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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.

Roche’s Avastin chalked up another miss in a study, this time failing to meet its main target of prolonging the lives of patients with late-stage stomach cancer in combination with chemotherapy.

Some time ago, 20 obese men traveled by cogwheel train and cable car to the awesomely named Umwelt Forschungsstation Schneefernerhaus, a research station (pictured) in the shadow of Germany’s highest mountain.

The men were the subjects of a study on altitude and weight loss. They were allowed to eat whatever they wanted during their week on the mountain, and their activity was restricted to slow walks through the research station.

All year, Congress has been trying to figure out what to do about the 21% cut in Medicare payments to doctors that’s set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2010. The latest legislative maneuver would block the cut — but only for two months.

That short-term patch is tucked inside a big defense spending bill the House passed today.

Folks from Sciele Pharma stopped by Health Blog HQ recently to talk about the company’s potential treatment for premature ejaculation. They were making the rounds at newspapers and magazines in an effort to raise awareness of the condition and their product, even though the company hasn’t asked regulators for approval yet.

Abbott isn’t likely to face generic competition on its cholesterol drug TriCor until at least March, 2011, according to an SEC filing the company put out yesterday. Filings like this come out all the time, but this one is particularly striking because the key compound in TriCor, generically known as fenofibrate, was discovered in the 1960s and hit the market in Europe in 1975. Drugs that old are almost always generic.

The CBO is out this afternoon with its latest round of estimates — this time, on what the Senate health-care bill would mean for health-insurance premiums. The short answer: Not much, for most working people.

The long answer is more complicated, so we’ll break it down into the three categories the CBO uses. The estimates compare premiums in 2016 under the Senate bill versus premiums in 2016 under current law.

With the medical establishment warning of a looming shortage of primary-care docs and general surgeons, Sen. Chuck Schumer is getting ready to introduce an amendment to the Senate health-care bill that would add 2,000 new medical residency slots, the WSJ reports this morning. But adding residency slots may not be enough to guarantee enough primary-care doctors and general surgeons.

Here are a few threads from around the world on what’s happening with the H1N1 swine-flu pandemic.

Four patients in the past six weeks had Tamiflu-resistant flu at Duke University Hospital. In at least two of the cases, patients contracted the resistant bug before they had been treated with Tamiflu, a Duke infection-control doctor told the Health Blog. All of the patients were on a cancer ward, and had suppressed immune systems.

The big health-care bill House Dems backed earlier this year would have blocked planned cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. That provision is not part of the bill Nancy Pelosi rolled out today. But that doesn’t mean it vanished — the Dems just made it a separate bill, also released today. Here’s the bill; here’s a summary.