Jeffrey Young

Could be.… More »

Obama and the healthcare industry promise $2 trillion in cuts. Um, how?… More »

The pharmaceutical industry isn't at the top of its game these days. Some of the big players are having real problems developing new drugs, more generics keep entering the market, Democrats run the Food and Drug Administration and the Congress, the dollar is weak and the economy's in the tank, to name a few reasons.… More »

As Congress and the Obama administration try to design a new and improved American health care system that covers everybody, improves the quality of the medical care we receive, and slows down or reverses unsustainable cost escalation, they're confronted with a very long list of challenges. Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill have made a political calculation that's making their job even harder: They've promised that their plan for health reform --…… More »

Some conservatives might be shouting from the rooftops that federal funding for comparative effectiveness research on drugs, medical devices, surgeries, etc., will lead our nation inexorably toward government rationing of health care. One pharmaceutical executive I recently spoke with says he just doesn't see it.The economic stimulus bill signed into law by President Obama earlier this year provides $1.1 billion for scientific research on the comparative…… More »

In a major development in the push for national health care reform, a diverse coalition of interest groups announced they had agreed to endorse a controversial proposal to mandate that everyone in America obtain health coverage.Or did they? (No, they didn't.)The so-called Health Reform Dialogue, an ad hoc coalition of business and health care organizations that had been negotiating for six months with the help of a professional mediator, released a report Friday…… More »

Everybody knows that Big Pharma is in bed with Republicans and is biding its time to join forces with them to kill Obama's health plan. Everyone also knows that Obama and the Democrats are really going to stick it to Big Pharma.Everybody, apparently, except Billy Tauzin, the pharmaceutical industry's top representative in Washington. … More »

Health insurance company stocks tanked this week last week on the news that President Obama wants to slash their Medicare payments. Except that doesn't even remotely qualify as "news."There's a lot more to Obama's budget and his plans for health reform than this but he wants to cut $177.5 billion from the subsidies the government pays to private insurers over the next ten years and to subject the plans to a new bidding process to win the right to service…… More »

Physicians already draw a huge portion of their income from government programs. Should it matter if more were to come from the federal coffers under President Obama's health reform plan? Rex Morgan, M.D., has some thoughts on the matter. … More »

I've been telling people that the partisan debate on health reform was going to get ugly. I said so during a panel discussion a couple of months back and got labeled a cynic by several audience members. Still, I was caught off guard this week by nasty politicking over an obscure provision in the economic stimulus bill.… More »

Assuming that President Obama is able to move past the rocky first weeks of his presidency -- starting with naming a Health and Human Services secretary to replace Tom Daschle -- we're going to be hearing a lot about how to solve the endemic problems in the American health care system. Along with those proposals, we're going to hear a lot of numbers being thrown around. Be skeptical. … More »

This scary story in The New York Times about contaminated, celebrity-endorsed diet pills highlights a particularly egregious example of "when dietary supplements go bad" but also provides an opportunity for me to share some fun facts about these popular products. I covered this industry full-time for The Tan Sheet (expensive subscription required) when I was a puppy and I'm still surprised how little people seem to know about what they're popping.… More »

The way Medicare pays doctors for treating elderly and disabled patients is deeply flawed and fixing it is going to cost a bundle.In response to steadily rising Medicare spending on physician services, in 1998 Congress replaced the old formula that sets the pay rates every year with what's called the sustainable growth rate. Since then, only the "growth" component of that name has been operative. The formula and the fees it calculates are demonstrably unsustainable…… More »

If I were to affix an epigraph to my space on this blog, it would be this, courtesy of Princeton University health economist and raconteur Uwe Reinhardt:"Every Dollar Health Spending = Someone's Health-Care Income"Reinhardt calls this the "Alfred E. Neuman's Cosmic Health Care Equation" (which is probably some sort of Princetonian inside joke). … More »

At the risk of making this blog too self-referential in its first week, I'd like to weigh in on the merger of the pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Wyeth, a subject my fellow contributor Derek Lowe ably tackled on Friday.… More »

How hard will it be for President Obama to fulfill his campaign promise to reform the health care system by the end of the first term? The answer, of course, is "very." In large measure, this is because reform requires trade-offs and nobody's volunteering to make them. When the ball gets rolling, look for Big Insurance, Big Pharma and their ilk to push back the hardest against reforms that threaten their bottom lines (or even their entire business models). But…… More »