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Today's Globe: veterans' mental health, mental health coverage, drugstore link, Basil Rifkind

E-mail|Link|Comments (0) Posted by Elizabeth Cooney July 1, 2008 07:00 AM

State lawmakers will convene the first of a series of meetings today to consider how to improve mental health services and programs for thousands of veterans returning to Massachusetts from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The House overwhelmingly approved a proposal yesterday that would require Massachusetts health insurers to cover mental health and substance abuse disorders in the same way they treat other medical conditions (third item).

The drugstore and pharmacy-benefit management industries will disclose today a combination of their information systems in order to boost electronic prescribing by physicians.

Basil Rifkind, a physician who was a national leader in the 1980s effort to persuade Americans to lower their cholesterol level and avoid heart disease, died June 22 at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington. He was 73 and had Parkinson's disease.

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Elizabeth Cooney is a former health reporter for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, where she also was a business reporter and an editor. Earlier in her career, she edited medical books and journals at Little, Brown, and worked for Boston magazine.