Boston Scientific Corp.’s (NYSE:BSX) third-generation stent platform, the platinum-chromium Omega bare-metal stent, won CE Mark approval in the European Union. Boston Scientific said it plans to make the device available “immediately” in the EU and other countries that recognize the mark. It’s the first of a trio of stents the Natick, Mass.-based medical device maker plans to launch on the platform, according to a press release.

Boston Scientific layoffs will come from its cardiology, rhythm and vascular unit. Executives at BSX told employees that the cuts were coming so the medical company in Massachusetts could remain competitive.

Boston Scientific Corp.’s stock jumps as much as 6 percent after RBC Capital Markets boosts its rating of the medical device maker’s stock.

It’s not unusual to see health care charges at 5x negotiated rates. What’s interesting is that there are still quite a few health care businesses that operate in this mode, earning a modest margin on their core business that’s reimbursed by Medicare and commercial insurers with which they have contracts, losing money on the fairly high percentage of patients who don’t pay anything –either because they’re uninsured or just don’t pay–, and making almost 100 percent of their profit on the occasional out-of-network sucker whose insurance pays full boat or who actually pays the bill himself or herself.

Healthcare venture capital executive Paul LaViolette warns that an “inefficient and unpredictable regulatory system” at the Food & Drug Administration should have government officials worrying “more about losing firms to Costa Rica than California. One of LaViolette’s killer statistics: three-quarters of the cost to bring new innovative medical devices to market in the United States is in dealing with regulatory issues.

A federal judge in California dismissed for the second time a purported class-action lawsuit against Boston Scientific’s star-crossed Guidant Corp. pacemaker subsidiary.

The Natick, Mass.-based medical device giant said it’s launching the third generation of its market-leading Promus and Taxus drug-eluting stents in a country of more than 1.1 billion people. Company officials say the DES market in India is surging, with an estimated 150,000 stents implanted annually. BSX won regulatory approval for the devices in India last year.

Medtronic Inc. (NYSE:MDT) managed to find the silver lining in the dark cloud that is a $74 million patent infringement judgment against it when a federal judge denied an Edwards Lifesciences Inc. (NYSE:EW) move to bar U.S. manufacturing and sales of its CoreValve aortic valve replacement.

Australian company Cavitus is eyeing North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park region as a possible site to relocate its headquarters. The company is planning the move to be closer to existing customers and to find new ones in the pharmaceutical industry. Other cities in the running include Boston and Chicago.

I say: go ahead and let malpractice reform happen, if only to take some of the focus off of extreme cases and get doctors to relax a bit. But let’s divert some or all of the savings to education and re-engineering of care processes to improve patient safety in order to prevent the emergence of situations that the malpractice system is meant to address.