Daily Rounds: Patrick's Payment Reform Agenda; Lucky HIV Genetics; GOP Cuts To Science; Obesity's Social Network

Patrick readies a sharply reduced agenda - The Boston Globe "Patrick signaled yesterday that the most ambitious item he wants to pursue in his second term will be reducing health care costs, a goal that is considered the second phase of the state’s universal health care law, which focused initially on extending coverage to the uninsured. If he is successful, Massachusetts would become the first state in the nation to scrap the current health care payment system, in which doctors and hospitals are typically paid a fee for every procedure and visit, and replace it with a system that will essentially put providers on a budget for each patient’s care." (Boston Globe)

The Lucky Genetic Variants That Protect Some People From HIV : Shots - Health News Blog : NPR (Harvard AIDS researcher Bruce) "Walker and his colleagues...pinpointed genetic variations that change amino acid building blocks in key proteins in the immune system. These differences help explain why some patients can be infected with HIV for decades, never get treatment and yet never progress to AIDS." (npr.org)

Money for Science May Be Scarce With New Congress - NYTimes.com "In the Republican platform, Pledge to America, the party vows to cut discretionary nonmilitary spending to 2008 levels. ..An analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science looked at what would happen if all of the agencies were cut to the 2008 amounts. The National Institutes of Health would lose $2.9 billion, or 9 percent, of its research money. The National Science Foundation would lose more than $1 billion, or almost 19 percent, of its budget, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would lose $324 million, or 34 percent." (The New York Times)

Obesity rate will rise to 42% of the population based on contagion - latimes.com "Obesity rates in the United States, which some health experts have suggested may be stabilizing at about 34%, will continue to rise until at least 42% of American adults are obese, according to a new model that projects the increase based on "social contagion." The social contagion hypothesis garnered widespread attention in 2007 when researchers...documented that obesity can spread through a social network — just like viruses spread — because people "infect" each other with their perceptions of weight." (Los Angeles Times)