The complex field of health-care information may soon be a little more streamlined. On Tuesday, Chicago-based electronic medical records provider Allscripts announced it has agreed to merge with British rival Misys PLC in a cash-and-stocks deal worth more than $1 billion. The new firm, which will operate under the name Allscripts, will become one of the largest players in the U.S.'s $20 billion electronic health-record industry. In its present form, Allscripts manages data for more than 40,000 ...

Amnesty International may be best known to American audiences for bringing to light horror stories abroad such as the disappearance of political activists in Argentina or the abysmal conditions inside South African prisons under apartheid. But in a new report on pregnancy and childbirth care in the U.S., Amnesty details the maternal-health care crisis in this country as part of a systemic violation of women's rights. The report, titled "Deadly Delivery," notes that the likelihood of a woman's dying in childbirth in the ...

As a rule, it's not a good idea to pick up a gun, take over the emergency room of a hospital and threaten to kill your family's cardiac surgeon. But that's what Denzel Washington's character does in the film John Q. when his son is denied the heart transplant he needs to survive. And if box-office reaction is any indication, plenty of frustrated health-care consumers have at least fantasized about doing the same thing: John Q., released in late February, ...

As a gubernatorial candidate last summer, Georgia Republican Nathan Deal boasted of having backed measures to bar undocumented immigrants from federal health care, and public colleges. He supported a bill that, starting July 1, will become one of America's most punitive state immigration laws. And now he has released a report indicating that Georgia's largest industry, agriculture, suddenly has 11,000 openings — which, he suggested, should be filled with some of the state's 100,000 ex-convicts, about ...

High infant mortality, low life expectancy, soaring health-care costs — the symptoms are numerous and the diagnosis unmistakable: America's health-care system is ailing. But like a patient who coughs or limps his way through an illness, the U.S. has often been reluctant to look for help. That's changing. The Obama Administration promises to offer universal coverage, introduce electronic records and wrestle health-care costs under control — in short, at least part of the health-care revolution that many Americans have advocated for ...

Which is more valuable? To provide a $150,000 liver transplant for an ailing child of indigent parents? Or to use that money for prenatal care that may enhance the life expectancy of fetuses being carried by 150 expectant mothers? To most Americans, the either/or aspect of the question is morally repugnant -- surely the leader of the democratic capitalist world can afford both. Yet a growing number of health experts argue that the U.S., in fact, no longer has the ...

Health care in America is suffering a total nervous breakdown, but it isn't just because doctors are striking and maternity wards are closing. Health-care premiums are rising at unsustainable rates. Some economists estimate that unnecessary tests and procedures, ordered by doctors to build a record just in case there is a lawsuit, cost more than $100 billion a year--enough to provide health insurance for the 40 million Americans who have no coverage. Modern medical technology is bringing us miracle cures, ...

Correction Appended: May 29, 2010 Three years ago, James Lansberry faced the kind of health care crisis that has become all too common in the U.S. Less than two weeks after his wife Theresa gave birth to their sixth child, she had to rush back to the hospital to have her appendix removed before it burst. Her medical bills eventually totaled more than $23,000. It would have been a stressful time for any family — but especially for those who, like ...

American soldiers often have a tough time with Arabic names, so to guards, he was just "Gus.'' To the world outside Abu Ghraib prison, he became an iconic figure, a naked, prostrate Iraqi prisoner crawling on the end of a leash held by Private Lynndie England, the pixyish Army Reserve clerk who posed in several of the infamous photographs that made the name Abu Ghraib synonymous with torture. Now, it emerges, there may be another dimension to Gus' story and ...

As Democrats on the campaign trail do their best to drum up support for health care reform by touting the benefits that take effect this year, it's easy to forget that the full thrust of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act doesn't kick in until 2014. But by then, a few major players in the health care industry might have already experienced a real downside of the massive overhaul, so much so that they may no ...