Weekend Update

Congress returns to Washington for a few weeks before recessing for the final stage of the 2012 political campaigns. The good news is that according to the Hill 

The House is expected to take up the six-month continuing resolution during the week, which could set up Senate passage by the end of the week. House and Senate leaders agreed to a six-month spending bill before leaving for the August break.

The six month long continuing resolution will fund the federal government through March 31. 2013.

Last week, the Institute of Medicine issued a report stressing the need to revamp our health care system.  According to the report

The costs of the [health care] system's current inefficiency underscore the urgent need for a systemwide transformation.  The committee calculated that about 30 percent of health spending in 2009 -- roughly $750 billion -- was wasted on unnecessary services, excessive administrative costs, fraud, and other problems.  Moreover, inefficiencies cause needless suffering.  By one estimate, roughly 75,000 deaths might have been averted in 2005 if every state had delivered care at the quality level of the best performing state.

The report places emphasis on the ability of technology improvements to share quality data and thereby reduce inefficiencies. The FEHBlog certainly hopes so because Government Health IT News reports that the federal government has spent nearly $7 billion giving healthcare technology away to hospitals and doctors. Caveat -- Modern Medicine reports that "Electronic health records (EHRs) have forced primary care physicians (PCPs) to focus on the computer screen, and a new study from the University of Florida indicates that this trend may be keeping PCPs from recognizing and properly treating some cases of depression."

The FEHBlog is skeptical of the $750 billion number (but not the $7 billion number) because it's so large and public health valuations like this are so screwy. The FEHBlog read a Wall Street Journal review about a book positing that the recent rise of auto-immune diseases like autism, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes stems from improvements in public health. In brief, our immune systems get bored and turn on our own bodies as a result.

But let's end on a high note. Recently, the FEHBlog wrote about a New York Times article in which research scientists found a cure for a colleague's cancer by analyzing his genome. The New York Times reports today that scientists by using genome scanning have made a valuable discovery.

The first large and comprehensive study of the genetics of a common lung cancer finds that more than half the tumors from that cancer have mutations that might be treated by new drugs that are already in the pipeline or that could be easily developed.

Most excellent.