Daily Rounds: Cost Control Buzz; Violent Games As Free Speech; Cherry-Picking Patients; Meditation Stress

Legislators vow bill to curb health care costs - The Boston Globe "State legislative leaders made their strongest statements yet in support of placing significant cost controls on health care, predicting yesterday that they will agree on a bill as early as the fall." (boston.com) (And see WBUR's Martha Bebinger's take on curbing health care costs here.)

Justices Reject Ban on Violent Video Games for Children - NYTimes.com “Like the protected books, plays and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas — and even social messages — through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with the virtual world),” Justice Scalia wrote. “That suffices to confer First Amendment protection.” Depictions of violence, Justice Scalia added, have never been subject to government regulation. “Grimm’s Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed,” he wrote, recounting the gory plots of Snow White, Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel. High school reading lists and Saturday morning cartoons, too, he said, are riddled with violence. "(nytimes.com) Study: Doctors More Likely To Drop Private Insurance Than Medicare : Shots - Health Blog : NPR Some doctors may be bucking the administrative hassles of private insurance, she said. Medicare may not always pay top dollar, but it's pretty reliable. And, she said, Medicare is still the largest payer, so it's hard for doctors not to accept those patients. For her part, Bishop sees patients with all kinds of insurance. But she said the findings are worrisome. "If these trends continue we may have problems getting care to patients in the ambulatory setting," she said. "It's possible patients might have health insurance but not be able to see a doctor." (npr.org) Archives Decides At Last Minute Not to Publish a Scheduled Paper - Larry Husten - Cardiobrief - Forbes "Today (Monday), at 3:48 PM ET, 12 minutes before the scheduled publication of the paper, the following message appeared in my inbox:
Subject: Important Notice from Archives of Internal Medicine — Please Open Immediately!
The editorial office of the Archives of Internal Medicine has made the decision not to publish, “Stress Reduction in the Secondary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Transcendental Meditation and Health Education in African Americans,” by Schneider et al, and the accompanying Commentary by Mehta and Bairey Merz that was to post Online First at 3 PM central time today. The decision is to allow time for review and statistical analysis of additional data not included in the original paper that the authors provided less than 24 hours before posting. We apologize for the short notice, but hope you will understand and not run your stories on this study today." (Forbes Blogs)