Daily Rounds: Patrick Details Cost-Cutting Plan; Termeer's Post-Genzyme Life; Addicted Newborns; Brown's Abuse

Patrick proposes health fee overhaul - The Boston Globe" The legislation also underlines the administration’s plan to shift most Massachusetts employees, Medicaid recipients, and other residents with state-subsidized health insurance — about 1.7 million people, or 1 in 4 residents — to a new cost-conscious health care payment system, in which doctors and hospitals are put on a budget for each patient’s care. It indicates that the state plans to have the infrastructure and strategy in place by 2014 to make this transition.
The legislation would also establish standards for groups of hospitals and doctors called accountable care organizations, which are expected to become common as providers band together to treat patients and coordinate their care for a budgeted fee, splitting the payment. For example, the proposal requires all accountable care organiza tions to include preventive care and mental health care and to have the technology to manage and divvy up payments." (boston.com)

Genzyme’s Termeer May Follow Health-Care CEOs to Private Equity - Businessweek "Genzyme Corp.’s chief executive officer, Henri A. Termeer, will leave his post of 26 years after Sanofi-Aventis SA closes its $20.1 billion purchase of his company. He may not be out of a job for long. His success selling some of the world’s most expensive medicines, priced from $200,000 to $300,000 a year, may make him an attractive hire for private-equity firms, said Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan business professor. Termeer, who turns 65 on Feb. 28, may follow the former chiefs of Wyeth and Schering- Plough Corp. to help pitch deals for equity firms led by Carlyle Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Warburg Pincus LLC." (businessweek.com)

Number Of Newborns Addicted To Painkillers Rising : NPR "Nationwide, from 2003 to 2008, the number of babies diagnosed with newborn withdrawal syndrome more than doubled to almost 12,000, according to a survey by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
In Florida, the trend is even more pronounced. In the past five years, the number of babies treated for withdrawal tripled while the total number of births in Florida actually declined." (npr.org)

Brown Tells ‘60 Minutes’ He Was Sexually Abused | Hubbub | Blogs | WBUR "Brown said the abuse occurred when he went to the camp infirmary, not feeling well. The counselor followed him into the bathroom, according to Brown’s account. “I was standing there with my pants down and he came right up next to me and asked me if I needed help, and then he reached out his hand,” Brown writes, continuing with a graphic description of the encounter. Brown said he screamed and ran outside. The counselor told Brown later, “that if I told anybody, ever, he’d hurt me badly,” Brown writes.
Brown said he continued to see the counselor at camp for years after he was abused." (hubbub.wbur.org)

Ecuadorean Villagers May Hold Secret to Longevity - NYTimes.com "The villagers are very small, generally less than three and a half feet tall, and have a rare condition known as Laron syndrome or Laron-type dwarfism. They are probably the descendants of conversos, Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal who were forced to convert to Christianity in the 1490s but were nonetheless persecuted in the Inquisition. They are also almost completely free of two age-related diseases, cancer and diabetes." (nytimes.com)