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We confess our eyebrows went up here at Health Blog headquarters when news crossed the wires late yesterday that Johnson & Johnson’s top medical-device exec Michael Mahoney was named president and will eventually be CEO at beleaguered Boston Scientific.

All day we’ll be tracking the latest and greatest on Express Scripts’ plans to buy Medco Home Solutions for about $29 billion in cash and stock.

Here’s what our colleagues at the WSJ have been reporting:

Deal Journal reports that investors love the deal. Shares in Express Scripts were up 4.7% to $55.00 in recent trading, while Medco shares rose 12.9% to $63.00.

Pfizer says it will “explore options” for its animal-health and nutrition businesses — in other words, look to spin off or sell the units. But the company plans to hang on to its established products (generics and branded generics) and consumer-health businesses, which may disappoint investors hoping for more sweeping restructuring plans.

Here’s the Dow Jones Newswires story and here’s the company’s press release.

Ready for Action: Federal appeals courts are set to start hearing arguments on whether the health-care overhaul law passed last year is constitutional, the New York Times reports. A court in Virginia will on Tuesday consider two rulings by lower courts — one upholding the law, another ruling the individual mandate unconstitutional — followed by separate hearings in Cincinnati and Atlanta early next month, the paper says.

Hospital Earnings: Tenet Healthcare, the object of an unwanted takeover bid by Community Health Systems, said first-quarter profit fell 16% due to increased income-tax expenses as revenue rose, Dow Jones Newswires Reports. Meantime, on Monday, Community Health boosted its all-cash bid for the hospital operator to $7.25 from $6 per share.

Johnson & Johnson, which has grown into a health-care powerhouse by acquiring small firms, is no stranger to making deals. But it’s never done anything as big as the one announced today, for device-maker Synthes. That could make digesting the new business thorny, even for a company as adept as J&J.

The $21.3 billion takeover of the surgical-device maker will be J&J’s biggest, eclipsing its $16.6 billion purchase of Pfizer’s consumer business in 2006.

It’s Deal Time: Johnson & Johnson is buying Synthes, which makes surgical devices used for orthopedic and traumatic injuries, for $21.3 billion in cash and stock, the WSJ reports. The boards of the companies support the merger, but some Synthes shareholders may think the company is worth closer to 165 Swiss francs ($189) per share than the agreed-upon price of 159 Swiss francs per share, the paper says.