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Today's Globe: insurance lobbyist, VA doctor probe, painkillers, health emergency

E-mail | Print | Comments () Posted by Elizabeth Cooney June 30, 2009 07:03 AM

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The face of the insurance industry in Washington is a slight, soft-spoken former AFL-CIO employee benefits director with a penchant for data-driven logic. She has the confidence and intellectual agility of a skilled debater, but prefers to dwell on areas of agreement. On healthcare, Karen Ignagni often sounds like the lifelong Democrat that she is.

A doctor accused of botching dozens of prostate cancer surgeries at a Veterans Administration hospital admitted yesterday that he sometimes missed his target when implanting radioactive seeds, leaving patients with incorrect dosages.

The makers of Tylenol, Excedrin, and other medications yesterday tried to dissuade regulators from placing new restrictions on their popular painkillers, including possibly removing some of them from store shelves.

"The H1N1 pandemic reveals the fallacy of relying on public health emergency laws to contain an epidemic," Wendy Parmet, professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law and author of "Populations, Public Health and the Law," writes on the opinion page. "The best way to prepare for a public health disaster is to focus our attention and our laws on ameliorating our everyday health problems."

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About white coat notes

White Coat Notes covers the latest from the health care industry, hospitals, doctors offices, labs, insurers, and the corridors of government. Chelsea Conaboy previously covered health care for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Write her at cconaboy@boston.com. Follow her on Twitter: @cconaboy.

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