Starting in 2013, drug and device companies will have to report all payments to physicians to a publicly accessible database, courtesy of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which was embedded in the health care reform law. Alas, there are serious flaws in the legislation, says Harvard professor Daniel Carpenter, writing in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association:
Gooz News
Republican plans for Medicare privatization may not affect individuals 55 and older, but younger?
Republicans are getting attacked at their spring break Town Hall meetings over their plans to privatize Medicare and turn it into a voucher program. But they seem to be getting traction with one response, which reflects the political jujitsu contained in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) plan. Here’s what Rep. Lou Barletta, a Republican from Pennsylvania, told the New York Times:
FDA considers releasing data on failed medical devices and drugs
FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg told the Food and Drug Law Institute’s annual conference that the agency is considering opening the files on failed drug and device products to rival firms and independent researchers. This is a long-overdue change that would improve the efficiency of research and development.
Federal report outlines alternatives to heath care reform’s individual mandate
For states, health reform law may be the mother of invention
If “Obamacare” was a federal takeover of health care, states failed to get the memo.
Centrist support for health reform grows as new provisions take effect
The tone on Capitol Hill during Tuesday’s debate was more civil, the partisan rhetoric less harsh than previous exchanges on the House floor. But there was little doubt that the republican-led House would vote to repeal President Obama’s signature health care reform law.
Lack of public dialog on death panels risks right’s wrath
Biotech founding father Eugene Goldwasser dies
Eugene Goldwasser, the University of Chicago biochemist whose agonizingly long but ultimately successful search for a single protein helped launch the biotechnology industry, died Friday in Chicago after a brief illness. He was 88.
The immediate cause of death was renal failure associated with advancing prostate cancer, which he’d lived with for over 20 years. When his kidneys began to fail shortly after Thanksgiving, Goldwasser opted for hospice care instead of dialysis, a procedure revolutionized by his discovery.
Health reform without an individual mandate isn’t reform
A bitterly divided Congress passed health care reform without a single Republican vote. The judiciary branch of government is responding in a similar fashion.
On Monday, Richmond, Va., federal district court judge Henry Hudson, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush in 2002, overturned the constitutionality of the law’s mandate that individuals buy insurance. Opposition to the mandate has been a rallying cry for conservative opponents of reform, who cheered Hudson’s decision.
Times’ Alzheimer’s test story criticized for selective statistics
HealthNewsReview.org gave Gina Kolata’s front-page New York Times story touting spinal taps to predict Alzheimer’s disease a two-star rating — out of five. Chief complaint: its 100 accuracy claim ignored the test’s “specificity” problem. Over a third of people told they were on the road to dementia didn’t develop the disease.
I’m glad somebody blew the whistle on this latest example of hyped health care coverage that so consistently emanates from the word processor of Ms. Kolata.
Insurers who thought the public plan was a threat have another thing coming
Check out this study from the Healthcare Performance Management Institute, a business-backed think tank that promotes self-insurance among employers. The survey claims that insurance companies are refusing to provide employers with detailed data about employee claims, citing privacy concerns. The result is that employers do not have the data that would allow them to better control their own costs by promoting employee health.