This morning, let's consider the case of Fay Derricote, an obese, 44-year-old former government contract worker confined to a wheelchair with multiple sclerosis. For the first time in her life, she has good health insurance -- provided by Medicare because she is disabled.

That's precisely what her former employer,...

This is a multiple-choice question pulled from the MCAT to get into the DeVry School of Newspaper Editing:

You're the page one editor of the world's leading financial newspaper. Your political editor comes to you with three story ideas to illustrate the ideas behind the candidacy of left-wing Cleveland...

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution asking Medicare and the Veterans Administration to pay for expensive lung cancer screening tests using CT scans. Local hospitals near my home are already jumping on the bandwagon. I suspect that if you check your...

The National Institutes of Health is in the midst of a $200 million trial to determine if routine CT scans of smokers' and former smokers' chests can identify lung cancer in its earliest stages and save lives through early intervention. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning (subscription required)...

Microsoft launched a public relations offensive today as part of the unveiling of its new online health records service, HealthVault. Bill Gates, never one to shy away from a business opportunity, offered the conventional wisdom on The Wall Street Journal's editorial page:

By giving us comprehensive access to our...

Two weeks ago, a front page story in the New York Times revealed that House version of the children's health insurance bill had secretly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to favored hospitals -- a violation of the Democrats' pledge to remove the shroud of secrecy surrounding earmarks. The story...

This hasn't been a good year for Amgen or Johnson & Johnson, which make various forms of EPO, the biotech wonder drug that raises red blood cell counts (as every dope-taking Tour de France bicyclist knows). Clinical trials have shown that they can increase the risk of heart attacks and...

Now that gasoline prices have soared beyond $3 a gallon, I'm reading the business stories on the subject a bit more closely. I'm even reading those full page ads from "the people of America's oil and natural gas industry," which claim it's all about the price of crude oil, which...

Every once in a while, someone at a conference makes a statement that stands out from the usual platitudinous palaver. Earlier this week, that honor belonged to William Plested, the president of the American Medical Association. At the World Health Care Congress in Washington, DC, he was asked to comment...

While Al Kamen of the Washington Post is reporting the latest emails emanating from Paul Wolfowitz's bunker at the World Bank, the Financial Times has uncovered evidence that the architect of the Iraq War has also been busy censoring reports on global warming.

For those not following this...

Stem cell research, though promising as an approach to treating diseases ranging from Type I diabetes to Parkinson's disease, has a long way to go before something shows up on the Food and Drug Administration's doorstep claiming to be a cure for a disease. Most of the advances breathlessly reported...

We're entering a period, like 1988-94, when everyone is for health care reform. The debate will center on what shape it should take.

I believe progressives should articulate a set of overarching goals, and evaluate any plan or incremental reform in light of those goals. Of course, compromise is inevitable....

A kind relative gave me the Far Side desk calendar as a present this holiday season. This morning's cartoon shows a number of people crowded into an elevator along with a lion. We see the lion's rear through the door, which is about to close on the lion's tail. His...

Medicare should negotiate drug prices AND formularies

The arguments used by Big Pharma's apologists on the Hill yesterday in their last ditch effort to defeat Medicare price negotiations are worth exploring, since we'll hear them again when the bill gets taken up in the Senate. Those arguments were repeated...

The government economists who track health care spending put a curious spin on their latest report. In 2005, health care grew 6.9 percent, more than twice the rate of the overall economy. It's now officially a $1.9 trillion sub-economy, 16 percent of gross domestic product, nearly $6,700 for every man,...

New York looks to become the next state to jump on the stem cell bandwagon, with newly-installed Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) promising to put a $2 billion bond issue on the ballot. The investment "will pay for itself many times over in increased jobs, economic activity, and improved health,"...

"America has the best health care system in the world, pure and simple." - President George W. Bush, May 1, 2006

"The U.S. health care system is a scandal and a disgrace." - New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, Jan. 1, 2007

Will 2007 be the year when...

The drug industry's mantra that it costs over $1 billion to develop a new drug gets trotted out every time someone in Congress wants to do something about the high price of drugs. With the incoming Democratic Congress pledging to force Medicare to negotiate drug prices like the Veterans Administration,...

One of the worst-kept secrets in medical research is that much of what passes for cutting edge knowledge is actually thinly-veiled advertising by the drug industry for drugs that have already been FDA-approved. Example: A company has an anti-inflammatory pain pill that has been approved for arthritis pain; they...

Richard A. Epstein is a law professor at the University of Chicago and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His new book is Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (Yale). He has from time to time consulted for Pfizer and PhRMA, an industry trade group.

So concludes...