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States expand kids' coverage despite widespread health care budget cuts

lthough states are facing their worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression, 14 found the dollars this year to increase health coverage for about 250,000 children," Stateline/Finance and Commerce reports.

6 Aug 2009

Parties trade barbs, refine messages over health care reform town hall events

Protesters at Democratic health care reform events during the Congressional recess are sparking controversy between Democrats and Republicans who are accusing each other of wrongdoing in the protests, ABC News reports.

6 Aug 2009

Total number of uninsured difficult to predict

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6 Aug 2009

Senators move closer to centrist health reform bill

Lawmakers working on a bipartisan health care reform bill in the Senate Wednesday signed on some centrist Democrats who believe they could support the reform and sell it to constituents back home over the recess, The New York Times reports.

6 Aug 2009

GE Global Research Biosciences technology celebrated fifth anniversary

From creating a new business in digital pathology to developing next generation diagnostic imaging agents and life sciences tools that are breaking new ground in the detection and treatment of disease, the Biosciences technology organization at GE Global Research today celebrated its fifth anniversary.

6 Aug 2009

Comparative effectiveness studies raise questions about vertebroplasty back pain treatment

New studies on treating back pain from a fractured spine could call more attention to the type of comparative effectiveness research health policy experts and President Barack Obama have embraced in their quest to increase quality of care while lowering costs.

6 Aug 2009

HIV genome decoded

"Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have decoded the entire HIV genome, opening the door to understanding how viruses infect humans – knowledge that could lead to new antiviral drugs," the Triangle Business Journal reports. The building block of HIV is a single stranded RNA, not a double stranded DNA (Gallagher, 8/6).

6 Aug 2009

President Obama hosts Senate 'gang of six' at the White House for a health reform update

President Barack Obama's Thursday meeting with six members of the Finance Committee was just an opportunity for an update and was not a "negotiating session," the White House said, according to The Associated Press (8/6).

6 Aug 2009

Health reform still worth fighting for

The news about health care is a little confusing these days. While polls show that Americans still support the key elements of health care reform that President Obama and his allies are trying to enact, there have been numerous reports of conservative activists showing up at congressional town halls across the country, protesting those same plans with an energy not matched by the other side.

6 Aug 2009

Obama to drug industry: We still have a deal

"Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion," The New York Times reports.

6 Aug 2009

Insurance industry speaks up on health reform

The insurance industry expresses what they want to get out of health care reform as efforts progress and attacks against them increase.

6 Aug 2009

Monographs address health reform issues

Monographs addressing individual mandates, tax exclusion and a public plan option were released today by the American College of Physicians (ACP).

6 Aug 2009

Congressman’s visit to The American Legion beneficial to veterans

During a recent visit to The American Legion headquarters here, U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., said that the maintenance of high quality health care for veterans is at the very top of his list of priorities. Within a week, Filner, who is chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, has demonstrated his advocacy and response to Legion concerns by introducing legislation long championed by the Legion that would materially aid Medicare-eligible vets.

6 Aug 2009

Hillary Clinton to meet with Somali President

As part of her seven country, 11-day trip to Africa, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday in Nairobi will meet with Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed at the new U.S. embassy in Kenya, according to Associated Press (Lee, 8/6).

6 Aug 2009

Checking in with health insurers' chief lobbyist Karen Ignagni

This has become an especially rough-and-tumble time for Karen Ignagni, the health industry’s chief lobbyist. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has denounced insurers as “villains,” and President Obama has criticized the industry for its “windfall profits.” Earlier this year, Ignagni pledged to work with Obama and Congress to pass major health care legislation this year, but relations have cooled as the White House and congressional Democrats have begun citing the industry’s practices as a top reason to pass an overhaul of the nation’s health care system.

6 Aug 2009

Celera and Aurora to collaborate on cardiovascular genetics

Aurora Health Care, Wisconsin's largest health care provider, and Celera Corporation announced today that they have entered into an agreement to collaborate on the integration of genetic testing aimed at optimizing heart care for Aurora patients

6 Aug 2009

Bill Clinton, Pfizer, and Mylan announce new agreements to lower prices of antiretrovirals for HIV/AIDS in the developing world

President Bill Clinton announced two important and complementary agreements today to enable better, more affordable treatments for patients on second-line antiretroviral (ARV) therapy for HIV/AIDS in the developing world.

6 Aug 2009

Big business group urges cost cutting to pay for health overhaul

John Castellani, the president of the Business Roundtable, told reporters today that health reform legislation should include mechanisms to finance coverage expansions largely through cost savings inside the health care system and should preserve ERISA, the 1974 federal law that regulates most private employee health plans.

6 Aug 2009

Automated network could predict disease outbreaks that originate in animals

The AP/San Francisco Chronicle examines Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers' efforts to create an automated network to monitor animals in an effort to predict disease outbreaks because two out of every three human diseases "originated in animals."

6 Aug 2009

Huge cost of scaling up entire health system in Sub-Saharan Africa

Hiring the nearly 800,000 workers needed to eliminate the staggering shortage of health care professionals in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015 will cost $2.6 billion a year, or 2.5 times the annual funds currently allocated for health worker wages in the region, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and collaborators from the World Health Organization (WHO) and The World Bank.

6 Aug 2009