WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration revealed what over 3,000 hospitals charge for common medical procedures in an early effort to challenge healthcare costs by showing consumers how prices for the same service can vary by tens of thousands of dollars.

The most extensive release of hospital charge rates to date showed dramatic variations in prices between different hospitals, even when they are located in the same city or town.

In Denver, Colorado, for instance, treatment for heart failure ranges from $21,000 to $46,000, according to the data on services used in the 100 common hospital stays covered by the Medicare program for the elderly and disabled. In Jackson, Mississippi, fees for the same treatment range from $9,000 to $51,000. The data can be accessed at: http://go.cms.gov/16WaMfH

"When consumers easily compare the prices of goods and services, (providers) have strong incentives to keep those prices low," said U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

"But even basic information about health premiums and hospital charges has long been hidden from consumers," she told reporters in a conference call. "These rates can vary dramatically in ways that can't be easily explained."

While the figures will be eye-opening for many consumers, they still lack the information needed to make as informed a decision about medical care as they already do when choosing a new car.

The mountain of data is not available in a form easy to navigate, nor is it matched with quality ratings that would show whether a lower-priced hospital delivers care comparable to its more expensive neighbor, healthcare analysts said.

"The administration is doing something here that's fairly meaningless, just to show that they're doing something," said Paul Ginsburg, who heads the Washington-based Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan research group.

"Everyone has known for years and years that those hospital charges bear little relation to what hospitals actually receive from different payors," he added.

Medicare sets its own national rates for reimbursing hospitals, while private insurers, particularly large companies like UnitedHealth or Aetna, use their market leverage with hospitals and doctor practices to negotiate substantial discounts.

INFORMING THE UNINSURED

Government health officials said the data was intended particularly to help millions of uninsured and under-insured consumers get better access to hospital services. Many of these Americans are expected to gain coverage beginning in 2014 under the health reform, either through subsidies to purchase private insurance or an expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor.

Officials said they would eventually make software tools available to help Americans use the data. Some price information is already available to consumers who have private health insurance and through websites such as Healthcarebluebook.com and Clearhealthcosts.com, which allow users to compare local rates based on a procedure's name and their zip code.

"For those who are navigating the healthcare system on their own, for those that don't have a large bulk purchaser behind them, they have to navigate a very complicated market," said Medicare director Jonathan Blum.

"There is no relationship ... to the cost of care being provided. There's no relationship that we see to charges and the quality of care that's being provided."

HHS also announced that it would make about $87 million available to states to help set up pricing data centers and fund rate review programs to encourage pricing transparency.

The American Hospital Association said the list of charges presented are no longer relevant based on how facilities are actually reimbursed for care by the government and private insurance.

"(Hospital) 'charges' were a central part of the former cost-based reimbursement system that disappeared from the scene decades ago," AHA President Richard Umbdenstock said.

The data release was welcomed as a step toward reining in healthcare costs by consumer advocacy groups including Families USA, which described hospital pricing as "the craziest of crazy quilts."

Sebelius' department plans to release more data over time by expanding the range of services and including charges set by outpatient clinics that would include physician services. Wednesday's release was limited to hospitals that accept Medicare Part A coverage for inpatient facilities.

(Editing by Michele Gershberg, David Gregorio and Tim Dobbyn)

HONG KONG/LONDON (Reuters) - Standard Charteredfaced a protest from over 20 percent of shareholders over its board structure on Wednesday and warned it could miss this year's revenue target after higher bad debts and falling interest rates hit first-quarter earnings.

Shares in the Asia-focused bank, one of the most consistent performers during the financial crisis, fell over 4 percent.

More than 22 percent of the London-based bank's shareholders abstained or voted against the re-election of four directors at an annual meeting, including probably its largest investor, Singapore state investor Temasek. Almost 13 percent of shareholders also failed to back the bank's pay policy.

Temasek, which owns an 18 percent stake, last year abstained on the re-election of some directors, in part because it wants fewer executives on the board. The investor was considering abstaining again this year, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters before the shareholder meeting. It could not immediately be reached for comment after the vote.

Standard Chartered Chairman John Peace said he had discussed governance with Temasek, and said his bank - which has six executives on its board of 19 people - had a structure that reflected best UK corporate practice.

"They believe in a different model. They expressed a different philosophy to us and I respect that," Peace said.

Standard Chartered said that, despite a weak March, it was still on course to achieve an 11th consecutive year of record profits, driven by strong Asian markets, but it would ease back on hiring to rein in growing wage costs.

The profitability of banks in Asia has been squeezed by ultra-easy monetary policy in the West, which has created a flood of cheap money that has pressured margins for banks competing to lend to fast-growing emerging markets.

Operating profit at both Standard Chartered's consumer and investment banking arms fell by about 5 percent in the first three months of 2013.

Revenues in the first quarter were slightly higher than in the first quarter of 2012 and Finance Director Richard Meddings said profit margins had stabilized.

But he said the impact of Western monetary policy on Asia was "the key anxiety" that could affect revenues, which Standard Chartered aims to increase by 10 percent a year.

"At this point, we'd prefer to wait to see how May and June land before we give that guidance (of 10 percent revenue growth)," Meddings told reporters on a conference call. "Last year we produced revenue growth of 8 percent and it may be that we're more likely to be at that level."

The bank, which makes about four-fifths of its operating profit in Asia and the Middle East, said it was comfortable with analyst forecasts for pretax profit of $8.2 billion this year, up 18 percent from 2012.

It said its performance had weakened in South Korea and in Singapore. South Korea's government has overhauled personal debt restructuring processes as part of a wider social welfare program, which includes more forgiveness on troubled long-term loans, and Standard Chartered said its consumer bad debts there had increased by more than 10 percent, more than expected.

STAFF COSTS GROW

Its shares closed down 4.4 percent at 16.25 pounds, the biggest daily drop since they slumped in August after charges the bank violated U.S. sanctions against Iran. That ended in a $667 million settlement with U.S. authorities.

"The Q1 trading statement is the first one in a long time in which Standard Chartered is down in operating profit comparisons on a year-on-year basis, both in the wholesale bank and the consumer bank," said Bernstein analyst Chirantan Barua.

Costs rose on the year, including a "high single-digit" percentage rise in staff costs after the addition of 560 staff in the quarter and wage inflation, the bank said. It does not issue full quarterly numbers and releases earnings twice a year.

Standard Chartered has previously said it could hire about 2,000 staff this year.

"We will still be hiring, the business still has good growth, but we will be pacing the rate of that hiring more acutely until we are more certain of the income run rate," Meddings said.

Hong Kong was once again Standard Chartered's standout market in the first quarter, with income growing more than 10 percent, mirroring a strong performance there reported by rival HSBCon Tuesday.

Income in Africa also rose more than 10 percent.

(Editing by Tom Pfeiffer and Mark Potter)

Circling, bounding over and pawing at a mound of garbage bags, the four dogs quickly have rodents on the run.

"Come on ... I mean, 'tally ho!' says one of their owners, Susan Friedenberg. In a whirl of barks, pants and wagging tails, dogs tunnel among the bags and bolt down the alley as their quarry tries to scurry away.

Within five minutes, the city has two fewer rats.

In a scrappy, streetwise cousin of mannerly countryside fox hunts, on terrain far from the European farms and fields where many of the dogs' ancestors were bred to scramble after vermin and foxes, their masters sport trash-poking sticks instead of riding crops and say it's just as viable an exercise for the animals' centuries-old skills.

"It's about maintaining the breed type through actual work," says Richard Reynolds, a New Jersey-based business analyst and longtime dog breeder who might be considered the group's organizer if it would accept being called organized.

Known with a chuckle as the Ryders Alley Trencher-fed Society parse the acronym the rodent-hunters have been scouring downtown byways for more than a decade, meeting weekly when weather allows.

On a couple of recent nights, an eclectic group of ratters converged on an alley near City Hall about an hour after sunset. The lineups included two border terriers; a wire-haired dachshund; a Jack Russell terrier/Australian cattle dog mix; a Patterdale terrier, an intense, no-nonsense breed that's uncommon in this country; and a feist, a type of dog developed in the American South to tree squirrels.

"Get 'im! Go!" Serge Lozach yelled as his cairn terrier, Hudson, streaked down an alley after a fleeing rat. Unlike many of the other owners, Lozach doesn't breed or show dogs, but he has taken Hudson to several alley hunts.

"I like watching him have fun," Lozach said.

Although the dogs have hunting instincts, it takes training to capitalize on them. Just because your pet runs after backyard squirrels doesn't mean it could ever catch one.

When at its best, the alley pack works together. One dog will sniff out a rat and signal its whereabouts, often by barking. Another leaps at the hideaway to rout the quarry, and then a third lurches to catch it as it flees. A rat that scuttles into the open might get caught in a rundown, or even a tug of war, between dogs that circle and flank it.

After making a kill with a bite or a shake, the hunters trot back, rat in mouth, and allow their owners to take it from their jaws. The night's kill ends up in a trash bin.

There's no official estimate of how many rats rove the city's streets, basements, parks and subways. But there are plenty.

Officials have tried a number of innovative tactics to rout them, including a 2007 city Health Department initiative that sent inspectors with hand-held computers to map infestations in a Bronx neighborhood and then followed up with owners to address the problems.

Recently, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority agreed to let an Arizona-based company test a form of rat birth control by setting out bait in some subway stations this summer.

But the terrier forays are an unofficial undertaking, and participants say they're less about killing rats than giving dogs the experience of chasing them. The Health Department declined to comment on the hunts.

The idea has a long history. A noted 1851 examination of working-class life in London describes rat-catchers working the city's streets with ferrets and terriers. More recently, a rat-catching dachshund got attention in Seattle when its owner happened by while City Councilman Tom Rasmussen was checking out a downtown cleanup program in 2010. Rasmussen snapped a picture of the dog, rat in mouth, and posted the photo on his website.

There's even an American dog breed called a rat terrier, though its origins lie on farms.

Rat-tracking recently became an official canine sport, called "barn hunt." Dogs get two minutes to sniff around a hay-bale maze and indicate where they smell a rat concealed in a crush-proof, aerated tube; the dog never catches the quarry. Dozens of dogs competed in the first trials this past month in Columbia, Mo.

While dog owners may see it as time-honored pursuit, rat-hunting riles animal-rights advocates. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which opposes hunting in general, expressed outrage after video of a dog snatching rats in a New York City park surfaced online two years ago. PETA Spokesman Martin Mersereau calls the alley rat quests "a twisted blood sport masquerading as rodent control."

Reynolds counters that "there are lots of worse things that people do to rats," noting that poisons can sicken the animals for hours.

As for the dogs, they have sometimes gotten stuck in waste bins or tumbled into holes, and a recent night left two with scrapes. But Reynolds says none has ever been seriously hurt or fallen ill.

In one recent foray, the dogs dispatched 13 rats within about a half-hour.

The dogs prowled and prodded for about 90 more minutes before the group gave up for the night. But not to worry, said dachshund owner Trudy Kawami.

"There will always be a million rats in the naked city."

___

Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

Both of them are senior to me in rank and age, and they pooh-pooh the notion that anything but water vapor is being exhaled. Am I making something out of nothing, or should I be worried about this? -- CLEAN AIR

DEAR CLEAN AIR: You don't have anything to worry about, but your co-workers may. In 2009, the FDA announced the findings from a laboratory analysis that indicated that electronic cigarettes expose users to harmful chemical ingredients, including carcinogens. However, those elements were not detected in exhaled vapor.

DEAR ABBY: The woman who collaborated with me on this letter is in her 80s and lives at an assisted-living facility. I am a caregiver and a senior myself, and I have worked in this area for six years.

We read your column on the days I care for her. She loves it and responds verbally to all the letters. Many times the situations spark good conversation, even though her short-term memory is failing. Sometimes we end up howling with laughter. She's a delight and has the courage to still seek out relationships.

This is what she asked me to help her to communicate. -- KATE IN AUSTIN, TEXAS

DEAR ABBY: I have been in assisted living for seven years. There are times when it can be lonely and boring. I'd like to meet some men for companionship, conversation and perhaps romance. The men here act so much older than me. They don't start conversations. They stay in their rooms and watch TV and don't seem interested in conversations.

It's hard because my memory isn't what it used to be, but I do remember how nice it was to have male companionship. Do you have any ideas to make my life a little more interesting? -- LONELY WOMAN

DEAR LONELY: Start by making sure you participate in all the activities your assisted-living facility offers. Shared mealtimes and holiday celebrations also present opportunities to mingle.

The trick is to find something you have in common with these men -- sports, games, music, movies. Because long-term memory outlasts short-term memory, some of them might find it easier to discuss their youth than the present.

Encourage your caregiver, Kate, to take you places where you can meet other seniors. And while you're at it, why not invite some of the men to join you both during your Dear Abby sessions? It's a way to draw people out and get to know them better.

DEAR ABBY: After a six-month separation, my husband and I are reuniting. We were married for 22 years. I know for a fact he has dated and slept with several women. He's adamant that he used protection each time, but the idea of STDs has me preoccupied and worried. I have asked him to use protection with me until I get over my fear.

How long do most of today's STDs incubate, and what is a safe time to wait to remove the "rain gear"? -- LONGING FOR CONTACT

DEAR LONGING: Congratulations on your reunion. Rather than worry about this, ask your husband to schedule a doctor's appointment and be tested for any STD he might have contracted. Not all STDs have the same incubation period, but a blood test could resolve the issue and put your mind at ease.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Write Dear Abby ator P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

For everything you need to know about wedding planning, order "How to Have a Lovely Wedding." Send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $7 (U.S. funds) to: Dear Abby, Wedding Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447. (Shipping and handling are included in the price.)

Financial details of the acquisition by the British drugmaker's MedImmune unit were not disclosed.

AstraZeneca's new CEO Pascal Soriot said last month he planned to build up the company's sparse drug pipeline by striking more deals, with cardiovascular and metabolic disease a particular priority.

Cardiovascular and metabolic disease is one of three core therapy areas for AstraZeneca - along with oncology and respiratory/inflammation - but the company currently has few experimental compounds for such conditions.

AlphaCore will help plug the gap, although it will not deliver any marketable products for many years. Its leading drug candidate ACP-501, a genetically engineered liver-derived enzyme called LCAT, only completed Phase I clinical tests last year.

Drugs need to go through three phases of lengthy tests before being approved for sale.

The hope is that ACP-501 will help in the management of cholesterol to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. It could also play a role in a rare, hereditary disorder called familial LCAT deficiency in which the LCAT enzyme is absent.

"As the science in this area continues to evolve, we are committed to exploring unique pathways that could lead to new combination or standalone therapies for patients living with chronic and acute cardiovascular diseases," said MedImmune head Bahija Jallal.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

The giant painting hangs in the same central position it did before an epic, decade long, 375 million ($480 million) makeover, flanked by works by Johannes Vermeer, Jan Steen and thousands of other Dutch cultural and artistic artifacts.

In a preview Thursday ahead of the April 13 reopening, Rijksmuseum director Wim Pijbes said the far-reaching improvements will justify the long wait.

"It's totally changed, renewed, improved, radiant everything is new," he said.

The Rijksmuseum houses the largest collection of Dutch artwork, with many treasures from the country's 17th-century Golden Age and beyond.

The 19th-century building's red-brick exterior, which resembles a fairy-tale castle, has been restored but left intact. Inside, twin central courtyards that had been gradually filled with extra floors as the museum grew over the years have been reclaimed. The clutter has been stripped away to let natural light flood into the center of the museum.

Despite reopening the courtyard, the museum preserved as much exhibition space as before by reclaiming some areas which had been used for offices.

From hand-painted details on every pillar, to newly laid mosaic floors and stained glass windows, to revitalizing the displays themselves, every part of the museum has been restored or rethought.

Pijbes said that almost never has a national museum undergone such a far-reaching facelift, with every single one of the 8,000 artifacts and pieces of art on display coming to rest in a different spot with one exception: "The Night Watch" itself.

That enormous canvas 4.35 meters wide and 3.79 meters high (14.86 x 12.43 feet) portrays a company of Amsterdam volunteer militiamen. It stands at the end of the museum's central gallery, just as it did in the original 1885 design by architect Pierre Cuypers.

The painting's placement reflects Dutch history, a crowning achievement of the Golden Age when the Netherlands was a major naval power and Amsterdam was one of the world's most influential and wealthy cities.

"The Gallery of Honor is a kind of basilica that ends not with a Christian display, but a civilian display: Rembrandt's 'Night Watch,'" Pijbes said.

The symbolism is that "that there is no one king that has the power, that the Netherlands is a country where an early republic decided a group of people would have power in their hands."

The main gallery is a who's who of Dutch masters, from landscape masters to portraitists. Highlights include Vermeer's delicate, quiet "Milkmaid" (1660), in which the act of pouring milk becomes an almost religious act; as well as larger and more raucous works like Steen's " The Merry Family" (1668) and Frans Hals's "The Merry Drinker" (1628).

And of course it includes paintings and sketches by Rembrandt, including several self-portraits and masterpieces such as one of his most-loved works, "The Jewish Bride" (1669), which shows a tender couple lightly touching.

The museum's head of collections Taco Dibbits said the 17th-century works will always set the museum apart from other national exhibitions.

"This little country became an enormous sea power, East and West, very rich," he said. "The old masters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals, Jan Steen they painted the world of the people, not Christ on the cross, they painted the people who made the country."

Outside the main gallery, the rest of the exhibits are dispersed along a 1.5 kilometers (about a mile) walk through the galleries.

The twin arms of the castle-like structure continue to divide the museum into wings, but with floors now organized chronologically by era.

Dibbits said the displays have been crafted to integrate artwork with artifacts that tell the story of the country's history and culture at the same time.

Before the renovation "there was one room for paintings, a room for glass, a room for silver, and so on, while in the new museum, you take a walk through the period," he said.

"The intention is ... to create a feeling for beauty of Dutch art and a feeling for the time," he said.

For instance, he said, you might a portrait painted by Rembrandt hanging above an ornate chest made by one of his friends, and silverware crafted by another of his friends on top of the chest.

"It's the relations between different art objects that tell the story of the Netherlands," he said.

The displays were arranged by French designer Jean-Michel Wilmotte, who also helped design the interior of the Louvre in Paris.

As a final, somewhat eccentric touch to remind the world Amsterdam is still a living city with its own cultural demands: a bike path runs straight under the center of the building's central arch, offering cyclists a view of the building's beautiful new courtyards.

The museum expects to attract as many as two million visitors annually after the renovations, from 1.3 million in the last year before it closed in 2003.

Tickets will cost 15 euros ($19).

Among totally new displays are an Asian art pavilion; access to the museum's ornate library; and a new wing devoted to the 20th century, with works by Piet Mondriaan and graphic artist and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld, among others.

"That's history now too, and we collect the past," Dibbits said, grinning.

The House cleared the way to debate the bill, which was designed to help Americans with pre-existing medical conditions while preventing the administration from using an alternate source of funding to implement its healthcare law.

But the "Helping Sick Americans Now" bill was pulled from the schedule before members could cast their votes, suggesting that Republican leaders did not have enough support from their own members. Democrats called the bill a political ploy by the Republicans.

An aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Republican leaders would bring the bill back up when Congress returns after a week-long recess in May. The legislation is not expected to go anywhere in the Democrat-controlled Senate and the White House has threatened to veto it.

"We're going to continue working on the bill. We had positive conversations today and made good progress," the Republican aide said, noting that they had run out of time with some members leaving town.

Before the House debate, several Republican conservatives were openly opposing the bill and questioning why their leaders were even offering up the measure.

They said that House leaders should give first-term Republicans a chance to vote on repealing the entire Obama healthcare law. The Republican-controlled House has voted to repeal or defund the law more than 30 times since it was enacted in 2010.

"The issue I think many of us are having with this particular piece of legislation... you're replacing one big government program with another big government program," said Representative Raul Labrador of Idaho.

In January, at an annual meeting of House Republicans, party members examined how to respond to the November 6, 2012 election results in which they lost seats to Democrats.

Some Republican consultants advised the party to appear less dogmatic over budget issues, such as the need to cut government spending and domestic programs, and become more in tune with voters' day-to-day concerns.

Labrador, speaking on Wednesday at a press conference, said he agreed with House Republican leaders' goal to brush up the party's image with voters.

But he added: "Subsidizing healthcare is not what Republicans should be about. Republicans should be about managing health care" to lower costs for Americans.

The two-term Republican added, "I agree with his (Cantor's) premise that we need to do something about the struggles of ordinary Americans. Subsidizing the struggles of ordinary Americans is not the solution to the questions that we are facing."

The bill would reallocate about $4 billion from a special Prevention and Public Health Fund that the administration has been using to help finance the creation of health insurance exchanges, new state online marketplaces where low-to-middle income families can begin signing up for federally subsidized private insurance on October 1.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, David Morgan and Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)