Health Care Blog

JGrimes
Before the Health Blog heads off for the Fourth of July weekend, we offer a reminder about this holiday’s big downside: firework-related injuries. Some 70% of such injuries last year occurred between June 20 and July 20, according to the Consumer Products Safety Commission.
There were nine firework-related deaths and 7,000 injuries in 2008, […]

JGrimes
One thing health-care practitioners know about treating the elderly is that they don’t know enough about treating the elderly.
The point is underscored today by Richard C. Frank, a doctor who writes in a WSJ.com guest column about a 83-year-old patient with heart problems seeking aggressive treatment to fight non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The cancer is […]

JGrimes
We mentioned yesterday that the feds are proposing their annual tweaks to the way Medicare pays doctors. But we were so busy geeking out on a proposed accounting change that we neglected to mention a few other details likely to be of interest: Namely, the feds want to increase Medicare payments to primary-care […]

Jacob Goldstein
Multaq, Sanofi-Aventis’s treatment for heart-rhythm disorders, has made a comeback. Rejected by the FDA in 2006 because of safety concerns, the agency has approved Multaq, the company announced today.
The drug approval is the French drug maker’s first major U.S. approval in seven years, according to Bloomberg. Late last year, Sanofi decided to […]

JGrimes
Health-care giant J&J is making a $1 billion bet for a stake in Irish drug maker Elan and will invest an additional $500 million in Elan’s closely watched experimental bapineuzumab that is in late-stage studies to treat Alzheimer’s, the companies announced this morning.
With the deal, Elan essentially turns over to J&J the development […]

JGrimes
Can cost-effective health-care measures that have worked in poorer countries be applied to in the U.S.?
That’s the question the WSJ asks amid the debate over how the U.S. can reign in health-care costs. It’s become clear that many stakeholders in the debate are in favor of figuring out what treatments and tests are […]

JGrimes
The agency that runs Medicare today suggested making an obscure accounting change that could make it easier for Congress to change how Medicare pays doctors.
The issue goes back to a law passed in the 1990s that was supposed to ensure that the amount Medicare paid doctors for each beneficiary grew no faster than […]

JGrimes
The FDA announcement today that smoking-cessation drug Chantix should require a boxed warning about the risk of serious mental-health symptoms isn’t particularly surprising.
The Pfizer drug has been investigated by U.S. and European regulators since 2007 for concerns about suicide risks and other events like blackouts. Since that time, Pfizer has beefed up warnings […]

JGrimes
It’s been a while since we asked about a topic that often seems to get readers riled up: Drug-industry gifts to doctors. We like the subject because it draws comments from all sides. “Getting free meals and all-expense-paid trips to conferences creates a subtle sense of obligation on the part of the doctor,” […]

JGrimes
The H1N1 flu (or, if you prefer, swine flu) continues to rattle around the globe. Here’s an update:
Buenos Aires has declared a health emergency. There have been 26 confirmed swine flu deaths in Argentina, though the actual toll may be higher, the WSJ reports. School vacations will be extended by two weeks in […]