Facing an electorate more worried about jobs and the economy than healthcare, House and Senate Democrats have stepped up efforts to get a compromise bill to President Obama by the end of the month, the Los Angeles Times reports. On Jan. 12, House leaders gathered to discuss potential changes to the bill. That chamber is expected to slightly modify the legislation Senate Democrats passed last month by the narrowest of margins, before sending it back across the Capitol for a final vote.
Miami-based Jackson Health System announced it has selected a chief operating officer to be the No. 2 in command for the system. David R. Small, a veteran administrator with 35 years in the healthcare business, has been named to the post by Eneida Roldan, Jackson's chief executive. Small's last position was in Chicago, where he was chief operating officer and interim chief executive of Cook County Health and Hospitals System, another public entity that has been struggling financially, the Miami Herald reports.
Harold Varmus, who has run Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for the past decade, has asked Sloan-Kettering's board to start looking for his successor. "I came here with the intention of doing this job for about 10 years, and 10 years have passed," Varmus told the Wall Street Journal Health Blog. Varmus is going to keep running a lab and teaching, and said he will stay on until his replacement has been recruited.
People with Type 2 diabetes will have an opportunity for personal consultations with Walgreen Co. pharmacists and nurse practitioners under a pilot program. Enrollees in the program, operating in Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, and Albuquerque, will be able to discuss medications, weight, and other issues in a one-on-one consultation with a Walgreen employee. After each consultation, pharmacists will contact the patient's primary physician with details from the meeting, the Wall Street Journal reports.
A group of House lawmakers and the head of the Federal Trade Commission want Congress to include a provision in the healthcare legislation that they say could save American consumers several billion dollars a year on prescription drugs, the New York Times reports. The group plans to ask Congress to block business deals in which they say makers of name-brand drugs directly or indirectly pay generic makers to delay competition from cheaper generic alternatives. The House bill already includes such a ban.
President Obama sought to assuage organized labor's misgivings about the healthcare overhaul, even as several key union leaders warned that the bill's final outlines could severely dampen their enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket in this year's elections, the Washington Post reports. Obama invited 10 labor leaders to the White House to discuss the negotiations aimed at reconciling the Senate and House bills, which are not heading in organized labor's direction in the three areas that it had identified as priorities, the Post reports.