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Congress is getting ready for another episode of its recurring doctor drama: Block the Medicare Payment Cuts If You Can!

The problems facing Boston Scientific over implantable heart defibrillators have grown deeper as federal authorities are delving into events causing the company’s recent recall of the devices.

“In evaluating an anticoagulant,” says heart researcher Michael Ezekowitz, “it’s all about getting the dose right.”

That’s the next big challenge for Merck and its partner Portola as they prepare to advance the closely held South San Francisco biotech’s drug betrixaban into a large-scale clinical trial in the burgeoning race to develop a replacement for the heart drug warfarin.

This post by WSJ’s Peter Landers also is appearing on the Washington Wire blog.

The fate of the Democrats’ health bill is likely to come down to the House, and the vote there hinges on wavering Democrats. The Associated Press surveyed all 39 Democrats who voted against the version of the health overhaul approved by the House on Nov. 7 and found nine who said they would consider switching to yes.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans usually stay home at some point during the winter battling fever, aches and pains — all the result of a normal flu season. But this flu season is clearly marching to a different drummer.

A few Boston Scientific-related news bites:

The company said it will cut 1,000 to 1,300 jobs over the next few years, as part of a restructuring program. That’s out of a work force of about 25,000. The company also reported earnings and gave new guidance; those figures are unpacked in this Dow Jones Newswires story.

Statins’ global conquest continues. The class of cholesterol drugs already includes Pfizer’s megablockbuster Lipitor as well as simvastatin, the hugely popular generic that Merck sold under the brand name Zocor.

Now, AstraZeneca’s statin Crestor has crossed a new threshold: It’s the cholesterol drug for people who don’t have high cholesterol.

The FDA just expanded the drug’s approval to include reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke in people who meet all of the following criteria:

A bunch of the blockbuster drugs that carried the drug industry for the past decade are about to go off patent. As we’ve noted along with everybody else, that’s going to be tough for pharma companies.

(See, for example, the news this week from Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which over the next two years will face generic competition on the two biggest drugs in the world, Lipitor and Plavix.)

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.

Public-health-related bans are set to take effect with the New Year in a bunch of states. Here’s a sampling: