May 13, 2013  |   PBS NewsHour recently aired a report on prescription drug abuse that led viewers to ask many questions. We asked the CDC to answer them, below. One in 20 people in the United States say they've used prescription painkillers for non-medical...

May 6, 2013  |   Americans still pay more than twice the price for health care than most other developed countries, but the sticker shock has come with a bit of good news in recent years: Costs are rising more slowly. "Exceptionally slowly," as...

May 3, 2013  |   Suicides now kill more Americans each year than car crashes, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2010 alone, 38,364 killed themselves in the United States -- 4,600 more than were killed...

May 3, 2013  |   Two-thirds of American office workers experience pain on the job and a quarter expect it. Not from physical exertion but the opposite -- too much hunching, sitting, clicking and staring at screens. According to a recent study from the...

April 30, 2013  |   Linebacker Austin Box of the Oklahoma Sooners takes a break during a game in 2010. Box died of an accidental prescription drug overdose the following year. Austin Box "gutted through" pain. Even after a bad blow to his back...

April 24, 2013  |   It's a classic case of denial. Roughly half of Americans above the age of 40 believe "almost everyone" is likely to require long-term care as they age. Just a quarter think they will need it for themselves. The truth:...

April 19, 2013  |   Police on School and Arsenel streets on Friday in Watertown, Mass. Photo by Darren McCollester/Getty Images. Updated 6:04 p.m. In a news conference in Watertown, Mass., Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick told Boston area residents that they may leave their...

April 17, 2013  |   First responders tend to the wounded, including a young boy in a wheelchair, where two explosions occurred along the final stretch of the Boston Marathon on Monday. Dr. David Mooney sees bleeding children all the time. As director of...

April 1, 2013  |   This World War II advertisement informs the soldiers about a new "wonder drug" that can cure gonorrhea. The disease is one of many diseases -- including the infamous "superbugs" -- now showing resistance to all modern medicines. Photo courtesy...

March 26, 2013  |   Havilah Phillips, a sister of a 15-year-old shooting victim in Newark, is comforted during his memorial service in 2011. Photo by Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-Ledger. NEWARK, N.J. | The floor of the trauma bay was slippery with blood the day...

March 20, 2013  |   NEWARK, N.J. | Even as he was patting them down for jewelry and cash, Sampson Davis knew he'd had brighter ideas than this: robbing drug dealers. It was the summer before Davis's senior year of high...

March 15, 2013  |   The guacamole tasted "a little spicy." At least that's the way Therese Warner described it after taking a bite. There was no other sign the stuff had been rotting in the back of the refrigerator for...

March 8, 2013  |   The call itself took seven minutes, 16 seconds to unfold and not much longer than that to spark outrage throughout the nation. The scene is now familiar to many: Lorraine Bayless, 87, was barely breathing at Glenwood Gardens independent...

March 4, 2013  |   Struck by a turtle lately? No? Then surely you've been smacked by a raccoon, chicken ... or at the very least, a nonvenomous lizard. Well, regardless, starting in 2014, your doctor will be prepared when animals, lightning, or even...

March 1, 2013  |   The classroom sometimes gets a little blurry for Rosie, a fifth-grader in Colorado. And when it does -- when she starts picturing her teacher as a banana or her classmates as apples -- Rosie reads a...

January 1, 2013  |   Tea Party activist William Temple, protests in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, on June 28, the morning the justices ruled to uphold the vast majority of the health care reform law. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images. Should old...

January 1, 2013  |   It's a phenomenon that's stumped social scientists for years. Hispanics in the U.S. are worse off than their white neighbors by almost every economic measure: poverty rates, dropout rates, access to health care. Claudia Kolker's new...

December 28, 2012  |   It's been a big year for the Affordable Care Act, a year filled with everything from a narrow victory in the Supreme Court to the re-election of a president who vows to implement the law on...

December 25, 2012  |   Photo of doctors looking at mammogram results by BSIP/UIG via Getty Images. In the last 30 years, mammograms have led 1.3 million women to seek treatment for cancer that would never have harmed them, according to a recent report...

December 25, 2012  |   A woman undergoes a mammogram at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Chicago. Photo by Heather Charles/Chicago Tribune/MCT via Getty Images. In the last 30 years, mammograms have led 1.3 million women to seek treatment for cancer that would never have...

December 25, 2012  |   Photo of woman getting a mammogram by BSIP/UIG via Getty Images. In the last 30 years, mammograms have led 1.3 million women to seek treatment for cancer that would never have harmed them, according to a recent report in...

December 25, 2012  |   Photo of a woman receiving a mammogram by BSIP/UIG via Getty Images. When it comes to mammograms, Candace Furlong is about as well-informed as a patient can get. She's a nurse practitioner. She's a regular reader of medical journals....

November 30, 2012  |   In a new documentary, "How to Survive a Plague," filmmaker David France re-examines the in-your-face brand of AIDS activism that forced the nation to pay attention in the early days of the epidemic and eventually convinced...

November 30, 2012  |   An Indian child walks past a mural painted on the side of a train Kolkata in West Bengal, India. India has the world's third largest population living with HIV/AIDS. Photo by Dibyangshu Sarkar/ AFP/ Getty Images. An AIDS-free generation? Sounds...

November 21, 2012  |   Photo by Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images 'Tis the season for giving thanks and sharing blame. The fiscal cliff, Bush-era tax cuts, the White House, the 47 Percent, Greece, Spain -- the accusations seem to be swirling everywhere this...

November 14, 2012  |   Contaminated vials like these, produced at the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass., were responsible for this latest outbreak of fungal meningitis. Photo by Minnesota Department of Health. It was just some neck pain -- nothing too alarming....

November 13, 2012  |   Joan Butterstein watched as the end came in steady waves of misery for her husband. "Chemo, radiation, and then more chemo and more radiation ... and he was sick and miserable frequently, if not most of that time," she...

November 5, 2012  |   For Ann Romney, it started as it has for millions of Americans. Numbness. Dizziness. "Foggy brain." Simple things that, when combined, added up to a startling diagnosis: Multiple sclerosis. After a year of aggressive intravenous steroid treatment in 1998,...

November 5, 2012  |   President Lyndon B. Johnson recovers from gall bladder surgery in 1965. Photo courtesy of the LBJ Presidential Library. Two endorsements you probably missed this political season might be among the most important in the years ahead: President Barack Obama...

October 24, 2012  |   Imagine an America where the entire business community took its cues from the health care system. Need some help picturing it? According to the respected Institute of Medicine, it's an industry that wasted $750 billion in 2009 between unnecessary services,...

October 23, 2012  |   Elizabeth Bailey made quite a few assumptions when her father developed double vision and needed to see the doctor. She thought that he would receive the proper diagnosis and prescription dosage, to name just two. Instead,...

October 22, 2012  |   How much is good health care worth to you? $8,233 per year? That's how much the U.S. spends per person. Worth it? That figure is more than two-and-a-half times more than most developed nations in the world, including relatively...

September 12, 2012  |   For the first time in four years, the number of Americans without health insurance dropped in 2011. According to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau, about 48.6 million people were uninsured last year, down from 49.9 million...

August 25, 2012  |   Children in Annandale, Va., watch Neil Armstrong become the first man to walk on the moon in 1969. Photo by O. Louis Mazzatenta/National Geographic. Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, died Saturday, according to...

August 24, 2012  |   For a disease that many Americans believe disappeared long ago, the numbers are staggering. More than 21,000 cases of whooping cough have been reported this year nationwide, claiming 13 lives -- all babies. Washington state has declared an epidemic. And...

August 24, 2012  |   BROOMALL, Pa. | No getting around it -- the news has an agenda in this suburb of Philadelphia. The stories are fun. The reporters are short. And most of the production team has Asperger's syndrome. This...

August 22, 2012  |   SEATTLE | On a clear day in South Seattle, it's not much of a strain to look across Puget Sound and see Vashon Island. Just a 25-minute ferry ride and a few twisting roads separate Karen...

August 21, 2012  |   Boy Scouts in Everett, Wash., advertise a whooping cough vaccination clinic during a community gathering in early August. Photo by Jason Kane. OLYMPIA, Wash. | Whooping cough. Those are among the last words Jennifer Crocker expected to be on...

July 5, 2012  |   It was a seemingly simple concept. The United States would inch closer to universal health care by expanding the Medicaid program to about 17 million low-income people. The federal government would pick up 100 percent of the tab for the...

July 3, 2012  |   Tea Party activist William Temple protests in front of he U.S. Supreme Court on the day the health care reform ruling was handed down, upholding the law. Read his opinions here and those of other Americans below. Word has...

June 28, 2012  |   A pro-health care reform demonstrator ties on a surgical mask outside the U.S. Supreme Court on June 25. AFP photo by Jim Watson. Two years, three months and five days. That's how long it's been since the first health...

June 28, 2012  |   JULIE APPLEBY OF KAISER HEALTH NEWS | "I'm disappointed and shocked that Justice Roberts led the charge to uphold the constitutionality of the mandate and called it a tax," said Bill McCollum, who filed the first state lawsuit against...

June 27, 2012  |   Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images Updated June 27 | The "best-kept secret in Washington" is about to go public. Three months after the Supreme Court's hearings on the health care reform law, the justices are expected to announce their...

May 17, 2012  |   Editor's Note: As the nation marks National Women's Health Week, PBS NewsHour will share the stories of three women -- and their doctors -- who refused to allow a cancer diagnosis interfere with a successful pregnancy. These are their...

May 16, 2012  |   Editor's Note: As the nation marks National Women's Health Week, the PBS NewsHour will share the stories of three women -- and their doctors -- who refused to allow a cancer diagnosis to interfere with a successful pregnancy. These...

May 8, 2012  |   They're the new minority in the United States: "healthy" waistlines. With a third of the nation's adults weighing in as overweight and another third registering as "obese," America's collective eating disorder has relegated those with a...

May 3, 2012  |   If the very sound of a "high-deductible health insurance plan" makes your head spin, you're not alone. Last week on the PBS NewsHour, health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser explored the growing popularity of these insurance options with high out-of-pocket costs...

May 2, 2012  |   Editor's Note: This story is part of a series profiling the views of ordinary Americans and their experiences -- good, bad or indifferent -- with the health care reform law. To capture the essence of the opinions expressed, the...

April 27, 2012  |   The name pretty much says it all: high-deductible health insurance plans. Higher deductibles, cheaper premiums. But if you think the surprises end there, brace yourself for one more: Proportionally, these plans are growing faster than any other type in the...

April 23, 2012  |   Editor's Note: This story is part of a series profiling the views of ordinary Americans and their experiences -- good, bad or indifferent -- with the health care reform law. To capture the essence of the opinions expressed, the...

April 19, 2012  |   The Supreme Court Building. Photo by Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images. Rob Rabie has some health care advice for the Supreme Court, straight from St. Johns, Ariz. "Perhaps the justices would better appreciate the problem if they were to forego their...

April 16, 2012  |   Editor's Note: This story is part of a series profiling the views of ordinary Americans and their experiences -- good, bad or indifferent -- with the health care reform law. The stories are told from the perspective of the interviewees....

April 6, 2012  |   Photo by John Moore/Getty Images Pick your adjective: wildly popular, unsustainable, politically convenient, endangered. At a time when politicians of all stripes are considering drastic changes to "Medicare as we know it," the Kaiser Family Foundation has another way...

March 28, 2012  |   It's slated to be an expansion of epic proportions. If the health care reform law pushes forward as planned, 16 million more Americans will receive health care coverage through the federal Medicaid program between 2014 and 2019. As the Supreme...

March 28, 2012  |   Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images Updated at 5:15 p.m. with Medicaid expansion analysis. In this third and final day of Supreme Court arguments on the constitutionality of the health care reform law, two major questions remain before the Court:...

March 28, 2012  |   Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images As Day 3 of the health reform hearings get under way, some things are already starting to seem routine. Outside the Supreme Court, the protesters arrive, the cameras roll, the health care reform debate...

March 27, 2012  |   They came marching, chanting, stomping to the beat of drums and the blare of a brass band -- doctors, nurses, the elderly and the chronically ill. After two years of watching people protest a piece of legislation they had...

March 27, 2012  |   Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images For more than two years now, it's been the nation's multibillion-dollar question: Can the federal government force Americans to buy health insurance or pay a fine if they don't? Banking that the answer is...

March 26, 2012  |   Court sketch by William J. Hennessy Jr. Even the overflow section at the Supreme Court was overflowing Monday as the justices began hearing the first day of oral arguments in the health care reform law suit. Up first for...

March 26, 2012  |   They came early. They came angry. They came from Georgia, Texas, Ohio, New Jersey and nearly every state in between. Hundreds of Tea Party Patriots gathered Saturday on Capitol Hill to officially voice -- once again -- their revulsion...

March 26, 2012  |   Photo by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images It's all come down to this day. All the passion, politics and propaganda. Starting today, the frenzied national debate that's divided the nation since the passage of the health care reform law...

March 23, 2012  |   Tea Party supporters attend a rally in Searchlight, Nev., in 2010. Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images. Love it or hate it, most Americans don't understand the health care reform law. As the Supreme Court prepares for next week's arguments...

March 19, 2012  |   Editor's Note: This profile is part of a PBS NewsHour series on the role of learning disabilities in America's dropout crisis. Stay tuned for more in the coming days, both on-air and online. I wanted to tell you, I have...

March 16, 2012  |   Getty illustration by Zigy Kaluzny In the classroom, it starts simply -- sometimes with a struggle to sound out simple words; sometimes with trouble telling time, memorizing the times tables or learning left from right. It often ends simply,...

March 12, 2012  |   Heath and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, middle, makes her way to a news conference in July to announce a preliminary framework on health insurance exchanges. She issued the final regulations Monday. Photo by Tom Willaims/Roll Call. Just two...

March 8, 2012  |   Photo by Nancy R. Cohen. It's clear this election season that the politics of health care costs and coverage remains a major lightning rod. But a study published Tuesday shows that some grim statistics continue to bind Americans of...

February 29, 2012  |   Photo courtesy of Flickr user Mr. T in DC. Grab some chocolate, pop an aspirin and wash it all down with red wine. You're on your way to a heart-healthy life, right? Not so fast. According to Dr. Steven...

February 23, 2012  |   Open wide, Oscar, it's time for a check-up. Posture and sheen look good, as usual. Sword appears sharp, base solid. But with the Academy Awards slated for Sunday, we decided to bring in a medical doctor to examine the...

February 22, 2012  |   Photo by J.B. Reed/Bloomberg via Getty Images Update: 6:55 p.m. ET | An independent panel of medical experts voted 20-2 to recommend FDA approval of Qnexa. Agency officials will now deliberate and issue a final ruling later this year....

February 14, 2012  |   Photo by Flickr user bored-now. Sherry Hollingsworth nearly collapsed at her aunt's funeral. The death itself had rattled her, but not nearly as much as the chest pressure that struck that day and the diagnosis that eventually followed: Hollingsworth...

February 9, 2012  |   John Cassidy, who holds Guinness World Records for several balloon-related tricks, performs a balloon act for first lady Michelle Obama in the Diplomatic Reception Room. White House photo by Chuck Kennedy. Michelle Obama may be spending her time these...

February 8, 2012  |   Strap on the goggles and fire up your DeLorean, it's time to go back to the future of American health care. Unfortunately, Marty McFly's booked. So our traveling companion is Mary -- a 50-year-old, middle-income, single woman with diabetes. Last...

February 6, 2012  |   Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images. Brandon Hostler's arm is usually among the first extended for the annual flu shot at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va. He is, after all, a registered nurse -- he knows it can do...

February 1, 2012  |   A supporter of Republican presidential hopeful and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum wears a pin with a photo of Bella Santorum, Rick's daughter, which reads 'Go Dad! Love, Bella.' Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images. When Victoria Miller heard the...

January 31, 2012  |   Does all the health reform chatter have you ready to jump into a high risk pool or bend a cost curve of your own? Take a deep breath and try to look past it all: It's the future, 2025 to...

January 25, 2012  |   Photo of "Encrucijada" characters Alicia and Don Juancho courtesy of The Colorado Health Foundation and Entravision Communications Corp. Alicia's entire life has been building to this one moment at the breakfast table. She's finally admitting to herself that the...

January 13, 2012  |   It looked like someone was hurting Cooper Cochran. The bruises seemed to be everywhere when Cherie Trout picked up her two-year-old from daycare one day. Then came the fevers and distended stomach. And finally, test results:...

January 11, 2012  |   Alexis Reilly, 22, at a coffee shop near her home in Los Gatos, Calif. The teen drama at the end of Alexis Reilly's freshman year of high school ran deeper than awkward dates or bad friends. It was more...

January 10, 2012  |   These are the things you should know about Bradford Tatum: In the past several years, he's turned 91, overcome a life-threatening bout with colorectal cancer and won more gold medals in the Olympics than he can...

January 5, 2012  |   "Failure Again." It was the working title for Stuart Altman's new book on the latest push for health care reform. Two years after President Obama's Affordable Care Act became law, Altman is the first to admit he happily changed...

December 23, 2011  |   President Nixon signs the National Cancer Act in 1971. Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute. It was President Richard Nixon's "Christmas gift to the nation." On Dec. 23, 1971, he faced a crowd full of congressmen and television...

December 12, 2011  |   Master Sgt. Jennifer Loredo never thought that an improvised explosive device, or IED, on the side of a road in Afghanistan would forever alter her life. But when she and her husband Eddie were deployed at...

December 7, 2011  |   Photo Illustration by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images. Just when it seemed that the "morning-after pill" would be making its big debut in American grocery store aisles, the federal government has ruled it should stay behind the pharmacy counter. The Food...

December 5, 2011  |   Photo by Mario Villafuerte/Getty Images. Breathe a little easier, baby boomers. The nursing shortage that looked like it might deepen just in time for your retirement may not be so certain after all. According to a report published Monday...

December 1, 2011  |   Demonstrators rally at the United Nations' High Level Meeting on HIV & AIDS last summer, calling for full funding of worldwide treatment and prevention programming. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images. The view from the curb looks pretty good to...

November 21, 2011  |   Photo by Getty Images At the start of this Thanksgiving week, Washington is gridlocked in all the expected places: the beltway, grocery aisles and -- most of all -- in Congress. Late Monday afternoon, the panel charged with cutting...

November 18, 2011  |   Photo by Bloomberg via Getty Images The Food and Drug Administration officially pulled the plug on its approval for the use of the drug Avastin in breast cancer treatment. There's simply no proof that the drug saves lives, FDA...

November 14, 2011  |   GRUNDY, Va. -- It felt like a sustained jackhammer to the jaw. A pounding, pulsing dental pain that started as a dull ache in some rotten teeth and eventually spread to Bobby Horn's entire mouth. "It...

November 14, 2011  |   The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will review the constitutionality of the health reform law. As Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal described in a post last week, the court was asked to consider five key issues...

November 11, 2011  |   A new report from the Commonwealth Fund painted a pretty dismal picture of the American health care industry this week. But if you don't have time to read the whole thing, these four graphics -- based on a poll of...

November 4, 2011  |   Imagine if diabetes could be peeled apart -- if a doctor could look at test results and instantly see the genetic and environmental factors that triggered and fueled the disease. Looking at a patient's medical history and genomic information, it...

November 2, 2011  |   Doctors prescribed enough pain medication last year to partially numb every American adult around-the-clock for a month. So much of the stuff is now being handed out that lethal overdoses tripled in the past decade, according to a new report...

October 31, 2011  |   President Obama signs an Executive Order directing the Food and Drug Administration to take action to help prevent and reduce prescription drug shortages on Oct. 31, 2011. Photo by Kristoffer Tripplaar-Pool/Getty Images. President Obama called for swift government action...

October 25, 2011  |   Photo courtesy of the Drug Enforcement Administration No more picking up "Bliss," "Cloud Nine" or "Hurricane Charlie" at the corner grocery store. The Drug Enforcement Administration has issued a temporary ban on U.S. sales of street drugs generically known...

October 20, 2011  |   It was a one-two punch that rattled the very foundations of the cancer world. Two years ago, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force questioned the benefit of routine mammograms for women under 50. And just this month, it advised that...

October 17, 2011  |   Dr. Howard Markel didn't need to look far for characters to help personalize his new best-selling book, "An Anatomy of Addiction." Simple snapshots of a handful of recognizable celebrities would have been enough to shed light on most corners of...

October 17, 2011  |   Photo by AFP/Getty Images Denham Kelsey seems like a healthy man -- a chronic dog-walker, professional pilot, and occasional scuba diver. The 54-year-old from Tucson recently hauled several tons of supplies to the top of his house and replaced the...

October 14, 2011  |   Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Getty Images The Obama administration reversed course on a major provision of its landmark health care reform law Friday when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the CLASS Act...

October 13, 2011  |   Illustration of the Black Death from the Toggenburg Bible An international consortium of researchers announced this week that they've managed to reconstruct the genome of Black Death -- the "great-grandmother" of modern plagues and the same illness that wiped...

September 28, 2011  |   Supreme Court; photo by Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images. The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court Wednesday to decide whether the president's landmark health care law is constitutional. In a White House blog post Wednesday afternoon, Stephanie Cutter, a deputy...

September 28, 2011  |   A split view of Galveston's Broadway Street - in September 1900 and today. Photo courtesy of Galveston Historical Foundation. September is an unlucky time of year for Galveston, Texas. It was in September that this barrier island on the...

September 27, 2011  |   As the economy sputters and many firms struggle to keep their health benefits, the news officially became even bleaker on Tuesday: Premiums for employer-sponsored health coverage shot up 9 percent last year. That's significantly more than the average increase...

September 21, 2011  |   Julio Ostro and his daughter, Cesly. Photo by Jason Kane. GALVESTON, Texas - To Julio Ostro, the empty feeling at the intersection of Avenue C and 16th Street tells more about his neighborhood than anything still standing there today....

September 16, 2011  |   If you're like most Americans, you probably didn't take your hospital for a "test spin," you didn't bother with the consumer ratings, and you certainly didn't look beneath the hood to make sure everything's running smoothly. The fact is that...

September 15, 2011  |   Photo by Valentin Ottone The rates of new lung cancer cases dropped significantly in the United States between 1999 and 2008, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a study that...

September 13, 2011  |   Chelsea Ricardo prepares to go to school. Her family was living at the Community Partnership for the Homeless assistance center in Miami. 2008 photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images. American families continued to take an economic pounding in 2010, with...

September 12, 2011  |   Photos courtesy of Flickr users jugbo and debmomof3 Diaper bags and strollers may do more to change new dads than they think. A new study from researchers at Northwestern University shows that testosterone levels take a dramatic plunge after...

September 10, 2011  |   Photo by Julian Cortez and Paul Keim, courtesy of the NYU Child Study Center September 11 didn't make sense to 7-year-old Julian Cortez and 8-year-old Paul Keim, so they drew a scene that gave them comfort in the days...

September 8, 2011  |   President Obama delivers a speech on his health care plan for the nation on March 8, 2010 at Arcadia University in Glenside, near Philadelphia, Pa. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images. In one of the biggest victories for President Obama's...

September 7, 2011  |   Two Texas National Guard CH-46 Blackhawks fly over the flames to dump their water near Bastrop, Texas, Sept. 6, 2011. Photo via Flickr user The National Guard. GALVESTON, Texas - Flames tore through more than 550 homes near Austin...

August 31, 2011  |   A view of West Main Street in Wilmington, Vt. on Aug. 31, 2011, after Tropical Storm Irene caused severe flooding in the town's center. Photo by Matthew Cavanaugh/Getty Images. Even the most disaster-ready Americans aren't stocked with much more...

August 29, 2011  |   A breast cancer patient receives a chemotherapy drip at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in Fayetteville, N.C. Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images. Michael O'Neal buys drugs for a living -- and too often these days, he's forced to do...

August 26, 2011  |   Ambulances wait on Friday to evacuate patients at Coney Island Hospital as Hurricane Irene headed northward; Spencer Platt/Getty Images Coney Island Hospital has been staring down the Atlantic Ocean for the past 137 years. On Friday, a retreat was...

August 24, 2011  |   Flickr User West Side Market. It looks as easy as dishing up dinner. According to new advice from the federal government, eating healthy simply means filling your plate with fresh broccoli and salmon, a generous spoonful of rice pilaf,...

August 22, 2011  |   Photo by Flickr user Toby Simkin. Brain-eating amoeba, found in warm lakes, streams, and hot springs, are back. Or more accurately, they never went away. Three people have died in recent weeks after attacks from a single-celled organism called...

August 17, 2011  |   Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images Finding the cheapest insurance plan for diabetes or breast cancer patients may soon be just as easy as flipping soup cans to compare calorie counts and sodium content. Under a set of proposed federal...

August 16, 2011  |   Photo by Chris Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Cigarettes may be the smoking gun behind half of the bladder cancer cases for women in the United States, scientists from National Cancer Institute announced Tuesday. Published in the Journal of the...

August 12, 2011  |   Challenges to the legality of the health reform bill signed into law by President Obama last year are moving closer to the Supreme Court. White House Flickr photo by Chuck Kennedy The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta...

August 11, 2011  |   Photo by Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images Dr. Donald M. Berwick. It's a name as likely to incite a political brawl in Washington as it is to attract a blank stare almost anywhere else. But if most Americans haven't...

August 11, 2011  |   Photo by Roll Call/Getty Images By 2014, the health insurance market will be flooded with 30 million more Americans purchasing plans through "health insurance exchanges." Created by the reform law, these online marketplaces will make purchasing a health plan...

August 9, 2011  |   Photo by SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images That "viral" metaphor for social media just got a little more bona fide. According to a recent slate of independent studies, Twitter can accurately track the spread of a virus or disease -- and...

August 4, 2011  |   Medicare is one of the programs that may be targeted for funding cuts. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images At least one sector of the economy seems to have boycotted the national sigh of relief that accompanied the 11th-hour debt...

August 2, 2011  |   On Tuesday's PBS NewsHour broadcast, we heard from health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser about Utah's health insurance exchange. Online, we posed our own questions to Julie Appleby of Kaiser Health News. But now is your chance to ask the...

August 1, 2011  |   Updated 6 p.m. ET | In just one year, the price tag for birth control, yearly check-ups, breastfeeding support and domestic-violence screening will virtually disappear for many American women. Under new guidelines issued Monday by the Department of Health...

July 29, 2011  |   Photo by Flickr user slapstix55. As a stifling heat wave continues to deep bake much of the country, a study released this week has news for overzealous athletes: That toned body isn't a shield for heat exhaustion. Each year,...

July 28, 2011  |   The government may be picking up the tab for nearly half of the nation's health care expenses by the end of the decade, but very little of the increase will be due to the health care reform law, according...

July 27, 2011  |   Medical assistant Elissa Ortivez draws a vaccination at a clinic in southern Colorado, where hospitals are scarce. Americans may want to reconsider the notion that moving to the countryside makes them healthier. Rural residents have more difficulty accessing health...

July 27, 2011  |   Photo by Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images. The Thomas More Law Center formally asked the Supreme Court Tuesday to reverse an appeals court decision upholding the health care reform law. Marking the first appeal of its kind to reach the...

July 26, 2011  |   Photo by Joe Raedle with Getty Images Seniors with access to affordable prescription drugs require less spending on emergency and short-term nursing care, according to a study of Medicare Part D released Tuesday. Published in the Journal of the...

July 21, 2011  |   Dr. Antonella Tosti uses an iPhone to check Michael Casa Nova,12, for symptoms of skin cancer. The FDA plans to begin regulating such apps. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images. They can check your heartbeat, count your calories, and even...

July 20, 2011  |   A missing protein may be the culprit in millions of cases of male infertility, according to a report released Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, discovered that the absence of a protein...

July 19, 2011  |   Birth-control pills are among the contraceptives that could be offered at no cost to Americans; Creative Commons photo by flickr.com/nateone All U.S. women should have access to free birth control as part of the 2010 health care reform law,...

July 18, 2011  |   A new study found links between teens' exposure to secondhand smoke and hearing loss; file photo Most scientists agree secondhand smoke is bad for young lungs, but a new study shows it may also be going to the heads...

July 13, 2011  |   Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spent two days on Capitol Hill this week, defending a board that some charge will ration Medicare. Photo by Alex Wong, Getty Images. Echoes of the once-familiar drumbeat to "repeal and replace"...

July 8, 2011  |   Medicaid makes a big difference to the health and financial stability of the poor, a new study concludes. The simple finding from Harvard and MIT researchers hit Washington this week just as politicians appear ready to start chipping away...

July 7, 2011  |   Few details have emerged from the closed-door deficit reduction talks, but members of both parties now admit one thing: Changes could be on the way for Medicare and Medicaid. For the first time this week, President Obama seems poised to...

July 6, 2011  |   Soldiers in Afghanistan. Photo by Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images. President Obama will begin sending condolence letters to the families of service members who commit suicide in combat zones, he announced Wednesday. The decision reverses a longstanding policy that had been...

July 5, 2011  |   Photo by Bloomberg via Getty Images. As health care costs play an ever-increasing role in Washington's budget drama, Medicare officials announced last week they will continue to pay for two extremely expensive cancer treatments despite lingering questions about their...

July 4, 2011  |   George Washington is a mainstay of history books for fighting everything from the British Empire to a cherry tree, but his private battles may have been the fiercest. Tuberculosis. Malaria. Smallpox. Dysentery. Some of the deadliest ailments of the...

June 30, 2011  |   More than 125 physicians descended on Capitol Hill this week to demand some relief in their fight against prescription drug addiction. With nearly 30,000 Americans dying from overdose last year - roughly half from prescription drugs - they say it's...

June 29, 2011  |   It's official: CT scans reduce the risk of death for heavy smokers with lung cancer by 20 percent compared to chest X-rays. After a nearly decade-long study, results from the National Lung Screening Trial were published Wednesday in The New...

June 23, 2011  |   Chubby cheeks for babies may not be so cute after all. A report released Thursday afternoon by the Institute of Medicine offers a stark reminder that obese babies often become obese adults -- and a series of simple steps...

June 21, 2011  |   Graphic images of diseased lungs, discolored teeth and dead bodies will soon greet smokers every time they reach for a cigarette. On Tuesday morning, the Food and Drug Administration unveiled nine new warning labels click the images above for...

June 20, 2011  |   Photo by Flickr user Distal Zou One in 13 American children has a food allergy -- far more than previously reported, according to a study released Monday in the journal Pediatrics. That's about two children in every classroom. Perhaps...

May 27, 2011  |   Photo by Alan Bedenko/Buffalo Pundit via Flickr Parties Debate Whether Hochul's Win in N.Y. is Referendum on Ryan Plan Democrat Kathy Hochul's electoral coup in a reliably conservative New York district Tuesday sent shockwaves through both parties this week,...

May 23, 2011  |   A MRI of a spine is shown above. Spinal imaging is part of the National Physcians Alliance recommendations. Photo by Flickr user Cory Doctorow. It might not be "Late Show" material, but the National Physicians Alliance is hoping its...