[NEJM] Early in 2009, members of major health care–related industries such as insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical device makers, and hospitals all agreed to forgo some future profits to show support for the Obama administration’s health care reform efforts. Skeptics have questioned the value of these promises, regarding at least some of them as more [...]

[MHT] When it comes to vaccines, everyone now wants to get in on the action. That’s according to Paul Bogorad, a senior manager at pharmaceutical and biotechnology consultancy Putnam Associates in Burlington. Bogorad and other analysts say that the frenzy over H1N1 has heightened the public’s awareness of the difficulty of making vaccines and has [...]

[Hastings Center] All of the health care reform proposals in Congress promise to substantially increase the number of people who get their insurance from sources other than an employer. This shift opens the door to an increase in civil litigation because existing federal laws, specifically the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), protect the employer-sponsored [...]

[msnbc] Analysis of a dozen published studies testing possible new uses for a Pfizer Inc. epilepsy drug found that reporting of the results was often misleading, indicating the medicine worked better than internal company documents showed.
According to the report, when a company-funded study’s primary finding wasn’t favorable, that result was usually buried and something else [...]

[medscape] Every day, doctors face pressure to choose between practicing defense medicine or trying to lower healthcare costs.
Your patient comes in, and even if you think the treatment is ‘wait and see,’ you can’t do that. If you miss diagnosing a disease and the patient sues, his attorney will hammer you for not having done [...]

[AP] Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug maker, will pay a record $2.3 billion civil and criminal penalty over unlawful prescription drug promotions, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. The department said the $2.3 billion settlement included a $1.2 billion criminal fine, the largest criminal fine in U.S. history. The agreement also included a criminal forfeiture [...]

(Business Wire) At a time when the competition between hospitals is at a fevered pitch, a new survey of 800 Massachusetts adults shows that consumers are questioning the longstanding practice of taking their doctor’s advice about where to go for medical care. They also are conducting their own research to determine where to receive their [...]

The Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) is calling for provinces and territories to legally recognize advance care directives for minors who are very sick or dying.  In a position paper published last week the CPS states that: 
Medical and technological advances have resulted in higher survival rates in… children with complex health conditions, many of whom would not [...]

The Supreme Court will hear arguments for Wyeth v. Levine, pertaining to whether manufacturers complying with FDA stipulated warning requirements can be held liable under state tort law for not supplying adequate warnings, this November.  Professor Zipursky of Fordham University, my alma mater, provides the following relevant facts: 
Levine’s facts present a shocking tragedy of the sort that can overwhelm [...]

Newswise — Nearly one in 10 obstetricians in a new study has considered giving up obstetric practice because of the emotional toll of stillbirths and infant deaths.
Three-quarters of the 804 obstetricians who responded to a survey by researchers at the University of Michigan Health System reported that the experience took a large emotional toll on [...]