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McNeil Oversight Changes: Johnson & Johnson is replacing two company group chairmen who had been charged with turning around the McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit after a series of recalls, the WSJ reports. Patrick Mutchler, charged with overseeing McNeil last April, is retiring and will be replaced by Roberto Marques. Meantime, the duties of Pericles Stamatiades, chief strategist for J&J’s consumer business since last spring, will be divvied up between other company officials when he departs the company, ..read more

Hostile Bid For Illumina: Swiss drug maker Roche is making a $44.50 per-share hostile bid for Illumina, valuing the gene-sequencing company at $5.7 billion, the WSJ reports. Illumina has already rejected an offer of $40 per share, Roche says. The latest bid represents a premium of about 18% to Illumina’s $37.69 closing price Tuesday. Illumina said today it would review Roche’s proposal.

PFCs and Vaccines: A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that ..read more

In the Big Issues special report on health care, the WSJ explores the pros and cons of proposed patient identification numbers.

The numbers would be assigned to every individual in the U.S., similar to a Social Security number, but for use by health-care providers. Proponents say that as medical records go digital and are more widely shared, universal patient IDs will facilitate information sharing among doctors and guard against needless medical errors. Universal health-care ID numbers would both improve care ..read more

Even a small gap in Medicaid coverage can have consequences for diabetics, new research suggests.

The study looked at 3,384 diabetes patients who received medical care at 50 clinics in Oregon from 2005-2007. The care was mostly free, but some recommended diagnostic tests and other services — including cholesterol screening, HbA1c testing to determine blood-sugar control and the flu shot — required a small co-pay.

Medicaid usually covered the co-pay. Researchers wanted to know whether there was some minimum amount of Medicaid ..read more

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 infant. Another infant in the state survived after being infected by the bacteria after consuming an undisclosed brand of formula, the paper says. A ..read more

Up to the States: The onus is on the states to make the tough decisions about what treatments must be covered by individual and small-group plans under the health-care overhaul law, the WSJ reports. The Obama administration said states would be able to align coverage standards with those of popular federal- and state-employee plans, large plans offered to consumers in small-group plans or the biggest HMO in the state’s market. Some disease-advocacy groups expressed concern that treatment ..read more

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 enrollees, would offer full or partial subsidies to seniors depending on income, the paper says. Ryan’s previous plan included replacing traditional Medicare with subsidies ..read more