Despite the additional explanations added and attempts at clarification of the new USPSTF guidelines, the women I meet with breast cancer and those who haven't had it are still angry. They are indignant when they ask, "Who are these people?" "Did the government really support this?" "Is this some...

I'd be dead by now if it weren't for breast self-examination. And had my doctor been less convinced of his own guidelines regarding women without a known history of breast cancer, my cancer would have been detected earlier and I would have been treated sooner and less aggressively. I was...

The tragedy at Fort Hood last week raises the question of whether we are indeed fighting in Afghanistan in order to protect ourselves from having to do so on our own soil. Here was a man trusted by the military in the middle of what had been one of...

Well, that would explain things, wouldn't it? He wouldn't be the first president not really in charge. Remember Cheney? Wasn't he in charge when George W. Bush was president? So, perhaps this time our guy isn't in charge. Why else would he be thinking of sending thousands of troops...

Few doctors consciously treat women differently than they treat men who have similar health conditions, yet women often have more difficulty convincing their physicians to really listen to their health concerns. It's tough enough when women experience inattentiveness or indifference in their careers or at home -- but when it...

I must have had a premonition the other day when I wrote a blog about delays in H1N1 because my daughter is now in bed with a fever, aches, and the symptoms of flu. She had the seasonal flu shot weeks ago, so this may very well be H1N1. Her...

This time labels won't cut it. My three children and perhaps yours are smack-dab in the middle of the high-risk group, and we keep watching people on television lined up to get the H1N1 flu shot wondering where those fortunate people live. Where most of us live you know that...

We are all of us a composite of conflicts from which may emerge a sense of who we truly are - a center of self. Some of us never find this place, leading lives of "quiet desperation" forever pushed and pulled.

Senator Kennedy found his center and...

Have you ever tried to get mental health care for a family member? I mean even with insurance.

My heart goes out to families whose children turn eighteen and suddenly doctors won't talk with them -- they're out of the loop. And if young patients won't seek...

When insurance companies deny coverage to critically ill patients because of what they deem "pre-existing conditions," they sentence those people to misery and often death. And that has nothing to do with proposed health care reform. This travesty exists now.

When acutely and chronically ill people are unable to purchase...

Nearly a month ago I took one of my teenaged children to the best of the best doctors. We'd been trying to get a diagnosis for a few years regarding recurring abdominal pain. I was charged more than $1100 for the initial office visit. When I got the bill, I...

I hope you didn't miss Lou Dobbs on Monday night speaking on fairness in the media. It provided a revealing look at what we've come to consider "free speech" in the United States: whoever can afford it. Dobbs was commenting on a "move to reimpose a so-called 'fairness doctrine'...to...

When I first wrote for Huffington Post over two years ago, one of my first blogs was about the intellectual free fall our country was in at the time. Our leaders were either ignorant, manipulative or both. And they didn't care what the rest of us thought. We were the...

As one door is closed to them, unethical banks will surely find another. That's what I shared with my senators and representatives when writing to them today. I've been using banking cards for a very long time. And never has a bankcard allowed me to get money I did...

What makes a president presidential? From communication research we know it comes from credibility defined largely by expertise, trust, conviction, comfort and something called homophily (perceived similarity).

President Obama's expertise gaps occasionally show. For a while he was blaming the past - the economic burden...

During the George W. Bush administration, traveling to other countries was an invitation for criticism. You found yourself either dodging or countering attacks. We have, indeed, been down in international opinion polls. What a breath of fresh air it is to see our president and first lady impress the world...

Parkinson's disease makes people uncomfortable - having it and seeing it. Oprah Winfrey helped alter that yesterday when she invited Dr. Mehmet Oz and Michael J. Fox onto her show. And the importance of that to millions of people who either have PD or love someone who...

Barack Obama, despite the massive problems he faces, is a popular president. Some of it may be the honeymoon of the first one hundred days, though these weeks have hardly deserved the term. It may be his infectious smile and determination and his tendency to come to us rather than...

Two venture capitalist friends of mine visit now and then, not because I know an ounce of what they study every day, but because anyone who is deeply involved in the vicissitudes of the economy likely lacks the big picture. It reminds me of when I was learning to play...

Having a medical comparative effectiveness council is fine so long as it is advisory at least until American voters have a chance to see how well it is working. And it should include among its members patients, nurses and other medical practitioners. The people who work directly with patients...