President Obama’s health-care law is expected to expand health insurance to 32 million Americans over the next decade. Health policy experts anticipate that the wave of new insurance subscribers will lead to a spike in demand for medical services.

Republicans might not offer a comprehensive plan to replace President Obama’s healthcare law if the Supreme Court strikes it down this summer.

Emergency departments are required to treat everyone who comes through the doors, but that doesn’t mean they treat everyone the same way.

The war on smoking can help guide the nation’s fight against obesity. Trash food can be the cigarette.

When it comes to nutrition policy, we know about a lot of things that don’t work: Soda taxes and proximity to healthy foods, for example, have relatively shaky support in the public health literature.

The government has identified hundreds of hospitals whose Medicare patients are incurring especially high bills, a first step toward using bonuses and penalties to encourage more efficient care.

Massachusetts is one step closer to passing major legislation that would aim to control the state's rising health-care costs.
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Primary care doctors could get a pay raise next year for treating Medicaid patients, under a rule announced by the Obama administration Wednesday.

Tossing out President Barack Obama's health care law would have major unintended consequences for Medicare's payment systems, unseen but vital plumbing that handles 100 million monthly claims from hospitals and other service providers, the administration has quietly informed the courts.

If doctors enjoy their day jobs, you certainly wouldn’t know it from talking to them.

It’s no secret that the Internet has fundamentally changed how people live and the way businesses operate.

Lately, school recess has been getting a lot of attention in the popular and research press.

Here’s one way America could cut $705 billion in health care costs: Act more like the Netherlands.

Back when health information technology amounted to a clipboard, paper and a pen, “continuity of care” was one of the bedrock principles of medicine.

The Obama administration is buying into an ambitious health care initiative in Oregon, announcing Thursday it has tentatively agreed to chip in $1.9 billion over five years to help get the program off the ground.

The United States spends more on health care than 12 other industrialized countries, a new Commonwealth Fund study finds – but that doesn’t mean this country’s care is any better.

Opponents of genetically modified foods are making headway in California with a proposed ballot initiative that would require food companies to label many products containing such ingredients.

Sean Guard watched other people exercising from the window of his car or his office in City Hall, as the pounds piled on slowly, a little bit at a time.

In the health reform debate, there’s a lot of crystal-ball gazing about what employers will do when, in 2014, tens of millions of Americans become eligible for publicly-subsidized health insurance.

Hospitals are ripping out wall-mounted toilets and replacing them with floor models to better support obese patients.

For postmenopausal women who are overweight or obese, new research offers more incentive to start shedding pounds.

Nearly 7,000 people in the United States die each year while waiting for an organ transplant.

The number of babies born dependent on prescription painkillers like Oxycontin tripled in the last decade along with higher costs to treat their withdrawal symptoms, research showed.

In the effort to make workers healthier, employers and insurers have dangled carrots.

In 2006, under Gov. Mitt Romney, Massachusetts became the first state to extend insurance coverage to all its residents.

Sudden chest pains landed Diane Zachor in a Duluth, Minn., hospital overnight, but weeks later she had another shock – a $442 bill for the same everyday drugs she also takes at home, including more than a half dozen common medicines to control diabetes, heart problems and high cholesterol.

Smoking could get more costly as some seeking to raise Missouri’s lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax expect to submit signatures this week to put the issue before voters in November.

Obesity and the form of diabetes linked to it are taking an even worse toll on America’s youths than medical experts had realized.

New research sends a stark warning to overweight teens: If you develop diabetes, you'll have a very tough time keeping it under control.

If the Supreme Court strikes down the health reform law’s individual mandate, the states at the forefront of implementing the law could find themselves like Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons: racing ahead only to discover there’s no ground underneath their feet.

In an article in The Times on Sunday, I look at whether there is more than meets the eye in the slowdown in health care costs.

The growth of health spending has slowed substantially in the last few years, surprising experts and offering some fuel for optimism about the federal government’s long-term fiscal performance.

Even before the hospital bills started coming, Lori Duff and her family were living paycheck to paycheck.

Public health groups are rallying the troops to try to help preserve the public health fund created under the 2010 health reform law, which Republicans now say they’ll raid to help pay for a student loan program.

After aggressive lobbying, Congress declared pizza a vegetable to protect it from a nutritional overhaul of the school lunch program this year.

The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) recently published criteria that it will use to fund research to “help people make informed healthcare decisions.”

Consultants have told some large employers they can save money by dropping health insurance in 2014 and funneling employees into insurance exchanges under the new health-care law, according to a report by congressional Republicans.

Somewhere between 36 million and 112 million adults have pre-existing conditions, the Government Accountability Office says in a new report.

More than 3 million health insurance policyholders and thousands of employers will share $1.3 billion in rebates this year, thanks to President Barack Obama's health care law, a nonpartisan research group said Thursday.

Hundreds of the nation's nearly 1,200 community health centers, which serve millions of mostly poor people, fall short on key measures such as vaccinating children and helping diabetics control blood sugar, federal data show.

While the rest of us have to wait until June, the justices of the Supreme Court will know the likely outcome of the historic health care case by the time they go home this weekend.

This week at the Supreme Court showed that President Barack Obama’s health care law could face a real threat of being overturned — but so far, the states don’t show any signs that they’re going to change their implementation plans.

Thanks to hefty profits and a requirement in the health law that takes effect this year, insurers will send subscribers hundreds of millions of dollars in rebate checks this August.

As Congress gins up its attack on women’s health services, another issue that affects the welfare of women has been getting far less attention.

Obesity drugs should undergo clinical trials to ensure that they do not cause heart attacks, federal advisers said Thursday, a requirement that could make it harder for such drugs to gain approval.

Psychological and physical abuse is a common facet of dating for America's adolescents, a new survey reveals.

The patient, a slender middle-aged woman who’d had multiple operations and radiation for a cancer in her belly several years earlier, was struggling with nausea and vomiting again.

The conversation took place two years ago, but Dr. Daniel Matlock still recalls it quite vividly.

The day after the Supreme Court suggested that President Obama’s health care law might be in danger of being held unconstitutional, the justices on Wednesday turned their attention to the practical consequences and political realities of such a ruling.

Voicing optimism, the White House on Wednesday said it is too early to devise contingency plans that anticipate the Supreme Court striking down any portion of President Barack Obama's health care law.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) is gunning for the history books with its challenge to President Obama’s healthcare law, and it has boosted its status among Washington’s business groups in the process.

Just as aging Baby Boomers are realizing they may need long-term care insurance, the marketplace is shrinking, the cost of premiums is soaring, and providers are altering the policies they offer.

Medicare’s largest effort to pay hospitals based on how they perform — an inspiration for key parts of the health care law — did not lead to fewer deaths, a new study has found.

What gives corporations the right to market junk food to children?

Cancer rates in the U.S. continue to fall, according to a report released Wednesday.

New anti-smoking advertisements released by the Federal government focus on the terrors of living with diseases caused by smoking, rather than dying from cigarettes.

Three in 10 Americans want the healthcare reform individual mandate overturned, a poll found, as the Supreme Court heard arguments on its constitutionality.

State officials and insurance executives are devising possible alternatives to the coming federal requirement that most Americans buy health insurance, even as the Supreme Court hears arguments about the constitutionality of the mandate.

After 34 years in private practice, Indianapolis orthopedic surgeon Philip Ireland last summer gave up his independence.

In recent years, insurers have tried to cajole consumers into using less-expensive health-care providers by promising lower co-payments and other cost-sharing breaks for members who select those doctors and hospitals.

The Supreme Court is refusing to overturn a $28.3 million verdict against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in the first of about 8,000 lawsuits that have been filed against cigarette companies in Florida.

Obesity rates continue to climb in California schools, but exercise and nutrition programs may be having a positive effect on student health, a new study suggests.

A Medicare cost-cutting board targeted by House Republicans in a vote last Thursday would have little to do until 2022 at the earliest, health care officials and experts say, and might not have been necessary if Congress had followed the recommendations of the panel it created to control Medicare spending.

Free health clinics have long been places people turn to when they don't have health insurance or money to pay for care.

The Obama administration must warn drug makers that the government may soon ban agricultural uses of some popular antibiotics that many scientists say encourage the proliferation of dangerous infections and imperil public health, a federal magistrate judge ruled on Thursday.

A group of Republican doctors, nurses and dentists in the House is inserting itself into the contentious Medicare overhaul debate that so far has been dominated by Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan.

Many older people fear that a hospital stay could leave them even more disabled than they were before.

The Obama administration today announced charges against 107 health providers in seven cities who stand accused of bilking $452 million from Medicare.

States are lagging in the creation of health insurance exchanges, the supermarkets where millions of consumers are supposed to buy subsidized private coverage under President Obama’s health care overhaul.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker cheers on Republican presidential contenders, who all pledge a takedown of President Obama’s health-care reform law if they win the White House.

Steve Panetta smoked for 34 years, the last 10 at a three-pack-a-day clip. He watched his father die from lung cancer and his stepfather struggle with emphysema.

When Ronda Storms, a Republican state senator in Florida, is accused of nanny-state-ism for her efforts on behalf of a sane diet, it’s worth noting.

A contentious debate in education policy concerns whether the low achievement of disadvantaged children is attributable primarily to social and economic conditions that bring them to school relatively unready to learn, or to public schools whose ineffective teachers fail to instruct.

They don't carry whistles or bench you after a bad night, but health coaches increasingly are helping patients up their game in terms of wellness.

The Obama administration says it's taking steps to fix a longstanding problem of improper payments to private health plans that serve 1 in 4 Medicare beneficiaries.

A plan by Washington state's Medicaid agency to stop paying for certain emergency-room visits is prompting pushback from hospitals and doctors, who say they will be stuck with bills for vital care they often are legally required to provide.

By a number of indicators, people have been using fewer medical services during the economic downturn.

The battle of the bulge has been a big, fat failure for U.S. drugmakers. But that hasn’t stopped them from trying.

Almost 50,000 Americans with serious medical conditions have gained insurance coverage thanks to the healthcare reform law, the Obama administration said in a new report Thursday.

New research in the journal Public Health Nutrition offers some surprising findings on what prevents people from eating more healthily.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America and 50 other organizations have signed onto a letter urging Congress to encourage antibiotics research as part of pending user fee legislation.

The controversy over vaccinating children — or really, not vaccinating children — has spread (literally) into to the mainstream. It seems there’s been a minor outbreak of measles linked to the Super Bowl.

Federal officials say another 10 states are getting a total of $230 million to set up new health insurance markets under President Barack Obama's overhaul.

Employers in Massachusetts routinely complain about health insurance costs rising two, three or even eight times faster than inflation.

A new study provides what independent researchers call the best evidence yet that colonoscopy — perhaps the most unloved cancer screening test — prevents deaths.

In last week’s flurry of budget deals, Congress patched together yet another temporary fix for a flawed formula used to calculate the fees paid to doctors by Medicare.

At all levels of government there has been a serious push for increasing access to food among low income households and fostering more nutritious eating habits in communities and schools.

“Growth in U.S. health spending remains slow in 2010” was the headline of a news release on Jan. 9 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Half the states last year made it easier for children and their parents to enroll in Medicaid by streamlining enrollment and using technology advances to verify citizenship requirements, according to a report released Wednesday.

A White House report Wednesday highlights positive remarks made by several Republican governors and state legislators about setting up health insurance exchanges in their states, a key element of the health care overhaul law.

This afternoon, in a hotel ballroom in Northern Florida, two dozen health policy wonks are quietly embarking on a momentous task: Determining what medical treatments are the most effective.

Programs designed to cut Medicare spending and improve the quality of healthcare have mostly failed, according to the Congressional Budget Office.