Year: 2014

By David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration on Wednesday said the number of people who have enrolled in private Obamacare health plans rose to 3.3 million from October 1 to February 1, providing new evidence that its effort to extend coverage to the uninsured is gaining momentum. Data collected from new health insurance marketplaces set up in all 50 states, under President Barack Obama's healthcare law, showed enrollment rising by 1.1 million or 53 percent in January and surpassing a government projection set before the botched rollout of the federal website HealthCare.gov. "We're seeing a healthy growth in enrollment," Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, told reporters in a conference call. Administration officials said the enrollment results bring to 9.6 million the number of people who have signed up for private plans or been found eligible for the Medicaid program for the poor since enrollment began on October 1.

(Reuters) – U.S. Food and Drug Administration declined to approve Durect Corp’s post-operative pain treatment, saying the application lacked enough data to prove the drug was safe. Durect’s shares fell about 30 percent after the bell. The FDA indicated that more clinical safety studies would have to be conducted on the drug, Posidur, Durect said. The specialty pharmaceutical company said it was evaluating the issues described in the “complete response letter”, the type of letter issued by the FDA to convey that it cannot approve a drug application in its current form.

(Reuters) – A new swine virus, distinct from the deadly PEDv pig virus, has been found in fecal samples taken from four different farms in Ohio last month and early this month, the Ohio Department of Agriculture said on Wednesday. This is only the second time the virus has been reported and the first time it has been seen in the United States, said Yan Zhang, a scientist in the department’s Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory. The pigs that contracted the new virus, called Swine DeltaCoronavirus (SDCV), suffered from diarrhea, which is also a symptom of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv) and transmissible gastroenteritis (TGE). Of the four Ohio farms where the virus was discovered, one tested positive for Swine DeltaCoronavirus but negative for PEDv and TGE.

(Reuters) – An independent advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said a blood clot preventer developed by The Medicines Co should not be approved due to a lack of data to prove its efficacy. The panel voted 7-2 against approving the drug, cangrelor, for use during angioplasty — a heart surgery for widening narrow or clogged arteries. The panelists also voted unanimously against allowing cangrelor’s use in patients with stents, who are at an increased risk of events such as stent thrombosis — a blood clot that forms at the site of the stent. Panelists said they were not convinced that data from an 11,000-patient trial was enough to prove cangrelor’s efficacy, especially given the failure of two prior trials.

A loss of trust in Switzerland's business and political elite may be one of the reasons the alpine nation voted in favor of putting strict limits on immigration, Swiss Economy Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann said on Wednesday. Pointing to a "culture of excess", Schneider-Ammann said pursuit of profit sometimes at the expense of the common good had turned off ordinary people from political and business leaders. Swiss voters on Sunday narrowly backed an initiative "against mass immigration," following a successful campaign by the populist right-wing Swiss People's Party, which blamed an influx of foreigners for higher crime, rising rents and congested streets. The Swiss government and business lobby groups had urged a vote against the proposal, emphasizing that it would make it difficult for businesses to recruit qualified staff on whom the Swiss economy and the banking and pharmaceutical industries depend.