know a guidewire without a guidebook. But we do know that the gadgets the interventionalists snake into clogged vessels to clear them are big business. Now Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) is asking questions about whether business interests are at issue in the American College of Cardiology’s decision [...]

Senator Kohl Asks Questions About Cardiology Pact

When it comes to interventional cardiology, we wouldn’t know a guidewire without a guidebook. But we do know that the gadgets the interventionalists snake into clogged vessels to clear them are big business. Now Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) is asking questions about whether business interests are at issue in the American College of Cardiology’s decision [...]

Senator Kohl Asks Questions About Cardiology Pact

When it comes to interventional cardiology, we wouldn’t know a guidewire without a guidebook. But we do know that the gadgets the interventionalists snake into clogged vessels to clear them are big business. Now Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) is asking questions about whether business interests are at issue in the American College of Cardiology’s decision [...]

Icahn Disses Bristol’s ImClone Bid as Too Cheap

When Bristol-Myers Squibb made its unsolicited $4.5 billion offer for ImClone last week, Bristol CEO James Cornelius sang the praises of financier Carl Icahn, who’s chairman of ImClone’s board, owns nearly 14% of the company’s shares and let’s just say has plenty of power over whether this deal happens. “I have the greatest respect for [...]

Los Angeles Bars Hospitals from Dumping Homeless Patients

Health insurers aren’t the only ones whose behavior is under a microscope in California. In Los Angeles, a new city ordinance makes it a misdemeanor for health facilities to transport a patient to a place other than his or her residence without written consent, the WSJ reports. The city is cracking down after embarrassing episodes [...]

Anthrax Survivor Still Battles Effects of Attack

The coverage of the surprising developments in the seven-year investigation of the anthrax-letter attacks after 9/11 have focused on the federal scientist, Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide last week in advance of being charged with murder. The anthrax sent through the mail in 2001 killed five people and injured 17.
What became of the sickened [...]

California Appeals Court Backs Medical Marijuana

Photo: Associated Press California’s medical marijuana law got an endorsement yesterday from a state appeals court: A three-judge panel ruled that San Diego and San Bernardino counties, which have been fighting the state law, must issue government-sponsored ID cards to patients whose doctors say they can benefit from marijuana. The counties had argued that there is [...]

Medicare Expands List of ‘No-Pay’ Hospital Conditions

The list of hospital treatments that Medicare won’t pay for is growing, but not by as much as the feds initially suggested it might.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said last year it would stop paying to treat certain complications it said were preventable with good care. (We described the initial list in this [...]

Who’s Next on the Big Pharma Takeover Menu?

Now that Roche has bid for partner Genentech and Bristol-Myers Squibb wants the rest of ImClone, who’s next? The two proposed deals have set off speculation that other biotechs with Big Pharma partners may be the next targets.
There’s Amylin, which partners with Eli Lilly on diabetes shot Byetta as well as other versions like a [...]

Safety First: FDA Rejects Schering-Plough Anesthesia Reverser

In a surprise, the FDA has rejected Schering-Plough’s application to sell a drug called sugammadex, the company said. Even in today’s tough safety climate, the thumbs-down is unusual because it goes against the unanimous recommendation of outside experts to the agency that it approve the drug, the first of its kind.
The drug, which would be [...]

Dingell Wants Vytorin Cancer Data

As night follows day, so a letter from Rep. John Dingell follows each new turn in the Vytorin saga. This morning’s WSJ reports on his latest request: Details on a study in which patients who took the cholesterol drug appeared more likely to develop cancer than patients who took placebos.
Merck and Schering-Plough, which co-market the [...]