Category: Congress

MEwens
A Komen fundraising race from the fall.
It hasn’t been a great week for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the breast-cancer advocacy group known for its pink-ribbon fundraising efforts.
Today the group reversed a decision — made public only Tuesday — to end Planned Parenthood’s eligibility for grants. Critics had said Komen planned to […]

MEwens
Prostate-Cancer Drug Studies: The results from two trials of experimental drugs for advanced prostate cancer add to recent progress against the disease, the WSJ reports. Medivation’s MDV3100 extended survival by nearly five months in a 1,199-patient study, while Bayer and Algeta’s Alpharadin, which homes in on cancer that has already spread to the […]

WSJ Staff
The latest national health spending figures out Monday show slowed growth in medical expenditures in 2010 — and plenty of debate fodder for both policy wonks and political partisans.
For a start, there’s little consensus among analysts over the causes of the slowdown.
Republicans are seizing on the explanation that it’s the product of […]

MEwens
Focus on Formula: Wal-Mart and Supervalu have removed certain containers of Mead Johnson Nutrition’s Enfamil infant formula from their store shelves following the death of a Missouri infant from a rare bacterial infection, the WSJ reports. The FDA is testing the formula for the presence of the Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria that killed the […]

MEwens
A doc fix is looking like an increasingly unlikely holiday present for the nation’s physicians — and the patients they treat.
Last year at this time a one-year patch for scheduled cuts to Medicare reimbursement was all squared away with a bow on top.
But it’s been a different story in 2011: as the Associated […]

MEwens
New Medicare Plan: Republican Rep. Paul Ryan and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden plan to today propose a plan for changing Medicare that would permit private health-insurance plans to compete for enrollees with the traditional Medicare plan, the WSJ reports. The plan, which would take effect in 2022 and wouldn’t apply to current Medicare […]

MEwens
Central to the drug-shortage issue is a chicken-and-egg question that often leaves legislators scratching their heads at congressional hearings.
Chicken: Are the shortages of crucial drugs caused by factory flaws and shutdowns? Or egg: Are shortages somehow caused by economics, like the thin profit margins of generic drugs?
A federal report to be released Thursday […]

MEwens
Easing Heart Fears?: Research published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests no increased risk for serious heart problems in adults stemming from drugs to treat attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, the WSJ reports. While a study author notes the research doesn’t prove the drugs are safe, it could — especially when […]

MEwens
It seems like just yesterday that Congress passed a one-year fix for Medicare reimbursement cuts.
Unfortunately, time has flown, and we find ourselves back on the “doc fix” watch — though this year, there’s a 24.7% cut looming.
(Last year, it was 20%; every time cuts are put off, cuts for the next potential round […]

Betsy McKay
The supercommittee, seen here in September, is expected to report it has failed to reach agreement on deficit reduction.
For the health-care lobby, the collapse of the deficit-cutting supercommittee marks the beginning, not the end, of the industry’s efforts to defend its interests in the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Under the negotiations that […]