Daily Rounds: Slashing Medicaid; Phantom Recall; Profits From Autism Scare; Hazardous Couch Potatoes

Advocates for elderly, disabled rip $15m cut - The Boston Globe "On the chopping block are the rates the state pays to long-term care providers, including adult foster care programs, which provide 24-hour-a-day supervision for elderly and developmentally disabled adults; adult day health programs, which offer care to residents in their communities to prevent nursing home placement; and day habilitation programs." (Boston Globe)

Motrin Buyback Draws Oregon Suit Against Johnson & Johnson - NYTimes.com "An effort by Johnson & Johnson to buy back defective Motrin pills from store shelves — described as a “phantom recall” by some members of Congress — has come under fire in a lawsuit filed by the state of Oregon against the company." (nytimes.com)

Journal Claims Profit Motive Helped Fuel Autism-Vaccine Scare : Shots - Health News Blog : NPR "Now Deer writes in more detail about Dr. Andrew Wakefield's big plans to make money from the work. There was support for the research from a lawyer with ambitions to launch product liability suits against vaccine makers. But other business ideas ranged from a company that could commercialize new clinical tests to development of a modified measles vaccine." (npr.org)

Inactivity Is Harmful, Even With Trips to the Gym - NYTimes.com "Extended sitting may also lead to high levels of low-grade inflammation, which can also lead to heart disease, Dr. Stamatakis said. A marker of low-grade inflammation called C reactive protein, or C.R.P., was about three times higher in the study participants who spent the most time slouched in front of a screen." (ell.blogs.nytimes.com)

Ezra Klein - Uncertainty for me, but not for thee "The health-care legislation might save less money than CBO projects. But it also might save more. People like Harvard's David Cutler and CAP's Judy Feder, people who have spent their lives studying health-care policy, think the CBO is far too conservative when it looks at the delivery-system reforms. They may be wrong, but there's certainly as good a case that they're right as there is that employers, in contravention to what CBO expects and what has actually happened in Massachusetts, will start yanking health-care coverage away from employees by the millions. (And, so far, the bill seems to be increasing the number of small businesses offering their workers coverage.)" (Ezra Klein)