Year: 2014

By Harriet McLeod CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) – South Carolina lawmakers failed to derail implementation of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law in the state when a measure was defeated in the Republican-controlled Senate. Late Wednesday night, however, Senators voted 33-9 to defeat an amendment regarding the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. The amendment would have banned state agencies and employees from helping to carry out the health care law. It would have required healthcare navigators who help people sign up for health insurance to be licensed by the state.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Arkansas Supreme Court tossed out a $1.2 billion judgment against Johnson & Johnson on Thursday, reversing a lower court verdict that found the drug maker engaged in fraudulent tactics when marketing the antipsychotic drug Risperdal.

By Shereen Jegtvig NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – In a new study suggesting laziness could be tapped as a tool for healthier eating, people reached for low-calorie apple slices more often than buttery popcorn when the apples were within easier reach. “There are the little things that we can do to just make our diets healthier, and one of them is the simple idea to just put the healthy foods closer to you and you’ll find you can use your laziness to your advantage,” Gregory Privitera told Reuters Health. Privitera, a psychology researcher at Saint Bonaventure University in Bonaventure, New York, led the study, which he says was inspired by experience with his kids. “Every time my kids would tell me, ‘I want a snack,’ I would point to the bowl of fruit on the kitchen table and just say, ‘go at it – you can have as many as you want.,’ and they’d say, ‘oh I don’t want that,’ and I’d say, ‘okay then, make your own snack,” Privitera recalled.

Johnson & Johnson on Thursday won a reversal by the Arkansas Supreme Court of a $1.2 billion judgment imposed after a jury concluded that the drugmaker improperly marketed its anti-psychotic drug Risperdal and concealed its risks. The penalty had been imposed in April 2012, one day after a jury in Little Rock, Arkansas, found that Johnson & Johnson and its Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit violated state laws governing Medicaid fraud and deceptive trade practices. Arkansas' highest court, however, said the jury verdict and subsequent award could not stand because Arkansas had relied on the wrong law to sue Johnson & Johnson, using a law covering healthcare facilities rather than drug companies.

By Joseph J. Kolb ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (Reuters) – The Los Alamos National Laboratory has found a temporary home in Texas for roughly 1,000 barrels of radioactive junk left in limbo after a radiation leak led to a prolonged shutdown of New Mexico’s only nuclear waste disposal facility. Los Alamos, one of the leading U.S. nuclear weapons labs, said earlier this month it had been forced to halt shipments of its radioactive refuse some 300 miles across the state to the nation’s only underground nuclear repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad. The repository has remained closed while the U.S. Department of Energy investigates the origins of a radiation leak that occurred there on February 14, exposing at least 17 workers to radioactive contamination.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sitting in a tub of warm water can relieve a mom-to-be’s pain during the early stages of labor, but actually giving birth under water has no proven benefit and may be risky, say recommendations for the nation’s obstetricians.