As our healthcare system slowly begins to make the changes necessary to keep it afloat, you might get more nagging phone calls from your doctor's office, or even from your pharmacist.

Yesterday, when I left the opening of the dramatic Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic exhibit at the Autry National Museum, I headed for Langer's Delicatessen for a pastrami sandwich.

While many worthy policies and programs need funding, it's hard to think of any more universally necessary than protecting our nation's food supply. The sequestration means, however, the FDA will be forced to reduce the number of inspections it conducts.

There are nearly 10 million of you out there, adult children older than 50 who are caring for aging parents. We used to refer to a "sandwich" generation, those people who had children late in life, only to be confronted simultaneously with teenaged angst and parents who need more and more help.

The average toddler sees nearly three fast-food advertisements every day. And research shows that children younger than eight years old are not capable of understanding the intent of advertising and typically accept claims as fact. Television and print are only part of the problem.

It may be a personal calling, a debt to pay or an act of profound love, but caring for an elderly parent or loved one can be a difficult juggling act. Here is some practical advice on the medical front to the 50 million Americans who are the unpaid caretakers.

Will we be able to train a sufficient number of physicians, given budget woes and threats to Medicare funding, to make sure that everyone who needs a doctor can find one?

In the imperfect communication that translates scientific findings into public pronouncements, a thin thread of an association can come off as a headline that touts a sure-fire way to prevent cancer. But associations and correlations are not definitive proof of causation.

We've grown wiser and more cautious in many ways about booze and cigarettes, for significant, scientific health reasons. We should see marijuana in enlightened fashion, too, neither demonizing nor glorifying it and discussing it with common sense in gear.

Will Congress bleed $2.5 billion from the NIH's funding? We cannot afford to lose more from a young generation of such researchers. If we do so, the consequences could be dire for our nation, its health and its medical-scientific progress

We've got a ways to go still with smoking and vehicular safety. But let's put the public health cross-hairs now, please, on guns and their accompanying violence. Now is the time for Congress to do its part and pass the legislation that President Obama has asked for.

This time of colds, ear and sinus infections and influenza can provide a reason for each of us, as individuals, to look at our own health and healthcare and see how our small choices play a role in contributing to the burgeoning, unsustainable costs of U.S. medicine.

In 2012, health care saw dramatic changes on major fronts: advances in patient care, important scientific discoveries, and perhaps most dramatically, in policy. Let's take a selective glimpse at some of 2012's key health stories.

When the finely honed bodies of elite athletes break down, these players' compulsion to get back in the game sometimes can lead them to embrace medical procedures that eventually may benefit the duffers among us and more.

As you declare your independence this week and we splash the skies with patriotic fireworks and stirring music, don't forget to stash some great summer reads in your tote for that annual retreat to the mountains or shore.

MALIBU, Calif. — In an elegant white tent at her oceanfront Malibu compound, Barbra Streisand sang and former President Bill Clinton spoke to a ...

With so many changes occurring in our society because of technology, the economy, and population growth, the practice of medicine in the future will change.

Within the borders of the United States, precisely where you live has a lot to do with your health, your health care and what it costs.

The goal of quality patient care is and always should be the same: Health care professionals should do the right thing for the right patient in the right setting with the right resources.

So what does the research tell us? We need to talk to both young women and men, not once but early and often about sexual health and responsibility.

The movement of what was once a relatively inconspicuous disease to an epidemic of significant public health concern remains both worrisome and mysterious.

Combining movement with meditative practices can help protect your good health -- but let common sense control expectations.