"Health & Medical News"

Imagine being allowed to practice medicine but not being allowed to drive. That’s what some Michigan physicians are facing.

Under a new state law that took effect Jan. 22, doctors in Michigan on a visa cannot get a new driver’s license. That’s because a law intended to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining a driver’s license also prevents legal residents on student or work visas, including physicians, from getting a license.

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The Bush administration recently said that cocaine supplies have tightened and prices are rising, but officials in some U.S. cities are unconvinced of the federal government’s claim of an “unprecedented cocaine shortage,” NPR reported Dec. 26.

In December, U.S. drug czar John Walters announced that, “The latest DEA reporting indicates a sharp increase in the street price of cocaine, with a 44 percent increase reported in price per pure gram between January and September of 2007.” Walters said that drug “seizures are having a profound effect on availability of drugs in the U.S.”

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Washington — The Dept. of Health and Human Services is appealing a court order that it release Medicare physician claims data to a consumer group.

The HHS appeal in late October blocks for now a plan by Consumers’ Checkbook/Center for the Study of Services to use the claims data to provide patients with more detailed information about the quality of physician care. The nonprofit organization had planned, as a first step, to create a free online public resource listing how many times in one year individual physicians had performed certain Medicare procedures in the District of Columbia and the four states covered by the order: Illinois, Maryland, Virginia and Washington.

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A recent rise in the street price and drop in the purity of cocaine in the U.S. had federal and Mexican antidrug officials claiming a big victory, Reuters reported Oct. 1.

Between January and June, the average price of a gram of cocaine on U.S. streets increased 24 percent, while purity fell 11 percent. “This impact is historic, this is real progress,” said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

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