Month: February 2014

By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. health officials have investigated whether some of the software used in computers at the heart of President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform was written in Belarus, but have found no evidence of that being the case, a White House official said on Tuesday. A report of the probe, first published by the conservative Washington Free Beacon website late Monday, was seized on by Republicans who are campaigning to scuttle the reforms and say the website HealthCare.gov remains vulnerable to hackers four months after its botched roll-out on October 1. Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for Obama’s National Security Council, said investigators for the Department of Health and Human Services had “found no indications that any software was developed in Belarus.” The main contractor for the HealthCare.gov project, CGI Federal, said: “At no time during its work on HealthCare.gov did CGI subcontract any work to any entity or persons from Belarus, specifically from the high-technology park in Minsk.” It added in a statement: “All of CGI’s work for HealthCare.gov was performed in the United States.” QSSI, a unit of health insurer UnitedHealth Group which took over late last year to oversee repairs to the faulty website, declined to comment.

By David Morgan and David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama's healthcare law will reduce the American workforce by the equivalent of 2 million full-time workers in 2017, the Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday, prompting Republicans to paint the law as bad medicine for the U.S. economy. In its latest U.S. fiscal outlook, the nonpartisan CBO said the health law would lead some workers, particularly those with lower incomes, to limit their hours to avoid losing federal subsidies that Obamacare provides to help pay for health insurance and other healthcare costs. White House officials characterized reduced hours as a reflection of new choices for workers. CBO officials pointed to older workers as one example, saying some nearing retirement could decide to keep their work hours shorter to maintain healthcare subsidies until they qualified for Medicare.

(Reuters) – Research services provider Covance Inc reported a better-than-expected 19 percent jump in quarterly adjusted profit as it gained from higher investments in later stages of drug development by pharma companies. The company forecast 2014 adjusted earnings of $3.65 to $4.00 per share, compared to analysts’ expectation of $3.81. Covance, considered a bellwether for the contract research business, said fourth-quarter revenue jumped 14.5 percent in the later-stage research business. …

By Lacey Johnson GEORGETOWN, Delaware (Reuters) – The stepdaughter of a well-known Delaware doctor accused of waterboarding her as punishment admitted on Tuesday that she had lied under oath about being molested by a family member in 2010. Dr. Melvin Morse, a best-selling author on near-death experiences, faces child endangerment charges. He was arrested in 2012 after the girl, then 11, told authorities that she had been waterboarded on four occasions. …

Medtronic Inc’s stumble in its U.S. medical device study to treat high blood pressure could create an opportunity for other device makers to pick up where their rival has left off, Boston Scientific Corp Chief Executive Mike Mahoney said on Tuesday. Called the silent killer, high blood pressure affects as many as one in three American adults, and medical device makers were racing to develop a procedure to treat it before the failure of Medtronic’s major clinical trial. Boston Scientific is still forging ahead with plans to develop its own blood-pressure-lowering device, called a renal denervation system, for sale in the United States, Mahoney said in an interview. Renal denervation devices create tiny scars along nerves in the kidneys, which play a pivotal role in regulating blood pressure by sending signals to the brain that can cause blood vessels to constrict.

By Ronnie Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Couples trying to conceive may want to avoid using certain common sexual lubricants, which a new study says can harm sperm and reduce the chances of pregnancy. “Lubricants available on the shelf at Target, Walmart are not lubricants any couple should use if they are trying to have a baby,” said Kazim R. Chohan, senior author of the study and director of the Andrology Laboratory at the State University of New York Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse. Johnson & Johnson recalled K-Y Tingling Jelly and K-Y Sensitive Jelly from retail outlets last year after finding the lubricants required additional data for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, according to a company statement. Men also use lubricants while masturbating for semen collection at fertility clinics, and healthcare workers use the lubricants to ease the insertion of medical devices, including those used during fertility treatments.

By Barbara Liston ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) – Florida lawmakers on Tuesday gave unanimous preliminary approval to bills seeking to forbid school districts from collecting biometric data on students. The issue is being taken up after parents were outraged in 2013 to find students' eyes were being scanned as a condition of boarding school buses in central Florida's Polk County School District. Stanley Convergent Security Solutions, a part of Connecticut-based Stanley Black & Decker, captured the iris images of 750 students in a pilot project before it was stopped, according to the local Lakeland Ledger newspaper.

By Richard Cowan and David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans said on Tuesday they hoped to attach deficit-reduction measures to legislation raising the U.S. debt limit, but a new government report that forecast less red ink in the near term threatened to undercut their efforts. "Nobody wants to default on our debt," House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner told reporters following a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans in the Capitol. Boehner added that while Republicans advance legislation to raise the U.S. borrowing authority, "We ought to do something about jobs and the economy, about the drivers of our debt." His comments came as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released forecasts estimating this year's budget deficit would fall to $514 billion. CBO also said that the budget deficit would fall further in fiscal 2015, to $478 billion.

ATLANTA (AP) — Children are dying less often in traffic accidents: Over a decade, the number who died in crashes dropped by 43 percent, according to a new government report.

By Elizabeth DeVita-Raebrun NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Liver disease and brain disorders due to alcohol abuse are important causes of premature death in the Americas, a new study concludes. “This provides direct evidence of the impact of alcohol on the health of countries in the region,” said one of the study’s authors, Dr. Vilma Pinheiro Gawryszewski, an advisor on health information and analysis for the Pan American Health Organization(PAHO). In the 16 North, Central, and South American countries studied, alcohol was the sole cause of 79,456 deaths a year, the researchers say. That represented 1.4 percent of deaths from all causes, and alcohol-related liver disease alone accounted for 0.6 percent of all-cause mortality.

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