[NYT] The Obama administration, reversing course, will revise a Medicare regulation to delete references to end-of-life planning as part of the annual physical examinations covered under the new health care law, administration officials said Tuesday.  The move is an abrupt shift, coming just days after the new policy took effect on Jan. 1.

Many doctors and [...]

[WSJ] Christopher G. Wayne doesn’t look like a typical family-practice doctor. Known to admirers as the “Rock Doc,” he wears his hair spiked, punk style, and festoons himself with chains, bangles and leather bracelets.
He uses his upscale Miami Beach home as a production studio for Playboy photo spreads, and his MySpace page shows him posing [...]

[The Hill]  A group of bipartisan senators this week introduced legislation to entice drug makers to focus more intently on cures for uncommon children’s diseases.
Sponsored by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.), the Creating Hope Act aims to solve a nagging problem inherent to the market-driven world of pharmaceutical manufacturing: [...]

[NYTimes] — Perhaps the only consistent thing about Britain’s socialized health care system is that it is in a perpetual state of flux, its structure constantly changing as governments search for the elusive formula that will deliver the best care for the cheapest price while costs and demand escalate.

Even as the new coalition government [...]

[wsj] Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for [...]

[NYT] In the nation’s drive to computerize patient records, Jonathan Bush surely qualifies as the most disgruntled beneficiary of the government’s largess – billions of dollars in incentives to accelerate adoption by doctors and hospitals.
Mr. Bush is chief executive of Athenahealth, which offers electronic health records and billing services to physicians, using an Internet-based, software-as-a-service [...]

(Bloomberg) — Drugmakers face $105 billion in costs over 10 years, $25 billion more than the industry first estimated, from discounting medicines sold through government health programs, according to Leerink Swann & Co.
The extra costs will come from expanding drug rebates through Medicaid, the U.S. insurance program for the poor, Leerink’s John L. Sullivan said [...]

[Boston.com] Top executives of the state’s two largest biotechnology companies offered diverging views today on the health care bill signed into law by President Obama, with one contending it protects innovation and the other insisting it does little to control costs. “I don’t think this health care reform really addresses the fundamental underlying issues that [...]

[medscape]  The American Medical Association (AMA) today announced its qualified support for Democratic healthcare reform legislation scheduled to come before the House this Sunday for a historic vote.
“The pending bill isn’t perfect, but we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” AMA President J. James Rohack, MD, said at a press conference Friday.
The [...]

[WSJ] The biggest transformation of the U.S. health system in decades won approval on Capitol Hill late Sunday, the culmination of efforts by generations of Democrats to achieve near-universal health coverage.

Facing voters’ judgment in the fall, Democrats bet they could overcome public misgivings on a bill that reshapes one-sixth of the U.S. economy. The final [...]