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Americans cutting costs by skipping prescription drugs

A Consumer Reports survey revealed that more Americans are ignoring their doctor’s advice and skipping prescription drugs or medical procedures to save money in 2011 than a year earlier.

8 Jan 2012

Health insurance gets dearer

According to a latest survey, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance continued to escalate this year even as the share of workers getting less generous coverage reached a new high.

8 Jan 2012

Trail of research that led to discovery of aspirin's role in prevention of first heart attack

Charles H. Hennekens, M.D., DrPH, the first Sir Richard Doll Research Professor as well as first recipient of an endowed chair in the new Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University, has published a Citation Classic in the current issue of Clinical Chemistry. Hennekens was the founding principal investigator (PI) of the landmark Physician's Health Study and was the first to demonstrate that aspirin prevents a first heart attack.

7 Jan 2012

HHS' new rules on electronic payments could benefit doctors, hospitals

NPR reports on how efforts to set uniform standards for electronic claims for health care services could pay off.

7 Jan 2012

RetireSafe calls upon Express Scripts PBM to come to an agreement with Walgreens

RetireSafe, a 400,000-supporter strong grassroots organization that advocates and educates on behalf of America's seniors on issues regarding Social Security, Medicare, health and financial well-being, today urged Express Scripts, Inc. (ESI) to return to the negotiating table, and come to an agreement with Walgreens.

7 Jan 2012

Kenyan government adopts new HIV testing guidelines following WHO recall

"The Kenyan government has changed its HIV testing algorithm following the withdrawal of a widely used brand of HIV test [based] on warnings from" the WHO, PlusNews reports.

7 Jan 2012

Moving FAO forward with sights on hunger eradication

Jose Graziano da Silva, director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, writes in a Huffington Post opinion piece, My top priority for 2012 will be to make a renewed push towards achieving the first millennium development goal of halving the proportion of people living in hunger and extreme poverty by 2015, but also to look beyond it, to the final, total eradication of hunger from this planet.

7 Jan 2012

Cardinal Health launches infusion room management tool for community rheumatologists

Cardinal Health Specialty Solutions today launched InfusaTrack, a Web-based infusion room management tool that makes it easier for community rheumatology practices to offer in-office infusion therapy services to patients.

7 Jan 2012

Justice Department, lawmakers file SCOTUS health suit briefs

The Obama administration on Friday told the Supreme Court that the requirement to buy insurance in its health reform law is well within Congress's constitutional boundaries - and insisted that legally, the law doesn't break any new ground. The 130-page brief is the first the Justice Department has filed since the court agreed to review the law.

7 Jan 2012

UDW responds to Gov. Brown's budget proposal for In Home Supportive Services

"Gov. Brown, just like his predecessor, continues to try to use the IHSS program as a 'piggy bank' for budget cuts. IHSS cuts were wrong in 2008; they are just as wrong in 2012. His proposal to eliminate domestic and related services for all IHSS consumers who live with someone else (even if those they are living with are NOT their providers) is especially egregious.

7 Jan 2012

Mass. high court says state can't bar legal immigrants from health program

The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the commonwealth cannot bar legal immigrants from joining a state health insurance program for residents with lower income. The price tag for covering the 37,400 immigrants who stand to gain coverage is $150 million.

7 Jan 2012

Justice Dept. to file brief regarding Supreme Court health law challenge

The early round of briefs will focus on the core questions related to the individual mandate. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that many insurers have profited from the health law -- despite their opposition to it.

7 Jan 2012

Medicaid news: Provider leaves Wash. State; Lawsuits in Calif., Iowa

Regence BlueShield is leaving Washington's Medicaid market and several news outlets analyze Medi-Cal lawsuits.

7 Jan 2012

ACLJ urges U.S. Supreme Court to declare flawed health care law unconstitutional

On behalf of nearly 120 members of Congress and more than 100,000 Americans, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to conclude that a key provision of ObamaCare - the individual mandate - cannot be severed from the health care law and urged the high court to declare the entire law unconstitutional.

7 Jan 2012

Governments must rethink policies surrounding biosecurity, not resort to censorship

Author Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes in this Foreign Policy opinion piece that the announcement researchers from the Netherlands and the U.S. have developed a supercontagious variety of bird flu "has highlighted a dilemma: How do you balance the universal mandate for scientific openness against the fear that terrorists or rogue states might follow the researchers' work -- using it as catastrophic cookbooks for global influenza contagion?"

7 Jan 2012

CMS selects UofL geriatrician for Innovation Advisors Program

Christian Davis Furman, M.D., M.S.P.H., vice chair for geriatric medicine in the Department of Family and Geriatric Medicine at the University of Louisville, has been selected for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) Innovation Advisors Program. She is the only Kentuckian among the 73 individuals from 27 states and the District of Columbia selected to participate.

7 Jan 2012

Hospice company accused of Medicare fraud

A national for-profit hospice care company that is partially owned by a San Francisco private equity firm has allegedly bilked Medicare of millions of dollars, according to a legal complaint filed this week by the U.S. Department of Justice.

7 Jan 2012

Illegal drug use may be affecting health, death rates worldwide, Lancet report says

"About 200 million people around the world use illegal drugs every year, and that may be taking a toll on health and death rates in various countries, says a report released Thursday in the Lancet," the Los Angeles Times' "Booster Shots" blog reports.

7 Jan 2012

Dems hit GOP lawmakers on efforts to repeal health law, 'privatize' Medicare

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has gone on the offensive, criticizing Republicans for focusing on health issues instead of job creation. In related action, House Democrats signaled they would support using Medicare and Medicaid savings only as an offset for other health care provisions in a bill to extend expiring tax breaks and jobless benefits.

7 Jan 2012

WHO confirms bird flu cases in Egypt, China

The WHO on Thursday "announced the deaths of two men from H5N1 avian influenza, one from Egypt and another from China whose death was reported earlier in the media," CIDRAP News reports. Both men are suspected to have contracted the virus from avian sources, although an investigation into the man from China's exposure to the virus is ongoing, according to news service.

7 Jan 2012