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McNeil Oversight Changes: Johnson & Johnson is replacing two company group chairmen who had been charged with turning around the McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit after a series of recalls, the WSJ reports. Patrick Mutchler, charged with overseeing McNeil last April, is retiring and will be replaced by Roberto Marques. Meantime, the duties of Pericles Stamatiades, chief strategist for J&J’s consumer business since last spring, will be divvied up between other company officials when he departs the company, ..read more

Roche’s Genomics Bet: Roche’s $6 billion hostile bid for DNA-sequencing company Illumina represents a bet that the technology will filter down from academic and government research centers to doctors’ offices and hospitals, the WSJ reports. Roche believes sales of genetic mapping machines will almost double to $2.1 billion by 2015, but some analysts say widespread use is by no means certain.

Former Executive Arrested: Jean-Claude Mas, former head the now-shuttered French company Poly Implant Prothese accused of making ..read more

Hostile Bid For Illumina: Swiss drug maker Roche is making a $44.50 per-share hostile bid for Illumina, valuing the gene-sequencing company at $5.7 billion, the WSJ reports. Illumina has already rejected an offer of $40 per share, Roche says. The latest bid represents a premium of about 18% to Illumina’s $37.69 closing price Tuesday. Illumina said today it would review Roche’s proposal.

PFCs and Vaccines: A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that ..read more

In the Big Issues special report on health care, the WSJ explores the pros and cons of proposed patient identification numbers.

The numbers would be assigned to every individual in the U.S., similar to a Social Security number, but for use by health-care providers. Proponents say that as medical records go digital and are more widely shared, universal patient IDs will facilitate information sharing among doctors and guard against needless medical errors. Universal health-care ID numbers would both improve care ..read more

CVS and FTC Settle: CVS Caremark will pay $5 million to settle FTC charges that the company’s Rx America unit posted prices for certain Medicare Part D prescription drugs that were far lower than the actual prices, Dow Jones Newswires reports. The mistaken rates were posted in 2007 and 2008 at CVS and Walgreen pharmacies and prompted Medicare consumers to choose Rx America without realizing how high their drug costs would be, DJN says. CVS says the ..read more

Waiting to Restock: Wal-Mart, Walgreen and Supervalu are waiting to restock a batch of Enfamil Newborn formula until the federal government completes tests for a potentially harmful bacteria, even though the manufacturer’s own tests have turned up no traces of contamination, the WSJ reports. The FDA and CDC are trying to figure out the source of the Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria that killed a 10-day-old Missouri infant, the paper says.

New Avastin Data: Avastin, the anti-cancer drug from Roche’s ..read more

Focus on Formula: Wal-Mart and Supervalu have removed certain containers of Mead Johnson Nutrition’s Enfamil infant formula from their store shelves following the death of a Missouri infant from a rare bacterial infection, the WSJ reports. The FDA is testing the formula for the presence of the Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria that killed the infant. Another infant in the state survived after being infected by the bacteria after consuming an undisclosed brand of formula, the paper says. A ..read more

New Medicare Plan: Republican Rep. Paul Ryan and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden plan to today propose a plan for changing Medicare that would permit private health-insurance plans to compete for enrollees with the traditional Medicare plan, the WSJ reports. The plan, which would take effect in 2022 and wouldn’t apply to current Medicare enrollees, would offer full or partial subsidies to seniors depending on income, the paper says. Ryan’s previous plan included replacing traditional Medicare with subsidies ..read more

By Louise Radnofsky

Doctors’ feelings about the health-care overhaul law passed last year are about as mixed as their patients’, research released today shows.

Some 44% of doctors said the law was “a good start,” according to a survey carried out by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions consulting group. Another 44% agreed that the law was “a step in the wrong direction.”

Many of the 501 physicians surveyed indicated that they had sour feelings about specific aspects of the law.

Around three-fourths of ..read more