Rounding up the year’s health news

Theirs and ours: You can read Commonhealth's list or listen to it on Radio Boston: Or listen to Carey Goldberg on WBUR MassDevice offers : The top medical device stories of the year, Part I From sweeping regulatory changes promised, but never delivered, by the FDA, to the industry and regulatory backlash against the impending 2.3% …

Advertisement

Hounded ex-Medicare chief Berwick back in Boston

Donald Berwick, who was hounded out of Washington for saying something nice about the UK health system, is back in town and on WBUR today. Also check out today's NTYimes op/ed by Joe Nocera: Dr. Donald Berwick was already in Massachusetts when I spoke to him Sunday afternoon. He was back in the Newton home where he’d lived for 30 years, being …

Maine senators join health reform lawsuit

 The Portland Press-Herald reports: Snowe was concerned with the concept of government mandating an individual purchase of something, especially because she did not believe health insurance would be sufficiently affordable, her office has said. Snowe and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., tried to amend the reform to reduce the number of people subject to the mandate …

Bad side effects of the Massachusetts health plan

First a bit of business.  RECONCILIATION: If you are wondering was reconciliation really means, check out this primer from the ever-reliable Bill Erwin at the D.C.-based Alliance for Health Reform  The Health Wonk Review is up at the Health Policy Analysis blog. This week’s edition is hosted by D. Brad Wright, a grad student at …

Health care summit streaming live

Health care summit streaming live via the excellent Association of Health Care Journalists.  Or from The White House.  (11:45 Both appear to be down and the moment.) For live blogging: a view from the right at the Cato Institute and a view from the left at the Daily Kos. Also, it is worth noting that health …

Obama in NH promises to push on with health reform

AP reports that at Obama's health reform comments went over well at a stop in Nashua. That story and more from NPR. He was in NH to talk about a program to help small businesses. He earned a standing ovation when he restated his goal of an ambitious remake of the nation's health care system. …

Snowe: Will History Call Back?

Brown's win has emboldened the GOP to call on Dems to hit the restart button on health reform. Kaiser Health News aggregates it for you, including news that Maine Republican Olympia Snowe is waiting for a call from Dems. From AP via the Globe. PORTLAND, Maine --U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, smarting over the way Democrats …

BHN Exclusive: Voter Voices from the Polls: Health Reform and the Mass. Senate Race

No campaign staff worked the polling station at the William Cardinal O'Connell Library in East Cambridge today. It was cold, slushy and raining in a city where voters tend to lean to the left of liberal. A sample of the locals leaving the polls found that almost all of them considered the future of health …

Not much good news in slowed growth of health spending

A funny thing happens when the feds try to reform the health care system. Take a  quick look at the chart on the NYTimes story. All of the "drops" -- they reflected smaller increase, not lower prices -- correlate with cost control efforts. The '80s brought limits on Medicare payments -- which many hospitals and …

Health bill a go, but no Snowe

The NYTime has a package on the the likelihood that the Senate will pass a striped down reform bill. But, without the support of the senator from Maine. Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a Maine Republican who had been considered a possible Democratic ally, said she would oppose the measure because it was being rushed. “It …