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Health clinics in retail stores like Wal-Mart, Walgreens and CVS are expanding services to treat chronic health conditions, as we’ve written about before, but what’s prompting the expansion?

It’s because demand for basic health services in retail settings — like flu shots — has fizzled, according to today’s WSJ.

CVS temporarily closed 90 of its 550 MinuteClinics in March and Wal-Mart, which planned to open 400 clinics by 2010, closed many facilities instead because several operators went out of business. The ..read more

As H1N1 flu virus fears spread, some in France are urging locals to dump the traditional double-cheek kiss. While some locals are on board, others say they’re not quite ready to change the traditional greeting. Video courtesy of Reuters.

View original here:  Will Flu Kill the French Kiss?/a>

Another player is getting into the health IT game. Today it will be computer maker Dell who’s going to partner with hospital groups to offer electronic medical records, according to the New York Times.

Dell plans to target small practices with 10 docs or less, set-ups where the majority of U.S. docs practice. It will offer the hardware framework for these services, and partner with electronic health records software makers like eClinicalWorks to offer services. But docs in small practices largely ..read more

Did the deals that industry stakeholders have made with Obama administration on health reform reflect in the president’s speech last night?

Health insurers took the brunt of Obama’s attack, while the hospital and pharmaceutical industries — who have agreed to a combined $225 billion in cost savings over 10 years — were barely mentioned, notes Bloomberg.

“Those deals obviously paid off tonight,” an analyst with Pali Capital LLC told Bloomberg. “I didn’t hear a peep about drug costs. I heard them ..read more

Amid speculation he would present a less contentious health-care plan, WSJ’s Jonathan Weisman and Janet Adamy say President Obama delivered a mostly uncompromising speech peppered with a few olive branches.

The rest is here: Obama Speech ‘Robust, Uncompromising’/a>

In a prime-time address to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama says neither Social Security nor Medicare led to socialism and neither will an overhaul to the U.S. health-care system. Video courtesy of the Fox Business Network.

Read the rest here:  Obama: Health Reform Not Socialism, But American/a>

Socialized health care in the U.K. isn’t so bad, write two U.K. academics in a piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In fact, the authors say the British system has two major strengths that the U.S. can learn from: strong primary care and NICE, the agency that assesses and approves reimbursement for cost-effective treatments.

Primary care docs in the U.K. are well-trained and are thus able to reduce hospitalizations, unwarranted investigations and unneeded prescriptions. “The jewel in ..read more

How can patients accurately assess the risks and benefits when doctors prescribe major medical treatments? It turns out the the odds of getting a serious side effect or winding up in the hospital can vary significantly depending on whether the length of time on a therapy is taken into account, according to the WSJ.

The idea is that the longer you take a drug, for instance, the higher your odds of experiencing a serious side effect. Calculating risk with time ..read more

While analysts are scouring the proposed Baucus health-reform bill, a draft of which has been circulating since the weekend, here’s one tidbit that stuck out in the dry language — Medicaid will no longer classify smoking cessation prescription drugs as “excludable.” Put another way, the medicines will be covered by the program that provides coverage to low-income people.

That could be good news for Pfizer, which makes the anti-smoking drug Chantix, and for GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Zyban, the major competitor to ..read more

In the challenging race to produce a more effective weight loss drug, biopharma Vivus may have just moved ahead. Patients in two late-stage clinical trials of its investigational drug, Qnexa, demonstrated statistically significant weight loss compared to placebo, the company announced today.

Orexigen Therapeutics and Arena Pharmaceuticals are also trying to get a new diet drug approved. A $10 billion market awaits a new safe and effective weight loss therapy, reports Bloomberg.

But the expectations for weight loss drugs can be high ..read more