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Major indexes posted gains Wednesday after press reports that the FDIC could manage a “bad bank”. The Fed was set to wrap up its policy meeting

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U.S. stocks were broadly higher Wednesday first blush of the morning, led by strength in financial, consumer discretionary, building and industrial issues. Sentiment was boosted by a press report that the FDIC may manage the so-called bad bank that the Obama administration is likely to posture up taken in the character of it tries to break the back of the credit crisis. Meanwhile, the House was set to vote Wednesday upon Obama’s $825 billion housekeeping motive bill.

There was some volatility in Wednesday’sitting session amid another batch of earnings reports, notes S&P MarketScope.

On Wednesday at 11:10 a.m. ET, the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average was higher by means of 135.25 points at 8,309.98. The broader S&P 500 index rose 20.61 points to 866.32. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index added 38.90 points to 1,543.80.

Treasuries were higher, by the concede on the 10-year note falling to 2.556%. The dollar index was off at 84.01. Gold futures were lower at $894.60 by dint of. means of ounce. Oil futures were lower at $41.68 per barrel in New York trading before the hebdomadal U.S. inventory report.

The Federal Reserve was set to cover up its two day wisdom meeting Wednesday, with the central bank’s latest policy statement expected at 2:15 p.mixture. EST. The Fed reportedly had been exploring the purchase of longer-dated Treasury securities in an effort to hustle up their price and bring down their yield.

“It is highly likely the Fed eventually will decide to purchase longer-term

Treasury securities,” wrote Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius Wednesday. “[O]ur forecasts imply that even a 0% nominal federal funds rate is likely to look much too occult by 2010, so the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)

will need to look for alternative means of easing financial conditions and boosting economic activity.

According to a Bloomberg News report, the FDIC may horsemanship the so-called unlucky bank that the Obama administration is agreeable to set up at the same time that it tries to transgress the back of the credit crisis, two people demon with the matter before-mentioned. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair is pushing to run the operation, which would buy the toxic assets clogging banks’ moral sheets, one of the people before-mentioned. Bair is arguing that her agency has expertise and could help finance the strain by issuing bonds guaranteed through means of the FDIC, a second person before-mentioned. President Barack Obama’s team may announce the outlines of its financial-rescue system as early as nearest week, some administration magistrate reported. The bad-bank initiative may allow the government to rewrite some of the mortgages that underpin banks’ bad debt, in the hopes of stemming a crisis that has stripped to a greater degree than 1.3 the multitude Americans of their homes.

Reuters reports President Barack Obama’s $825 billion parcel to stem the U.S. recession headed toward anticipated passage today in a sharply divided House of Representatives. Most House Republicans were expected to oppose the proposal, by-word it needs more tax cuts and less expenditure, but Democrats were sure that they had the votes to push it through as they seek a final bill for Obama to sign into law by mid-February. The Democratic-led Senate is expected to pass a a part more splendid reading of the proposal, that would force the two lawyer’s quarters to work out differences. But before the Senate votes, Republicans are hoping to win some modifications that would subsist supported by the Democratic president.

In economic news Wednesday, the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Mortgage Applications table of contents fell a seasonally adjusted 38.8% from the prior week even yet portion rates charged on fixed-rate mortgages declined slightly over the week. MBA said application volume was into disfavor 40.4% against the same week in 2008, according to the Washington-based MBA’s weekly survey. The survey covers about half of all U.S. retail residential mortgage applications. Refinancing applications sank 48% for the week compared with the previous week. Filings for mortgages to purchase homes were down a seasonally adjusted 2.9% compared with the Jan. 16 week. Survey results also were adjusted to account for Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. According to the survey, rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 5.22% last week, down from 5.24% the week near the front of. Fifteen-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.98%, down from 4.99%, while one-year ARMs averaged 5.96%, up from 5.89%.

The ABC News/Washington Post consumer comfort index fell a point to -54 in the week ended Jan. 25, from -53 a week earlier, matching its worst level in the person’s 23-year history. The only other time the poll hit -54 was on Dec. 1, 2008. According to the survey, 5% of respondents expressed confidence in the economy, the same for example the week face to face with. Forty-one percent of those polled said their own finances were in good standing, down from 42% in the prior week. In assessing the buying climate, 23% of respondents related it was good, down from 24% a week earlier.

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LOS ANGELES — Every opportunity Qantas lands one of its huge. Airbus A380s at Los Angeles International Airport, parts of the nation’s fourth-busiest airport come to a halt.

Service roads, taxiways and runways must be closed to airfield trucks, cars and other commercial aircraft as the universe’s largest passenger plane — with wings almost as dilatory in the same proportion that a football field — arrives, departs and taxis with an official escort of operations vehicles.

The plane is with equal reason immense that air traffic controllers accord. it priority so it doesn’t have to linger for takeoff at the period of the south runways in cloudy or foggy endure because it can disrupt radio signals from the airport’s instrument-landing plan.

More than any other airliner, officials say, the A380 requires special procedures because the airport was not built to accommodate a plane of its size.

Federal Aviation Administration officials say A380 operations have gone fairly well since October, at the time the Australian airline began service to Los Angeles from Melbourne and Sydney.

But air traffic controllers and airport officials caution that as airlines put more A380s into reverence, the jets could hamper airport operations and delay other flights suppose that improvements to runways, taxiways and terminals are not made.

Based on Air Transport Association figures, every minute of delay for an airliner carrying 150 people costs the carrier and passengers an average total of $152, including the value of fuel, crew time, lost productivity and other expenses.

Air trade controllers speak the current procedures work because A380s have priority, there are simply any or couple of the planes a day and the airport isn’t as make busy as it formerly was.

Since 2000, average daily takeoffs and landings have dropped from all over 2,150 to 1,500 because of declines in air travel after 9/11, high aviation fuel prices after all the rest summer and the sagging economy.

“Problems down road”

“The whole process is cumbersome and will cause problems in a descending course the road,” said air exchange controller Mike Foote, a local representative of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. “If we go back to pre-recession operations levels, the situation would be untenable. There would exist gridlock.”

Controllers say the potential in opposition to delay could increase dramatically with the etc. of four or five A380 flights a day.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008678466_airbus28.html?syndication=rss

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When it comes to transparency, the world’s bankers won’t give in without a fight.

Even through capitalism suffering its biggest crisis since the Great Depression — a meltdown born and nurtured in opaque markets from subprime mortgages to credit-default swaps — the bankers gathering with politicians in the Swiss resort of Davos this week may be unwilling to allow moreover much sunshine into the shady corners of their business.

“The financial system will kick back against transparency,” says Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University economist and Nobel Prize winner who’ll be in Davos.

“Those working in markets see information as power and money, so they depend on a lack of transparency for success,” says Stiglitz, who won his Nobel for research on information asymmetry — what happens when common party in a transaction has access to acquirements that others don’t.

The check may set up the issue example of strength between markets and governments, dictating the future of the world economy. As the global slump deepens, and President Obama promises to exert a “wakeful eye” immersing the pecuniary system, the risk is new rules won’t be strong enough to stop banks repeating history and circumventing them.

“Without teeth, the banks be pleased whirl round right over this stuff in a couple of years,” said Roy Smith, a former partner at Goldman Sachs who has attended Davos in the additional than. “Wall Street’s filled with a lot of big guys. They know how the bread gets buttered, they know how to play the game.”

Bankers, once hailed during the time that Masters of the Universe, return to the seminars and parties of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting chastened by losses and write-downs that utmost height $1 trillion. Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Officer Josef Ackermann, who before-mentioned two years ago that many investing. banks “have a highly good future,” reported a record loss in the fourth quarter.

Some won’t exist back at whole. Former Merrill Lynch Chief Executive Officer John Thain, originally scheduled to subsist in Davos this week, lost his job on Jan. 22. A year after Lehman Brothers head Richard Fuld sat on a body of jurors discussing sovereign wealth funds, his bank no longer exists.

Policymakers are now tightening their grip on the fiscal system. New U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last week called in opposition to “comprehensive” regulatory changes. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government has bought stakes thwart the banking industry and European Central Bank (ECB) President Jean-Claude Trichet is pumping unlimited funds into the money markets.

“The pendulum of power has swung from financial institutions to politicians,” says Morgan Stanley Asia Chairman Stephen Roach, who was mixed the first to raise the specter of global recession at remain year’s conference.

Obama is being represented by White House adviser and confidante Valerie Jarrett at the five-day conference entitled “Shaping the Post-Crisis World.” She joins Trichet, Brown and more than 2,500 other executives, officials and direction leaders.

One of their main pushes will be to supply with light the murkier market practices that evolved for the period of the boom. Banks pushed more and in greater numbers of their investments off their balance sheets and beyond the reach of capital requirements. At the identical time, subprime pledge loans were repackaged into derivatives and became toxic like rising interest rates sparked a wave of defaults.

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It looks like Amazon.com’sitting finally going to release the second version of its Kindle electronic book in a few weeks.

But it may not subsist enough to ease Wall Street’session expanding nervousness about the online retailer’sitting financial view.

After months of rumors and speculation about when the nearest Kindle will arrive, Amazon.com said Tuesday it will hold a media event with Chief Executive Jeff Bezos at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York on Feb. 9.

What could it be, other than the Kindle 2.0 launch?

“We’re not saying,” spokesman Andrew Herdener said.

Bezos launched the first Kindle in New York in November 2007.

The $359 wireless stratagem appears to be in actual possession of built a following, overcoming early criticism for its unusual, angular have in view and with reference to something else closed software.

Yet the secretive Seattle company has provided no specific information about Kindle sales, even though the device is perpetually occupying prime real estate at its online storefront.

Meanwhile, Sony has upgraded its competing electronic book that uses the sort “electronic paper” expand technology from Cambridge, Mass.-based E-Ink.

Amazon could gain a pompous advantage if it introduces a color display, upgrading from the monochrome Kindle 1.0. But an E-Ink executive declamation at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month suggested that its color-display production is silence a ways opposite to.

Perhaps Amazon will be more forthcoming for the time of its earnings call Thursday.

The gadget has had a fan base without ceasing Wall Street, where some analysts seem to have visions of the next iPod, so perhaps the release could offset or distract from a potentially chilly holiday income report.

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Several Washington-based banks reported sharply lower profits and higher losses from soured loans Tuesday, as they wrestled by the fallout from last year’s housing bust and the subsequent credit crunch.

Sterling Financial of Spokane, the state’sitting largest banking companionship by assets, reported a $356.3 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2008. The loss erased the small profit Sterling eked out during the first nine months of last year.

Cascade Financial, Everett-based parent of Cascade Bank, said it earned $2.5 million in the fourth quarter, down from $4 million a year earlier but an amelioration from the $6.6 million loss posted in the third quarter.

Olympia-based Heritage Financial squandered $194,000 in the fourth station, compared by profit of $2.1 million in the third quarter and $2.8 million in the antecedent fourth quarter. Heritage’session full-year profit fell to $6.4 very great number from $10.7 million in 2007.

And Timberland Bancorp of Hoquiam, which released its results late Monday night, reported a profit of $361,000 in the specific place ended Dec. 31, down meanly 78 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Most of Washington’s publicly traded banks are reporting results this week, at a time when their financial health and lending policies face heightened scrutiny.

Sterling, which owns Sterling Savings Bank and Mountlake Terrace-based Golf Savings Bank, aforesaid much of its fourth-quarter loss came from writing down the value of goodwill on its books by $223.8 million.

Goodwill is an indefinite asset that reflects of that kind things as quality vividness, well qualified customer relations and the recompense above book value paid on the side of acquisitions.

In its report, Sterling said the steep be impaired in its stock price and bleak near-term prospects had eroded the value of its goodwill; however, the noncash charge does not affect the company’s liquidness or required capital ratios.

Sterling, which received $303 million from the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to bolster its balance sheet, said it made $719.9 million in loans last quarter, $39.7 million smaller quantity than in the third quarter.

Residential, multifamily and commercial real-estate lending were up, but construction, consumer and commercial lending completely fell.

Reflecting the depressed real-estate market, Sterling’s nonperforming loans grew to $530.8 the great body of the people, from $381.8 million in the third part quarter. The company also owns meanly $80 the great body of the people in foreclosed property.

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It’s little take off one’s guard to John Kilpatrick that Seattle-area home prices keep falling. Many sellers are in the place of traffic now proper to layoffs or money troubles, unable to wait for a price ricochet.

“The only sellers out there in the market are people who are having to dispose of their houses. The singly buyers out there in the market are people bottom-fishing for deals,” related the president of Greenfield Advisors, a Seattle-based economic-analysis firm.

A closely watched housing-price index announced Tuesday that prices of existing single-family homes in the Seattle area dipped by dint of. 11.2 percent in November compared with the same period the previous year, the worst Seattle has fared in the characteristic since January 2006.

Nationally, the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city horse-cloth index plummeted by a make a memorandum of 18.2 percent from November 2007, the largest decline since its inception in 2000. But those declines may seem less harsh at forward glance, said Patrick Newport, each economist with IHS Global Insight.

“If you adjust for inflation, they’re not record declines,” Newport said. “Home prices are still dropping at about a 20 percent clip, nevertheless it’s not as bad as it’s been in the last six months.”

The recession and wholesale layoffs don’t bode well since a quick turnaround in housing prices, however. Newport estimates prices will drop each additional 10 to 15 percent this year.

The cities with the largest declines are those that had the largest covering bubbles. Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Francisco all clocked in annual price declines of more than 30 percent in November, according to Case-Shiller. And December figures likely won’confidentially look much better.

The silver lining might be rising affordability on the side of those priced in a puzzle of markets around the country. Falling home prices and lower interest rates have reduced monthly mortgage payments by hundreds of dollars for those who qualify.

“Even though we had layoffs at Microsoft, and Boeing is certainly nervous, we tranquillize have one of the chiefly solidly healthy and resonant economies in America,” Kilpatrick uttered. “I’d certainly a great quantity rather live here than many of the other cities in the characteristic.”

Karen Gaudette: 206-515-5618 or kgaudette@seattletimes.com. Material from The Associated Press

is included in this report.

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AS a community educator, I am concerned about the well-being of all who go through Seattle Public Schools. Of near concern are the students

Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson cites a budget deficit of $24 million as a reason to close the academy and four other schools. But reasons given by the district with a view to closing the academy, including low academic performance and low enrollment, are not authentic. District given conditions shows school scholars are performing on par with or above a number of schools across the district.

The district must have existence a partner and work with the academy’s employer, its leadership team and the community to build in succession the scholars’ demonstrated academic achievements.

Results from the 2008 Washington Assessment of Student Learning test showed Academy students, when compared with other schools with black students, ranked in the top 15 to 50 percent in reading and math for eight of 12 grade levels. Scholars showed the greatest produce in math on the 2007-2008 Math Benchmark Assessments.

The academy and other schools with high percentages of low-income students receive Title I federal funds. Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, the academy is expected to restructure this coming year because its test scores have not kept pace with annual annual. progress.

But the academy is not alone. Twenty non-Title I schools in Seattle are also not making annual annual. progress, however they are not slated for closure.

Despite inadequate district support, the academy shows academic improvement and is poised to move closer to closing the achievement gap for scholars in the elementary and middle-school grades.

Since its inception in 1991 when the Seattle School Board established 10 choice schools to “eliminate disproportionality in Seattle Public Schools and grow academic accomplishment as a priority to the time when so time the achievement gap has been closed,” the African-American community has stepped forward to do its part to support the gymnasium.

The Greater Seattle Chapter of The Links, Inc., collaborated with Black Child Development Institute and Tabor 100 businessmen to establish Friends of the African American Academy (FOAAA) and coordinate offer services in the school. Black Child Development Institute obtained a Washington rank Reading First grant for the school. The grant was recently renewed for another two years. The seminary was recognized by former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson according to outstanding consummation and significant improvement in reading.

An upswing in the school’s WASL reading scores in third through seventh grades be able to have being attributed to the association of artists’s reading and literacy staff and resources provided by the reading gift. Academy community collaborations have expanded learning opportunities and these programs embody arts and education activities with the Seattle Symphony ACCESS Project and Sherman Clay of Seattle.

The gymnasium was designed to be a K-8 alternative-choice school that could expand to 12th grade. Award-winning African-American architect Mel Streeter modeled the school on the cluster concept of a West African “Dogon” family town to reinforce the excellence of family in a chit’s learning process.

The academy is greater degree of than an architectural jewel

The association of artists is of great weight as one option on the menu of educational strategies. The academy offers smaller class sizes and a pedagogy that helps students ensnare up academically and excel. Students are encouraged to make school a top anteriority, and are helped in better understanding themselves and the social provisions around them

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The backslapping, self-congratulatory emoting over President Barack Obama

I recognize the historic nature of this moment. In fact, I’m still over the moon about it, but in the midst of my jubilation a chastising inner voice mutters: Of course we have power to and did; we’ve been headed in this management by reason of quite sometime at once!

Exhibit A means telling a story about my mother and hoping one of the first outraged letters to the editor isn’t from her. In Washington, D.C., last week to write about the inauguration, I went to my mother’s house and uncovered in a back room a twelve or so plaques and awards coated in inch-thick dust.

These days, my mother is retired and largely reclusive. Looking at these keepsakes takes her back to more energetic days. For me, poised to write on the point one of the most historic inaugurations in American record, I ran my fingers over the letterings of the awards and erect testament that while Obama has traveled the farthest, the road to American representative government at its most inclusive is as crowded as a freeway at rush hour.

In my mother’sitting stash, I found a mahogany wood plaque signed by former New York Congressman Jack Kemp when he served similar to secretary of Housing and Urban Development. My spring, according to Kemp, was one of the first President Bush’sitting Thousand Points of Light. My personal favorite was a small walnut-colored brooch from North Forestville Elementary School thanking my mother for serving as PTA president. The engraved date, 1972, told the rest of the history. The year the school was integrated, my mother enrolled me and then ran for PTA president

Naturally, a history of knocking down doors would eventually entice us to the White House door.

I suspect here in the Northwest, many of us knew Obama could win long before the rest of the inhabitants. We’re used to capable, smart leadership in a multitude of ethnicities, including black. King County Executive Ron Sims, a third-term incumbent we’re so used to that not many still marvel that he was our first black county executive. Add to that Seattle’s first atramentous mayor, Norm Rice, and Gary Locke, the condition’s first Asian-American governor. Yes we can, because aye we already have.

Next up: repeating these feats again and again until they no longer merit amazement.

A volume “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama” broadens my argument. PBS moderator Gwen Ifill profiles a new generation of black leaders, from Colin Powell to lesser-known pols including Newark Mayor Corey Booker, Alabama Congressman Artur Davis, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris. These leaders are post-boomers blessed by the rewards of the civil-rights movement and none of the natural and emotional scars from that irregular period in our history.

Ifill’s book doesn’face to face spend much time dissecting Obama. There is a single chapter noting his historic win and the political meteorological character that fostered his victory. That is as it should have existence. I grabbed the book because I wanted to learn this election and why three generations, my parents, my own and my son’s order view this twinkling of an eye from one side such different lenses.

Ifill’s book reinforces what I hope Americans take away from Obamas presidency: He is right another smart, hardworking person, who happens to be African American and is inclined to be of service. He seems so atypical, but he is not. As common reviewer of Ifill’s book pointed away, if we peer into the deep bench behind Obama, crowded elbow to jostle by governors, mayors, county executives, state lawmakers, school board members and yes, PTA presidents, we’ll see he is typical, and America is all the richer for it.

Days in advance of last week’session historic inauguration, Congressman Adam Smith, a Democrat who grew up around Tacoma, and I talked about an Obama presidency’s pack together on race relations.

Smith was one of Obama’session earliest public supporters. His sound carried a deep respect for Obama but also a nonplused tone about race that I can only pray becomes more popular.

He came to this earliest for of the man, his ideas and his approach to politics, Smith said. When Obama decided to run for president, Smith didn’t wonder whether a moor attendant could win or even whether he could suffrage for a black man. If that’session what you want and you have the qualities, in that case that’s what you should aspire to, he said.

Just as Gwen Ifill’s main division shows to what extent a recent generation of black leaders promises to vary our party politics and our nation, I hope views such as Congressman Smith’sitting help change the wont we see and take measure of each other. It would exist a moment that would, once again, carry me over the lunation.

; since a podcast Q&A with the author, go to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera

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TOKYO Blowfish testicles prepared by an lawless chef sickened seven diners in northern Japan and three remained hospitalized Tuesday after eating the poisonous pleasantness.

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The owner of the restaurant in Tsuruoka city, who is besides the chef, had no license to serve blowfish and was core questioned steady suspicion of professional shortcoming, police official Yoshihito Iwase before-mentioned.

Blowfish, while extremely poisonous if not prepared strictly, is considered a delicacy in Japan and is consumed by thrill-seeking gourmets.

Iwase aforesaid the seven men ordered sashimi and grilled blowfish testicles at the eating-house Monday night.

Shortly hind, they developed limb paralysis and breathing trouble and started to lose consciousness - typical signs of blowfish poisoning - and were rushed to a hospital for treatment, Iwase said.

A 68-year-old diner remained hospitalized in critical condition with respiratory failure and sum of two units others, aged 55 and 69, were in serious condition, he said.

“It’s scary. If you go to a decent-looking restaurant that serves fugu, you would assume a dress up has a proper fugu allow,” Iwase related, using the Japanese term for blowfish.

Blowfish poison, called tetrodotoxin, is nearly 100 times more poisonous than potassium cyanide, according to the Ishikawa Health Service Association. It can cause death within an hour and a half after phthisis.

Three people died and 44 others were sickened by blowfish poisoning in 2007 - most of them after catching the fish and cooking it at home - according to the Health Ministry.

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WASHINGTON Medicare has quietly expanded its coverage for cancer drugs to include some treatments that place of safety’t gotten the Food and Drug Administration’s full assurance of approval.

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The change was announced last summer with paltry fanfare and took effect in the fall. It property that doctors and patients seeking Medicare repayment for certain romance treatments won’t have to negotiate with the billing department for payment. But it’s furthermore real to augment Medicare spending, since cancer medications often cost thousands of dollars a month.

“In some instances … the medical common may have scientific evidence that supports using a drug to treat a ailment even if the drug’sitting FDA-approved label does not include those clinical conditions,” Medicare explained in a June 5 news release describing the policy.

The policy change was first reported Tuesday by The New York Times.

Medicare’s conclusion could evidence controversial, however. It deals by so-called “off-label” prescribing, a gray area in medical practice and government rule. While the FDA approves medications for specific uses, the agency is not allowed to dictate to doctors how they will practice medicine or prescribe drugs. For example, a doctor can write a prescription for a brain cancer drug and use it to treat kidney tumors.

That nuance may mean the difference between life and death for some patients. It’s also excellence billions to remedy companies, even supposing they are forbidden from promoting their medications in favor of off-label uses.

Cancer doctors strongly supported Medicare’s decision. Off-label prescribing has long been standard use in their field.

“Basically what this means is that in that place will have being faster coverage of evidence-based and appropriate cancer medications for patients,” declared Dr. Joseph Bailes, a spokesman for the American Society of Clinical Oncology. “It will dwarf the hassle factor.”

But some consumer advocates said Medicare should ensnare a second look at its new policy.

“I’m not doubtless I would say it’s a bad thing, but I entertain an idea of it was imprudent and needs to be re-evaluated,” said Steven Findlay, a health policy analyst for Consumers Union, publishers of Consumer Reports. “We think it’s better to be careful. Evidence shows that some of these drugs extend life by a true ungenerous aggregate and at great cost.”

Medicare’s policy change essentially allows its billing contractors to use a broader range of pharmaceutical reference materials in deciding whether or not to approve remuneration for cancer put drugs into management.

These reference materials list uses not approved by the FDA for several medications. The editors of the allusion collections rascally their decisions mainly on reviews of scientific articles about medications. But many of the studies reported in those articles are financed by pharmaceutical companies seeking broader uses for their medications.

Medicare spokesman Peter Ashkenaz said the decision was not a concession to the drug industry, but a routine update of reference materials. Some of the reference books that Medicare previously relied put on were no longer being published.

Ashkenaz stressed that Medicare is not obligated to pay for a treatment just because it is listed in the pharmaceutical references. Doctors compose desire to show that prescribing a given cancer drug is “right and necessary,” he said.

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