Health Journalism Today - February 5, 2009

While all national news organizations reported the news that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has pancreatic cancer and most speculated on her possibly soon-to-be-vacant seat, U.S. News & World Report's Katherine Hobson was quick to post 6 Things You Need to Know About Pancreatic Cancer. Helping to guide Hobson in her reporting was Gauri Varadhachary, a medical oncologist who specializes in pancreatic cancer at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

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It was a good day for for veteran financial/health journalist Maggie Mahar who was interviewed on ABC News about the failed nomination of Tom Daschle and who wrote on the same topic for The Guardian of London.

On her Health Beat blog, Mahar says the loss of Daschle won't deal a serious blow to healthcare reform, noting particularly that "Daschle was expected to compromise with conservatives -- which might have meant giving in on issues that more progressive reformers consider essential to reform." 

In the Guardian, Mahar, author of Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much, concludes that the "idea of tightly regulating the private insurance industry...will be contentious."  Even without Daschle, Mahar reassures progressives that healthcare reformers still have Senators Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy to champion their cause.

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Writing for the Op-Ed pages of The Washington Times, Amy Menefee makes the case that the so-called 'stimulus' bill holds within it the seeds of slyly revamping the U.S. healthcare system.  "It would hand over decisions about your care to a group of bureaucrats you won't have the chance to elect," Menefee believes.

Menefee, previously managing editor of Media Reseearch Center's Business & Media Institute, is now director of communications for nonprofit Galen Institute, a health policy think tank. 

"...having the government decide which treatments are acceptable is beyond frightening," Menefee writes.  In her Washington Times piece, she quotes Robert Pear of The New York Times who wrote, "For Democrats, it [the stimulus package] is also a tool for rewriting the social contract with the poor, the uninsured and the employed, in ways they have long yearned to do" and "with little notice and no public hearings."

Menefee, a native of Macon, GA., studied public policy journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MA-2004), and is a frequent blogger and editorial contributor on health-related topic. 

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Botox is not recession-proof, or at least not as much as some once thought.  So writes Natasha Singer in The New York Times, noting that the 8.8% decline in quarterly earnings at Allergan, maker of the best known antiwrinkle shots, is proof positive that the entire $12 billion-a-year cosmetic medicine market is slumping. 

Singer notes that Allergan is viewed by many investment analysts as the bellwether of the cosmetic medical market.  "Call it the Botox index," she suggests.

Singer interviewed David E.I. Pyott, CEO, by phone.  She also spoke to Gary Nachman, an analyst with Leerink Swann, a health care investment bank.

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Also:

• Roche Offers Dim Outlook as Profit Drops 8% -- (442 words) By Jeanne Whalen and Anita Greil -- The Wall Street Journal

• FBI Reopens Tylenol Tampering Case -- By Jeff Coen and Gary Marx -- The Chicago Tribune

• Vertex CEO to Retire, Clearing Way for M&A Deal -- (401 words) By Deena Beasley (Additional reporting by Bill Berkrot, edited by Richard Chang and Andre Grenon.)

• David Hauslaib's JOSSIP has some thoughts on Women's Health magazine and its new editor, Michele Promaulayko:  "The magazine has started to read more like a Cosmo than a health mag," he writes, noting that Promaulayko is a Cosmopolitan ex-pat.  Joining their old colleague at Women's Health are Molly Nover-Baker, who becomes beauty director; and Lesley Rotchford, who moves from deputy editor of Cosmo to executive features editor at Women's Health.

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