Current medical news from today, including what the debt-reduction plan means for healthcare, legendary innovators honored on the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame, and online gamers solve HIV drug puzzle.

Every week, MedCity News highlights the best of its MedCitizens — syndication partners and MedCity News readers who discuss life science current events on MedCityNews.com. Now here’s the best of what YOU had to say.

I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, [...]

It seems that Medicare’s focus on reducing readmissions to hospitals is stimulating renewed attention to hospital discharge planning and communications. I’ve found it shocking how patients are often abruptly transitioned from high tech, high touch hospital care to their homes with minimal discharge instructions or after receiving information that’s on [...]

Close observers of the U.S. health reform debate in recent years know that the proceedings have illustrated why Barack Obama can hardly be called a liberal or a progressive.That’s because the president showed no willingness to advocate for most liberals’ top choice for reorganizing the U.S. health system — a Medicare-for-all, single-payer plan in which [...]

There are some confusing reports out there that appear to suggest that Medicare will now pay for MRI scans for patients with MRI-safe implanted pacemakers. Uh, not yet. Although the chances for this seem to have just improved. Earlier this week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid put out a memo, also known as the [...]

Every week, MedCity News highlights the best of its MedCitizens: syndication partners and MedCity News readers who discuss life science current events on MedCityNews.com.Now here’s the best of what YOU had to say:New Medicare healthcare reform: Everyone for themselves. “There is a dangerous but beguiling econometric [...]

The healthcare reform discussions, of a few years back, and resulting policy creation, advocate the formation of accountable care organizations (ACOs). The ideas behind this concept and projected outcomes seem positive and beneficial to all parties involved: physicians, hospitals, patients, and the third-party payer. The new health law is slated to launch in January 2012 and only seven of its thousands of pages speak to the concept of accountable care organizations. Will ACOs lead us down the road to healthcare paradise or perdition? Or something in between?

There is a dangerous but beguiling econometric logic behind the idea that turning Medicare over to the insurance industry will lower health care costs. It’s an idea that could catch on if the general public became convinced that there is nothing we can do acting together as a society to lower [...]

Serving Medicare patients with walkers, diabetes supplies and other durable medical equipment has been a cornerstone of Bill Griffin’s Charlotte, North Carolina business for nearly 30 years.But now the only equipment Griffin Home Health Care offers Medicare patients is oxygen supplies. That was the only product category Griffin won under a new competitive bidding program [...]