The American Medical Association (AMA) National House Call campaign visits New Mexico today and urges residents to help press Congress to stop scheduled Medicare cuts. Unless Congress intervenes, Medicare will slash physician payments 15 percent over the next two years beginning on Jan. 1, 2008.
Former Speaker of the House and founder of the Center for Health Transformation (CHT) Newt Gingrich told a group of conservative Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill that while he understood how important the current debate in the Congress over the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is to shaping the future of healthcare in America, he was insistent that Congress not lose sight of the hundreds of thousands of poor children currently enrolled in SCHIP and urged them to work to ensure that they will not lose their coverage because of congressional action.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NASA have entered into an agreement that helps American scientists utilize the International Space Station to answer questions about human health and diseases.
Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center announced 19 recommendations to improve American health care, including a move from employer-based insurance to portable, individual-based coverage.
A white paper that examines various state initiatives to expand access to health insurance, as well as proposals by the President and Congress in support of state efforts, was distributed today by the American College of Physicians.
An observational study of a large United Kingdom primary care database showed that switching patients from Pfizer?s Lipitor? (atorvastatin calcium) Tablets to simvastatin was associated with a 30 percent increase in the relative risk of major cardiovascular events, including heart attacks, strokes and certain types of heart surgeries, or death compared to patients who remained on Lipitor therapy.
This week, more than eight hundred pathologists from around Europe and the world will take part in a first of its kind, large-scale virtual microscopy slide seminar on the web. The seminar is arranged by the Biomedical Informatics Research Group from the University of Helsinki in conjunction with the 21st European Congress of Pathology, which will be held in Istanbul, Turkey.
The largest-ever study of treatments for type 2 diabetes has shown that a combination of two blood pressure lowering drugs reduced the risk of death, as well as the risks of heart and kidney disease.
Rasilez? (aliskiren), the first new type of high blood pressure medicine in more than a decade, is generally well-tolerated and can potentially reduce the severity of heart failure based on new data showing significant reductions in BNP, a substance secreted by the heart and whose levels are viewed as an indicator of disease severity.
People with type 2 diabetes are more prone to have some heart disease, high blood pressure or stroke. Using a combination of diuretics and ACE inhibitors to manage blood pressure in these people with type 2 diabetes can help protect against heart disease, revealed by researchers in a recent worldwide study known as ADVANCE.