On my 80th birthday I am going to put on a metal wrist band etched with the following words, "Medical Alert -- Do not intubate, ventilate or resuscitate," with a website linked to copies of my living will. Don't waste money on me to keep me alive past my due date.

"Can naturopaths deliver complementary preventive medicine?" Thus ran the headline in a recent editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Culture shifts with regard to medical practice come slowly, but having this collaborative style effort from thought leaders of reputable organizations underscores both the timeliness and urgency of these recommendations.

The pressure is on. Newly medically-uninsured, I must take a deep breath and dive into this project of figuring out what I'll do when the medical needs demand strike.

The big money in complementary and integrative medicine fields and their preventive and health-promoting focus that CFO Magazine's McCann notes is not in churning services. It is in saving money by limiting services.

Dear CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, I just received your letter, announcing the 20 percent hike in my health insurance premiums, due no doubt to r...

What I didn't see coming, what I did not expect, was how ashamed everyone is about their lack of health coverage. I've been caught off guard, these last weeks, when friends and acquaintances have cornered me and whispered of their own non-insured situations.

It's easy, when you have a degree of financial security, to have a real disconnect from the financial challenges that so many Americans face today. Yet our ER experience brought those challenges into sharp relief for me, and the impression wasn't pleasant.

Herman is right that it's time to shift the dialogue from roundhouse dismissal of potential cost-saving contributions from what she and the authors call "CIM" treatments and providers. The evidence is there for proactive exploration of potential cost savings.

Whether we are Democrats or Republicans, all Americans can agree that our health care costs are unsustainable -- and the sooner we acknowledge that, the better. A new report from the Institute of Medicine reveals the truth about the way our health care dollars are spent.