health policy

The Kaiser Family Foundation will webcast an "ask the experts panel" on the future of Health IT on Thursday, June 30, featuring National Health IT coordinator David Brailer, National Medical Association President William Price, MD, and Dean Rosen, Director of Health Policy Office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. E-mail questions to ask@kaisernetwork.org. Website

Critics assailed the Justice Department's decision to sharply reduce the settlement the government is asking for in the racketeering case against Big Tobacco. Yesterday, government lawyers dropped a bombshell when they announced that they will ask the tobacco industry to pay $10 billion for smoking cessation programs over the next five years, a figure substantially lower than the $130 billion estimate over 25 years many experts had expected. The news has provoked anger in health …

The Centers for Disease Control appears to be backing away from a controversial report released in April which concludes that obesity poses fewer health risks than earlier estimates had suggested. The April CDC analysis, which raised eyebrows in health policy circles across the country, concluded that obesity claims only 25,000 lives per year, as opposed to an earlier estimate of about 385,000.

Many prominent researchers have since harshly criticized the report. In a press …

The US leads the rest of the world in the use of high tech imaging, according to a new study. That's not very much of a surprise, especially for health policy critics who have argued that overuse of the technology is one factor driving high healthcare costs. According to the study, which compared the use of radiography (classified as low tech) with CT and MR imaging (classified as high tech), other countries are using a mix of both high tech and low tech solutions to some effect. Release