This year's U.S. flu season has created shortages of the Tamiflu treatment for children and of the most widely used flu vaccine, their manufacturers said. Roche Holding AG told Reuters late on Wednesday that it had a shortage of the liquid form of Tamiflu, given to children who already have the flu to slow or stop symptoms. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration confirmed that there have been supply interruptions in some locations.
The United States could save $2 trillion in healthcare spending over the next decade, if the U.S. government used its influence in the public and private sectors to nudge soaring costs into line with economic growth, a study released on Thursday said. Compiled by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund, the study recommends holding the $2.8 trillion U.S. healthcare system to an annual spending target by having Medicare, Medicaid, other government programs and private insurers encourage providers to accelerate adoption of more cost-effective care.
A chart, published today by Health and Human Services, shows how quickly the agency expects Medicare costs to grow over the next two decades. Most of the growth above and beyond overall economic growth has to do with the Medicare population getting older and bigger. Actuaries predict that cost growth will begin exceeding the rest of the economy's growth in 2023.
Just two days ago, Florida Gov. Rick Scott was in Washington declaring that the potential cost of the federal health care overhaul to state taxpayers would be as much as $26 billion. But on Wednesday, Scott's own health care agency released new cost estimates of as little as $3 billion over the next decade. The startling turnabout is likely to fuel continued criticism that Scott—a longtime critic of President Barack Obama's health care reform—is overstating the numbers to justify his opposition.
Tufts Health Plan chief executive James Roosevelt Jr. is a candidate to run the Social Security Administration, the program his grandfather signed into law in 1935, according to people briefed on the matter. Roosevelt, 67, is the grandson of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and would come to the post at a time when the agency is facing intense financial and political pressures.
The Illinois government agency that looks into complaints against doctors announced it will lay off investigators starting Tuesday and warned of yearlong delays in physician licensing because the Legislature didn't act to bail out the medical watchdog unit. In a letter being sent to doctors Thursday, officials from Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation pin the blame on the Illinois State Medical Society for lobbying against legislation to transfer $9.6 million to keep the program going. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter on Wednesday.