Health Care Policy News

AAMC Joins Hospitals in Opposing Cuts to HOPDs
The AAMC joined eight other hospital associations—including the American Hospital Association (AHA)—on a Feb. 1 letter to Congress opposing the House-passed cuts to hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs), reductions in Medicare “bad debt” payments, and the rebasing of Medicaid disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments included in H.R. 3630.  The letter supports efforts to address the flawed sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula, but states that SGR reform should not be funded “by further cutting resources for the hospital services upon which America’s seniors depend.”

Louisiana rolls out new Medicaid managed care program
Louisiana's Medicaid program on Wednesday started providing health care through private managed care networks in nine parishes around New Orleans, the first step in a sweeping revamp of the program that provides care to the poor. Nearly 246,000 Medicaid recipients, mostly children, across southeast Louisiana were switched to the managed care networks in this first phase of the insurance-based model, called Bayou Healt

Sen. Feinstein backs health insurance rate controls
A high-stakes ballot measure to give state regulators the power to approve health insurance rates in California has landed a heavyweight supporter: U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.One of California's most respected politicians, Feinstein has come forward as the chief spokeswoman and No. 1 booster of a proposed initiative to regulate hikes in health premiums. "I am proud to tell you that I was the first person to sign a new ballot initiative petition that will reform the health insurance industry in California,

Medical device industry would provide nearly $600 million to FDA for implant reviews
The Food and Drug Administration has agreed to work toward more predictable, transparent reviews of new medical implants in return for a 100 percent increase in user fees from manufacturers, under a preliminary agreement. The pact with the medical device industry announced Wednesday is expected to provide $595 million in user fees to the FDA over five years, allowing the agency to hire 200 new scientists. That amount essentially doubles the $295 million industry paid over the last five years of the arrangement.

Device Makers Said to Double FDA Fees to Produce Faster Reviews
Medical device makers will double the fees they pay U.S. regulators to get their products reviewed over the next five years, to $595 million, in a deal designed to secure faster and more predictable evaluations, say two people with knowledge of the talks. The pact with the Food and Drug Administration, which must be authorized by Congress, replaces one that cost Medtronic Inc., Johnson & Johnson and other device makers $295 million over the last five years, and expires on Sept. 30.

Households hold back on healthcare spending
More evidence of the economy's effect on healthcare spending emerged in recent weeks to paint a grim picture for access to medical care during a downturn. Now federal health officials have released an analysis that underscores the close link between employment and the wherewithal to get needed treatment or prescriptions. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey found half the unemployed were uninsured compared with one-fifth of those in the workforce in 2009—the year the recession officially ended—and the following year.

Kaiser Hospital Still Open Despite Strike
Kaiser Permanente workers across the state began picketing began at 7 a.m. today in a one-day strike over a new contract for mental health and optical employees. Thousands of workers took to picket lines today in Northern and Southern California over a contract dispute involving 4,000 employees who are members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, a NUHW representative said.

Health Insurance Deductibles Doubled in 7 Years, Study Finds
If you’ve seen your health insurance premiums increase along with your deductible, you’re not alone. A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund shows just how much more consumers are paying for employer-provided health insurance. Total premiums — the amount paid by both employers and workers combined — for family coverage rose 50 percent from 2003 to 2010, to nearly $14,000 a year, the study found. (The fund is a private foundation that researches health policy issues. The report includes an interactive map showing premium increases by state.)

Doctors lobby urges GOP to halt new insurance codes
The largest physicians lobby has sent House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) a letter urging him to halt a federal requirement forcing doctors to switch to new insurance codes in 2013. The American Medical Association (AMA) says switching to so-called ICD-10 coding will require doctors' offices to deal with some 68,000 codes, more than five times the current 13,000. The change will cost medical practices anywhere between $83,290 and more than $2.7 million, depending on size — at a time when Medicare payment rates face an almost 30 percent cut.

Mass. health insurance law: More coverage, more expensive
The state’s landmark health insurance law, passed in 2006, significantly increased the number of residents ages 19 to 64 with coverage -- now at 94.2 percent. A survey released today found that it also is starting to produce results by keeping patient’s healthier and out of emergency rooms and hospitals.Unfortunately, as many probably suspect, it has done little to control costs. “There was a significant increase in premium costs paid by workers, reflecting Massachusetts decision to put off efforts to address lowering health care costs in the 2006 legislation,’’ according Health Affairs, the journal that published an article based on the survey on its website today.

AHRQ finds gains in teamwork, leadership
Hospitals are making progress in a number of areas related to safety culture, including teamwork and leadership, according to a report from HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.Released in 2004, AHRQ's 42-item Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture allows employees at participating hospitals to report on their organization's approach to open communication, patient handoffs and other safety topics. The agency released the first comparative report of survey data in 2007, covering 382 hospitals.

Health insurers hold back on rate increases in Mass
State regulators have approved premium increases averaging 2.3 percent for health insurance covering hundreds of thousands of residents, the most modest hikes in at least a decade and a sign that years of efforts to control costs may be working. The new rates are in Massachusetts’ “small group’’ market, which includes tens of thousands of small businesses as well as self-employed and formerly uninsured individuals. They apply to policies taking effect April 1, the biggest renewal date for insurance coverage. Last year, small group premium increases averaged 9 percent.

Medical lobby keeps up ‘doc fix’ push
Medical groups are keeping up the pressure on Congress to find a long-term solution to Medicare’s payment formula for doctors. The American Medical Group Association said in a letter Friday that Congress’s near-constant cycle of short-term “doc fix” bills is a strain on doctors as well as the Medicare program, and the group pressed Congress to find a longer-term solution. The latest temporary patch is set to expire March 1, at which point doctors would see a nearly 30 percent cut in the Medicare payments.

CBO: Medicare cost-cutting programs haven’t worked
Programs designed to cut Medicare spending and improve the quality of healthcare have mostly failed, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The findings are a blow to existing Medicare projects as well as a key goal of the healthcare reform law. There is widespread support, in Congress and among economists, for the broad ideal that Medicare would save money if it paid for better outcomes instead of more procedures. But 20 years of trying to shift the program in that direction have yielded little to no progress, CBO said Wednesday.

U.S. States Streamline Medicaid as Federal Law Forces Changes, Report Says
A stipulation in the 2010 health- care law that bans U.S. states from dropping Medicaid patients has forced them to be more efficient in managing the program to save money, according to a report today. While Medicaid, the joint U.S.-state health plan for low- income people, is among the biggest expenses for states in a flagging economy, the law prevents them from dropping members or tightening eligibility. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 29 states have streamlined their programs, with most using U.S. incentives to add new technology.

U.S. Seeks Rollback of a Health Insurer’s ‘Excessive’ Rate Increase
The Obama administration said Thursday that rate increases sought by a health insurance company were unreasonable, and it ordered the insurer to rescind them or justify its refusal to do so. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, issued the finding against the carrier, Trustmark Life Insurance Company, a unit of Trustmark Mutual Holding Company.

House panel announces user fee hearings
House Republicans on Thursday announced a slew of hearings on health industry fees aimed at speeding up federal regulators' review of new medicines before they can go to market. The Energy and Commerce health subcommittee will kick things off on Feb. 1 with a hearing on the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which expires Sept. 30. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg is scheduled to testify at the hearing.

Total health spending is slowing. Government health spending isn’t.
Largely due to the recession, health care spending grew in 2009 and 2010 at its slowest rate in five decades. What has not slowed, however, is government spending on health care: A new analysis from the McKinsey Center for U.S. Health System Reform shows that state and federal spending on health care has grown by 55 percent since 2003, nearly twice as fast as private spending growth. Two changes in health care spending, both also products of the recession, explain this trend.

CDC: Homicide drops off top 15 causes of death in U.S.
For the first time in 45 years, homicide is no longer among the 15 leading causes of death in the United States, according to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, an analysis of deaths in 2010, is the latest confirmation of homicide's steep decline over more than a decade, especially in America's largest cities. Of the 2.4 million total deaths reported in 2010, there were 16,065 homicides, down from 16,799 a year earlier, according to the report, which gathers data from death certificates provided by the states.

Raising Medicare Age Would Save $148 Billion, CBO Says
The federal government could save $148 billion over 10 years by increasing Medicare eligibility two years to age 67, the Congressional Budget Office reported on Tuesday. The projected savings are lower than CBO’s March estimate of $162 billion, but the earlier calculation did not include the premiums that seniors must pay into the program. A CBO official said that a senator requested the additional analysis of increasing the Medicare and Social Security eligibility ages.

More Health Clinics Pop Up Inside Retailers
The growth of health clinics inside retail stores rebounded in 2011 and is poised for a “second spring” this year, driven by well-capitalized retailers and grocers, according to a new report. The number of retail clinics jumped 11.2 percent to 1,355 in 2011 after slow growth in 2010 and 2009, according to a report by Thomas Charland, chief executive of Merchant Medicine, which tracks the growth of retail medical care services. The number of retail clinics rose only 3 percent in 2010 and had flat growth in 2009 when the financial crisis and the related poor real estate market caused some smaller operators to close their doors.

Alert: Health spending growth stayed slow in 2010: CMS
U.S. healthcare spending grew 3.9% in 2010, reaching a total level of $2.6 trillion and following the slower-growth trend seen in 2009, according to the annual report on national health expenditures published in the journal Health Affairs.The rate of spending in 2010 increased only 0.1 percentage point faster than in 2009 (3.8%), a year that had the lowest rate of increase in the 51-year history of the annual report, according to economics analysts from the CMS.

University: New medication shortages hit 267 drugs in 2011, for 5th straight yearly increase
The number of new prescription drug shortages in 2011 shot up to 267, well above the prior record and about four times the number of medication shortages in the middle of the last decade. Figures just released by the University of Utah Drug Information Service, which tracks national drug shortages, show there were 56 more newly reported drug shortages in the U.S. last year than in 2010, when there were 211. By contrast, there were only 58 drug shortages reported in 2004.

Should Doctors Be 'Parsimonious' About Health Care?
A major medical group issued ethical guidelines on Monday that take the provocative position of urging doctors to consider cost-effectiveness when deciding how to treat their patients. The American College of Physicians, the second-largest U.S. doctors' group after the American Medical Association, included the recommendation in the latest version of its ethics manual, which provides guidance for some 132,000 internists nationwide.

2012 Medicare Debate Is All About the Baby Boomers
Baby boomers take note: Medicare as your parents have known it is headed for big changes no matter who wins the White House in 2012. You may not like it, but you might have to accept it. Dial down the partisan rhetoric and surprising similarities emerge from competing policy prescriptions by President Barack Obama and leading Republicans such as Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.

More consumers choosing high-deductible plans
Millions of patients are enrolled in health insurance plans that don't kick in until they've spent $1,000 or more out of pocket, and many don't have tax-free accounts to help them meet their deductibles. Enrollment in high-deductible plans rose from 14% of insured adults in 2010 to 16% in 2011, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute, which surveyed 4,703 adults from age 21 to 64 who had employer-based insurance.

Blue Shield to pay $2 million over dropping of policyholders
More than a year after the healthcare reform law sought to prevent sick patients from losing medical coverage, insurers are still paying for their alleged abuses. Blue Shield has agreed to pay $2 million to resolve accusations that the company improperly dropped policyholders after they got sick and needed expensive treatment.

California Barred by Judge From Cutting Hospital Medi-Cal Rates
California can’t cut reimbursements hospitals receive for the skilled-nursing services they provide to low-income people, a federal judge ruled. U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder in Los Angeles yesterday granted the request from the California Hospital Association for an order to stop California from imposing the reductions, saying the hospitals had met their burden of showing irreparable harm if she didn’t halt the cuts temporarily.

NIH, health centers avoid cuts in fiscal 2012
For the third time in 2011, Congress adopted appropriations legislation that narrowly prevented a partial shutdown of the federal government -- this time for the remainder of fiscal year 2012. President Obama signed the measure on Dec. 17, which includes a mixed bag of small spending cuts, increases and freezes for nonmandatory federal health programs.

24 states back FDA on tobacco warning label lawsuit
Several states have weighed in on the lawsuit between the federal government and big tobacco over new graphic tobacco warning labels the FDA wants placed on cigarette packs in 2012.Twenty four attorneys general filed a friend of the court brief on Friday in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington in support of the FDA's challenge of a lower court ruling in the case.Last month, a U.S. District Court judge granted a request by some of the nation's largest tobacco companies, including R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Lorillard Tobacco Co., to block the labels while deciding whether the labels violate free speech rights.

Deadlocked Congress warned Medicare claims can't be delayed for long
Almost 650,000 doctors will see a steep cut to their Medicare payments on Jan. 18 if Congress doesn't act before then, the Medicare agency warned. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the past has been able to delay payments for more than 20 days as lawmakers hashed out legislation to prevent scheduled cuts. But doing so almost crashed agency computer systems that are designed to expedite payments, The Associated Press reports.

J&J Recalls 12 Million Bottles of Motrin That May Not Dissolve
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), the health-care company beset by product recalls the last two years, said it was asking retailers to return about 12 million bottles of Motrin over concerns the painkiller may dissolve too slowly. Tests of product samples showed some caplets may not dissolve as quickly as intended when near their expiration date, J&J’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit said in a statement on its website today.

Funding Cuts Threaten Public Health Disaster Preparedness, Study Finds
Public health funding cuts are undermining programs that protect Americans from infectious disease outbreaks, bioterrorist attacks, and natural disasters, according to a Trust for America’s Health report released on Tuesday. “We’ve documented how preparedness has been on an upward trajectory” over the past 10 years, said Trust for America’s Health director Jeff Levi. “But the economic crisis has changed the story. Now we’re seeing a decade’s worth of preparedness eroding in front of our eyes.”

State, federal officials reach $26B Medicaid deal
Massachusetts health care officials have reached an agreement with the Obama administration on a multi-year deal worth more than $26 billion in Medicaid funds, according to a Patrick administration official. The deal was reached last week when Gov. Deval Patrick met with U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius in Washington, D.C., and details were finalized in the days since the meeting.

HHS names Pioneer ACOs
HHS on Monday announced the 32 organizations the agency selected from among 80 applicants to participate in the Pioneer accountable care organization model. Overseen by the CMS Innovation Center, the Pioneer ACO model will test the effects of several payment arrangements to support these groups in providing better care and outcomes at a lower cost, according to HHS, , which estimated the project could save up to $1.1 billion over 5 years.

Dems, allies firmly reject Paul Ryan's new Medicare reform plan
Democrats and their allies quickly united against the Medicare proposal introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). As he introduced the plan Thursday morning, Wyden insisted that there was plenty for Democrats to support. But lawmakers, the White House and healthcare interest groups took a hard line against the proposal, even linking it to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Democrats have held a political advantage on Medicare since early this year, when Ryan proposed ending the existing program and moving seniors into private insurance.

Feds: Florida can continue 5-county Medicaid pilot
Federal officials on Thursday approved the expansion of a five-county Medicaid privatization pilot program that allows for-profit providers to determine the health care of recipients, but there's no indication whether a statewide expansion will be allowed. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was insisting on new protections, more accountability and quality reporting, spokesman Alper Ozinal said. "We are separately considering the state's request to expand this demonstration statewide, and we are care

House approves two-year Medicare 'doc fix'
The House voted 234-193 Tuesday evening to approve a payroll tax extenders package that includes a two-year "fix" to the formula for Medicare payments to doctors.  President Obama has threatened to veto the legislation, which is expected to die in the Democrat-controlled Senate on Wednesday. Without congressional action on the Sustainable Growth Rate, physicians will see a 27.4 percent cut to their Medicare rates starting Jan. 1.

Medicare changes payment plan to fight drug fraud
Medicare will not pay prescription-drug bills if officials see evidence of fraud, which will let them avoid chasing down money after it has been paid out, Vice President Biden announced Tuesday.The move, Biden said, demonstrates "the administration's continued commitment to cutting waste and protecting taxpayers." The Justice Department recovered $5.6 billion from fraud in 2011, and $2.9 billion was for health care fraud, Biden said. Some of the money was recovered because officials spotted the fraud before Medicare paid a bill.

Price Tag Hindering Congress in Struggle to Pass Year-End Legislation
The costs of last-minute items pending before Congress are formidable, and lawmakers say that is a major reason they have had so much difficulty reaching a year-end agreement on payroll taxes and other issues. Politics and ideology play a big role in the debate, but the sheer cost of the items — which could easily top $350 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office — is also a factor.

Interest building for drug shortage solution
More congressional committees are investigating the causes of national drug shortages, increasing the possibility that more lawmakers will offer legislation to address this issue.Two House committees and a Senate panel have each held hearings since September to explore the causes of drug shortages. Many of the more than 200 drugs in shortage are older generic sterile injectables, the Food and Drug Administration said

Supreme Court has hard time finding an easy test for patents on medical processes
Prometheus Laboratories holds patents for how to determine the proper dosage of drugs that treat gastrointestinal and other autoimmune diseases. The problem for the company, defending itself Wednesday at the Supreme Court against a patent challenge from the Mayo Clinic, was that its procedures don’t sound like much of a discovery. You administer the drug. You take a blood sample. If the level of the drug or its components is too low, you increase the dosage. If too high, you decrease.

Plan to Widen Availability of Morning-After Pill Is Rejected
For the first time ever, the Health and Human Services secretary publicly overruled the Food and Drug Administration, refusing Wednesday to allow emergency contraceptives to be sold over the counter, including to young teenagers. The decision avoided what could have been a bruising political battle over parental control and contraception during a presidential election season. The contraceptive pill, called Plan B One-Step, has been available without a prescription to women 17 and older

Health care law changing behavior
More than 2.65 million Medicare recipients have saved more than $1.5 billion on their prescriptions this year, a $569-per-person average, while premiums have remained stable, the government plans to announce today.That's because of the provision of the health care law that put a 50% discount on prescription drugs in the "doughnut hole," the gap between traditional and catastrophic coverage in the drug benefit, also known as Part D.

Vermont, New Hampshire top list of healthiest states
Progress in the fight against obesity, heart disease, and several other public-health scourges all but ground to a halt in the past year, although as usual a person's chances of being in good health varied widely by location, according to the latest state-by-state rankings of the nation's health. As they have in the past, northeastern states dominated the top of the rankings, while states in the southeastern United States were clustered at the bottom

Obama Pledges Funds, Seeks Global Effort to Defeat AIDS ‘Once And for All’
President Barack Obama, marking World AIDS Day, called on Congress, other countries, drug companies and state governments to “renew our commitment to ending the AIDS pandemic once and for all.” “Make no mistake, we are going to win this fight -- but the fight is not over, not by a long shot,” Obama said today at an event for the ONE Campaign and Red, two groups battling the disease. Obama was joined by Bono, lead singer of U2 and co-founder of ONE and Red, and former U.S. President George W. Bush, along with President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete of Tanzania, through live video teleconference.

Secretary Sebelius Announces Delay of Meaningful Use Stage 2
Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius Nov. 30 announced that HHS intends to delay the implementation of Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements for both hospitals and eligible professionals until 2014 (i.e., until fiscal year (FY) 2014, beginning Oct. 1, 2013, for hospitals, and until calendar year (CY) 2014, beginning Jan. 1, 2014, for eligible professionals).  The delay was announced in an effort to “encourage faster adoption” of electronic health records under the Medicare and Medicaid incentive payment program funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Foes of health-care law are among states receiving federal money to implement it
Thirteen states were awarded nearly $220 million in federal grants Tuesday to help them erect the private health-insurance marketplaces that are at the heart of the 2010 health-care law — including eight led by Republican governors who opposed the legislation. The announcement by the Obama administration brings the number of states that have received such grants to 29. It also highlights the dual path that many Republican state leaders have been following when it comes to the law — petitioning the Supreme Court to strike it, even as they ready their states for implementation in the event that the justices uphold the statute.

AMA delegates detail steps to confront national drug shortage emergency
The AMA House of Delegates said the rising number of critical drug shortages constitutes a "national public health emergency" that requires a swift and sophisticated response to address the complex roots of the crisis. The tally of drugs classified as being in shortage by the Food and Drug Administration tripled from 61 in 2005 to 178 in 2010. Nearly three-quarters of the shortages involved sterile injectables, and 80% of the shortage drugs are generics

Merck to pay $950 million over Vioxx drug
Merck has agreed to pay $950 million and has pleaded guilty to a criminal charge over the marketing and sales of the painkiller Vioxx, the company and the Justice Department said today.The negotiated settlement, which includes resolution of civil cases, was the latest of a series of fraud cases brought by federal and state prosecutors against major pharmaceutical companies.

Regeneron: FDA considers new approval for Arcalyst
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Tuesday the Food and Drug Administration will review its drug Arcalyst as a treatment for gout.Regeneron said the FDA plans to complete the review by July 30.Arcalyst is approved as a treatment for CAPS, a group of rare, inherited, auto-inflammatory conditions. Regeneron reported $5.5 million in sales of the drug during the third quarter

Cain signs anti-abortion pledge, leaving Romney as sole GOP presidential outlier Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has signed the Susan B. Anthony List's anti-abortion pledge, leaving Mitt Romney as the only major candidate who hasn't done so. The "Pro-Life Presidential Leadership" pledge commits candidates to abide by four pro-life goals if elected to the presidency.

Super committee failure leaves Medicare pay cuts in place
Roughly $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts over 10 years will hit federal programs, including Medicare, after lawmakers on a special 12-person bipartisan deficit reduction committee failed to develop a consensus plan. Leaders of the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction announced on Nov. 21 that they would not be able to reach an agreement on a spending cut plan by the Nov. 23 deadline set by Congress. Organized medicine had hoped the committee would strike a deal that not only met the panel's minimum goal but that also fixed the long-term physician payment problems plaguing the Medicare program.

Northwestern University ends stem cell trial after backer pulls out
Embryonic stem cell researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine have stopped the first trial involving human patients after the Northern California company backing the study killed its funding. Northwestern will continue to treat its sole patient in the highly-publicized program, which was launched last year and was hailed as a key step in the use of stem cells to treat thousands of patients a year by regenerating neurons in spinal cords damaged by car crashes and other accidents

Workers’ Health Premiums Rose 63% in 7 Years: Study
U.S. workers’ health insurance premiums rose 63 percent from 2003 to 2010 as employers shifted more of the burden of rising medical costs to individuals and families, a study showed. The total cost of insuring a family through employer- sponsored health plans rose 50 percent over the same period, reaching an average of $13,871 a year by 2010, according to the Commonwealth Fund study, based on annual government surveys of companies.

Study: Copays for Medicare brand-name drugs to rise in 2012; wide differences among plans
With three weeks left for seniors to change their Medicare prescription plan for 2012, a new study brings distressing news: Copays for brand-name drugs are going up — sharply in some cases. Copays for preferred brand-name drugs will increase by 40 percent on average next year, and non-preferred brands will average nearly 30 percent more, according to the study by Avalere Health. Copays are the portion of the cost of each prescription that the customer pays the pharmacy.

AMA opposes ‘active purchaser’ model for exchanges
The American Medical Association said Tuesday that state insurance exchanges should not try to actively negotiate with health plans. Some consumer advocates have endorsed an “active purchaser” model, in which states empower their exchanges to negotiate with insurers and allow only certain plans into the exchange. But insurers — and now doctors — say any plan that meets the federal standards laid out in the healthcare reform law should have access to the exchanges.

Uninsured hospital patients discharged sooner
Uninsured Americans tend to be discharged from the hospital somewhat sooner than those with health coverage, regardless of the medical condition itself, a new study finds. Researchers are not sure what the reasons for the findings are. And it's not clear that a shorter hospital stay is a bad thing. Still, the findings suggest that financial factors are playing a role in hospital length of stay, the authors say.

Physicians want revisions to health insurance exchange rules
Federal health officials should ensure that families can afford health coverage, that physicians have access to patients' coverage status and type, and that physicians can lead health insurance exchanges, according to physician organization responses to several proposed rules implementing the health system reform law. Generally, physician organizations agreed in comment letters with several proposed rules released over the summer by the Dept. of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and other agencies.

Obama administration launches $1 billion healthcare drive
The Obama administration on Monday said $1 billion of federal funds allocated in last year's health reform law will go toward innovation programs designed to boost jobs and improve patient care. The announcement is the administration's latest attempt to show that it is working outside of a deeply divided Congress to create jobs. The administration will award grants in March to people who come up with the best ideas to lift care and save money for those enrolled in the federal healthcare programs Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.

Problems persist with Medicare fraud contractors
Contractors paid tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to detect fraudulent Medicare claims are using inaccurate and inconsistent data that makes it extremely difficult to catch bogus bills submitted by crooks, according to an inspector general's report released Monday. Medicare's contractor system has morphed into a complicated labyrinth, with one set of contractors paying claims and another combing through those claims in an effort to stop an estimated $60 billion a year in fraud.

State lifts three-visit ER limit for poor patients
A Thurston County judge has ruled that the state broke its rules when it imposed a three-visit limit on emergency-room visits for Medicaid patients, a budget-cutting move designed to save $30 million. The limit had prompted outcry from doctors and health-care advocates, who said it would severely hurt thousands of poor and disabled people on Medicaid. They sued the state and won Thursday, when Thurston County Superior Court Judge Paula Casey said the state had violated its own "rule-making procedures.

Michigan Senate approves health exchange measure
The Republican-led Michigan Senate took an initial, hesitant step on Thursday toward setting up a state health insurance exchange that would be created under federal health care reform requirements. The Senate passed a bill by a 25-12 vote that would help set up the Internet-based marketplace to assist small businesses and individuals with buying health insurance. The measure advances to the Republican-led House.

28 states, DC cut $1.7B in mental health funding
Modest increases in some states' mental health budgets have done little to erase massive cuts nationwide over the past three years and a reduction in Medicaid funds, according to a report to be released Thursday by the nation's largest mental health advocacy group. All told, the Washington-based National Alliance on Mental Illness found, 28 states and the District of Columbia have cut nearly $1.7 billion from their mental health budgets since the 2009 fiscal year.

Report: Mass. must control health care spending
A special commission charged with studying rising health care costs in Massachusetts is recommending the creation of an independent oversight panel to identify acceptable and unacceptable reasons for price variations in care based on which hospital or doctor is used.The Special Commission on Provider Price Reform was created by lawmaker last year. It also recommends that state regulators be given the authority to settle price disputes between insurers and health care providers if the cost of a medical procedure exceeds the market-based median.

Column: How deficit committee should tackle Medicare
With a divided Congress and a presidential election swiftly approaching, any hope for bipartisan solutions in Washington may seem far-fetched, but I believe the 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction may be the last best chance this Congress has to do something meaningful to put our country back on a path to fiscal sanity and long-term growth. And we can't afford to wait until after the next election to act.

Glaxo Agrees to Pay $3 Billion in Avandia Case
Drug maker GlaxoSmithKline said on Thursday that it would pay $3 billion to the U.S. government to settle charges it improperly marketed the diabetes drug Avandia and other products. The case is not completely settled, but the agreement brings the British drug company and the U.S. government closer to resolving the issue. “In recent years, we have fundamentally changed our procedures for compliance, marketing, and selling in the U.S. to ensure that we operate with high standards of integrity and that we conduct our business openly and transparently,”GlaxoSmithKline CEO Andrew Wittysaid in a statement.

The Bush-Obama Rx Shortages
This week President Obama finally confronted a major U.S. health-care disgrace—the growing shortages of lifesaving drugs, especially anticancer therapies. For some reason the White House lumped its executive order with its "we can't wait" campaign against House Republicans, but the pity is that we will have to wait, because the only genuine fix is a liberal anathema: market prices.

Obama Tries to Speed Response to Shortages in Vital Medicines
President Obama will issue an executive order on Monday that the administration hopes will help resolve a growing number of critical shortages of vital medicines used to treat life-threatening illnesses, among them several forms of cancer and bacterial infections. The order offers drug manufacturers and wholesalers both a helping hand and a gloved fist in efforts to prevent or resolve shortages that have worsened greatly in recent years, endangering thousands of lives.

AMA Statement on House Vote to Eliminate 3 Percent Withholding
The U.S. House of Representatives today passed H.R. 674, legislation which removed the three percent withholding provision that was created under the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 (TIPRA). “The AMA applauds the House for passing legislation that removes the three percent withholding provision. This flawed provision would have required the government to withhold three percent of Medicare physician payments. This additional burden is simply untenable in our current Medicare system. There is already a 20 percent gap between Medicare’s payments to physicians and the cost of providing care to seniors, and physicians now face a nearly 30 percent cut on January 1 due to the broken Medicare physician payment formula.

Medical Marijuana Dispensary in Oakland Is Focus of Federal Government
Richard Lee, the leader of the marijuana legalization movement in California, does not appear to be intimidated by the federal government’s crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries. Mr. Lee closed his Oakland dispensary, Coffeeshop Blue Sky, this week after the Department of Justice threatened his landlord with criminal prosecution. He then reopened it three doors down, with enormous posters of marijuana buds in the windows. On Thursday morning, an employee was handing out fliers to customers at the new locale that read: “Thank you for your support. Together we will survive the attack. Long Live Oaksterdam.”

Panel endorses anthrax vaccine test on children
A key panel of government advisers Friday recommended that the federal government sponsor a controversial study to test the anthrax vaccine in children to see whether the inoculation would protect young Americans against a bioterrorist's attack. The National Biodefense Science Board, which advises the federal government on issues related to bioterrorism, voted 12-1 to recommend that the Health and Human Services Department move forward with a study aimed at determining whether the vaccine is safe and effective in children and identifying the best dose. Patricia Quinlisk of the Iowa Department of Public Health, who chairs the panel, was the only dissenter.

Mitt Romney may be haunted by Massachusetts health care costs
Mitt Romney’s health care albatross isn’t just the similarity between his Massachusetts health care overhaul and President Barack Obama’s health reform law. It’s also the fact that Massachusetts still has the highest health costs in the country — even after the reforms Romney signed into law as governor. It’s a problem his Republican challengers are beginning to use against him, and it’s yet another health care issue that could keep him on the defensive in the primaries.

Democrats at odds over Medicare cuts
Democrats on the deficit-cutting supercommittee created a stir Wednesday by calling for hundreds of billions dollars in Medicare cuts. Aides told The Hill that the proposal, backed by a majority of the panel's six Democrats, includes hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts and more than $1 trillion in new tax hikes. Although details remain vague, Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Democrats' plan includes about $400 billion in Medicare reductions, split roughly between senior benefit cuts and reductions in payments to healthcare providers.

Boys should get routine HPV vaccination, CDC panel says
All 11- to 12-year-olds — both boys and girls — should be routinely vaccinated against HPV, a family of viruses that causes more than 25,000 cases of cancer a year in the USA, a federal advisory panel recommended Tuesday.Vaccinating boys will protect both boys and their sexual partners from HPV-related cancer, say doctors with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although HPV, the human papillomavirus, is best known for causing cervical cancer, it also causes cancers of the vagina, vulva, anus, penis and back of the throat, as well as genital warts. And just this week, a study suggested that HPV also is linked to heart disease in women.

Federal officials target Medicare’s poor-performing drug plans
Nationally, federal officials have given negative assessments to more than a quarter of Medicare’s rated prescription drug plans that will be available to seniors in 2012. And in the Washington metropolitan area, 36 percent score unacceptably low, according to an analysis of Medicare data.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is notifying the plans that, unless they improve their performance over the next few years, they face expulsion from Medicare.

Inspector general report faults oversight of Medicaid prescription drug program
Not one of 14 states recently audited had adequate controls in place to ensure that all of its Medicaid drug expenditures complied with federal law, according to a new Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General report. The potential cost to state and federal taxpayers: almost $260 million. The report found many drugs were ineligible for coverage, and faulted the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)."These shortcomings in internal controls adversely affected the efficiency of the Medicaid outpatient prescription drug program," the report found.

Still No Relief in Sight for Long-Term Needs
The law that many Americans had hoped would transform the nation’s dysfunctional system of long-term care for the swelling ranks of people with disabilities and dementia quietly died this month, a victim of its own weaknesses, a toxic political environment and President Obama’s re-election campaign focus on jobs. Its demise came as an intense disappointment to people like Alison Briolat, a chemist for a pharmaceutical company, whose family is staggering under the burdens of caring for her bedridden parents.

Demanding action, Deval Patrick presses for January vote on health care cost bill
Gov. Deval Patrick dialed up his pressure on lawmakers Friday to act on health care cost legislation, requesting a commitment from House and Senate leadership to vote on a bill in January and saying he’s discussed scaling up cost control strategies nationally with Obama administration officials. “The building is full of good intentions. We need action,” Patrick said during an interview with News Service reporters, making a rare and impromptu visit to the press Friday morning before a meeting with his Cabinet.

Optional Medicaid benefits face state cuts
States are using a variety of strategies to control rising Medicaid costs even as they look ahead to a massive expansion of the state-federal health insurance program for the poor beginning in 2014. The weak economy is driving more jobless Americans into Medicaid, increasing enrollment at the same time that medical costs keep going up. To deal with the higher costs, states are pushing Medicaid recipients into managed-care plans run by private insurers, cutting reimbursement rates to hospitals and doctors and reducing benefits.

Senate votes to keep Canadian prescription drugs out of US
The Senate on Thursday defeated an amendment that would have made it easier for individuals to get prescription drugs from Canada for personal use. "This amendment would allow the importation of small personal-use quantities of safe FDA-approved prescription drugs from Canada alone," argued Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), the amendment's author. "It is a very modest amendment." The measure would have prohibited the Food and Drug administration from blocking such imports.

Wal-Mart Cuts Some Health Care Benefits
After trying to mollify its critics in recent years by offering better health care benefits to its employees, Wal-Mart is substantially rolling back coverage for part-time workers and significantly raising premiums for many full-time staff. Citing rising costs, Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, told its employees this week that all future part-time employees who work less than 24 hours a week on average will no longer qualify for any of the company’s health insurance plans.

U.S. Moves to Cut Back Regulations on Hospitals
The Obama administration moved Tuesday to roll back numerous rules that apply to hospitals and other health care providers after concluding that the standards were obsolete or overly burdensome to the industry. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said the proposed changes, which would apply to more than 6,000 hospitals, would save providers nearly $1.1 billion a year without creating any “consequential risks for patients.”

Oklahoma judge halts law barring drug-induced abortions
A judge blocked a new Oklahoma law on Wednesday that would have prohibited women in the state from having medication-induced abortions to end unwanted early-term pregnancies. The law had been scheduled to go into effect on November 1, but state District Judge Dan Owens issued a temporary restraining order in a victory for abortion rights advocates.

Outside Panel Backs Prostate Test Advisory
In the wake of a government panel’s advice last week that healthy men should no longer be routinely screened for prostate cancer, an independent team of experts sought to explain, in an assessment of the scientific evidence in a prominent medical journal, why a simple blood test generally results in more harm than good. The review, published online Friday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, provides the scientific justification for the United States Preventive Services Task Force’s recommendation that men should no longer have an annual P.S.A. — prostate-specific antigen — test. The task force’s recommendation, which was supposed to come out after the review’s publication, leaked out on Thursday.

FDA Medical Device Process Is Best
In "How the FDA Could Cost You Your Life" (op-ed, Oct. 3), Scott Gottlieb asserts that the Food and Drug Administration approves medical devices in the U.S. years after they're approved in Europe due to burdensome data requirements. For higher-risk devices, there are big differences between the two systems. While the FDA requires that high-risk devices actually benefit patients, the European Union doesn't. A lung sealant to close air leaks and a drug-eluting stent are two examples of products approved in the EU only to be recalled or withdrawn after U.S. studies found them to be unsafe or ineffective.

FDA earns plaudits for flexible approach to approval of drugs for rare diseases
Drugmakers should not fear investing in new medicines for rare diseases because federal regulators have shown considerable flexibility when approving them, says a new report from the National Organization for Rare Disorders. The report was released Tuesday in conjunction with the start of a three-day U.S. conference on rare diseases and orphan drugs. Federal law offers financial incentives for drug companies to develop so-called "orphan" drugs for diseases that affect 200,000 or fewer U.S. patients, but the standard for federal approval is the same as for more mainstream medicines — even though the pool of test patients is much smaller.

Physicians sue Washington state for limiting emergency room visits
The American College of Emergency Physicians is suing the state of Washington over its new policy of paying for only three non-emergency trips to the emergency room per year for low-income Medicaid patients, ABC News reports. The state has defined 700 symptoms as non-emergencies, including difficulty breathing, dizziness, early-pregnancy hemorrhage, gall stones, abdominal pains and chest pains not related to a heart attack, ABC News reports. Patients with these symptoms should visit a regular doctor's office instead, the state suggests.

Feds Seek to Curb Calif. Medical Marijuana Industry
Federal authorities in California are cracking down on the state's medical marijuana industry, four U.S. attorneys in the state announced. Prosecutors have stepped up campaigns to break up businesses that take shelter under a state law allowing patients to possess marijuana for medical use, sending warning letters, filing civil forfeiture lawsuits, and prosecuting criminal cases, the attorneys said. "It's the new California gold rush," Andre Birotte Jr., the U.S. attorney for the state's central district, said during a press briefing. "There's an epidemic of these marijuana stores."

Report: Even with a job, insurance is no longer a sure thing
Employer-based health insurance is quickly becoming a thing of the past for millions of American workers, a new report says. Workers are losing jobs that offer health insurance and getting part-time or contract jobs that make finding affordable coverage more difficult, researchers say in a report released Wednesday by the nonprofit Iowa Policy Project. "Employer-provided health insurance has become more rare and more expensive, leaving the economically weakest workers to fend for themselves," said Noga O'Connor, co-author of the report, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Panel Urges Affordable Health Plans
Requirements for health-insurance plans offered through new government-run exchanges should be tailored to what small businesses can afford, a key report to the Obama administration recommended.The report—from the Institute of Medicine, an independent board that advises the government on health policy—will play a pivotal role in determining how the Department of Health and Human Services decides what benefits must be covered under plans offered on state-run insurance exchanges starting in 2014.

Supreme Court Begins New Term With Medicaid Case
The Supreme Court began its new term Monday by weighing who gets to object when a state makes Medicaid cuts — and soon is likely to plunge into a far bigger health dispute. That's the challenge to President Barack Obama's historic health care overhaul. For now, patients and providers are squaring off against California and the Obama administration to argue they should have the right to sue in federal court when a state cuts its payment rates in the Medicaid program for poor Americans.

Senators say home care companies overbooked care
Senate investigators are accusing three of the nation's biggest home care providers of deliberately increasing their visits to patients to get higher payments from the government's Medicare program. A report released Monday by the Senate Finance committee lays out more than a half-dozen strategies used by executives at Amedisys, LHC Group and Gentiva to increase home care, even when patients may not have required extra attention. Staffers for Senators Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, reviewed internal documents by the companies.

Employers' Health-Care Premiums Jump 9%
The health-insurance premiums employers pay rose sharply this year, with the average annual cost of family coverage passing the $15,000 mark for the first time, according to a major survey. The 9% average increase, reported in an annual poll of employers performed by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, comes despite a continued trend toward more limited use of medical services in the U.S. Last year, family premiums rose just 3%, the survey found.

Budget rep. wants supercommittee to take on permanent Medicare payments fix
Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) is taking the lead in urging the congressional deficit-cutting supercommittee to prevent a nearly 30 percent cut to Medicare physician payments. Schwartz, the second highest ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee and a leader on healthcare issues, issued a "Dear Colleague" letter Wednesday morning asking her colleagues to demand a permanent fix to Medicare's Sustainable Growth Rate formula. Lawmakers for years have delayed statutory cuts to doctors' payments through short-term fixes, but doctors want a permanent fix to the payment formula that was created in 1997.

Fraud, testing and specialists push up Miami health costs
Health care is big business here in Miami, one of several cities examined as part of a yearlong Tribune-Review investigation of America's skyrocketing medical costs. Known for hurricanes and mortgage fraud, Miami also is America's hot spot for costly medical care. The federal Medicare program spends $18,199 per beneficiary here every year -- double the national average of $9,103.

Health reform lawsuit appears headed for Supreme Court
The Obama administration chose not to ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to re-hear a pivotal health reform case Monday, signaling that it’s going to ask the Supreme Court to decide whether President Barack Obama’s health reform law is constitutional. The move puts the Supreme Court in the difficult position of having to decide whether to take the highly politically charged case in the middle of the presidential election.

State decides what’s not a medical emergency
State government is about to start refusing to pay for repeat visitors to emergency rooms whose conditions don’t truly rise to the level of emergencies. The trouble is all in how you define an emergency. Starting Saturday, Medicaid won’t pay for more than three ER visits in a year for a patient’s nonemergency conditions as defined by the state. A list of more than 700 diagnoses put into that category has drawn fire from hospitals and doctors’ groups over inclusions whose symptoms seem awfully similar to emergencies

Medicare pay-for-performance plan criticized over early launch
Members of organized medicine are sharply critical of a plan by the Obama administration to initiate a Medicare value-based purchasing program two years before federal law requires it. Although the 2015 start date of pay-for-performance is mandated by Congress, CMS plans to use a 2013 reporting period to determine how pay will be adjusted for some physicians in 2015.

State to penalize hospitals that readmit too many patients
Starting next month, the state plans to cut Medicaid payments to more than 20 hospitals that it says have higher-than-average rates of readmitting patients. When a patient returns to the hospital soon after going home, it can mean that the hospital provided inadequate instructions on taking medications, or failed to follow-up on problematic test results. By docking the pay of hospitals that readmit high numbers of patients within 30 days of discharge, state officials hope to push hospitals to better coordinate patients’ care after they leave the hospital. Massachusetts Medicaid officials, who plan to reduce reimbursements to these hospitals by 2.2 percent, estimate the program will save $5.2 million in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

Ruling on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research appealed
Opponents of human embryonic stem-cell research asked a federal appeals court to reverse a judge's ruling that the US may continue to fund experiments in the field." The plaintiffs, two physicians, "filed their challenge" Tuesday "with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit seeking to block the US Health and Human Services Department and the National Institutes of Health from spending federal funds on research involving human embryonic stem cells." Notably, this "appeal is the third time the case has reached the Washington appellate court.

Rick Perry: Selling Sixth-Grade Girls' Health to the Highest Bidder?
In 2007, Governor Rick Perry shocked both public health officials and his conservative base when he signed an executive order mandating that female students in Texas be vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) before entering the sixth grade. The order referred to Gardasil, a vaccine that had been approved by the FDA only a few months earlier after having been found to prevent infection with four strains of HPV, including two strains that account for 70 percent of cervical cancer and two that account for 90 percent of genital warts.  The FDA approved the three-shot regimen for young women ages nine to 26 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that this become part of the routine vaccinations of girls at ages 11 or 12 because “it is important for girls to get HPV vaccine before their first sexual contact – because they won’t have been exposed to human papillomavirus.”

Medicare Advantage Enrollees to Rise 10% in 2012
Enrollment in the Medicare program administered by private insurers will increase next year as premium rates decline, the U.S. government projects. Enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans for the elderly and disabled will climb 10 percent in 2012, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said today in a statement. Premiums paid to market leaders UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH), Humana Inc. (HUM) and WellPoint Inc. (WLP) will decline 4 percent.

Readmission rates should be re-examined as measure of quality, AHA report says
While unnecessary hospital readmissions should be avoided to lower the cost of healthcare, eliminating planned readmissions would have an adverse effect on healthcare, according to an American Hospital Association report (PDF) The report appears in the September edition of the AHA's Trendwatch, and states that readmission rates alone may be an “ill-advised measure of quality.” About 2 million Medicare patients each year return to the hospital within 30 days of discharge, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee.

Health insurance, poverty: Numbers of poor, uninsured increase, census figures show
More than 46.2 million Americans live in poverty — the highest number in the 52 years for which such estimates have been published, according to census figures released Tuesday. From 2009 to 2010, the nation's poor increased by 2.6 million, and the number of those without health insurance grew by nearly 1 million people. In Florida, 3.8 million people — more than one in five — were without health insurance last year. Nationwide, the number of uninsured was closer to one in six.

Democrats See Perils on Path to Health Cuts
As Congress opens a politically charged exploration of ways to pare the deficit, President Obama is expected to seek hundreds of billions of dollars in savings in Medicare and Medicaid, delighting Republicans and dismaying many Democrats who fear that his proposals will become a starting point for bigger cuts in the popular health programs. The president made clear his intentions in his speech to a joint session of Congress last week when, setting forth a plan to create jobs and revive the economy, he said he disagreed with members of his party “who don’t think we should make any changes at all to Medicare and Medicaid.”

Romney's Health Care Success?
If Monday night's GOP presidential debate is any indication, Romneycare may not be the liability it once was for Mitt Romney. The former Bay State governor took fewer punches on the issue than before and seemed to have absorbed most of the blows.During the debate, Romney once again defended the health care law he signed into Massachusetts law and insisted that Barack Obama’s signature legislation, Obamacare, ought to be repealed. Romney said he would also “direct the secretary of Health and Human Services to grant a waiver from Obamacare to all 50 states” on his first day in office. Then his chief rival went on the attack.

Doctors find ways to treat uninsured patients
Practicing family medicine in one of the most economically depressed cities in the country, Eric Ramos has watched his patients make wrenching choices about health care.One couple, longtime patients, had to decide whether to maintain coverage for the wife, who had chronic kidney failure, or instead for her diabetic husband. "He decided to cover her," Ramos, 55, says of the husband, "and he's scraping by." How? With medications Ramos obtains from pharmaceutical representatives or elsewhere.

A Bipartisan Move to Tackle Benefits Programs
In a significant shift driven by bipartisan concern about the looming long-term debt, Republicans and Democrats are no longer fighting over whether to tackle the popular entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — but over how to do it. In the presidential race, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, the Republican front-runner of the moment, took the debate over entitlements to a level never before seen from a major candidate, calling for the end of all three programs as currently structured.

Multistate insurance plans in development; AMA submits comments
In order to provide competition with the qualified health insurance plans that will offer coverage through the state-based health insurance exchanges by January 2014, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) directs the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to offer multistate health plans (MSHP) to the same individual and small group markets. This ACA provision represents a compromise between members of Congress. One group of legislators wanted to allow insurers to sell health insurance across state lines and permit them to choose which state's insurance laws would apply. The other group was concerned that this approach would undermine state consumer protection laws.

S.F. experiment in improving patient health care
Researchers long ago established that certain medical procedures are performed at dramatically different rates from place to place, and that these disparities affect the quality and cost of health care. Now, health insurers, hospitals and government agencies from the Bay Area to Washington, D.C., are getting more aggressive about tackling variation in medical care. The issue will surface in San Francisco with a collaboration that started this summer among Blue Shield of California and some local hospitals and physicians, aimed at better coordination of patient care for about 26,000 public employees.

CDC: 2 children sickened by novel swine flu strain
A new strain of swine flu has shown up in two children in Pennsylvania and Indiana who had direct or indirect contact with pigs. The virus includes a gene from the 2009 pandemic strain that might let it spread more easily than pig viruses normally do. So far, there's no sign that the virus has spread beyond the two children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday. "We wanted to provide some information without being alarmist," because people have contact with pigs at fairs this time of year and doctors should watch for possible flu cases, said Lyn Finelli, the CDC's flu surveillance chief. "We're always concerned when we see transmission of animal viruses to humans."

Florida’s ‘watered down’ law curbing firearms inquiries OK with FOMA
Pitting the First Amendment against the Second Amendment and children’s safety against the right to privacy, a controversial new Florida law limiting the ability of physicians to ask patients about gun ownership has sparked a lawsuit by three medical specialty societies. But the Florida Osteopathic Medical Association (FOMA) is among the physician organizations that view the legislation as a palatable compromise from the original, more punitive bill.

HHS awards $40 million to grow public health workforce
The Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday awarded $40 million to health departments and schools of public health to help train and educate public health workers. Most of the grant money was included in a provision of Democrats' healthcare reform law that some Republicans have derided as a preventive care "slush fund." The grants awarded Wednesday will fund state and local public health programs and support 10 Public Health Training Centers.

Florida Shutting ‘Pill Mill’ Clinics
Florida has long been the nation’s center of the illegal sale of prescription drugs: Doctors here bought 89 percent of all the Oxycodone sold in the country last year. At its peak, so many out-of-staters flocked to Florida to buy drugs at more than 1,000 pain clinics that the state earned the nickname “Oxy Express.”But with the help of tougher laws, officials have moved aggressively this year to shut down so-called pill mills and disrupt the pipeline that moves the drugs north. In the past year, more than 400 clinics were either shut down or closed their doors.

Kaiser Health Tracking Poll -- August 2011
The August tracking poll examines the views of Americans without health insurance, with a particular focus on how they think the health reform law will affect them. Findings from the poll include: Although estimates are that 32 million uninsured Americans will gain coverage under the ACA, only about half of non-elderly Americans currently without coverage say they are familiar with the chief components in the law designed to achieve this goal. Perhaps because awareness of these coverage expansions is low, nearly half (47%) of the uninsured do not expect to be affected at all by the health reform law, either positively or negatively.

Health Law Puts Governors in Pickle
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, along with a slew of other Republican governors, faces a dilemma: Do they apply for millions of dollars in federal grants by September to begin establishing state-run health insurance exchanges, or let the deadline slide, lose the federal money and risk falling into a federally run exchange? Republican governors are unanimous in their condemnation of President Barack Obama's health care law. But one by one, many of them are moving forward to build state exchanges, which are intended to help people not covered by large-company plans buy private health insurance at subsidized rates.

Medicare Is Taking A Page From Priceline
he Obama administration is offering a new pricing strategy for doctors and hospitals looking to improve care and lower costs of treating Medicare beneficiaries. It could be called “Name Your Own Price” — except that’s already taken by a certain online travel website that has a certain Star Trek actor as its pitchman. But the principle is the same. On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services unveiled a Medicare pilot program that will pay participating hospitals, doctors and other health providers one, “bundled,” payment to treat a patient for a single episode of care. The program starts in 2012.

NIH finalizes financial conflict of interest rules
The National Institutes of Health has finalized rules to reduce financial conflicts of interests among federally funded researchers who also receive payments or stock from drug and medical device companies.
The rules, which will affect more than 40,000 researchers, come after a string of high profile cases in which federally funded researchers failed to disclose millions of dollars from companies with a financial interest in the outcome of their work.Researchers who receive more than $5,000 in income from drug or device companies must disclose the payments. Universities or other institutions employing the researchers must collect the data and provide for public access to it.

For More Health Care Policy News Visit Our Health Care Policy Archives