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Reform bill details emerge, lobbyists gear up for fight

Industry groups reacted "warily" this weekend to a draft of the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) Committee's health overhaul plan. The first details emerged late Friday and lobbyists began speaking up, USA Today reports.

9 Jun 2009

'Roll call' solicits strong opinions on health reform

Roll Call published a special section today that pulls together opinion pieces from 20 major players from all corners of the health care debate, including Tom Daschle, Michael Tanner, Dick Gephardt and Tommy Thompson and Newt Gingrich and Jim Frogue.

9 Jun 2009

Taxing health benefits could be used to pay for expanded coverage, drive out unnecessary care, some say

Economists say taxing health benefits not only could raise billions per year for health care reform efforts, but also could make the system run better, NPR and KHN report.

9 Jun 2009

Democrats prepare message as congress reacts to Kennedy's health reform draft

Congressional Democrats are preparing the message to go with their sweeping health reform in both the House and the Senate, after Sen. Edward Kennedy's draft reform bill was circulated, CNN.com reports.

9 Jun 2009

Republicans react to Obama insistence on public plan inclusion

President Obama's insistence on having a government-run public insurance option for the middle class risks bipartisan support for reform, Senate Republicans said in a letter to the White House released Monday, The Associated Press reports.

9 Jun 2009

Lawmakers pick up pace on health legislation

House and Senate Democrats are gearing up for what could be a crucial, month-long drive to craft health care legislation before the July 4 recess.

9 Jun 2009

St. Petersburg Times examines work of Paul Farmer, potential candidate for USAID, State Department position

The St. Petersburg Times examines the work of Paul Farmer – "the Harvard-educated doctor who, starting in Haiti, built a multinational organization on the radical idea that poor patients deserve the same care as rich ones" and is reportedly being considered for a high-level job with USAID or the State Department.

9 Jun 2009

International health experts to discuss environmental effects on children's health

International health experts will gather through Wednesday in Busan, South Korea, to discuss the effects of the environment on children's health for the Third WHO International Conference on Children's Health and the Environment, the Korea Times reports.

9 Jun 2009

Jacob Zuma addresses increased access to antiretrovirals, reduction in HIV incidence

South African President Jacob Zuma on Wednesday said he wants to have 80 percent of HIV-positive South Africans who need antiretrovirals (ARVs) on them by 2011, BuaNews reports (BuaNews/allAfrica.com, 6/3).

9 Jun 2009

Ongoing refugee crisis in Pakistan overwhelms health system

The AP/Washington Post examines how the millions of Pakistani refugees fleeing from the army's offensive against the Taliban in the northwest of the country are overwhelming the country's health care system. "The crisis has exhausted doctors, used up limited supplies of medicines and buried hospitals in a mountain of red tape as they try to get money and medicine for the crisis" pushing the entire health system to the brink of collapse, the AP/Washington Post writes.

9 Jun 2009

3-day polio, measles vaccination campaign launched in Uganda

Uganda on Saturday launched a three-day polio and measles immunization campaign, Possy Mugyenyi, the country's immunization manager, said, UGPulse.com reports (Nyanzi, UGPulse.com, 6/5). More than 6 million children are being targeted, IRIN reports (IRIN, 6/5).

9 Jun 2009

Washington Independent examines U.S. food aid

The Washington Independent examines a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, which found that a federal law requiring most international food aid to come from U.S. farmers could be "hobbling efforts to feed the world's hungry." Currently, Food for Peace – the nation’s largest food aid program – "requires that the crops be purchased from U.S. growers, processed through U.S. companies, and shipped using U.S.-flagged vessels," according to the article.

9 Jun 2009

WHO to incorporate disease severity into pandemic alert scale

A meeting of the WHO's emergency committee held Friday to discuss the H1N1 (swine) flu ended without a pandemic declaration, but experts concluded that declarations would now be based upon the severity and transmission pattern of a virus, Reuters reports (Nebehay, Reuters, 6/5). "The Emergency Committee is composed of international experts and its task is to give advice to the WHO chief on influenza outbreak responses," according to Xinhua writes (Xinhua, 6/6).

9 Jun 2009

Cisplatin doubles lung cancer survival time in mice

A lung cancer treatment that inhibits nicotine receptors was shown to double survival time in mice, according to Italian researchers.

9 Jun 2009

Diabetes with coronary disease: A moving target amid evolving therapies

In an editorial in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), William E. Boden, M.D., professor of medicine and preventive medicine at the University at Buffalo, recommends that the results of the BARI-2D Trial published in that edition must be interpreted with "considerable caution."

8 Jun 2009

Officials worry about swine flu preparedness amid budget cuts

In light of two reports released this week, public health officials examine preparation plans for a second strain of swine flu amid troubling budget cuts.

5 Jun 2009

Eleven accused of scamming Medicare in Michigan

Eleven people were charged in an indictment unsealed on Thursday with "scamming Medicare to get painkillers," the Associated Press reports.

5 Jun 2009

Industry leaders offer solutions for health care reform

The Chicago Tribune published a series of articles on industry's solutions for health care reform. The paper "turned to Chicago-area leaders in three key segments of the industry: insurers, medical providers and pharmacy," and presented their "thoughts on how best to expand medical-care coverage to all Americans."

5 Jun 2009

Debate over taxing health benefits picks up

"As the debate on how to fix health care picks up pace, so does discussion about one of the most lucrative ways to pay for it:" taxing employer-provided health benefits, CNN reports. The "tax-free arrangement" in which an employer's contribution to employee health benefit "is treated as tax-free to the employee in terms of income tax and payroll tax," was "born during the days of wage control in 1943."

5 Jun 2009

Johnson & Johnson's research reflecting new Washington policies

Health care supplier Johnson & Johnson will focus on new treatments and improved tests for cancer and other diseases for which company perceives unmet needs, like diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV, as well as using new, Washington-supported research techniques to gauge their effectiveness, researchers and executives said at a briefing with analysts, BusinessWeek reports.

5 Jun 2009