Posts Tagged ‘health-care overhaul’


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  • Kaiser Poll Finds More Opposition to Health-Care Overhaul Law

    Saturday, October 29th, 2011 at 00:32 | Comments Off

    Public opinion has tipped against the health-care overhaul passed last year, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s monthly tracking poll finds.

    Some 51% of respondents in a major monthly poll now say they have an unfavorable opinion of the legislation passed by Democrats in March 2010, and just 34% of them feel favorably about it, according to a KFF telephone survey of 1,223 people carried out earlier this month.

    The results are striking because previous polls carried out by the foundation since the legislation ..read more

  • A.M. Vitals: XMRV Link to Chronic Fatigue Theory Faces More Doubt

    Friday, September 23rd, 2011 at 22:28 | Comments Off

    XMRV Theory Dealt a Blow: Scientists are backing off a controversial paper that linked a retrovirus called XMRV to chronic fatigue syndrome, and a working group looking at the issue says there’s now no reason to screen the blood supply for the virus, the WSJ reports. Two authors of the original 2009 study, published in Science, found that samples taken from patients were contaminated with a lab form of XMRV, and the paper was partially retracted. Some ..read more

  • Health Law Means Fewer Young Adults Go Without Insurance

    Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 at 03:44 | Comments Off

    Here’s a bit of good news for President Obama’s health law: it’s helping drive down the uninsured rate among young adults.

    Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that in the first quarter of 2011, the percentage of adults between ages 19 and 25 without health insurance fell 3.5 percentage points — to 30.4%. That translates to about an additional 1 million people that got coverage from the previous year.

    It’s the third survey in recent weeks ..read more

  • A.M. Vitals: Feds Won’t Try to Exclude Forest’s Solomon From Government Business

    Monday, August 8th, 2011 at 22:40 | Comments Off

    Reversal of Course: The federal government won’t try to force the resignation of Forest Laboratories CEO Howard Solomon after the company last year plead guilty to drug-marketing misdemeanors, the WSJ reports. Solomon wasn’t named in the criminal action but the government had sought to exclude him from doing business with the government under a clause of the Social Security Act.

    Bad Habit: New research shows that when it comes to lung-cancer risk, smoking within 30 minutes of ..read more

  • Reader Consult: Secret Shopping to Gauge Access to Health Care

    Tuesday, June 28th, 2011 at 01:17 | Comments Off

    It’s no secret that there’s a shortage of physicians that will likely only get worse when the health-care overhaul law brings an estimated 33 million new people into the health-care system starting in 2014.

    To gauge the current access situation, the government is planning a mystery shopper program that is already raising the hackles of some physicians, the New York Times reports. Federal contractors will pose as potential patients and call more than 4,000 physicians to see if they are accepting ..read more

  • A.M. Vitals: Pfizer Looking to Cut an Additional $1 Billion

    Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 at 22:13 | Comments Off

    Looking For Savings: Pfizer is looking to cut costs by an additional $500 million this year and $1 billion in 2012, mostly from administrative functions, the WSJ reports. That’s on top of CEO Ian Read’s plans to cut the drug maker’s R&D budget to as little as $6.5 billion in 2012 from the current $9.4 billion. Pfizer says the additional cuts are already included in its financial projections for this year and next, the paper says.

    More Salmonella: ..read more

  • A.M. Vitals: Bean Sprouts May Be Source of European E. coli Outbreak

    Monday, June 6th, 2011 at 22:26 | Comments Off

    Tainted Sprouts?: While testing isn’t yet complete, it looks like bean sprouts grown in Germany could be the source of the E. coli outbreak that has killed 22 people in Europe and sickened 1,600, many of them seriously, the WSJ reports. Agricultural officials say a bean-sprout supplier has been linked to  restaurants where people ate and then fell ill, and that an employee of the bean-sprout supplier has also been infected by E. coli. With no confirmed ..read more

  • Reader Consult: Why Have So Few People Signed Up for High-Risk Insurance Pools?

    Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 at 23:51 | Comments Off

    A year ago some policy folks raised the alarm that the budget for the federal high-risk insurance pools would be sufficient to cover only about 200,000 of the several million folks who might be eligible to participate. Medicare’s actuary predicted funding for the pools would run out by this year or 2012.

    But as it turned out, many fewer people than expected signed up for the program, which was created by the health-care overhaul law and designed to insure people who ..read more

  • A.M. Vitals: E. coli Outbreak In Europe Kills 14

    Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 at 22:47 | Comments Off

    Contaminated Cucumbers?: There’s finger-pointing over the source of an E. coli outbreak that has killed 14 people in Germany and sickened hundreds there and in other countries, the WSJ reports. An EU spokesman says cucumbers from Spain have been pegged as possible sources of contamination by the bacteria and that another batch from the Netherlands or Denmark is also being investigated; Spanish officials say the outbreak didn’t begin in that country.

    Efficiency in Medicare: Hospitals are displeased with ..read more

  • Kaiser Poll: Half of Americans Report Personal Tie to Medicaid

    Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 at 23:48 | Comments Off

    Kaiser’s latest health tracking poll focuses on Medicaid — and some of its findings may surprise you. About half (51%) of the 1,203 adults surveyed report a personal connection with the federal-state insurance program for low-income Americans, defined as receiving benefits themselves or having a friend or family member who has done so.

    Digging into who actually receives Medicaid explains how so many Americans have had a brush with the program. According to previous Kaiser research, a full 70% of nursing-home ..read more