Orshe

The latest national health spending figures out Monday show slowed growth in medical expenditures in 2010 — and plenty of debate fodder for both policy wonks and political partisans.

For a start, there’s little consensus among analysts over the causes of the slowdown.

Republicans are seizing on the explanation that it’s the product of an economic downturn (which they blame on President Barack Obama).

As the Health Journal column reports today, the holidays can be particularly hard on people who have outlived both their parents and their siblings.

A Pfizer Pharmacy?: Pfizer is planning to sell Lipitor at generic prices directly to consumers after the patent on the drug expires at the end of the month, the WSJ reports. The company is partnering with a specialty pharmacy to mail Lipitor to patients. Health plans that have contracted with Pfizer “would pay about a generic price for Lipitor, while plans that didn’t would pay a higher price,” the paper says.

It’s common for parents in the Netherlands to allow their older teenagers to have sleepovers with a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Can you imagine that here?

The WSJ Bonds column today explains how American parents should start teaching their children about sex from the time their children can talk.

There’s a lot of concern today that paying fees to medical providers for each service may lead to unnecessary care. But there’s no easy way to replace the massively complicated fee-for-service system.

Since signs emerged last year that Americans were using fewer medical services, the question has been when we would flock back to clinics and hospitals. The answer: not yet.

With four big insurers already done announcing earnings, there are scant signs of an uptick in what health experts call “utilization.”

We wince when journalists are called “content providers,” so we sympathize with a perspective piece in the current New England Journal of Medicine bemoaning “the new language of medicine.”

The two physician-authors, Pamela Hartzband and Jerome Groopman, do not wish to be called “providers,” thankyouverymuch. Nor do they want their patients to be called “customers” or “consumers.” Instead they prefer specific job titles: doctors, nurses, physical therapists, etc., to describe specialized medical professionals.

Mood Lift?: A study shows that for women, drinking two to three cups of coffee per day is associated with a 15% lower risk of developing depression during a ten-year period, the WSJ reports. Other forms of caffeine were also tied to a lower risk of depression. However, this type of study can’t prove that caffeine prevents the condition.

We already know that health-care spending and use can vary wildly depending on where a person lives.

But most of that evidence comes from Medicare data, notably reports by the Dartmouth Atlas Project. Those analyses don’t say anything about spending patterns for people covered by commercial insurance.