As health care legislation moves to the Senate, there is a growing criticism that the measure doesn't fulfill President Obama’s promise to slow runaway health care costs, the New York Times reports.

When makers of heart defibrillators wanted Medicare to vastly expand the types of patients eligible to receive the devices, which can cost upward of $25,000, agency officials were skeptical. It was not clear how many of those patients would actually need a defibrillator, a device that can deliver a life-saving shock to restore a faltering heart to normal rhythm.

New York City health officials scrambled to explain themselves Thursday following outraged media reports about bankers who got scarce H1N1 flu vaccines through their employers

Merck, slated to acquire Schering-Plough later this year, reported better-than-expected earnings due to cost controls and strong sales of its diabetes and HIV treatments.

A race is on to develop the potentially next big thing in heart surgery: a replacement valve that can be implanted through thin tubes known as catheters rather than by traditional open-heart surgery.

The number-one H1N1 flu concern among U.S. businesses is the availability of a vaccine for employees, according to a new survey by the Business Roundtable.

Workers are fighting the flu around the clock at the Alpha Pro Tech factory in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Iin light of evidence that some drug makers have gone to great lengths to turn scientific articles into marketing vehicles for their products, some influential medical editors are cracking down on industry-financed ghostwriting. And they are getting help from some members of Congress.

Tips for cultivating marijuana. Testimonials by patients about its medical benefits. Cannabis cooking lessons. Even citations for award-winning strains of pot. Viewers here can now watch, every week, what amounts to a pro-weed news program.

Virtually every large pharmaceutical company seems to have discovered cancer, and a substantial portion of the smaller biotechnology companies are focused on it as well. Together, the companies are pouring billions of dollars into developing cancer drugs.

Real choice is not part of the bills moving through the Democratic-led Congress; even if the much-debated government-run insurance plan was created, it would not be available to most people who already have coverage.

A growing body of evidence suggests that doctors at some of the nation’s top medical schools have been attaching their names and lending their reputations to scientific papers that were drafted by ghostwriters working for drug companies - articles that were carefully calibrated to help the manufacturers sell more products.

It sounds like a simple idea for improving health care: draw up guidelines on how best to treat a particular illness and then pay doctors to follow them. That strategy, which some insurers and health plans already employ, has been embraced during the health care debate by some lawmakers in Congress who want to extend it more broadly.

Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.

The biggest barrier to improved cancer treatments is that almost no adult cancer patients — just 3 percent — participate in studies of cancer treatments, mostly new drugs or drug regimens.