Medicare and its contractors don't adequately track which physicians are opting out of Medicare, making it nearly impossible to determine who is cutting ties with the program and why, according to a memo from the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

Added sugars are as much a threat to public health as alcohol and tobacco, and should be regulated in a similar fashion, some researchers suggest. That includes levying taxes on sugary foods and even enforcing age limits for buying sodas" researchers suggest.

Federal authorities have charged a major health care company and two CVS pharmacies in Florida with violating their licenses to sell powerful pain pills and other drugs.

The DEA suspended Cardinal Health's controlled substances licenses on Friday for the third time in five years. The Drug Enforcement Administration linked Cardinal Health to unusually high shipments of the controlled drugs to four pharmacies.  A federal judge temporarily halted the suspension the same day after Cardinal, a $1.3 billion company, said it would stop supplying the drugs to the four pharmacies.

The DEA alleges that Cardinal knew or should have known that the four retail pharmacies had purchased far more drugs than it needed to fulfill legitimate prescriptions.

Federal healthcare spending will more than double over the next decade, according to a projection released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The cost of federal healthcare programs is expected to increase by 8% each year from 2012 to 2022 to reach $1.8 trillion by 2022, which would be about 7.3% of the gross domestic product in that year. Currently, healthcare spending accounts for about 5% of the GDP.

Working-age adults who use two or more prescription medications may be at risk for becoming seriously injured after falling in the home, researchers found.

In a study of young and middle-age adults, using at least two medications was associated with an increased likelihood of dying from or being hospitalized for a falling injury …. Antihypertensives and cholesterol-lowering drugs were the most common medications involved.

"The risk of falls may be increased as a result of both the intentional and unintentional effects of pharmacological therapy such as orthostatic hypotension, psychomotor impairment, extra-pyramidal symptoms, and dizziness."

Overuse of therapeutic procedures, diagnostic tests, and medications is an understudied problem that may account for as much as 30% of healthcare spending in the United States and result in harm to patients.

The 4 most common health services examined in the studies included in the review were antibiotics for upper respiratory infections, coronary angiography, carotid endarterectomy, and coronary artery bypass grafting and revascularization.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's warned it may downgrade "a number of highly rated" Group of 20 countries from 2015 if their governments fail to enact reforms to curb rising healthcare spending and other costs related to ageing populations.

"If governments do not change their social protection systems, they will likely become unsustainable."

"If no reforms are adopted, healthcare-related credit downgrades would likely start within three years..."

"... developed nations will eventually become the victims of their social safety nets."

"S&P said it was not too late for G20 countries to tackle the problem, but reforms to contain age-related spending needed be coupled with efforts to balance budgets by 2016, which would be enough to offset rising healthcare costs by 2050."

The Foundation for Chiropractic Progress (F4CP), architect of the chiropractic profession's longest running public awareness campaign has recognized Foot Levelers and Standard Process as its highest cumulative corporate contributors. Foot Levelers' total contributions surpassed $1.2 million and Standard Process' contributions exceeded one-half million.

Just 1% of the U.S. population accounted for 22% of all healthcare spending in 2009.