DoughStreet.com - A Blog About EverythingA Blog About Everything!

Athenahealth’s Bush Says Don’t Make Health IT Reform a Bailout

Besides being an entrepreneur in online billing services for doctors, athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush is a proud first cousin of President Bush and a lifelong Republican. But on a recent visit to The Wall Street Journal, he made no bones about voting for Barack Obama.
Surprisingly, he says it had little to do with President-elect Obama’s [...]

Grassley Probes Medical Ghostwriting by Wyeth

Sen. Charles Grassley, investigating instances of “medical ghostwriting,” has asked drugmaker Wyeth for information about whether it helped draft papers about the company’s hormone therapy products and recruited doctors to sign articles for medical journals.
Grassley, who has been on the warpath over drugmakers’ financial relationships with doctors, fired off a letter to Wyeth CEO Bernard [...]

Democrats Weave Health Funding Into Stimulus Package

Associated Press
President-elect Barack Obama introduces former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle as Health and Human Services Secretary-designate in Chicago.

Barack Obama was pretty serious yesterday when he said health reform needed to be “interwoven” into an economic recovery plan. Looks like the Democrats are angling to get some provisions for health care into the economic [...]

Hospitals Spar With Pennsylvania Governor Over Medical Malpractice

The uninsured and doctors’ malpractice costs are colliding in Pennsylvania.
A group representing Pennsylvania hospitals has petitioned the state’s Commonwealth Court to order Gov. Ed Rendell to fund something called the Mcare Abatement, a Philadelphia Inquirer blog reports. That’s a program that has helped doctors pay for malpractice insurance, but it hasn’t yet been extended.
Rendell, a [...]

Lilly Swinging to Red on ImClone Buy, but Remains on Lookout for Deals

Hello, ImClone. Goodbye profits.
Eli Lilly will be in the red for 2008 thanks to more than billion in fourth-quarter charges related to the drugmaker’s .5 billion deal for ImClone Systems.
For this year, the company said it now expects to record a loss of .56 to .06 a share, reflecting Imclone-related charges of .05 [...]

Massachusetts Disclosure Rules Stop Short on Doctor Pay for Research

Massachusetts has taken some big steps to cut down on drugmakers’ gifts to doctors and to require disclosures of payments. But some folks are complaining that the state stopped too far short of the finish line.
Their beef: the state proposed rules that don’t require disclosure of money companies pay doctors to conduct clinical research. The [...]

Doctors Say Testing of New Defibrillator Connector is Inadequate

Stung by past problems with the wires that hook up implantable defibrillators to the heart, two prominent cardiologists are arguing that a new type of connector should be tested in humans before hitting the market.
The doctors, Robert Hauser and Adrian Almquist of the Minneapolis Heart Institute, argue in the New England Journal of Medicine [...]

Besides HHS, Daschle to Oversee Health Reform Office

Tom Daschle is expected to officially get President-elect Barack Obama’s nod as secretary of Health and Human Services today. He’ll also get a second charge overseeing a new White House Office of Health Reform, the Associated Press is reporting.
The idea is to put Daschle in clear position to head up the administration’s push for health [...]

Wild Mushroom and Goat Cheese Puff Pastry Braid
So finals are finally done and thankfully, I’m back in the kitchen. Thanks for all of the birthday wishes last week. And now, the holiday crunch is on. I haven’t started any of my Christmas shopping, so I really need to get on the ball.
But with the holiday [...]

Hay Hay! You’ve got a few extra days!

Hello everyone! We are smack dab in the crescendo of Holiday Bustle and, if you are like me, scrambling to finish year-end reports and prep and all that tralala. SO, I am extending the deadline of Hay Hay it’s Donna Day: Pesto! The new deadline is Monday, December 15 and all you wonderful folk who [...]

The Price Is Right for Weight Loss

If we paid people to lose weight, would it curb the obesity epidemic? A study in the current issue of JAMA suggests the answer is yes.
Researchers, led by Kevin Volpp of the University of Pennsylvania’s business and medical schools, divided 57 participants into three groups to gauge the effects of financial incentives. One group of [...]

Waxman Maps Health Agenda for Next Congress

Rep. Henry Waxman, incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has started laying out his health-care priorities in the new role.
High on the list after Congress comes back next year: more scrutiny of drug marketing. Waxman, long a critic of the drug industry, talked about his approach and the emerging legislative agenda [...]