Posts Tagged ‘country’
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Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 01:15 | Comments Off
Teva, Amgen Duke It Out Over Generic BiotechCategories: Wall Street Journal
There’s been plenty of hand-waving in Washington about bringing generic versions of biotech drugs to market in this country. But rather than wait for all that to get worked out, Teva, the Israeli generics giant, went ahead and ran clinical trials on a biotech drug that’s a whole lot like Amgen’s Neupogen, a $900 million drug used to stimulate the growth of white blood cells.
The FDA has agreed to take a look at Teva’s application. But, as Dow Jones Newswires ..read more
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Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at 02:02 | Comments Off
Medical Marijuana Possession Limits Struck Down in CaliforniaCategories: Wall Street Journal
California’s state Supreme Court threw out a law that limits how much medical marijuana patients can possess. Here’s the court’s ruling, which was filed yesterday.
The ruling is noteworthy in part because California already had some of the most permissive medical marijuana rules in the country; as we noted recently, the backers of New Jersey’s new medical marijuana law were eager to point out that the drug would be more tightly regulated in their state than in California.
The state’s legislature had ..read more
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Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 09:46 | Comments Off
Grassley Asks Hospitals About Problems With Health IT SystemsCategories: Wall Street Journal
Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator and a prolific author of letters, has written to more than 30 hospitals to ask about their experiences — including “complications,” “errors” and “problems” — with health IT systems.
The letters follow a barrage Grassley sent out last fall to some of the companies that sell electronic systems to hospitals and doctors, asking some similar questions.
Health IT is a big deal at the moment, of course, because of the tens of billions of dollars included in ..read more
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Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 06:04 | Comments Off
Hey, Docs: Walgreens Also Says Medicaid Doesn’t Pay EnoughCategories: Wall Street Journal
Walgreens is threatening to stop filling Medicaid prescriptions at 64 of its 121 pharmacies in Washington state because of state cuts in payments.
Walgreens, the biggest drug-store chain in the country, has been down this road before. It threatened to pull out of Medicaid programs last year before settlements were reached in Delaware and in an earlier dust-up in Washington state.
This time, the chain says it is losing money on 95% of the brand-name drugs it dispenses to Medicaid patients ..read more
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Saturday, January 9th, 2010 at 01:28 | Comments Off
Should Bone Marrow Donors Be Compensated?Categories: Wall Street Journal
Paying donors of tissue or organs can help sick people by driving up supply. But creating a market for human parts is an ethically slippery proposition.
In this country, it’s legal to compensate donors of eggs, sperm and blood, but it’s illegal to pay organ donors. Compensating donors of bone marrow — which is sometimes removed from the bone itself, but more often taken from the donor’s blood — is also illegal. But a lawsuit in federal court is challenging ..read more
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Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 03:59 | Comments Off
GE Sues a Doctor for LibelCategories: Wall Street Journal
For a while now, the FDA and other regulators have been looking at safety risks associated with a few drugs patients sometimes take before getting MRI scans.
While it’s common for new risks to crop up with established drugs, the Times of London this weekend highlighted an interesting twist in this case: GE has filed a libel suit in Britain against a Danish radiologist who gave a talk about the risks associated with Omniscan, a GE drug that’s one of ..read more
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Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 09:55 | Comments Off
Dorgan and McCain: Live in Concert! One Day Only!Categories: Wall Street Journal
You don’t see much bipartisanship on Capitol Hill these days, or many duets in the Senate. But Democrat Byron Dorgan and Republican John McCain teamed up to put on a show for colleagues and lucky C-Span viewers this afternoon with their routine pushing drug re-importation.
Allowing importation of prescription drugs from a select few countries such as Canada, Ireland, and parts of Europe could lower prices in this country, and Dorgan has an amendment to the health-care bill that ..read more
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Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 08:08 | Comments Off
Watch Scientists Slice the Brain of a Man Who Had No MemoryCategories: Wall Street Journal
Before you read this post, you might want to take a look at this live feed of a frozen brain being sliced like lunch meat.
That brain belonged to Henry Gustav Molaison, a man known in the medical literature as patient H.M. He suffered from seizures and in 1953, at the age of 27, underwent a radical experimental surgery that wound up wrecking his ability to form new memories. As he aged, his face in the mirror surprised him because he ..read more
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Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 02:51 | Comments Off
Four Free Ways to Improve Your HealthCategories: Wall Street Journal
Yes, the headline we just wrote for this post sounds a little like those cheesy “one simple rule” online ads. But that’s our headline and we’re sticking to it.
Anyway: In her health column this week, the WSJ’s Melinda Beck lists 20 health-related things to be thankful for. Most are improvements in public health — rising life spans, decreasing malnourishment among the world’s children, that sort of thing.
But she also gives thanks that there are a few simple, free things that ..read more
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Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 08:40 | Comments Off
A Doc Warns of ‘Magical Thinking’ on Health ITCategories: Wall Street Journal
“There’s this incredible magical thinking about health-care IT,” Jack Cochran said. “Once you put it in, health care will be saved.”
Cochran is an M.D. who runs the national umbrella organization for groups of Kaiser docs, and he was a practicing plastic surgeon for years, so he’s seen his fair share of health-care IT implementations. The subject came up this week when he dropped by the Health Blog’s office.
“It is a disruptive technology,” he said. “When you put it in, it ..read more

