Customs agents are warning people to watch out for illegally imported fireworks.

The entire Massachusetts House delegation on Thursday called on President Obama to protect Medicare and Medicaid from what they said would be "devastating" Republican budget cuts.

"Republican efforts to slash Medicare and Medicaid while leaving untouched tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, unnecessary subsidies for oil companies, and a bloated defense budget is unjust and irresponsible," the letter said. "Accordingly, we respectfully request that you reject any such proposals if they are presented as part of the ongoing discussions."

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday that it was awarding more than $352 million to help hospitals and healthcare systems across the country prepare for disasters.

The Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) grants allow recipients to hire emergency preparedness experts and buy mobile medical units and equipment to communicate with local emergency responders. The grants also help communities register volunteers and track the number of available hospital beds, vital for handling a surge of patients after disasters.

"We want every community to be prepared and resilient when faced with any type of health hazard and we've seen preparedness steps pay off this year across the country with severe storms, floods, and tornados [sic]," Nicole Lurie, assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said in a statement. "State health officials have attributed their ability to respond as well as they have to the preparedness levels they’ve reached through the HPP and other federal programs."

The dietary-supplement industry is pushing back against new restrictions proposed by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

Durbin introduced a bill Thursday to tighten labeling requirements for supplements. It would require the Food and Drug Administration to define the difference between supplements and food products. Under current law, companies can choose which way to classify and market their products.

“My gripe is not with the array of vitamins available at health stores across the nation; my gripe is with products labeled as ‘dietary supplements’ whose ingredients have not been deemed safe by the FDA but are found on store shelves right next to conventional food and beverages," Durbin said.

The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) said the new authorities would be redundant and the FDA could use its existing power to achieve much of what Durbin wants.

"Instead of urging FDA to use its current enforcement authority to isolate and punish those companies that are not following the law, this bill serves to punish all responsible companies with its overreaching mandates," CRN President Steve Mister said in a statement.

Conservative healthcare analyst Avik Roy is rekindling debate over the virtues of government-run health insurance with a new post questioning Medicare's alleged efficiency over private healthcare. 

On his Forbes blog, Roy resurrects a 2009 Heritage Foundation study that throws into question the conventional wisdom that Medicare's administrative costs are much lower than those of private insurers. The conclusion matters greatly as lawmakers debate proposals to keep the nation's safety-net programs solvent.

"There needs to be an honest discussion of how well those programs perform as compared to the private sector," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans.

Immigration issues could exclude more 20,000 California children from healthcare reform, according to a new UCLA study.

State governments are blocking their cities from passing anti-obesity measures, The New York Times reports.

New rules take effect today to limit the number of hours medical residents can work. Kaiser Health News has more.

Insurance brokers got some help Thursday from state insurance regulators. Brokers and agents want their commissions exempted from the healthcare law’s medical loss ratio (MLR) rules. The MLR provision only allows insurance companies to spend 15 or 20 percent of their revenues on profit and administrative cost. Brokers want an exemption from the MLR because they’re afraid insurers will squeeze commissions in order to free up money for other uses.

A National Association of Insurance Commissioners task force on Thursday endorsed Rep. Mike Rogers’ (R-Mich.) bill to carve agents and brokers out of the MLR calculation. The NAIC had planned to vote on endorsing Rogers’ bill months ago, but scrapped that vote to study the issue after consumer advocates opposed the move.

Healthwatch’s Julian Pecquet has more.

IPAB OK? Republicans might have their work cut out for them as they try to stoke opposition to the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The expert cost-cutting panel is certainly controversial in Washington, where congressional Republicans are arguing that it will ration care.

But a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that more people trust the IPAB to make Medicare cuts than trust Congress, CMS or private insurance companies. Half of those polled said they trust the IPAB “a great deal” or a “fair amount,” compared with 34 percent who put the same level of trust in Congress.

Read the story from Healthwatch’s Sam Baker.

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) hammered Massey Energy this week for "systemic" mine-safety breaches leading to a deadly explosion in a West Virginia coal mine last year.

But Kline, the head of the House labor committee, stopped well short of endorsing tougher regulations for the coal industry, instead calling for stricter enforcement of existing laws.

The issue made headlines this week after the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) charged that the April 2010 explosion at Massey's Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine could have been prevented if the company had followed existing safety guidelines. The blast killed 29 miners and maimed another – the deadliest mining disaster in more than 40 years.

Kline minced no words blaming Massey for fostering a culture of negligence at the facility.

"It is unconscionable that a mine operator would knowingly jeopardize the health and well-being of his or her workers," Kline said Thursday in an email. "Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly clear that unlawful conduct by Massey was part of a systemic failure to protect the miners at Upper Big Branch."

The Senate Finance Committee has dropped cuts to Medicare payments for medical imaging as a pay-for for trade legislation.

Instead, the revised chairman's mark would divert penalties from physicians who fail to adopt electronic healthcare records by 2015, as called for under the 2009 HITECH Act. The law requires the penalties to be diverted to the Medicare Improvement Fund after 2019, but Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) is proposing to delay that by a year, freeing up the penalties to be used elsewhere.

Stakeholders immediately praised the decision.