health

The office of Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) sends over the news that he’ll be the ranking member on the Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Subcommittee. The subtext is that the party is taking the health care fight more seriously; the previous point man on the issue was Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who doesn’t regularly [...]

United Nations food inspectors are going to Mexico to investigate reports that industrial pig farms were the source of the swine flu outbreak, the BBC reports.
As I wrote yesterday, based on some excellent reporting in Grist and elsewhere, local residents in La Gloria, Mexico, where the swine flu outbreak may have originated, suspect that the [...]

Lawmakers and immigration restrictionists advocating closure of the border with Mexico to prevent the spread of swine flu into the United States may want to stop and listen to what Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and a longtime adviser to the U.S. government on public [...]

Influence comes in many forms. Often, influencing the influencers is a smart strategy. Free food never hurts, either.
The head of public relations for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer makes free food a centerpiece of his “tips for managing journalists” an industry conference, Advertising Age reports.

After prodding from President Obama, House Democrats have reversed their earlier position that condoms should be part of a stimulating economic package.
This afternoon, House Dems announced that they’d cut a provision from their version of the stimulus bill that would have made it easier for states to cover family planning services for low-income women, Elana [...]

The tobacco industry is fighting a lonely battle against health insurance for poor kids.
A coalition of tobacco industry groups ran a full-page ad in the influential Capitol Hill newspaper, Roll Call, on Monday warning President-elect Barack Obama that a proposed tobacco tax hike to cover the expansion of the popular State Child Health Insurance Program [...]

Blogging off my beat for a minute, I wanted to add a few points to the Gov. Sarah Palin discussion. We’re hearing a lot about Palin as the “glass-ceiling-shattering” nominee, meant to soak up votes of women who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton — and just as much about how she’s unlikely to succeed in [...]