Starting Feb. 1, Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, TN, will no longer hire people who use tobacco products, making the hospital one of a small number of employers nationwide that consider smoking status in job applicants. Under the new rule, which does not affect current Memorial employees, those offered employment at the hospital will be tested for nicotine during their required drug test, a human resources officer said. Even nicotine gum or the patch would make a potential employee ineligible, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports.
President Obama made a last-ditch effort to resurrect the candidacy of a struggling Democrat who could provide him a critical Senate vote for healthcare reform. Obama urged Massachusetts voters to send state Attorney General Martha Coakley to the U.S. Senate to succeed the late Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) in a close race that has taken on national implications. An upset victory by state Sen. Scott Brown (R) would give Senate Republicans 41 votes, enough potentially to scuttle the healthcare legislation, the Washington Post reports.
With the Massachusetts special election for United States Senate unpredictable, Democrats are contemplating a fall-back plan to advance healthcare legislation even if a Republican victory deprives Senate Democrats of the crucial 60th vote they need to overcome filibusters. The preferred Plan B would be to try to persuade House Democrats to approve the healthcare bill that the Senate adopted on Christmas Eve. But House Democrats have expressed complaints about the Senate legislation, and Congressional leaders and top White House officials, including President Obama, worked last week to negotiate various compromises, the New York Times reports.
Congressional leaders met with the White House for hours on January 15 to negotiate over the healthcare bill, including how to pay for a deal giving a five-year reprieve on a new tax on expensive health plans to as many as 12 million union members, the Wall Street Journal reports. The agreement cleared away a significant hurdle to reaching a final deal on a healthcare overhaul, but unions estimated that softening the tax would reduce revenue by $60 billion over a decade.
Philadelphia-based Fox Chase Cancer Center announced that it was abandoning its efforts to expand into a neighboring park. The cancer center decided not to appeal a decision last month barring its plans. In December 2008, Orphans' Court Judge John W. Herron ruled that Fox Chase was not entitled to build on 19.4 acres of the 65-acre park. Fox Chase had appealed that decision. Fox Chase's plan to spend $1 billion over 20 years on the expansion was met by strong neighborhood opposition, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
The Justice Department charged Johnson & Johnson with paying "tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks" to a nursing-home pharmacy company to boost sales of J&J drugs to nursing-home patients. Prosecutors, in a complaint filed in federal court in Boston, accused J&J of illegally paying Omnicare Inc. to buy J&J medicines and recommend their use to nursing homes. Under the arrangements, prosecutors alleged, Omnicare's annual purchases of J&J medicines nearly tripled to more than $280 million, the Wall Street Journal reports.