The question was deceptively simple. It was answered with a telling silence. What would Barnes-Jewish Hospital charge for heart bypass surgery, Dr. Glenn Steele asked a St. Louis audience on Tuesday.
“I can tell you what it costs at one of…

As a candidate for governor last year, Jay Nixon wanted to dramatically expand Medicaid and provide health insurance to all Missouri children.
But now that he’s actually governor? Not so much.
Children’s advocates have been pressing him since July to take simple…

For all the talk about test votes and public options, health care reform remains a relatively nebulous concept to most people. As the Senate prepares to take up its version, it is worth asking what it is all about.
The answer:…

Fear the four-in-hand.

The wave of swine flu cases that gripped Missouri and the nation appears to have peaked in late October, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.
But the wave of panic it induced remains strong. The latest…

Women worried about breast cancer have just one concern: What can they do to reduce the risk of dying from the disease?
One answer is to get regular mammograms. Over the past 15 years, that advice has saved thousands of lives.…

A baby in St. Louis Childrens Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

The little girl lay silent and asleep.
She wore a white stocking cap. A pair of plastic tubes sprouted from her chest, deep crimson from the blood that filled them.
They led…

Post-Dispatch file photo.

If you’re planning to get sick outside of regular business hours, you’d be well advised to do it in the Netherlands.
Almost every Dutch primary care doctor — 97 percent, to be precise — has a nurse or physician…

Here’s something you won’t learn from reading headlines or obsessively watching text crawl across the bottom of the TV screen: Health care reform isn’t a horse race.
It doesn’t turn on what the latest key member of Congress said this morning…

Dan Callahan

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., took to the Senate floor today to talk about Dan Callahan, the Southern Illinois University Carbondale baseball coach who has been denied coverage for the costly cancer drug Avastin. You can read the full blog…

Dan Callahan

It began with a little black spot on Dan Callahan’s lower lip. He didn’t think it was anything to worry about. His doctor thought it was cancer.
The doctor was right.
It was neurotropic melanoma, a very rare — and very…

Otto von Bismarck: Not socialist.

Forget all this nonsense about socialized health care. The first head of state to propose a national health system was at the other end of the political spectrum. His name: Otto von Bismarck.

The system established by…

House Democrats unveiled a sweeping health care reform bill last Thursday built on shared responsibility.
Individuals would have to buy health insurance for themselves and their families.
Taxpayers would subsidize coverage for those unable to afford it on their own.
Employers would have…

By Dr. Walt Sumner, President, St. Louis Academy of Family Physicians

The St. Louis Academy of Family Physicians supports the St. Louis County clean indoor air proposal for the following reasons:

1. Fine particles in tobacco smoke hurt smokers and non-smokers alike.

These…

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, was in a fine fury Tuesday morning. Speaking on the Senate floor, he blasted Democratic lawmakers for a plan to permanently adjust the Medicare formula used to set payment…

If there were a way to save $207.4 million, avoid 30,000 unnecessary hospitalizations and more than 2,000 premature deaths, we’d jump at it, right?
That’s what Missouri would gain if its health system performed as well as the systems in Vermont,…

President Barack Obama speaks after last week's historic Senate health reform vote.

Forget all the angry shouting about socialized medicine and government take-overs. Health care reform is really all about markets, competition and choice.
That’s probably not what you’ve heard. But as…

To hear some people tell it, the number of people without health insurance in the United States is vastly overstated.
There are the illegal immigrants, the argument goes, and then there are those who can afford to buy insurance but don’t…

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…

Suppose you were asked for a list of the game-changers in modern medicine — treatments that saved the most lives and had the greatest health impact.
You might name organ transplants or drugs to fight cancer and AIDS. Maybe if you…

"Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges."

Here’s how much the Congressional Budget Office says a new health reform bill in the Senate would cost: $829 billion over 10 years.

The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post , Associated…