The New York Times has two stories on pharmaceutical industry payments to physicians and experts.

In the first, the paper reports that the new federal health care law will require drug companies and medical device makers to disclose payments made to doctors, starting in 2013. Some of the big drug makers already have released their databases, though "many followers of the pharmaceutical industry are still finding it far too difficult to follow the money. ... The money disclosed in such databases can be substantial. Pfizer, for instance, listed $35 million in payments to 4,500 doctors and 250 research organizations from June through December 2009." 

The Wall Street Journal: "Three leading health-care providers in Colorado's Front Range region recently teamed up in an electronic health-record exchange program that will allow them to share data on more than a million Colorado residents. … The three [health systems] have agreed to share their records on a secure network that will allow clinics, doctors' offices and hospitals to exchange data on common patients instantly, including lab reports, radiology images and medical history" (Landro, 4/13).

People with no health insurance are less likely than the privately insured to receive proper therapy for their migraines, as per a research studyreported in the April 13, 2010, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Migraines, often characterized by excruciating headache and nausea, can cause significant distress. They can cause people affected by them to lose an average of four to six days of work each year. Study authors say migraine sufferers who lack private health insurance are twice as likely to get inadequate therapy for their condition as their insured counterparts. Migraine patients insured through Medicaid are one and a half times as likely to receive substandard therapy........

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S. military doctor removed a live round of ammunition from the head of an Afghan soldier in an unusual and harrowing surgery....