House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa has been looking into the FDA’s action at a closed Johnson & Johnson medicine plant in Puerto Rico. Three months after the Justice Department took ownership of three troubled J&J plants through a consent decree,

Today, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin signed H.202 into law, which puts his state on a path toward creating the first single-payer health care system in the nation. H.202 was passed in Vermont with the strong support of both the House of Representatives (

This week, I talked by email with physician and researcher Dr. Joseph Ross about the importance of using unique identifiers in pharma disclosure data, and other ways to take the guess work out of the Physician Payments Sunshine database. PS: Last week, a

This Pharma With a Chance of Meatballs site is making the rounds, and it's a great illustration of the issues on the Massachusetts gift ban we touched on yesterday. (The site's author clearly has a knack for story-booking policy issues. We can't help wond

When it comes to pharma meals, MA medical centers have already spoken In its aggressive push to repeal the state’s gifts and meal ban, the Massachusetts restaurant industry (and pharma, the presumptive cooks in the kitchen behind this lobbying blitz) are

States Take Steps to Improve Oversight and Consumer Engagement In the past few months, several states have taken dramatic steps to strengthen their rate review authority, protect consumers, and call out insurers on excessive rate increases. For example, e

Childhood obesity is truly an epidemic. More than one in six children in the United States are obese, a rate that has tripled in the past 30 years. Childhood obesity is linked to a number of debilitating and costly diseases, including cardiovascular disea

If you are blessed, or cursed, with a certain kind of sense of humor, the current health care debate offers a rich field for laughs, if only of the sardonic kind. First up is the spectacle of House Freshman Republicans, many of whom owe their seats to th

There’s been much said already about ProPublica’s latest installment of its “Dollars for Doctors” series, which looks at the industry money in medical specialty societies, using the Heart Rhythm Society and its annual meeting earlier this month as a case