Los Angeles, CA, United States (4E) – Poison front man Bret Michaels agreed for a settlement reported Tuesday regarding his lawsuit against Tony Awards and CBS following a serious injury during a performance in 2009.

Michaels, whose band performed “Nothing But A Good Time” during the Tony Awards in 2009 at the Radio City Hall in New York, was hit on the head by a piece of the set after their performance. He was reported to have suffered a broken nose, busted lip and serious brain hemorrhage that had left him in a life threatening condition in April 2010. The rocker then filed suit against the organizers of the Tony awards and CBS, which broadcasted the ceremony.

Now, the parties have come to terms with an amicable resolution, details of which remain confidential to the public.

“Mr. Michaels would like to thank his fans for their continued support,” said his attorney Alex Weingarten, as reported by Fox News.

The Hague, Netherlands (4E) – Former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic is on trial for allegedly orchestrating a campaign of ethnic cleansing during the civil war that ripped apart Yugoslavia.

Mladic, 70, showed no remorse as his war crimes trial began Wednesday at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, which is a special court established to try those responsible for atrocities committed during war

At one point, the man accused of being “the Butcher of Bosnia” drew his hand across his neck as if cutting a throat while staring at victims of the war. At other times, he merely stared at them, while once he growled at the survivors.

The bloody 1992 to 1995 war introduced the phrase “ethnic cleansing.”

Among other crimes, Mladic stands accused of conducting a campaign that included massacring 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995. Prosecutors also charged Mladic in connection with the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that started on April 6, 1992 and left more than 10,000 people dead. The war ended in the fall of 1995.

Mladic’s indictment includes 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his actions during that war.

Prosecutor Dermot Groome on Wednesday began by saying that ethnic cleansing was not a byproduct of the war, but a specific aim of the Bosnian Serb leadership. Moreover, Groome will argue that Mladic bears direct responsibility for atrocities carried out by his forces.

Mladic’s troops were fighting for control of land in ethnically mixed Bosnia.

Observers expect the trial to last for months or even years as the prosecutors present evidence that will include testimony of survivors as well as video clips.

Mladic eluded capture for almost 16 years. Nevertheless, police finally took him into custody in May 2011. He was hiding in a small house in northern Serbia.

Paris, France (4E) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Wednesday started hearing the case of a German man who claimed that he fell victim to a secret rendition by Macedonia and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2003 and 2004.

Khaled El-Masri, who is of Lebanese descent, accused Macedonian police of arresting him, holding him in isolation, questioning and mistreating him in a Skopje hotel for 23 days before transferring him to CIA agents, who then transported him to a secret detention facility in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, El-Masri claimed he was further subjected to torture by a CIA team for four months.

El-Masri complained that he was detained unlawfully and kept incommunicado, without any arrest warrant, and that he was never brought before a judge.

The government of Macedonia, however, contends that El-Masri had entered the country on Dec. 31, 2003, had been interviewed by the police as suspected of travelling with false documents, had been allowed entry into the country and then had left over the border crossing into Kosovo.

Upon learning that El-Masri was the wrong person being interrogated, the CIA sent him to Frankfurt, where he was released without charge.

Washington, D.C, United States (4E) – An at-home HIV test that claims to diagnose the disease in 20 minutes from a swab of saliva has taken a step closer to hitting store shelves.

The Food and Drug Administration’s advisory panel of experts unanimously recommended the test kit’s approval Tuesday, stating the benefits of the OraQuick HIV test outweighed its potential risks for consumers.

While the test does not appear to be as accurate as professionally administered diagnostics, the panel noted it could provide an important way to expand HIV testing.

The FDA will make its final decision on whether to approve the product later this year. While the agency is not bound by the panel’s recommendation, it typically follows its lead.

Government officials estimate one fifth, or 240,000, of the 1.2 million HIV carriers in the United States do not know they are infected. Testing is one of the chief ways of slowing new infections, which have held steady at about 50,000.

The test is marketed by Orasure. The company sells a professional version of the test for $17.50, which has shown to accurately identify both carriers and noncarriers 99 percent of the time.

However, a trial conducted by the company showed the home test only correctly detected HIV in those carrying the virus 93 percent of the time.

The FDA estimated that the test would miss about 3,800 HIV positive people a year, while correctly identifying 45,000 if approved for U.S. consumers

Based on estimates, the test could prevent 4,000 new transmissions of the virus annually.

Greenboro, NC, United States (4E) – The defense team for John Edwards rested its case Wednesday without calling Edwards or his ex-mistress Rielle Hunter to the stand.

Edwards’ attorneys also elected not to call his eldest daughter Cate, and prosecution star witness Andrew Young, a former Edwards campaign aide, before wrapping up the case.

Closing arguments are set for Thursday. Jury deliberations are expected to begin Friday.

Edwards is charged with six counts of illegal campaign contributions, conspiracy and falsifying documents.

The trail, in Greensboro, N.C., has stretched into four week.

If found guilty on all charges, Edwards faces up to 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine.

The government maintains that Edwards “knowingly and willingly” accepted large amounts of money from wealthy campaign donors to hide Hunter and her pregnancy in an effort to remain a viable candidate in his 2008 presidential campaign.

Mountain View, CA, United States (4E) – In a week dominated by Facebook news, Google showed it has still got game with the announcement Wednesday of its revamped search engine.

Dubbed “Knowledge Graph,” the new internet search aims to think more like a person. Google has made significant changes to how search result are delivered with its revamped search program.

Knowledge Graph will begin rolling out to some users immediately. Search results will be arranged according to categories with which the search term has been associated. Boxes will appear with separate results for what Google thinks a user is searching for.

The user can then click on one of those boxes to obtain only the results for the specific topic they were searching.

More specific searches, for example names of famous people or celebrities, will return boxes with basic information, as well as links that Google deems possibly related.

The new search will begin rolling out as early as Wednesday afternoon for some users in the United States. It will later become available on desktop, mobile and tablet searches.

But now 14 states have or are setting up searchable databases designed to help people shop and compare health care options based on price and quality.

Colorado is launching its All Payer Claims Database this fall. Phil Kalin at the nonprofit Center for Improving Value in Health Care in Denver is in charge of the project, which is the result of 2010 legislation and is expected to have data from most of the claims in the state in 2013. Kalin was formerly the president and CEO of Rose Hospital in Denver and at the Henry Ford System in Detroit, Michigan.

Kalin

He talked about the new database on Colorado Public Radio’s Colorado Matters. The questions and his answers were edited for space and clarity.

How will consumers use this new database?

Patients will be able to go online and see how much something is actually going to cost them, and compare prices across hospitals and doctors. They’ll be able to see how much variation there is in terms of charges and costs. It will cover essentially all procedures, anything that is billed and being paid for by an insurance company.

Do we know much about price variation now?

Very initial data shows, for example, an MRI can cost as little as $450 to as much as $3,500, with no obvious distinction in terms of quality. Other states with databases like these see prices vary as much as double from the lowest price to the highest, with no evidence of difference in outcomes.

Once everybody knows what everybody else is paying, huge price variations should go away?

Yes, again, trying to control for quality, because we want to reward people who are providing higher quality. We believe that as consumers look at this, they’re going to move toward the best value, which is the combination of price and quality.

In Colorado, half of all health care is paid for by businesses, so businesses are going to look at this same information and say, why are we sending our employers to these providers, when there’s no obvious difference in quality and there’s a huge variation in cost?

Do you expect providers to learn from the database as well?

Yes. Right now, most providers don’t know how they compare to their peers in terms of price and quality. But Grand Junction, Colorado, which has some of the lowest Medicare costs in the country has taught us that when providers get feedback on their performance, those with the lowest scores talk to those with the best scores and learn how to get better.

Who’s threatened by this new database?

Everybody has some trepidation, when you don’t know how you’re going to compare to other people. We’re being very careful to compare apples to apples, in terms of who has healthier or sicker patient populations. And before we go public with the names of providers we’ll feed the data to them so they can start doing quality improvement. So they’ll hopefully have made adjustments when providers are publicly identified in 2013.

Won’t this put teaching hospitals at a disadvantage?

They are going to show some great difference based on cost. Teaching hospitals do have higher overhead associated with their academic missions, and [that] will probably be reflected in higher prices. It’s going to put interesting pressures on those higher cost hospitals, and raise this issue of, how do we pay for teaching, indigent care, etc? Because those are still real societal issues.

Have price and quality databases in other states proven successful in moderating costs?

It’s still early. The databases vary in the level of detail they report. They’re starting to get some traction, but it hasn’t been documented that just putting out consumer information has actually driven costs down dramatically. There’s starting to be some studies on that.

We think that as more costs get shifted to consumers, co-pays, deductibles, and as businesses and insurers put more pressure on the system, the all-payer databases are going to be increasingly looked to as important levers for making change.

If every procedure being performed in Colorado is being entered into this database, should people be worried about privacy?

We’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to insure privacy and security. All the data has been encrypted and all personal identifiers stripped away.

This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes Colorado Public Radio, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

– Provided by Kaiser Health News.

But now 14 states have or are setting up searchable databases designed to help people shop and compare health care options based on price and quality.

Colorado is launching its All Payer Claims Database this fall. Phil Kalin at the nonprofit Center for Improving Value in Health Care in Denver is in charge of the project, which is the result of 2010 legislation and is expected to have data from most of the claims in the state in 2013. Kalin was formerly the president and CEO of Rose Hospital in Denver and at the Henry Ford System in Detroit, Michigan.

Kalin

He talked about the new database on Colorado Public Radio’s Colorado Matters. The questions and his answers were edited for space and clarity.

How will consumers use this new database?

Patients will be able to go online and see how much something is actually going to cost them, and compare prices across hospitals and doctors. They’ll be able to see how much variation there is in terms of charges and costs. It will cover essentially all procedures, anything that is billed and being paid for by an insurance company.

Do we know much about price variation now?

Very initial data shows, for example, an MRI can cost as little as $450 to as much as $3,500, with no obvious distinction in terms of quality. Other states with databases like these see prices vary as much as double from the lowest price to the highest, with no evidence of difference in outcomes.

Once everybody knows what everybody else is paying, huge price variations should go away?

Yes, again, trying to control for quality, because we want to reward people who are providing higher quality. We believe that as consumers look at this, they’re going to move toward the best value, which is the combination of price and quality.

In Colorado, half of all health care is paid for by businesses, so businesses are going to look at this same information and say, why are we sending our employers to these providers, when there’s no obvious difference in quality and there’s a huge variation in cost?

Do you expect providers to learn from the database as well?

Yes. Right now, most providers don’t know how they compare to their peers in terms of price and quality. But Grand Junction, Colorado, which has some of the lowest Medicare costs in the country has taught us that when providers get feedback on their performance, those with the lowest scores talk to those with the best scores and learn how to get better.

Who’s threatened by this new database?

Everybody has some trepidation, when you don’t know how you’re going to compare to other people. We’re being very careful to compare apples to apples, in terms of who has healthier or sicker patient populations. And before we go public with the names of providers we’ll feed the data to them so they can start doing quality improvement. So they’ll hopefully have made adjustments when providers are publicly identified in 2013.

Won’t this put teaching hospitals at a disadvantage?

They are going to show some great difference based on cost. Teaching hospitals do have higher overhead associated with their academic missions, and [that] will probably be reflected in higher prices. It’s going to put interesting pressures on those higher cost hospitals, and raise this issue of, how do we pay for teaching, indigent care, etc? Because those are still real societal issues.

Have price and quality databases in other states proven successful in moderating costs?

It’s still early. The databases vary in the level of detail they report. They’re starting to get some traction, but it hasn’t been documented that just putting out consumer information has actually driven costs down dramatically. There’s starting to be some studies on that.

We think that as more costs get shifted to consumers, co-pays, deductibles, and as businesses and insurers put more pressure on the system, the all-payer databases are going to be increasingly looked to as important levers for making change.

If every procedure being performed in Colorado is being entered into this database, should people be worried about privacy?

We’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to insure privacy and security. All the data has been encrypted and all personal identifiers stripped away.

This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes Colorado Public Radio, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

– Provided by Kaiser Health News.

But now 14 states have or are setting up searchable databases designed to help people shop and compare health care options based on price and quality.

Colorado is launching its All Payer Claims Database this fall. Phil Kalin at the nonprofit Center for Improving Value in Health Care in Denver is in charge of the project, which is the result of 2010 legislation and is expected to have data from most of the claims in the state in 2013. Kalin was formerly the president and CEO of Rose Hospital in Denver and at the Henry Ford System in Detroit, Michigan.

Kalin

He talked about the new database on Colorado Public Radio’s Colorado Matters. The questions and his answers were edited for space and clarity.

How will consumers use this new database?

Patients will be able to go online and see how much something is actually going to cost them, and compare prices across hospitals and doctors. They’ll be able to see how much variation there is in terms of charges and costs. It will cover essentially all procedures, anything that is billed and being paid for by an insurance company.

Do we know much about price variation now?

Very initial data shows, for example, an MRI can cost as little as $450 to as much as $3,500, with no obvious distinction in terms of quality. Other states with databases like these see prices vary as much as double from the lowest price to the highest, with no evidence of difference in outcomes.

Once everybody knows what everybody else is paying, huge price variations should go away?

Yes, again, trying to control for quality, because we want to reward people who are providing higher quality. We believe that as consumers look at this, they’re going to move toward the best value, which is the combination of price and quality.

In Colorado, half of all health care is paid for by businesses, so businesses are going to look at this same information and say, why are we sending our employers to these providers, when there’s no obvious difference in quality and there’s a huge variation in cost?

Do you expect providers to learn from the database as well?

Yes. Right now, most providers don’t know how they compare to their peers in terms of price and quality. But Grand Junction, Colorado, which has some of the lowest Medicare costs in the country has taught us that when providers get feedback on their performance, those with the lowest scores talk to those with the best scores and learn how to get better.

Who’s threatened by this new database?

Everybody has some trepidation, when you don’t know how you’re going to compare to other people. We’re being very careful to compare apples to apples, in terms of who has healthier or sicker patient populations. And before we go public with the names of providers we’ll feed the data to them so they can start doing quality improvement. So they’ll hopefully have made adjustments when providers are publicly identified in 2013.

Won’t this put teaching hospitals at a disadvantage?

They are going to show some great difference based on cost. Teaching hospitals do have higher overhead associated with their academic missions, and [that] will probably be reflected in higher prices. It’s going to put interesting pressures on those higher cost hospitals, and raise this issue of, how do we pay for teaching, indigent care, etc? Because those are still real societal issues.

Have price and quality databases in other states proven successful in moderating costs?

It’s still early. The databases vary in the level of detail they report. They’re starting to get some traction, but it hasn’t been documented that just putting out consumer information has actually driven costs down dramatically. There’s starting to be some studies on that.

We think that as more costs get shifted to consumers, co-pays, deductibles, and as businesses and insurers put more pressure on the system, the all-payer databases are going to be increasingly looked to as important levers for making change.

If every procedure being performed in Colorado is being entered into this database, should people be worried about privacy?

We’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to insure privacy and security. All the data has been encrypted and all personal identifiers stripped away.

This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes Colorado Public Radio, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

– Provided by Kaiser Health News.

Bethesda, MD, United States (4E) – The United States government is set to launch a first-ever multimillion dollar collaborative drug trial to attempt to prevent a form of Alzheimer’s disease, officials announced at a two-day research summit at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

The government is committing $16 million to the $100 million trial. It is also kicking in an additional $7.9 million to a second trial for treating the disease.

The trials kickoff the government’s ambitious national plan to find a cure for the disease that is projected to affect some 5.4 million people in the U.S. by 2025.

President Barack Obama last year signed the trials into law, which went through several drafts before a final version was presented Tuesday. The plan calls for new research, earlier diagnosis, new training for physicians to detect the disease and help for caregivers.

The trial will be conducted on about 300 family members who are in their 30s and have the gene for early onset Alzheimer’s, but have yet to show any symptoms.

While most trials do not find a cure, the National Institute on Aging says this new trial follows others that have advanced the understanding of how the disease progresses. New research finds that early intervention is best.

The mission of the antibody studied in the new trial is to prevent or stall amyloid plaques from forming in the brain, which affect brain neurons, causing memory loss and cognitive decline.

The second trial will test a nasal spray for treating Alzheimer’s. A previous small pilot study found that insulin sprayed directly into the brain might slow the disease. Brain cells require insulin, which provides glucose, a kind of food for brain cells.

Current treatments for Alzheimer’s do not do much for patients. The last drug for the disease was discovered in 2003.

Researchers say their aim is to make our brain spans equal our life span. They note these new studies are an important and monumental shift by focusing on prevention and early detection.