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effort to “grade” the 50 states in the U.S. on their mental health care, the problem with such reports is that they are out-of-date and virtually useless from the moment they are published.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...

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...

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 ...

Ezra Klein writes that Republicans are drawing the lines of opposition to the progressive health care agenda in pretty narrow terms: Does that matter? It’s hard to say. Rhetorically, the GOP has staked out a very narrow corner of opposition. Last week, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Mike Enz...

Some of the more desperate hospitals are filling gaps in their depleted nursing staffs by hiring ninjas From Reuters: The U.S. healthcare system is pinched by a persistent nursing shortage that threatens the quality of patient care even as tens of thousands of people are turned away from nursing sch...

COBRA aid for layoffs is confusing Employers are confused about the COBRA revisions, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said: Confused over whether to calculate a person’s income before or after termination; whether people taking a buyout are eligible; on how to determine a spouse’s income. Many indiv...