Robin Beaton's insurance company cancelled her breast cancer surgery because she didn't disclose she'd been treated for acne.

Health insurance companies launched an 11th-hour assault Monday on a compromise health care reform bill in the Senate. In a new report and a…

During a visit to an Alton hospital in 2005, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich signs a bill to cap pain-and-suffering awards in medical malpractice cases.

Plenty of reasons exist to support medical malpractice reform. Doing it to slow the dizzying growth in…

According to the Chicago Tribune’s “The Swamp” blog, U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, a Republican from Collinsville, walked out on the president’s speech Wednesday night.

An aide to Shimkus told the Tribune that the congressman was frustrated that nothing new was offered. From the Swamp…

President Barack Obama will try to retake the initiative on health care reform this evening with a nationally televised address to Congress. Conventional wisdom holds that it will be among the most important speeches of his political career.
That’s entirely backward.
Whatever…

An Air Force C-37A; House appropriators want a couple of the upgraded C-37Bs, the military version of the Gulfstream G550.

You’re going to love this: Last month, the House Appropriations Committee quietly added $132 million to the 2010 defense appropriations bill to…

When it comes to health care reform, most people are on the side of the angels — as long it doesn’t cost too much. But let’s be blunt here: What’s in it for us?
More than you probably think.
The United States…

President Barack Obama will talk about health care reform in a nationally televised press conference tonight and at a town hall-style meeting in Cleveland on Thursday.
His speech comes as a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll shows declining confidence in Mr.…

Healthy piglets are injected with antibiotics in this Post-Dispatch file photo.

Pop quiz: Most antibiotics in the United States are used for (a) healthy farm animals or (b) people with potentially life-threatening infections?
The answer, by a long shot, is healthy farm…

U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer

Last year’s global average temperature was the 10th warmest since 1850. In fact, eight of the past 10 years, and 13 of the last 14, are among the warmest on record.
So naturally, Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Republican…

AP Photo/Jim Prisching

When Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to stimulate the economy in 1933, the first thing he did was create the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Within 37 days of FDR’s inauguration, he had proposed and Congress had enacted the CCC. On the 38th…

President Barack Obama

After all the heat former President George W. Bush took for his multitude of signing statements, you would think President Barack Obama would know better than to use them, too.

Well, apparently, he doesn’t.

According to this story from The Hill,…

Post-Dispatch file photo.

The nation’s largest employer thinks big companies should be required to provide health insurance for their workers.
Wal-Mart, the country’s biggest retailer and the second-largest corporation in the world according to this year’s Fortune 500, this week endorsed the idea…

Post-Dispatch file photo.

By any standard, American health care is the world’s most expensive.
• We spend twice as much per person as the average of other large developed nations — $6,714 in 2006, compared to $3,414. In 2008, per person spending is…

The federal government finally will regulate cigarette manufacturing and marketing. That’s long overdue, as anyone familiar with the tobacco industry’s shameful history can attest.
President Barack Obama — an occasional smoker who admits that he still struggles daily with his nicotine…

Remember all that talk about how global warming was going to change our lives? It already has.
A new federal report on the impact of climate change condenses the latest science from a variety of disciplines. Among the findings:
• Heavy downpours are…

Ronald Reagan spoke out against the evils of socialized medicine as part of an American Medical Association campaign against Medicare in 1961.

Does President Barack Obama support “socialized medicine?”
That’s the mantra of some conservative commentators. Rush Limbaugh has mouthed it. So…

A young reporter once set out to explain the American health care system to his editor.
After many minutes of earnest conversation, the editor smiled brightly. “I get it now,” he said. “It makes perfect sense.”
“Well then, I must have left…

Two troubling reports surfaced this week. One was about an increase in hate crimes against Hispanics, immigrants and people perceived to be immigrants; the other was about an increase in murders of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

The Washington Post…

Congressional Democrats have seen the future of American health care. It looks a lot like Massachusetts, and a little like John McCain, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
House Democratic leaders spelled out their prescriptions for reform this week. Their colleagues in…

People buy health insurance so they won’t be bankrupted by unexpected illness. But for increasing numbers of Americans, that’s not how things are working out.
A new national survey estimates that 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies in 2007 — nearly…