Corporate news

A trade group for pharmacies is pushing back on calls for more federal regulations after a “60 Minutes” report on a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak.

The National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) on Monday said there are already “adequate” regulations in place to protect consumers who visit small-batch pharmacies that mix custom prescriptions.

The group said the New England Compounding Center (NECC), which manufactured hundreds of injectable pain medications contaminated with fungal meningitis, is a “rogue entity.” B. Douglas Hoey, the chief executive of the NCPA, said the company passed itself off as a compound pharmacy while producing drugs en masse.

“As a country, we must strike the right balance to go after rogue entities like NECC while preserving patients’ access to the safe and essential compounded medications that their physicians prescribe,” Hoey said, pledging that the organization would “continue to work with health officials” on the issue.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) agreed to settle charges with cord blood bank Cbr Systems after alleging that its weak security practices led to a security breach that exposed the Social Security, credit and debit card numbers of roughly 300,000 customers, Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen said on Monday.

Ohlhausen said the blood bank, which stores umbilical cord blood and tissue, suffered a security breach in 2010 after a company laptop, hard drive and unencrypted backup tapes that contained consumers' personal information were stolen from an employee's car. The backup tapes had people's Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, birth dates and credit- and debit-card information stored on them.

Under the terms of the settlement, Cbr Systems agreed to establish an information security program, and is subject to third-party audits every other year for 20 years.

Speaking at a data privacy event hosted by the National Cybersecurity Alliance, Ohlhausen also provided a brief outline of the commission's plans for data-security matters this year. She said the commission will continue its study on the data broker industry. Last month the FTC asked nine large data broker companies to provide the agency with information about how they collect and use data about consumers. 

Hospitals that primarily serve low-income patients and underserved areas are facing a major financial risk from the sluggish economy and President Obama's healthcare law, a new study says.

The research, conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, says safety-net hospitals need to adjust their business practices to avoid taking a big financial hit.

"To overcome declining government subsidies, safety-net hospitals governed by elected politicians must focus on cost control, quality improvement, and services that attract insured patients," the study says.

The wife of former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) is under pressure to resign from the board of insurance giant WellPoint after the insurance lobby America's Health Insurance Plans transferred $86 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce while the chamber was actively opposing President Obama's healthcare reform law in 2010. 

A coalition of activist investor groups is launching a campaign calling for the heads of Susan Bayh and another WellPoint board member, The Washington Post reports. The groups allege that the board failed to oversee "high risk political spending" in the run-up to the 2010 midterm elections that saw Democrats lose 66 seats in the House and another six in the Senate.

The campaign reveals a "new militancy" in the fight to require companies to disclose their political donations ahead of the 2012 elections, the Post reports. A spokesman for the Chamber told the paper it was "part of a coordinated effort by the left to silence the business community and create one-sided debates, the only ones they can win."

"Our shareholders voiced their opinion on the issue of political disclosure just two years ago," WellPoint said in a statement. "A proposal that would have required additional reporting was voted down by WellPoint shareholders by a wide margin (by 82% of shareholders). Shareholders will have another opportunity to voice their views on this subject at next month's annual meeting."

Bayh, who voted for the healthcare reform law, resigned in 2010 after just two terms in the Senate, saying the body had grown too dysfunctional to get anything done. He then went on to work at a lobbying firm and as a contributor for Fox News.

Update: This post was updated at 12 p.m. to reflect that the Chamber of Commerce received $86 million from AHIP, not its member company WellPoint.

Pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and GlaxoKleinSmith are the latest firms to come under pressure to sever their ties with the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida.

ALEC helps craft business-friendly legislation for state lawmakers across the country, such as legislation outlawing penalties for failing to obey the federal health law's individual mandate. Long a target for liberal groups, the group has come under intense scrutiny over the past few weeks over its support of NRA-backed "Stand Your Ground" legislation that enhances citizens' ability to claim self-defense to avoid prosecution for harming or killing someone.

"The public is fed up with big pharmaceutical companies pursuing profit over the interests of the average American," Bob Edgar, president of the liberal advocacy group Common Cause, announced Thursday. "ALEC's pro-corporate agenda to limit voting rights, undermine our public schools, assault collective bargaining and weaken laws protecting our environment is in diametric opposition to the public interest. This is neither good business nor responsible corporate citizenship."

The healthcare sector added another 26,000 jobs in March, with physicians' offices and hospitals each adding 8,000 jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday.

The healthcare consulting group founded by Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Wednesday according to court documents obtained by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. 

Gingrich stepped down from his leadership position with the Center for Health Transformation when he began his 2012 presidential campaign. According to the filing, the firm estimates liabilities between $1 million and $10 million despite assets below $100,000 and says it will be unable to pay its dozens of unsecured creditors.

The bankruptcy will likely deal another damaging blow to Gingrich's already struggling presidential campaign. The former House Speaker has not won a primary contest since his home state of Georgia on Super Tuesday, and he announced last week that he would lay off a third of his campaign staff and substantially scale back his campaign activities.

Express Scripts is set to start a 30-day period for antitrust regulators to rule whether it can merge with Medco, Bloomberg reports.

Some health advocates think the Obama administration shouldn't sprinkle its prevention grants far and wide but instead channel them into proven programs, Kaiser Health News reports.

Talking Points Memo thinks Justice Antonin Scalia's 1990 opinion allowing Oregon to deny benefits to peyote smokers puts the Obama administration's birth control decision on firm legal ground.

Death row inmates are asking a federal judge to block importation of an execution drug, saying the Food and Drug Administration didn't properly vet it, Bloomberg reports.

A former Obama administration official at the Department of Health and Human Services is going to work for KPMG.

David Hansell has been hired to lead the global Human/Social Services team at the tax, audit and advisory firm.

“As government action to address human and social services continues to be an important issue for many of our clients around the world, we’re extremely pleased to have David help lead our efforts in this key role,” John Herhalt, a KPMG global chairman, said in a statement announcing the hire.

The United States is rapidly losing high-tech jobs — including in the medical-device industry — to Asia amid "moribund" interest in science in this country, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Retail labs that provide medical tests without involving patients' doctors are causing concerns, Kaiser Health News reports. 

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is blaming Taliban resistance to vaccines after polio cases in that country tripled last year, the Boston Globe reports.

Comfort-food chef Paula Deen is now pushing diabetes drugs and healthy eating, leaving some fans befuddled, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Consumer testing by Consumers Union provides a foundation for regulatory and legislative efforts to make health insurance understandable.

U.S. obesity rates held steady in 2009-2010, with more than one-third of adults and almost 17 percent of youth falling into that category, according to the latest figures from the CDC.