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WASHINGTON (EGMN) After months of internal debate, the Senate Finance Committee passed a health care reform bill on Oct. 13 aimed at expanding health coverage and making health insurance more affordable. The 14-9 vote in favor of the bill was split largely along party lines, with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) the lone Republican to cross over and vote for the bill along with 13 Democratic colleagues.

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BETHESDA, Md. (EGMN) A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on Oct. 9 cast mixed votes on whether data on an injectable product derived from autologous fibroblast cells had demonstrated that it was safe and effective for treating moderate to severe nasolabial fold wrinkles in adults, the indication for which it is under review for approval.

The federal government has issued new rules spelling out how it intends to police the use of genetic information by health plans.

October is an important month! Medical Librarians Month is during October, and National Physician Assistant Week is October 6-12. Librarians and Physician Assistants (PAs) are natural partners to address patient education and health information literacy.
Health information literacy is an important component of patient care. Included as an objective in the Healthy People 2010 report, “Understanding and Improving Health”, it has been shown to be a strong influence in health outcomes. As health care becomes more expensive, poor health information literacy can increase heath care costs even further as people with low health information literacy are more at risk.
Physician Assistants, licensed to practice medicine in partnership with a physician, are also patient educators and often…

A continued wide disparity in access to and quality of care across the United States argues strongly for a national health reform plan, according to executives at the Commonwealth Fund, who released on Oct. 8 a state-by-state survey of 38 health indicators.

Rituximab seems to be the most effective biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drug used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, according to a Cochrane systematic review of the literature. Anakinra appeared to be the least effective of the six agents evaluated.

The latest issue of the MDMLG News is now available online. Click here to access the PDF. The issue is also available from the Current MDMLG News link this page: http://www.mdmlg.org/news.htm.If you have any article suggestions or news items for future issues, please send them to jkrzemi1@hfhs.org.Thank you,JoAnn KrzeminskiMDMLG News Editor (Source: MDMLG / Metropolitan Detroit Medical Library Group)

d. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on Oct. 5 voted 10-0 that the benefit-to-risk profile of the angiogenesis inhibitor pazopanib for advanced renal cell carcinoma was acceptable, but strongly recommended close postmarketing surveillance of hepatoxicity in patients treated with the drug, if it is approved.