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 ...

Roe v. Wade. Sometimes those seem like the most contentious words in American law. Short and unassuming though they are, they connote other, more explosive terms: abortion and murder, morality and privacy, the right to life and the right to choose. Attached to those words are some of the most intractable passions in American life. Writing about medical advances that improve the chances for a fetus to survive outside the womb, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor once declared ...

Recently the University of Wisconsin and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released its second annual County Health Rankings, a within-state comparison of county health covering each county in every state the United States. Newspapers and TV news programs jumped all over the results — particularly local outlets serving counties that were ranked comparatively lower than their neighbors. "If you are looking for a healthy county, head north," read a March 30 article in the Inland Valley ...

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 ...

It's the latest evidence that the health and environmental effects of the Fukushima nuclear-power-plant accident will be devastating and long-lasting. After a review of data on the amount of radiation leaked by the damaged plant following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Japanese nuclear-safety officials raised their assessment of the crisis to Level 7, the highest ranking on an international scale of nuclear-incident severity--which puts the Fukushima disaster on par with the Chernobyl explosion in 1986. The new rating reflects ...

Prescription pads, clipboards and patient charts are so 20th century. In the era of CT scans, gene-splicing and stem-cell breakthroughs, handwritten record-keeping feels about as outmoded as the fluoroscope. It's more than just strangely retro; it's fantastically expensive. Health care in the U.S. costs a jaw-dropping $2 trillion annually, or more than $6,600 for every man, woman and child in the country. Streamlining the industry by eliminating medical errors, labor costs and general clunkiness caused by paperwork alone ...

For most people, regular exercise is associated with cardiovascular health. But doctors have long noted a troubling tendency among the ultra-fit: an athlete has a greater chance than the average person of suddenly dropping dead. As physicians and sporting organizations learn more about the condition known as sudden cardiac death , their research has opened an emotive and evolving debate about what can be done to protect athletes — and how much money should be spent trying ...

Mental-health experts across the U.S were choosing up sides in a controversy over a new drug. From California's Modesto State Hospital came enthusiastic reports of success in using reserpine to calm down the most disturbed patients in the back wards, and to lift the most depressed out of their lethargy, thus making both types more responsive to psychiatric treatment. Three California doctors used such words as "dramatic" and "incredible" to describe the improvement wrought by reserpine* in ...

These are fat times in politics. Literally. Nearly 400 obesity-related bills were introduced in state legislatures across the country last year--more than double the number in 2003. A quarter of them were passed into law, up from only 12% two years before. In Washington the word obesity appears in 56 bills introduced during the current Congress; this, the Wall Street Journal points out, is fast catching up with the number containing the word gun. Surgeon General Richard Carmona says obesity ...

Researchers have known that secondhand smoke can be just as dangerous for nonsmokers as smoking is for smokers, but now there's fresh evidence quantifying just how hazardous the after burn from cigarettes can be, and how quickly it affects your body. Scientists at the Oregon Department of Health documented for the first time an hourly buildup of a cancer-causing compound from cigarette smoke in the blood and urine of nonsmokers working in bars and restaurants in ...