The Supreme Court is set to review a case in which it will determine whether the bio-pharmaceutical company Myriad Genetics Inc. may legally patent two cancer-related human genes, paving the way for a decision that will have broad-based economic and regulatory ramifications for the biotech and drug industries — as well as for the millions of Americans whose health care may increasingly depend on such cutting-edge innovations.

Back in August, the D.C. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled by a 2-1 margin that Myriad could patent the detection of two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, that have been linked to a heightened chance of breast and ovarian cancer in women. While Myriad and other bio-tech firms argue that such patenting is necessary to spur and protect innovation in diagnostic medical testing, critics — including the ACLU, AARP, and the AMA — warn that it could actually have the opposite effect, stifling the standardization of such testing methods and commoditizing naturally-occurring human biology:

Peter Meldrum, Myriad’s chief executive, said in a statement that the Supreme Court’s ultimate decision could affect the providing of medical treatment to hundreds of millions of people. He said Myriad’s own diagnostic test has helped nearly 1 million people learn about their risk of hereditary cancer.

“The discovery and development of pioneering diagnostics and therapeutics require a huge investment and our U.S. patent system is the engine that drives this innovation,” he said.

Many outside groups supported the petitioners, including the AARP, the American Medical Association, the American Society of Human Genetics, the March of Dimes Foundation, the National Breast Cancer Foundation and several women’s health groups.

“Some critics say it is unjust to give a company a monopoly over something as intrinsic to people’s health as their genes,” said Josephine Johnston, a research scholar at The Hastings Center, a independent bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York, who is not involved in the Myriad case.

“From an ethics perspective, one could argue that genes are owned by everybody, and that patenting them amounts to a commodification of an element of the human body,” she added.

The D.C. appellate court’s ruling also harbors a potential conflict with an earlier Supreme Court finding in which the court found that a pharmaceutical company could not patent “observations about natural phenomena.”

Tea Party leaders in Nevada are trying to shape the future of their movement in the aftermath of the 2012 election. And back away from the Republican party’s anti-abortion agenda is one of the first goals that Art Gisi and Cathie Lynn Profant, the co-leaders of the Grass Roots Tea Party of Nevada, want to pursue:

A woman’s right to choose abortion is the law of the land and should be accepted, they said Tuesday at the group’s first post-election meeting following a year in which Republicans were accused of waging a “war on women.” [...]

“Nevada’s changing and we as Republicans are going to need to step up or we’re not going to win any more elections,” Profant said. “By staying back here, the rest of the country is leaving us.” [...]

Gisi said tea party groups need to back moderate candidates who share their conservative fiscal views, including for limited government and spending.

He said it’s time to stop focusing on abortion and other social issues, which allow Democrats to paint Republicans as anti-women.

About two-thirds of voters in Nevada agree that abortion should be legal, according to exit poll data. And it’s a question that Nevadans essentially settled in 1990 when they approved a ballot measure codifying a woman’s right to have an abortion “as determined in the 1973 Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision.” Anti-choice advocates tried to put a “personhood” amendment on Nevada’s ballot this year, which would have severely limited abortion and even contraception access by defining life as beginning at conception, but failed to gain enough support to put the issue up for a vote.

Nevada Tea Party supporters are not the only people rethinking the Republican party’s anti-abortion strategy. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) suggested shortly after the November election that Republicans should stop focusing on abortion if the GOP wants to appeal to broader group of Americans, which led one anti-choice group to call on Republicans to “drop” the party’s former presidential candidate. And in Ohio, state Senate leaders will not vote on two controversial anti-abortion measures during their lame duck session, citing Mitt Romney’s loss as one reason they don’t have enough support for the legislation.

Despite the fact that the cost of brand name drugs has skyrocketed over the past few years, one Obamacare provision is helping seniors on Medicare save billions on their prescription drug costs.

Over the summer, data from the Centers for Medicare And Medicaid Services (CMS) showed that the Affordable Care Act had already saved 5.2 million seniors and people with disabilities nearly $4 billion on their prescriptions by closing the “donut hole” coverage gap and ensuring that more prescription drugs are covered under Medicare. And today, the Obama Administration announced that their updated data shows seniors’ savings have now surpassed $5 billion, as nearly 2.8 million Americans have saved an average of $677 on their prescription medications so far this year.

And recent figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) suggest that the cost of closing the donut hole and extending coverage for additional prescription drugs won’t be as high as initial estimates predicted. Making drugs more affordable means that more people will take their medication, ultimately saving the government money in the long run by stabilizing their medical conditions and reducing medical costs. Taking that into account, the CBO’s report estimates that the net cost of closing the donut hole will actually be $51 billion — significantly less than the previous $86 billion estimate.

Largely thanks to the increasing savings that Obamacare ensures, a full 90 percent of seniors with Medicare plans report that they are satisfied with their prescription drug coverage under the program. And the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that those savings are likely to continue through the next decade, as the Affordable Care Act will help the average American with a traditional Medicare plan save $5,000 between 2010 and 2022.

Throughout the election, Republicans tried to sell Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Medicare reforms by arguing that the party’s proposed changes would not affect current seniors. “Our point is we need to preserve their benefits, because government made promises to them that they’ve organized their retirements around,” Ryan argued in his first interview after being named as Mitt Romney’s running mate. “In order to make sure we can do that, you must reform it for those of us who are younger.”

But in negotiating legislation to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, Republicans are abandoning this guarantee and pressuring President Obama to accept immediate changes to the program as a “down payment” for larger “structural reform”:

Republicans have countered by arguing for a smaller down payment that must include immediate savings from Medicare and other entitlements….House Republicans say the down payment should be at least $110 billion, the value of the automatic spending cuts they would cancel next year, and they want those savings to come largely from cuts in Medicare and other benefit programs. [...]

But Republicans say they are selling Congress short on what can be done before the January deadline. They made clear that they want some initial changes to entitlement programs ahead of larger talks next year.

Senator Michael D. Crapo, Republican of Idaho and another Gang of Six member, said some initial changes to entitlement programs could and should be in the down payment.

The party has largely dismissed President Obama’s proposal of identifying savings and inefficiencies from providers and drug manufacturers in search of so-called “serious” savings that will surely impact beneficiaries. As Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) bragged on Sunday during an appearance on Meet The Press, “I laid out in great detail very painful cuts to Medicare…. We really have to look at much deeper reforms to the entitlements.”

Had Mitt Romney won the election in November, Ohio might be on its way to passing one of the most stringent anti-abortion measures in the country.

Ohio’s so-called ‘heartbeat bill’ would have banned abortion after a fetal heartbeat is found, sometimes as early as six weeks into pregnancy. But State Senate President Tom Niehaus (R-OH) told the AP that he tabled the legislation because of Romney’s loss, citing a changing Supreme Court as the bill’s clearest path to success:

Niehaus said a Romney win over Democratic President Barack Obama would have increased the likelihood of a lineup of new U.S. Supreme Court appointees that would be favorable to a legal challenge to the heartbeat measure. Backers had hoped the legislation’s passage would spark a legal challenge that could lead to overturning the high court’s landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized abortion up until viability, which is closer to 22 weeks after conception.

It’s no surprise that Niehaus put off a vote on the bill: As one of the strictest anti-abortion bills ever proposed, the bill was unpopular even among some abortion foes.

But Niehaus is also right in his assessment of what the election meant for anti-abortion advocates. A Romney presidency would have indeed have made the difference between Roe v Wade’s survival and its demise. And voters’ support for Obama — along with a sweeping rejection of state-level anti-choice candidates and legislation — signaled a desire to move away from the GOP’s stringent anti-abortion focus.

As NPR points out, social media and online communities have the potential to provide a broad-based support network to the increasing number of Americans suffering from diabetes.

The diabetes online community (DOC) consists of millions of Americans nationwide who blog and share testimonials on every aspect of living with the disease, from insulin testing to dating advice, through social media services. And pharmaceutical companies that create drugs for diabetic Americans have taken note, employing their own online outreach efforts in order to spread information about their products, receive input from patients, and provide a hub for the increasing number of Americans with diabetes:

A few years ago, drug companies started paying attention to these video testimonials and to bloggers talking about their products. The companies even created their own social media sites.

“Our primary platform is our blog Discuss Diabetes,” explains Dennis Urbaniak, the head of diabetes at drug giant Sanofi US. They also have a Twitter account, a Facebook page, and a diabetes dictionary, and they’re looking into Pinterest and Instagram. “Getting involved in social media is a critical component of serving the diabetes community,” says Urbaniak.

And it’s not just serving the community; it’s serving companies’ bottom lines. Treating diabetes is extremely profitable. Every year Americans spend more than $100 billion on diabetes care. So, in addition to tweeting about new products, pharmaceuticals are sponsoring bloggers like Sparling.

“If we’re talking about what we want from our devices, it is in their best interest to be hearing that and making the changes we’re requesting so they can improve their sales,” Sparling says.

Emerging internet technology is already encouraging a growing number of people to use online resources to track their medical information or even to crowdsource their medical bills. And internet tools do present a promising opportunity for a pharmaceutical model that puts drug manufacturers in direct contact with the people they are servicing, creating better market information and bearing potential benefits for both patients and drug makers. Especially because diabetes cases have soared by 50 percent in the last 15 years, and are likely to continue affecting more and more Americans across the country, this could be an important way forward.

But officials from the Food and Drug Administration are careful to note that while pharmaceuticals’ online outreach might be the wave of the future, there must be greater transparency in identifying which bloggers and online resources are funded or sponsored by the drug industry so as not to dupe customers in what is largely a profit-motivated enterprise. Drugs for pre-diabetic or borderline patients can run Americans with private insurance up to $100 per prescription.

Even though Texas has the highest uninsurance rates in the nation — nearly a quarter of the state’s population lacks health insurance — Gov. Rick Perry (R) has refused to expand the Medicaid program, prioritizing his continued opposition to Obamacare over the opportunity to extend health coverage to an estimated 2 million low-income Texans.

But some faith leaders want Gov. Perry to know they stand in sharp opposition to his decision. Mike Rosen, a spokesperson for the Dallas Area Interfaith group, told the Dallas Morning News that accepting the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare makes sense “for moral, ethical and financial reasons.” That’s why Rosen’s group brought a diverse group of church and community leaders together for a rally and religious service on Sunday to emphasize what’s at stake in the battle over Medicaid expansion.

More than 300 people crowded into a Dallas-area church to share firsthand stories about working with the uninsured members of their communities, and to explain why church leaders are invested in extending Medicaid coverage to those people:

For more than two decades, Dallas Area Interfaith members have monitored overcrowded conditions at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas’ lone public hospital.

“Churches care about the health of the community, whether it’s related to people not being able to afford insurance coverage or not getting access to the care they need,” said Mary Lou Hoffman, spokeswoman for the organization.

Repeatedly, speakers described scenarios in which uninsured Texans were forced to seek basic medical care in local emergency rooms, particularly at overcrowded Parkland.

“Without insurance coverage, families are delaying medical checkups, which can save their lives,” said Lisa Lopez, a Dallas woman whose husband was treated for a brain tumor discovered during a Parkland checkup.

Yesterday’s event also kicked off a state-wide petition drive to pressure Perry to reconsider his stance on Medicaid. Dallas Area Interfaith plans to deliver their signatures when the new legislative session begins in January.

Earlier this year, a group of over 100 national, state, and local faith leaders also urged Republican governors to accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, explaining that “depriving struggling families of healthcare is wholly incompatible with the teachings of our faiths and the ideals of our nation.” Nevertheless, Rick Perry isn’t the only intransigent lawmaker who continues to resist implementing the health reform law at any cost. GOP governors in states like Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, Mississippi, Wisconsin, and Arizona have also resisted expanding the eligibility levels for their Medicaid programs.