April 10, 2012  |   Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images If you're like most Americans, you probably think getting a tooth filled is about as much fun as undergoing a colonoscopy. But oral health is no less an important part of staying healthy....

April 4, 2012  |   Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Health care costs are currently eating up just over 17 percent of the American economy. And while there has been some slowing of this in some quarters, health policy experts project that if something...

January 17, 2012  |   Her name was Mary. She was a big, tall, red-headed drink of water with a face full of freckles and a smile that lit up a room the minute she walked in. She was a television producer at CBS News...

November 23, 2011  |   Photo by Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images Dr. Donald Berwick, the man who has been both praised and reviled as the country's Medicare chief, will step down on Dec. 2. The White House announced that Marilyn Tavenner, Berwick's principal...

November 14, 2011  |   Health Correspondent Betty Ann Bowser reports in Toksook Bay, Alaska. Somehow sesame chicken is never going to be quite the same ... and it's all because of Alaska. Trust me. Our health unit recently went there to do a...

September 22, 2011  |   Growing up on the east coast in Tidewater, Va., meant beautiful white sand beaches, learning to swim as you learned to walk, and fantastic summers in the sun. But it also meant hurricanes. As a child, I remember vividly how...

September 8, 2011  |   A fireman walks through the rubble and the smoldering wreckage of ground zero in New York on Oct. 11, 2001; Gary Friedman/AFP/Getty Images In the 10 years since 9/11, a lot of people have asked me what I remember...

July 11, 2011  |   Saying "flexibility is the name of the game," Department of Health and Human Services officials unveiled a broad framework for states to follow as they build their health insurance exchanges under the health reform law. The...

June 22, 2011  |   In an unusual special report Monday, the Food and Drug Administration laid out a strategy it hopes will help it do a better job of policing America's food and drug supply. Called the Pathway...

May 24, 2011  |   Ever since the federal government rolled out its proposed rules for setting up Accountable Care Organizations in March, it's been one piece of bad news after another for the Obama administration. Now comes another blow on the political front. Seven...

May 23, 2011  |   As the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Daniel Levinson is the person at the federal government who's in charge of protecting the integrity of programs like Medicare and Medicaid. That means he's also...

May 13, 2011  |   The trustees who oversee the finances of Medicare and Social Security said Friday that both programs will exhaust their trust funds sooner than previously expected. The Medicare Trustees report projected funds for the Medicare hospital insurance fund would be...

May 10, 2011  |   A new study released Tuesday by two nonpartisan organizations added new fuel to the debate over debt and spending when the report found that debt reduction proposals by House Republicans lawmakers could leave up to 44 million more low-income...

May 9, 2011  |   For the first time, researchers have studied an entire population sample and found that one in 38 children exhibited symptoms of autism. The study was published Monday in the American Journal of Psychiatry. "These numbers are really startling" said Geraldine...

May 6, 2011  |   The federal government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is finalizing a new reimbursement plan that will determine how hospitals get paid to take care of Medicare patients. The proposed rule calls for something called "value based purchasing," which...

May 3, 2011  |   Anybody who's got more than one medical condition knows the drill. You go to the cardiologist with a heart problem. You go to the orthopedic surgeon if your back hurts. You find an oncologist if you need chemotherapy. They...

April 19, 2011  |   The Obama administration launched a major campaign Tuesday to combat prescription drug abuse, which it says is the nation's fastest growing drug problem. The program, announced at a press conference in Washington, aims to reduce abuse rates of some non-medical...

April 12, 2011  |   Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced Tuesday that her department will spend $1 billion dollars on a new program designed to cut down on medical mistakes, preventable injuries and infections in American hospitals. The new program, called Partnership...

April 12, 2011  |   A new report released Tuesday by the Dartmouth Atlas Project shows that elderly Medicare patients are spending fewer days in the hospital at the end of life, but the care they received is more aggressive and expensive. The findings...

April 7, 2011  |   When someone goes into the hospital for treatment for one condition, but acquires another one they didn't bargain for -- such as a bloodstream infection or a complication from the wrong medication -- it's called an "adverse event." The magnitude...

February 22, 2011  |   Last week, in the largest nationwide bust of its kind ever, more than 700 federal agents fanned out from Miami to Los Angeles and rounded up 111 doctors, nurses, physical therapists and health company executives in nine cities. It was...

February 17, 2011  |   This week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that Arizona could drop 250,000 childless adults from the state's Medicaid program. The decision is being watched closely in statehouses all over the country, where governors facing massive budget deficits...

January 17, 2011  |   Over the past ten days, the story of 22-year-old Jared Loughner, the alleged gunman in the Tucson shootings, has unfolded on news outlets throughout the world. It's a dark tale of a troubled young man who was growing increasingly out...

December 20, 2010  |   In courthouses and on Capitol Hill, the battle over health care reform is still being fought. Behind the scenes, though, in states all over the country, officials are quietly moving ahead to implement some parts of the law. Last...

December 9, 2010  |   Congress once again headed off a pay cut for doctors who treat Medicare patients by stopping a 25 percent decrease in the amount the federal government pays them to take care of seniors. The cut was scheduled to take effect...

December 6, 2010  |   Texas State Capitol Building For 45 years, the states and federal government's Medicaid program has provided health care to low income children, pregnant women, seniors and disabled adults. Today, Medicaid covers about 50 million Americans....

November 11, 2010  |   Fall in Franklin County, Mass. A recent post-election poll confirmed the national split over health reform -- 49 percent of respondents wanted to see the law repealed or rolled back, while 40 percent wanted to see...

September 30, 2010  |   When health journalist Jean Carper discovered that she carried the ApoE4 gene that triples her risk for developing Alzheimer's disease, she became interested in finding out more about the latest research on Alzheimer's prevention. More research and public education preventing...

September 9, 2010  |   In a new report that's sure to provide fresh ammunition to both sides of the health reform debate, a government estimate released today finds that the new health reform law will not curb the rising costs of care once it...

September 2, 2010  |   In the days following the flooding after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, approximately 1.5 million people throughout the Gulf Coast were displaced from their homes, including 163,000 children. Some of those were young people who became separated from their siblings and...

August 30, 2010  |   A worker lays boom beside a fragile Louisiana wetland area early in the Gulf oil disaster on April 29. Photo by Erica Berenstein/AFP/Getty Images City fathers love to talk about the numbers: 78 percent of the population of New...

August 26, 2010  |   New floodgates at the 17th Street Canal On a steamy morning June 2006, less than a year after Hurricane Katrina, I sat in a packed ballroom at a hotel in downtown New Orleans to...

August 25, 2010  |   Correspondent Betty Ann Bowser returned to New Orleans on the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Her reports will appear on air and online in the coming week. In this first dispatch, an audio slide show from the city's Ninth Ward,...

July 12, 2010  |   When the Department of Veterans Affairs announced its changes for how military vets can quality for PTSD treatment Monday, it made us think back to a very powerful story we did in 2008 on the impact of these health issues...

July 9, 2010  |   Citing the "unprecedented" nature of the BP oil spill disaster, federal and state medical officials expressed concern Friday about what they see as mounting mental health issues that people in the Gulf states are facing. Public health officials in Louisiana,...

July 7, 2010  |   A resident of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward mows his lawn in front of a FEMA trailer in 2006. It was just a couple of weeks ago when I looked out the window of...

June 16, 2010  |   The Department of Health and Human Services announced new regulations Monday that it says will fulfill the Obama administration's health care reform promise that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it." But Republican critics on Tuesday...

June 9, 2010  |   U.S. Food and Drug Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told the PBS NewsHour Wednesday that a recent report criticizing the agency for its handling of food safety issues was "very much on message and it reinforces the direction we have...

June 4, 2010  |   The American Medical Association on Thursday launched a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign aimed at stopping a 21 percent cut in Medicare payments to physicians. AMA President Dr. James Rohack said the "U.S. Senate turned its back on our nation's seniors and...

June 3, 2010  |   I recently spent five days in the "desert" with three of my PBS NewsHour colleagues. It wasn't your ordinary run-of-the-mill desert. There was no sand. It wasn't blazing hot. I didn't see Lawrence of Arabia or a single camel. But...

April 21, 2010  |   A new report says that 27 percent of all Americans ages 17 to 24 are too overweight to join the military. Now, the group of retired military officers that prepared the report is asking Congress to pass a nutrition bill...

March 22, 2010  |   The health reform bill passed by the House Sunday night sets a timeline for phasing in reform that's several years long. Some provisions will take effect quickly, many will be phased in over the next four years and one major...

February 19, 2010  |   Since its founding in 1965, Medicaid has served as a health insurance safety net for people living at or below the federal poverty level: the nation's poorest children, pregnant women, people with disabilities, and senior citizens with low incomes living...

January 26, 2010  |   The State of the Union address was supposed to be a moment of triumph for President Obama: to stand before the American people and talk about passage of a sweeping overhaul of the nation's health care system -- one that...

December 10, 2009  |   Some Senate Democrats sounded confident about prospects for health care reform Thursday, in the wake of Democratic negotiators' recent compromise deal on the public option -- though details of the agreement were still hard to come by. The agreement puts...

December 7, 2009  |   It's all we've heard about for months: the public option, a government-run health insurance plan. Liberals love the idea. They say it would offer cheap insurance for the uninsured because there would be low administrative costs. And, they reason, it...