“The default is that Medicare covers acute care therapies, tests, and procedures if there is a patient that wants to receive them and a provider who is willing to deliver them, whether there is evidence of any benefit to the patient or not. As I tell students in my Introduction to Health Policy Course, while Medicare sets payment rates (and is therefore like Marlon Brando in The Godfather: “I have an offer you can’t refuse”), when it comes to what is covered in the acute care setting, it is more like my Grandmother serving lunch (“whatever you would like, honey.”)”

Obama nominee Marilyn Tavenner received a 91 to 7 vote on the Senate floor to run an agency that, since 2006, has been without a confirmed leader. Her position, overseeing a $1 trillion agency that administers health benefits to millions, has long been considered too politically volatile to fill.

“Researchers propose a new coverage option for Medicare beneficiaries that would provide comprehensive benefits, protection from catastrophic costs, and incentives for choosing high-quality, high-value care. Combining hospital, physician, and prescription drug coverage, the “Medicare Essential” option could save $180 billion in national health spending in the next decade while also improving care.”

The epic inside story of long-term criminal fraud at Ranbaxy, the Indian drug company that makes generic Lipitor for millions of Americans.

“Hospitals hoping to attract patients and build their brands are teaming up with medical-screening companies to promote tests aimed at consumers worried about potentially deadly heart disease or strokes.

What their promotions don’t say is that an influential government panel recommends against using many of the tests on people without symptoms or risk factors. The panel says such screenings find too few problems to outweigh their drawbacks, which include false positive results, follow-up procedures and potentially unnecessary surgery. Other medical experts warn that the tests could needlessly raise health-care spending.”

An Annals of Internal Medicine article last year criticized many of these commercial screening tests.

“I remain baffled by the expectation that patients could easily begin the process of recovery from mental illness on most inpatient psychiatric units. Seeing the often poorly lit and drab rooms, I am reminded of Andrew Solomon’s description of how people he met from Senegal could not understand how the Western practice of “tak[ing] people into these dingy little rooms and having them … talk about bad things that had happened to them” would be helpful.”

“He said: Half the time, bone marrow transplants don’t work.

He said: If the first transplant fails, you have to get bone marrow from a donor and try again.

He said: If the second transplant fails, treatment options become very limited.”

Here’s a good summary of the current academic journal market and the incentives driving price, access, etc.

cranquis:

If you suck your child’s pacifier clean, there’s no need to be embarrassed. You may actually be helping your kids avoid eczema and asthma, Swedish researchers say…

Other interesting findings from the study and comments in the article:

• Spit-cleaning the binkie had no effect on respiratory illness — meaning babies aren’t more likely to get cold or flu viruses from their parents sucking on the paci.
• Dr. Hesselmar [pediatric allergist] encourages moms to lick the pacifier if a child was delivered through caesarean section. C-section babies don’t receive the hefty dose of microbes that vaginally-delivered babies do and can be more prone to allergies.
• Tots throw their pacifiers on the floor all the time… [but] parents needn’t worry about picking up nasty germs themselves if they stick it in their mouths to clean. “I haven’t heard of anyone getting ill from it,” [Dr. Hesselmar] says. “There isn’t much bacteria on the floor.”

All this is still less gross to me than using that awful nasal suction bulb…

“Placing a minimum price on a unit of alcohol delivers health benefits much greater than those predicted by the UK government’s theoretical model, concludes a new report by the independent UK Institute of Alcohol Studies, which used empirical data from Canada, where minimum pricing has been in place for decades. … These analyses concluded that a 10% rise in average minimum alcohol prices was associated with reductions of 32% in wholly alcohol caused deaths, 9% in chronic and acute hospitalisations, and 3.4% in total consumption. A separate analysis showed that Saskatchewan’s policy of raising the minimum price for products of higher alcohol content within a particular class of beverage brought a shift in consumption towards less strong beers and wines.”