Health Headlines for Tuesday, January 26
Agency head skips budget hearing and lawmakers pounce
Crain’s New York Business
The state Department of Financial Services, which regulates health insurance in New York, skipped a state budget hearing Monday—an absence lawmakers used to hammer the agency on recent shortcomings.
Cuomo’s placebo drug-price plans
New York Daily News
Americans and New Yorkers are by now familiar with the cycles of outrage over skyrocketing prescription drug prices, not the least of which was Martin Shkreli raising the price of a toxoplasmosis drug, Daraprim, by several thousand percent overnight.
New Yorkers have one week left to sign up for health insurance
Syracuse Post Standard
The New York health insurance exchange is reminding state residents Sunday is the deadline to enroll in health insurance for 2016.
Prescription price is less than cup of coffee
Democrat and Chronicle
Why did I pay $16.39 for a one-month supply of a generic formulation for a prescription last year and for the same prescription this year, I’ll pay 63 cents?
Vicodin Scripts Down After Tighter Controls
Med Page Today
Putting tighter regulations on hydrocodone combination products like Vicodin has flushed more than a billion pills from the market, federal researchers reported.
Diabetes Cure Hope After Cell Transplant Trial
Sky News
Scientists are hoping a cure for Type 1 diabetes is getting closer after they managed to halt the condition for six months in an experiment involving insulin-producing cells.
The Health Benefits of Knitting
New York Times/Blog
About 15 years ago, I was invited to join a knitting group. My reluctant response — “When would I do that?” — was rejoined with “Monday afternoons at 4,” at a friend’s home not three minutes’ walk from my own. I agreed to give it a try.
State to spend $200 million on drug-making facility in Dunkirk for Buffalo biotech firm
Buffalo News
The state plans to spend $200 million to build a high-tech drug-manufacturing center in Dunkirk for a Buffalo biotech firm that would create hundreds of jobs, The Buffalo News has learned.