Today's Globe: Tamiflu stockpile, Obama girls' vaccinations, BU grad student infection, small-business health-care cost, health overhaul bill, sleep, surgeon general, primary-care coverage

The Boston-based law firm Ropes & Gray made arrangements this month for hundreds of its employees and their families to obtain the antiviral medicine Tamiflu to protect them from swine flu, a move that the company calls a wise precaution but that public health officials criticized as medically questionable stockpiling.

With Dad a world leader and Nobel Prize recipient Malia and Sasha Obama surely could have been first in line when vaccinations began for swine flu. They weren’t, the White House says. But that hasn’t stopped complaints that President Obama’s daughters got preferential treatment.

A graduate student on Boston University’s medical campus developed a bacterial infection just days after conducting experiments with dangerous meningitis germs, prompting city health investigators yesterday to scour the lab where he worked and university officials to dispense antibiotics to other scientists.

New data compiled by the state show small businesses and their employees are frequently charged more for the same health insurance coverage than large employers and their workers - a practice small business owners said they long suspected but could never prove.

After six months of deal making, Democratic leaders introduced a health care bill yesterday that would expand coverage to almost all Americans and overhaul the insurance industry, while asking the wealthiest taxpayers to pay much of the tab.

Sleepless in Seattle? Hardly. West Virginia is where people are really staying awake, according to the first government study to monitor state-by-state differences in sleeplessness.

The Senate yesterday confirmed Dr. Regina Benjamin to be US surgeon general, elevating a well-known Alabama family physician to be the nation’s top doctor.

International Business Machines Corp., the world’s largest computer services company, will provide US employees with 100 percent coverage for primary care, a policy designed to curb health expenses.