The Senate health care bill’s 5% tax on elective cosmetic procedures (breast implants, Botox wrinkle treatments, etc.) is drawing opposition from predictable quarters: Cosmetic surgeons and companies that sell products used in cosmetic procedures.... 

The House of Representatives just passed a bill that scraps the current system for calculating Medicare payments to doctors. The vote was 243-183, almost entirely along party lines; here’s how everybody voted . If the bill were to become law (unlikely),... 

The CBO may grab all the headlines in wonky conversations about the costs and effects of big health-care bills. But the Joint Committee on Taxation , another nonpartisan body, also plays a key role: Estimating how much revenue new taxes are likely to... 

Drug and device companies, along with other industry players, spend about $1 billion a year to fund the continuing medical education classes doctors have to take to keep their licenses current. We may soon get more insight into how that money flows:... 

We’re waiting along with everybody else to see what’s in the health-care bill Harry Reid will soon bring to the Senate floor. So we’ve been interested to read a couple stories out of Washington this week looking at what new taxes Reid... 

For people in their late teens and early 20s, taking an antidepressant may actually increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors , at least during initial treatment. So it’s important that those patients are carefully monitored. Citing... 

Older people are more likely than younger people to need expensive medical care. So should they pay higher premiums for health insurance to reflect their higher health costs? If so, how much more? On the individual market, people in their 50s can now... 

The House of Representatives kept busy this weekend, narrowly passing the big health-care bill late Saturday. You probably know that already; if you need to catch up on your reading, here’s a primer on what the bill would do, and here’s the... 

The House could vote on its big health-care bill in the next week or so. The Senate — ah, the Senate — will take a while longer. House Dems released this 42-page manager’s amendment to their health-care bill late last night —... 

Sometimes it seems like everybody has financial ties to the drug or device industry. As it turns out, it’s only a little more than half of everybody. A survey conducted in 2006-07 and published this week in the journal Health Affairs found that...