A 4-year-old Haitian girl named Christelle-Melenchy Fortius had her cleft lip surgically repaired when the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort docked in Port-au-Prince recently. “That ship was like a benediction for me,” her father told the Baltimore Sun in the second of two stories on the Baltimore-based ship’s four-month humanitarian mission in Latin America. But [...]
Catholic pharmacists should not dispense the emergency contraception known as Plan B, Pope Benedict said today, the AP reports.He was speaking at the Vatican to an international conference of Catholic pharmacists, but his words will add to the debate in this country over whether pharmacists may refuse on moral grounds to dispense the drug. For [...]
In a sign of the American tech industry’s eagerness to get into health care–and, perhaps, of the U.S. health-care industry’s slow adoption of IT–Microsoft is buying a Thai software company known mainly for building an IT system for a Bangkok hospital.Microsoft didn’t say what it’s paying for a controlling stake in Global Care Solutions. The [...]
As Washington grumbles over the cost of private Medicare plans, big insurers are busy signing up more seniors. Humana reported higher-than-expected third-quarter earnings today, and said it expanded its Medicare Advantage business to 1.14 million customers, a gain of 15% over the year-earlier period. Its stock opened up 6% this morning on the news.Overall, Humana’s [...]
Biogen Idec’s been the biotech flavor of the month ever since it said it was for sale. Speculation has put Pfizer, hungry for new products and a bigger presence in biotech, at the top of the list to buy Biogen. But the company’s stock has come off a bit from the initial (irrational?) exuberance over [...]
Add one more health-policy prescription to a presidential campaign that’s been full of health talk. John Edwards yesterday rolled out a plan to impose tighter rules on the direct-to-consumer drug ads that have played an increasingly important role in the drug industry’s marketing arsenal. Under Edwards’s plan, a drug would have to be on the [...]
The Health Blog looked for stories you might have missed over the weekend. Here’s our short list.A U.S. Navy hospital ship called Comfort just finished a four-month humanitarian mission in Latin America. Thousands of patients received medical care, some of it life-saving, the Baltimore Sun reports, but the ship also “left a wake of frustration [...]
Jerry E. Bishop, a giant in the field of science journalism who covered nearly every major story from the Space Age to the Genomic Age during a 42-year career at The Wall Street Journal, died this morning after a long battle with lung cancer. He was 76.For his legions of readers, Jerry wrote with uncommon [...]
Sure, old docs say things aren’t like the good old days. But veteran M.D.s may not be quite as sour about the state of doctoring as they were a few years back. Look closely at the graphic at right and you’ll see that in a recent survey of docs age 50 to 65, just over [...]
After falling through the floor yesterday, WellCare Health Plans’ stock is down another $9.26, or 22%, to $33.62 in morning trading. A few new details emerged in Florida papers today on Wednesday’s raid of the health insurer by state and federal agents company’s Tampa HQ.The raid was timed to the quarterly meeting of the company’s [...]
