Daily Rounds: Painkillers And Miscarriage; Who Cares About Health Costs? Misspent Tobacco Money

Miscarriage risk doubles with use of NSAIDs - msnbc.com "Common anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen and naproxen may increase the chance of miscarriage if they are taken early in pregnancy, a new study suggests. The study appears in the latest issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. “I would strongly suggest that women take no non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs during the first trimester,” said study co-author Anick Berard." (MSNBC)

Health care costs: A public opinion disconnect - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post "One little-noticed finding in today’s wave of political polls: Americans just aren’t that concerned with our rising health care costs. Only 6 percent consider “health care costs” the most important issue facing the country in Politico’s new Battleground Poll. Over in the WSJ/NBC survey, only 20 percent say it’s okay for the congressional debt “supercommittee” to touch Medicare as it looks for more than $1 trillion in savings. This all feels like the perfect opportunity to remind America of a certain graph, pretty clearly showing that we might want to get a little more concerned." (The Washington Post)

Medical News: Tobacco Settlement Money Being Burned on Unintended Uses - MedPage Today "When the major U.S. tobacco companies settled litigation with the states in 1998 in what is known as the Master Settlement Agreement, expectations ran high that the cash windfall would fund tobacco control and cancer research programs. Now, half way through the 25-year payout period, states have increasingly shifted that money out of anti-tobacco activities, using it to pay for things like roads and college scholarships and to cover budget shortfalls, as Stanton Glantz, PhD, director of the University of California San Francisco's Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, explains in this exclusive video report." (medpagetoday.com)

Conservatives Step Up Attacks On Public Funding For Birth Contro: NPR "It used to be that opposition to publicly funded birth control was linked to abortion. Either the birth control in question allegedly caused abortion, or the organization providing the birth control (read: Planned Parenthood) also performed abortions. But that's changing. These days, more and more voices are opposing the provision of birth control for its own sake."

Texas, Massachusetts Book-End Health Insurance Stats - Maggie Fox - NationalJournal.com :There are few surprises in the latest Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which finds on average 16.8 percent of U.S. adults went without any kind of health insurance in the first half of 2011, virtually the same as the year before but up from 14.8 percent in 2008. Not surprisingly, the numbers also reflect the strongly differing approaches to health care taken by the two governors responsible, who both happen to be seeking the Republican nomination for president—former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and current Texas Gov. Rick Perry." (nationaljournal.com)