Category: Legal

MEwens
Paying More for Primary Care: Beginning in the summer, WellPoint will increase reimbursement for primary-care services — offering those physicians a fee increase of around 10% with the chance of additional payments that could bolster what they receive for covered patients by as much as 50% — in an attempt to lower acute-care […]

MEwens
By Louise Radnofsky
Still trying to figure out how health care will play in the Republican primary and the November presidential election? Consider some numbers from the latest opinion poll by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
Some 54% of respondents said they thought the Supreme Court should rule unconstitutional the individual mandate — a requirement […]

MEwens
J&J Settles With Texas: Johnson & Johnson said it would pay $158 million to settle claims by Texas that the company promoted its antipsychotic drug Risperdal for unapproved uses, resulting in overcharges to the state’s Medicaid program, the WSJ reports. J&J said the settlement, to be paid to a plaintiff who filed a […]

MEwens
Hepatitis C Deal: Bristol-Myers Squibb is buying Inhibitex, which has a hepatitis C drug in development, for $26 per share in cash, or about $2.5 billion, the WSJ reports. Like Bristol-Myers, Inhibitex is developing a drug belonging to the so-called nucleotides class. A Bristol executive tells the WSJ Inhibitex’s drug could combine with […]

MEwens
Double Duty?: Research published in the journal Cancer finds that among a group of middle-aged men, statin use was associated with a lower risk of dying from prostate cancer, Reuters Health reports. The study, which covered 760 men, most of them white, can’t prove that statin use caused the lower risk of death, […]

MEwens
Three Days in March: The Supreme Court said it will hear five and a half hours of arguments concerning the health-care overhaul law over three days, starting Monday, March 26, the WSJ reports. There will be two hours of argument covering the individual mandate — which requires most Americans to purchase insurance or […]

MEwens
Health Suit Complication?: A small-business owner who is a key plaintiff in the 26-state suit against the Obama health-care law has closed her business and filed for bankruptcy, which may complicate her legal standing to be part of the suit, the WSJ reports. The suit relied in part on the financial burden the […]

MEwens
Call for Funding: President Obama called for spending an extra $50 million on U.S. HIV/AIDS programs, including $15 million for HIV clinics and $35 million for state drug-assistance programs, the WSJ reports. He also called for putting about 2.1 million more people globally on antiretroviral drugs by the end of fiscal 2013, through […]

MEwens
Is donating bone marrow more like giving blood or a kidney?
According to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, it’s the former. The court ruled today in favor of plaintiffs including a California nonprofit, MoreMarrowDonors.org, that planned a pilot project to offer incentives such as a $3,000 charitable gift or scholarship to help […]

MEwens
The Obama administration announced yesterday that a dozen more states have crossed the first big threshold in setting up health insurance exchanges — including seven of the states that are suing the administration to overturn the health-care law passed last year.
Under the 2010 law, the state-run exchanges will be launched in 2014, opening […]