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FORTUNE — It was a humiliating moment. Congressman Edolphus Towns was upbraiding a top Johnson & Johnson executive. Certainly Towns (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has browbeaten his share of CEOs and Wall Street titans. But it’s not the sort of thing that usually happens to J&J. At this hearing in May, though, Towns laid into the health care giant. “The information I’ve seen during the course of our investigation raises questions about the integrity of the company,” he boomed. “It paints a picture of a company that is deceptive, dishonest, and has risked the health of many of our children.”

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WASHINGTON – Former Labor secretary Robert Reich wants to place BP’s U.S. operations in temporary receivership. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wants the oil giant to suspend its dividend payments. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is weighing criminal charges. And lawyers in more than a hundred lawsuits want BP to pay billions of dollars in damages for harm done to people’s health, the environment and businesses.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — You may have thought you were playing it safe by avoiding recently-recalled Johnson & Johnson products, but another drugmaker is now in the hot seat for some of the same problems, including the release of metal-tainted pills.

On Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter to one of the world’s largest manufacturers of generic drugs, Michigan-based Perrigo Co.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Food and Drug Administration is looking into reports of at least 775 serious side effects from drugs recalled by McNeil, a division of Johnson & Johnson, according to a source close to a Congressional investigation.

Included in the reports were 30 deaths, nearly all of which were found to not be tied to McNeil’s recall of Tylenol, Motrin and Benadryl drugs from Jan. 1, 2008 through April 30, 2010, according to another source close to the investigation.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — For the fourth time this year, doctors face a potential huge cut in the fees that the government pays them to treat Medicare patients.

Physicians will be hit with a 21% cut in Medicare reimbursements as of June 1, unless lawmakers decide to patch over the issue — as they’ve done for years. Congress is now debating the matter, and to stop the cut lawmakers would have to vote to pass a new patch sometime in the next two weeks.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — An all-but-overlooked provision of the health reform law is threatening to swamp U.S. businesses with a flood of new tax paperwork.

Section 9006 of the health care bill — just a few lines buried in the 2,409-page document — mandates that beginning in 2012 all companies will have to issue 1099 tax forms not just to contract workers but to any individual or corporation from which they buy more than $600 in goods or services in a tax year.

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We can be sued into oblivion

Doctors’ fear of multi-million dollar lawsuits is pushing them to practice “defensive medicine.” More doctors are ordering additional tests and procedures not based on need but fear of liability.

The government estimates that cost of medical malpractice is less than 2% of overall health care spending. Industry experts say defensive medicine accounts for about 10% of health care costs, or more than $100 billion annually.

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My husband and I are both self-employed, so we can’t wait to find affordable health care for ourselves and for our employees — probably through an exchange program or with the help of tax credits.

Right now, we carry only a catastrophic policy for ourselves. We’re not getting the preventative care that we would like because it’s all out-of-pocket. Our deductible, before the catastrophic plan would kick in, is $10,000 per year.

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WASHINGTON – As more corporate heavyweights warn about multimillion-dollar charges related to the Obama administration’s landmark health care bill, experts say the one-time hit simply curbs a government giveaway.

At issue is a sweetener added in 2003 by lawmakers to legislation providing a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, the health insurance plan for the elderly.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The sweeping health-care bill passed by the House of Representatives Sunday, and now headed for President Obama’s desk, promises a sea change in the way that small business owners purchase and provide health insurance for themselves and their employees.

But many of the provisions won’t kick in until 2014 — and the final rules could still be changed by amendments that will now be considered by the Senate.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — More than 1 million people could lose their jobless benefits and health insurance subsidy in March if Congress doesn’t act fast.

When it returns from the President’s Day recess on Monday, the Senate will have one week to extend the deadlines to apply for federal unemployment benefits and the COBRA health insurance subsidy. Currently, the jobless have until Feb. 28 to sign up.

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(Money Magazine) — Last month was open-enrollment season, and my wife and I got an unpleasant surprise. For 2010 we’re looking at an annual health-insurance premium that’s $1,600 higher than it is now, plus higher deductibles. Instead of flat co-pays, we’ll pay co-insurance, a share of the total costs. And this is with a plan provided by a Fortune 500 company that still spends big bucks on relatively generous benefits.

You may well be in the same boat. According to human-resources consultant Hewitt Associates, the average large-company employee will pay $4,023 in premiums and out-of-pocket costs next year — 10% more than in 2009 and more than three times the level in 2001.