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Drinking and driving dropped to historic lows last year, new government data show, though it’s not necessarily because adult Americans are boozing less—or less often.

The reasons behind the decline are “not well understood,” U.S. health officials said in their report. But one possibility is that the rough economy is leading people to limit their “discretionary driving” and opt to drink more often at home.

An estimated 112 million drunken driving instances occurred in 2010, a 30% drop from 2006’s peak of ..read more

There are new rules for financial-conflict-of-interest disclosure for scientific researchers who get grants from the National Institutes of Health.

While the “vast majority of academic researchers” are already sensitive to conflicts and act with “the highest standards of integrity,” the system “needs an additional layer of oversight” to protect against potential problems down the line, said Francis Collins, director of the NIH, on a conference call with reporters.

The final rule, out from the Department of Health and Human Services today, generally ..read more

Everyone agrees Medicare spending growth is unsustainable, but the specifics of how to curb it are much tougher to agree on.

The health-care overhaul law charges a panel — called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB — with making recommendations for cuts in some cases. As Kaiser Health News reports, starting in 2015, if per-beneficiary spending is projected to rise by more than the average of general consumer and medical inflation, the 15-member board can issue its own binding recommendations. ..read more

At a House subcommittee meeting today, medical societies weighed in on how to fix the much-maligned Medicare physician payment formula.

The current formula, which absolutely no one thinks can continue in its present form, is (ironically) called the Sustainable Growth Rate, or SGR. It pegs the growth of Medicare reimbursement to the GDP — problematic, since GDP growth has famously been outpaced by the increase in health-care spending for years. Automatic, across-the-board reimbursement cuts kick in if spending reaches a certain ..read more

Looking Past the Cliff: In an interview with the WSJ, new Pfizer CEO Ian Read says that the company won’t lose all of the roughly $11 billion in sales generated by Lipitor when the anti-cholesterol drug loses patent protection later this year. Read also reiterates his intention to review Pfizer’s businesses and consider whether certain non-core units may “have a better value to Pfizer shareholders outside of Pfizer rather than in.” (If you can’t get enough of ..read more

In general, Americans think pretty highly of their own health care, a new poll finds. But they’re far more pessimistic about the system as a whole. And their personal feelings are tied to their income.

The 1,034 person poll, commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, asked respondents to grade their own health-care experience on an A to F scale.

When asked about the quality of health care they directly receive, 65% said ..read more

With little progress on budget talks so far today, we could indeed be facing a government shutdown starting at midnight, the WSJ reports. So what would that mean for the health- and medical-related functions of government?

New enrollees in Medicare and Medicaid might have difficulty getting their benefits if the agency’s staff is furloughed, leaving it short of workers to process paperwork. But the entitlement programs will continue to pay providers and permit beneficiaries to receive care, NPR reports.

Meantime, medical research ..read more

Radiation Risk: The existence and extent of the radiation risk to human health in Japan will hinge on whether the nuclear reactors experience a full or partial meltdown and whether the wind blows radiation out to sea or inland, the WSJ reports. Yesterday there was a temporary spike in radiation levels in Tokyo, though the absolute levels were still very small. At this point the workers struggling to cool the reactors are the people most likely to ..read more

Donald Berwick, who became head of Medicare and Medicaid via a controversial (and temporary) recess appointment by President Obama, will have a tough time getting confirmed by the Senate.

The road ahead looks so difficult that some Democrats are joining Republicans in calling for a new nominee, The New York Times reports. It’s a matter of math; 42 Republicans have already urged President Obama to pick someone else, and by voting accordingly, they could block confirmation, the paper says. A White ..read more

Vaccines Likely to Return: Members of a panel of medical experts in Japan said they didn’t believe Pfizer’s Prevnar and Sanofi-Aventis’s ActHIB childhood vaccines are connected to the deaths of five kids there in the past few months, Dow Jones Newswires reports. That means the vaccines, against bacterial infections that can lead to meningitis and pneumonia, will likely return to use in Japan, DJN says. They were temporarily taken out of circulation pending the results of the ..read more