Efforts to rein in surgical errors haven't eliminated cases of doctors operating on the wrong patient or the wrong body part, according to a new report.

Researchers identified 25 wrong-patient procedures and 107 wrong-site treatments reported to just one insurance company in one state (Colorado) over a six-year span.

The findings — published Monday in the journal Archives of Surgery — reveal a "persisting high frequency of surgical 'never events,' the authors wrote. "Never events" refer to episodes that are 100 percent preventable and should never occur.

The findings weren't overlooked by Washington's trial lawyers lobby, which is using the report to lobby against any new restrictions on malpractice claims — a central feature of the Republicans' plans to overhaul the new healthcare reform law.

"Colorado has some of the most anti-patient laws in the country, severely capping medical negligence cases," Ray De Lorenzi, spokesman for the American Association for Justice, said Tuesday in a blast e-mail. "This clearly has not helped patient safety."

Any changes to malpractice law, De Lorenzi added, "should focus on the tens of thousands of people injured annually by medical errors, not taking away their rights via 'tort reform.' "

As part of their "Pledge to America," House Republicans laid out plans to lower overall medical costs by putting new limits on malpractice claims. 

"Skyrocketing medical liability insurance rates have distorted the practice of medicine, routinely forcing doctors to order costly and often unnecessary tests to protect themselves from lawsuits, often referred to as 'defensive medicine,' " the Pledge states. "We will enact common-sense medical liability reforms to lower costs, rein in junk lawsuits and curb defensive medicine."

The new "never events" report was based on an examination of more than 27,000 adverse events that were self-reported by Colorado surgeons between 2002 and 2008. 

The Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday awarded almost $30 million to three dozen states and territories so they can help people see the benefits of Democrats' healthcare reform bill. 

The consumer assistance grants are part of the healthcare overhaul. They're meant to support state efforts to establish or strengthen consumer assistance programs that help consumers with questions or concerns regarding their health insurance.

"The Affordable Care Act’s Patient’s Bill of Rights gives people important benefits and ends the worst insurance company abuses," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. "These grants will help ensure consumers’ rights are protected, and they are another way the new law is putting patients, not insurance companies, in charge of their health care."

Specifically, the grants aim to:

• Help consumers enroll in health coverage;

• Help consumers file complaints and appeals against healthcare plans;

• Educate consumers about their rights and empower them to take action; and

• Track consumer complaints to help identify problems and strengthen enforcement.

One of the world's top biopharmaceutical companies has recently paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in promotional fees to a Georgia doctor with a record of sexual misconduct toward both patients and nurses, according to an investigative report published this week.

Anesthesiologist Donald Ray Taylor has admitted giving vaginal and rectal exams to young female patients without either documentation or justification, according to 2004 court documents. 

"Maybe I am a pervert, I honestly don't know," he said, according to the documents.

But that hasn't stopped the drug giant Cephalon, Inc. from paying Taylor at least $194,000 in the last 22 months to promote the company's drugs, ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism group, reported Monday night.

Taylor is hardly alone.

Hundreds of doctors with records of dubious ethics, questionable credentials and state-board disciplinary actions are now being paid by drug makers to promote pharmaceutical products, ProPublica reported.

The findings fly in the face of the industry claims that companies hire only "the most-respected doctors in their fields for the critical task of teaching about the benefits and risks of their drugs," ProPublica notes.

The report is based on an examination of more than $250 million in payments by seven drug companies since 2009 to roughly 17,700 healthcare providers around the country.

The findings also have public health implications, some experts maintain.

"Without question the public should care," Joseph Ross, assistant professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine, told ProPublica. "You would never want your kid learning from a bad teacher. Why would you want your doctor learning from a bad doctor, someone who hasn’t displayed good judgment in the past?"

Among ProPublica's findings:

• A review of physician records in 18 states found that more than 250 speakers have been hit with sanctions. "Their misconduct included inappropriately prescribing drugs, providing poor care or having sex with patients," the authors wrote. "Some of the doctors had even lost their licenses."

• More than 40 speakers have received research-related warnings from the Food and Drug Administration. 

• No fewer than 20 have been hit with two or more malpractice suits.

The pharmaceutical lobby is already pushing back against the report. In a nearly 600-word comment posted this morning to ProPublica's website, Diane Bieri, executive vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), said the reporters ignored the standards — both internal and regulatory — governing the industry's peer-education system.

"Doctors and other healthcare professionals with real-world clinical experience in specific therapeutic areas are uniquely qualified to educate and inform their peers about the medicines they prescribe," Bieri wrote. "Unfortunately your article gives short shrift to the informational value of these exchanges." 

The exhaustive investigation is part of a broader series, dubbed "Dollars for Docs," produced by ProPublica, NPR, PBS's Nightly Business Report, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe and Consumer Reports. 

As for Taylor, he said the allegations were “old news” that bear no relevance to his speaking engagements. 

“It had nothing to do with my skills as a physician,” Taylor told ProPublica. “Even my biggest detractors in that situation lauded my skills as a physician. That’s what’s most important.”

The Food and Drug Administration has allowed an Iowa farm involved in the largest egg recall in the nation's recent history to resume distribution.

Hillandale Farms and Wright County Egg launched voluntary recalls in August because of concerns that their eggs could be tainted with salmonella. No one is believed to have died as a result of the contamination, but hundreds of people have gotten sick.

In a letter to Hillandale Farms plant manager Gary Barness, the FDA writes that "FDA finds your corrective actions to be adequate." The farm will hold off on shipping eggs from four hen houses that tested positive for salmonella until they clear four rounds of egg testing.

A top Senate Republican suggested Monday that the party's prevailing strategies to curtail healthcare might not be good ideas.

Virginia's challenge to the constitutionality of the new healthcare reform law kicked off Monday in a Richmond courtroom.

A federal judge in Virginia conceded Monday that his ruling on the new healthcare law is just the first step in a much longer process.

"As you well know, this is only one brief stop on the way to the United States Supreme Court," U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson said during the first day of oral arguments in Virginia's constitutional challenge of the individual insurance mandate.

The case, brought by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, hinges on the question of whether Congress' authority over commercial activity includes the power to regulate commercial inactivity — i.e., a consumer's choice not to buy health insurance. 

Virginia Solicitor General E. Duncan Getchell argued Monday that the Constitution provides no such authority.

"The Supreme Court has never allowed inactivity to be regulated as commerce," he told Hudson, according to The Washington Post.

The Obama administration has a different take, arguing that healthcare is decidedly different from other commercial markets, because — illness being both inevitable and involuntary — everyone ultimately requires some form of care.

"The decision to get or not get insurance and essentially gamble that other people will pay for you when you get sick is not inactivity," Deputy U.S. Assistant Attorney General Ian H. Gershengorn told Hudson, the Post reported. "It is not passivity."

Hudson said he plans to have his verdict by the end of the year. 

What a difference a week can make.

Eight days ago, Gov. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), the Democrat in a surprisingly tough contest to replace the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), launched an ad distancing himself from both the White House and its new healthcare reform law. 

"I'll take on Washington and this administration to get the federal government off of our backs and out of our pockets," Manchin says in the TV spot. "I'll cut federal spending, and I'll repeal the bad parts of ObamaCare."  

Fast forward to this week, and Manchin is out with a new ad that blasts GOP candidate John Raese for opposing one of the central benefits of the healthcare reform law: the prohibition on denying coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions.

"One out of every four West Virginians under the age of 65 suffers from a pre-existing medical condition such as heart disease, cancer or asthma," the narrator says in the new radio spot.

The ad then switches to a recording of Raese saying, "I don't believe that insurance companies be mandated to handle pre-existing conditions." 

The narrator again: "And that's OK for John Raese, who lives in a Palm Beach, Fla., mansion with a pink marble driveway, but it's not OK for the rest of us who work to pay our bills and struggle to afford insurance."

The message is hardly unique to Manchin this campaign season — there's a long list of candidates (mostly Republicans) who say they want to repeal the controversial provisions of the healthcare law and replace them with different reforms. 

The big question they have yet to answer: How to get rid of the unpopular elements of the bill (e.g., the individual insurance mandate) and still keep the popular reforms (like the pre-existing conditions provision), which are inextricably linked to each other? 

The Hill called Manchin's office every day last week to learn what "the bad parts of ObamaCare" are. The office has yet to respond. 

Those likely to vote on Nov. 2 have a more unfavorable view than the general public.