Daughter Claire was home over the weekend and the big news was her plan to get a new puppy. Claire took it pretty hard when her dog Darcie died over the holidays. We all took it pretty hard. Chris and I had been taking care of Darcie while Claire was away at school. I'm secretly happy about this dec...

While I applaud the intent of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’s effort to “grade” the 50 states in the U.S. on their mental health care, the problem with such reports is that they are out-of-date and virtually useless from the moment they are published. The problem with the...

TALLAHASSEE, AP–Bobby Bowden appealed to the NCAA to include wins from his past before. He may have to do it again. Florida State will appeal the NCAA ruling in an academic fraud case including the vacating of 14 wins, but should the University lose the appeal Bowden will likely try a new tack...

A lively discussion has been taking place among commenters on Robert Reich's blog. We are fortunate to have there an international array of people who are in a position to do some comparative analyses among different countries. In particular we are fortunate to have Frank Thomas, an American exp...

Steven Lash, President and CEO of Satori World Medical, spoke with HealthBlawg last week about Satori's take on medical tourism, including its method of sharing cost savings with consumers who use Satori's services through employer-sponsored health plans. The audio file of my interview with Steven L...

A few days ago, I had a facial (more on that soon), and at the end of my session, my specialist applied Juice Beauty’s SPF 30 tinted moisturizer. Woah. Now, I realize that we are all especially dewy and glow-faced after a fabulous facial (which this was), but can I say, my face felt even bette...

This article is by Steven Hill and appeared in Huffington Post on March 9, 2009: Imagine a place where doctors still do house calls. When I was visiting my friend Meredith, living in the small rural town of Lautrec about an hour's drive outside Toulouse, France, one day she was stung badly by a ...

To try to clear up something about yesterday’s post on a Swiss model of health care reform I don’t, personally, consider something like that adequate. I don’t think it’s the appropriate role of progressives in the United States to be pushing for subsidies and mandates for ins...

One thing of note to add to this analysis of the Swiss health care system is that, as Ellen Immergut has pointed out, Switzerland is comparable to the U.S. in having an unusually large number of veto points that gave particularly high levels of power to minorities with a vested interest in the statu...

Not that this comes as a surprise: (CNN) -- As President Obama reversed the Bush administration's limits on embryonic stem-cell research, he said scientific decisions must be "based on facts, not ideology." President Obama lifted a ban that limited federally funded embryonic stem cell research. The ...