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House Health-Care Bill: AMA! Obama! Protesters!

November 7, 2009 Doctors, Medicare No Comments

By Jacob Goldstein

House Health-Care Bill: AMA! Obama! Protesters!Sorry about all those exclamation marks in the headline. But there’s lots of action in DC today, what with the House set to vote on the big health-care bill this Saturday.

The AMA came out in favor of the House bill today. Not a huge surprise, given the group’s endorsement of the health-care bill introduced in the House earlier this year. Still, the new version of the legislation splits a provision … Continue Reading

Medicare Payments for Doctors: Back to the One-Year Fix!

October 21, 2009 Doctors, Medicare No Comments

By Jacob Goldstein

Medicare Payments for Doctors: Back to the One-Year Fix!The Senate just killed that bill that would have blocked Medicare pay cuts to doctors. All of the Republicans opposed the bill, along with a handful of Dems. But that doesn’t mean the looming 21% pay cut is going to take effect next year.

Instead, Congress will likely do what it almost always does: Pass another short-term fix that blocks the pay cuts for the immediate future but leaves in place plans … Continue Reading

Senator Compares AMA to a Prostitute

October 21, 2009 Doctors, Medicare No Comments

By Jacob Goldstein

Senator Compares AMA to a ProstituteThere were some heated words on the Senate floor today as Congress debated what to do about planned Medicare pay cuts for doctors. We’ll get to the rhetoric in a minute, but first a bit of the back story.

Under current law, Medicare payment rates for doctors will fall by 21% next year. Nobody seems to want to let the cuts take effect, and Congress has repeatedly blocked similar pay cuts in recent years. … Continue Reading

What the Health Care Bills Do (and Don’t Do) for Primary Care

October 13, 2009 Doctors, Medicare No Comments

By Jacob Goldstein

What the Health Care Bills Do (and Don’t Do) for Primary CareYes, the big health-care bills moving through Congress include a few measures to increase the number of primary-care doctors. No, those measures probably aren’t enough to satisfy the demand for primary-care projected by medical educators and others, Kaiser Health News reports

Medicare payments to primary-care docs would be boosted by 10% under the the House and Senate bills. And about 1,000 residency … Continue Reading

Why Don’t More Doctors Discuss Vaccines With Their Patients?

October 13, 2009 Doctors, Medicare No Comments

By Laura Landro

Why Don’t More Doctors Discuss Vaccines With Their Patients?In the push to get Americans vaccinated against both the seasonal flu and the swine flu, infectious disease experts and public health officials are also sounding the alarm about continuing low rates of adult vaccination for a host of other preventable diseases, as I write in my latest column.

Despite evidence that vaccines are among the most cost-effective ways to prevent disease, studies show a pretty high level … Continue Reading

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Drugs

South Korean FDA Probes Roche for Aiding Tamiflu Stockpiling

November 8, 2009

By Shirley S. Wang
Should companies be allowed to buy large quantities of medicine like Tamiflu to have on hand in case their employees develop the H1N1 flu virus? Not according to the law in South Korea, where it’s illegal for non-medical professionals to purchase big lots of drugs. Punishment is up to five years in [...]

Boosting Medical Students’ Training in Drug Abuse

November 7, 2009

By Shirley S. Wang
There’s lot of action these days aimed at curbing the abuse of prescription drugs. The FDA is working on a plan to make it harder for people to get access to unauthorized prescription painkillers, pain specialists have come out with guidelines to help doctors manage pain-drug-abusing patients and drug companies have been [...]

What Will Pfizer’s R&D Look Like a Year from Now?

October 21, 2009

By Jonathan D. Rockoff
Pfizer’s huge R&D shop is even bigger now that the company has swallowed Wyeth. To get a sense of the changes that could be in store, the Health Blog spoke today with the company’s two top R&D execs — Martin Mackay, a Pfizer veteran who will lead small-molecule work, and Mikael Dolsten, [...]

See Your Doctor: The Dawn of Consumer Drug Ads

October 13, 2009

By Jacob Goldstein
For a look back at a key breakthrough in the history of the pharmaceutical industry, we turn now to Joe Davis, a retired ad guy who lives in Vermont.
Back in the mid-1980s, Davis came up with an idea: Run a TV ad for Seldane, the allergy medicine, but don’t say the drug’s name. [...]

Why Other Drugmakers Want to Be More Like J&J

October 12, 2009

By Jacob Goldstein
Johnson & Johnson’s third-quarter earnings, out today, provide the latest reminder of why other drugmakers want to be more like J&J.
In a nutshell: It’s a tough time to be in the prescription drug business, what with stiff competition from generics manufacturers and payers pushing for lower costs on branded drugs. So it’s nice [...]

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Research

What Will Pfizer’s R&D Look Like a Year from Now?

October 21, 2009

By Jonathan D. Rockoff
Pfizer’s huge R&D shop is even bigger now that the company has swallowed Wyeth. To get a sense of the changes that could be in store, the Health Blog spoke today with the company’s two top R&D execs — Martin Mackay, a Pfizer veteran who will lead small-molecule work, and Mikael Dolsten, [...]

Are Mammograms and PSA Tests Overrated?

October 21, 2009

By Jacob Goldstein
Catch cancers early and treat them before they become deadly. That’s the idea behind cancer screening, and that’s clearly how it works with pap smears for cervical cancer and colonoscopy for colon cancer.
But in some cases screening can lead to aggressive treatment of slow-growing tumors that would never have caused a problem [...]

The Problem With Ranking Countries’ Health-Care Systems

October 20, 2009

By Jacob Goldstein
The oft-cited WHO ranking that said the U.S. has the 37th best health-care system in the world is dated and had problems even when it was new, WSJ stats maven Carl Bialik writes in his column today.
The ranking was published in 2000, and came up against a major problem: Good data weren’t available [...]