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9/11 Health fund administrator chosen

The Justice Department on Wednesday chose a special master to administer a multibillion-dollar fund created to provide compensation to rescue workers and others sickened from exposure to toxic fumes, dust and smoke from ground zero after the 2001 terrorist attack.

20 May 2011

Study: Costs get in way of cancer patients refilling their prescriptions

About 10 percent of cancer patients aren't taking the oral medicines they need either because of the cost or they feel they are already taking too many other drugs, according to a study released by health-care consulting company Avalere Health late Wednesday.

20 May 2011

HealthGrades identifies major flaws in hospital ratings study

The findings of a journal article published in the May issue of the Archives of Surgery are fundamentally flawed and could undermine patients ability to find high quality hospital care, according to HealthGrades. The article, Evaluating Popular Media and Internet-Based Hospital Quality Ratings for Cancer Surgery, compared outcomes for gastrointestinal cancer patients who underwent surgery at hospitals on HealthGrades' "America's 50 Best Hospitals" and US News and World Report's "America's Best Hospitals" lists.

20 May 2011

Longer looks: Tough health care questions for GOP presidential contenders; Robotics help spike use of prostate treatment

For my money, the most interesting thing about Mitt Romney's health-care speech last week wasn't his struggle to defend Romneycare and distance it from Obamacare, but the largely hostile reception of the speech from the right.

20 May 2011

OPINION: U.S. administration must address humanitarian situation in Haiti

Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Donald Payne (D-N.J.), and Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) write in a Huffington Post opinion piece that the "increasing gravity of the situation" of internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Haiti "requires an urgent response.

20 May 2011

Viewpoints: Coburn on his dropout; Malpractice reform and states

For the past several months I have been meeting with a small group of senators from both parties, informally known as the Gang of Six, that was designed to force the idle — not gridlocked — Senate, and then the House and the president, to enact a long-term deficit-reduction package.

20 May 2011

OPINION: Economists helping to deliver reliable data about what development aid works

"[F]inally, we're getting some reliable data suggesting how to" help people in developing countries because of economists, who "provide answers that are rigorously field-tested, akin to the way drugs are tested in randomized controlled trials, yielding results that are particularly credible and persuasive," Nicholas Kristof writes in his New York Times column.

20 May 2011

First Edition: May 19, 2011

Today's headlines continue to analyze the impact of the departure of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., from the 'Gang of Six' on the efforts to address long-term budget issues such as Medicare spending.

19 May 2011

Latest development in Gingrich-Ryan Medicare dust-up: An apology

Newt Gingrich's presidential candidacy is only days old, and more than a decade after he last campaigned for public office, he's clearly shaking off some rust. On Tuesday, the former House speaker stepped up outreach to conservatives in an attempt to backtrack from comments he made Sunday calling Rep. Paul Ryan's proposed changes to Medicare "right-wing social engineering," as Democrats sought to use his remarks to attack the GOP.

19 May 2011

'Gang of six' budget talks hit wall as Sen. Coburn withdraws

The already weak prospects for a bipartisan debt-reduction deal this year dimmed further on Tuesday when a Republican member of the Senate's "Gang of Six," Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, withdrew after months of private negotiations amid differences over changes to Medicare.

19 May 2011

Health law faces legal challenges and political battles

Senate Republicans target the law's Independent Payment Advisory Board and issue a top-10 list of its biggest problems. Meanwhile, CQ HealthBeat reports on the merits of the "imminent injury" argument that is in play in at least one legal challenge to the law.

19 May 2011

Free NYU Physician iPad app now available in iTunes store

NYU Langone Medical Center, one of the nation's premier academic medical centers, announced today the magazine of NYU School of Medicine, NYU Physician, is now available as a free iPad app in the iTunes App Store.

19 May 2011

People living with HIV/AIDS in China face discrimination when accessing health care, report says

HIV-positive people living in China "are routinely being denied medical treatment in mainstream hospitals due to fear and ignorance about the disease," according to a study based on interviews with 103 people living with HIV/AIDS and 23 health care workers that was conducted by the International Labor Organization and China's National Center for STD and AIDS Prevention and Control, Reuters reports.

19 May 2011

HHS offers new initiatives to add momentum to ACOs

The Obama administration on Tuesday announced three new initiatives to encourage physicians and hospitals to better coordinate care after a key regulation came under intense criticism over the past week.

19 May 2011

IRIN examines high risk of TB infection among health workers in Kenya

IRIN examines tuberculosis among health care workers in Kenya, where "safety equipment - including protective masks and proper waste disposal facilities - are rarely available in rural centres, something health workers say must be addressed urgently."

19 May 2011

Afghan Acting Health Minister says country wants to boost immunization access

Reuters featured an interview with Afghanistan's Acting Health Minister Suraya Dalil on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly in Geneva. "Afghanistan, whose government is fighting a worsening insurgency that has dragged on for nearly a decade since the U.S.-backed overthrow of the Taliban, is also plagued by poverty, malnutrition and corruption," Reuters writes, adding that the government and donors together spend "barely" $10 per person on health annually.

19 May 2011

Government study finds 12 women died giving birth per month in 2010 at hospital in Sierra Leone

A study has shown that during 2010, 12 women died every month while giving birth at the Princess Christian maternity hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone, "a country with one of the world's highest maternal mortality rates," Agence France-Presse reports.

19 May 2011

Decline in donations, weak U.S. dollar causing WHO to cut budget, staff, Director-General Chan says

A decline in contributions from the WHO's leading 30 "traditional" donor nations and the exchange rate for the weaker U.S. dollar are causing the agency to cut its budget and staff, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan told reporters in a news conference at the World Health Assembly in Geneva on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports.

19 May 2011

On Op-Ed pages, controversies abound: Romney, Gingrich, abortion, telemedicine, cancer funding cuts

Gingrich was taking basically the same position on Medicare he took 16 years ago, when, as speaker of the House, he was the commanding general of the Republican Revolution. ... Compared to today's Republican agenda, the Revolution of '94 now appears to be a halcyon period of moderation and good sense. Then, there was a hope that government-run Medicare would "wither on the vine" when recipients were offered alternatives.

19 May 2011