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NEJM Study Points To New Era In Hepatitis C Treatment
For patients with the most common form of hepatitis C, the addition of a hepatitis C specific protease inhibitor called telaprevir to the current standard therapy can significantly improve the chances of being cured, and it does it in half the time of standard therapy alone.

ReachMD Launches CME iPhone APP
ReachMD, which provides medical news and information to healthcare practitioners, is raising its profile with the Continuing Medical Education, or CME, application for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. This is the first CME application that lets users listen to all ReachMD Continuing Medical Education content, get regular updates on new Continuing Medical Education content and take Continuing Medical Education tests for credit, all from their iPhone or iPod touch.
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Obama Has Larger Pool Of Female Judges To Select From For Supreme Court Nominee
In selecting a Supreme Court nominee, President Obama will have a more diverse pool of judges to choose from than his predecessors did, largely because the number of women on the federal bench has increased dramatically over the past two decades, the AP/Kansas City Star reports. Just two of the 110 justices that have served on the Supreme Court are women: former Justice Sandra Day O"Connor and current Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Most of the candidates Obama is considering are women.According to the AP/Star, there are 212 full-time female judges serving in the federal courts, meaning that women make up more than one quarter of the federal judiciary. In contrast, there were about 40 female federal judges during the Reagan administration. In addition, women make up at least 40% of the judges on 22 of the 53 state supreme courts, another likely for nominees. The AP/Star reports that the increase in the number of female judges reflects the rise in the number of practicing female lawyers; women currently account for about one-third of lawyers and nearly half of all law school graduates. Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women"s Law Center, said, "I wouldn"t say the doors have swung open as fully as we would like." She added, "Nonetheless, there are superb women in the judiciary, academia and private practice."The AP/Star also reports that Obama might seek to increase racial diversity on the Supreme Court, as only two of the 110 justices have been black men: current Justice Clarence Thomas and former Justice Thurgood Marshall. There has never been a Hispanic, Asian-American or American Indian justice (Sherman, AP/Kansas City Star, 5/20).
Nutrition

Administration Could Find Compromise In Co-Op Plan

"With Republicans fighting the idea of a government-run health insurance plan, members of President Barack Obama"s team said Sunday that they are open to a compromise: a cooperative program that would expand coverage with taxpayer money but without direct governmental control," the Associated Press reports. The non-profit, health insurance cooperatives were suggested in Congress by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the concession could be a path to bipartisan health reform legislation (Elliott, 6/15). "But Senate Democratic leaders have been cautious in their appraisal of the plan and have said the co-op option would be acceptable only if it works in the same way they envision a public health insurance plan working - as a competitor to private insurance companies that also lowers health care costs," Roll Call reports. Even as Conrad"s proposal gained traction with Republicans last week, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., demanded that "any co-op would have to be national in scope, would need a large infusion of startup cash from the federal government, and would need to bar insurance industry insiders from servicing on its board." The GOP said those demands were problematic (Drucker and Pierce, 6/15). In a Sunday talk show spree, Republicans "continued to express strong concerns over the Obama administration"s plan to reform health care and its call for a public insurance option," the New York Times reports. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on CBS"s "Face the Nation": "We know that, if the government gets in this business, pretty soon nobody else will be in the businesṣ€¦ There are a whole lot of other things we can agree to do on a bipartisan basis that will dramatically improve our system." Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, on "Fox News Sunday": "There is a lot of waste in government-run programs generally, and a lot of waste and fraud and misuse of money in Medicare and Medicaid that can be saveḍ€¦ But right now, I could not put a figure on that amount of money. There is some savings there that can be made and ought to be made, whether or not we are doing things for health care reform or not." Kaiser Health News looks into the Puget Sound-based health co-op, a model for Sen. Conrad"s proposal , with an interview with Group Health Cooperative"s Pam MacEwan: "We are a coordinated care organization like an HMO. We began as a cooperative 60 years ago, so that we"re actually capitalized by the members and they set up cooperative governance ... We have 23 clinics. We have doctors. We have nurses. Then we also do the financing of health care, so we have the insurance mechanisms as well. That whole operation is governed by consumers, and that"s the part that"s really unusual about Group Health" (Gold, 6/15). This information was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at kaiserhealthnews.org. © Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.


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