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…

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…

Matson

Poverty is on the rise in Missouri. Over the past nine years, the state’s poverty rate has grown at more than double the national average.
The change has disproportionately affected whites. Poverty remains significantly higher among African-Americans. But the poverty rate grew fastest…

Tim Blacke

When doctors found a tumor in Tim Blacke’s brain, health insurance was the last thing he worried about. That was his first mistake.
For nearly two decades, he’d worked for internationally known evangelical minister Josh McDowell. During that time, Mr.…

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

America needs a strong shot of health care reform, but Sen. Max Baucus’ two-aspirin-and-call-me-the-morning measure won’t get the job done.
Mr. Baucus, D-Mont., who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, dithered for months trying to craft a compromise with…

In 1999, it cost about $5,800 to buy employer-provided family health insurance coverage. If premiums had increased at the same rate as inflation, that same policy today would cost $7,239.

Instead, it costs $13,375. That’s an increase of 131 percent — more than…

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…

Extreme Truthiness, Health Care Edition: Comedian Stephen Colbert.

An interesting e-mail about health care reform has been making the rounds over the past few weeks. It doesn’t provide any great insight into the bill it purports to analyze, H.R. 3200, or contain…

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was on a roll.
“Nothing makes me more angry … than the suggestion that America does not already have the finest health care in the world,” the Senate minority leader said Monday at a forum in…

Betty Feliciano had classic symptoms of heart disease: swollen ankles, shortness of breath and fatigue. Doctors at the Crider Health Center in St. Charles ordered a cardiac stress test.
Ms. Feliciano didn’t get it. “I knew I needed” it, she said.…

Critics are questioning whether health care reform will force middle-class families out of the insurance plans that currently cover them. The better question is whether the insurance plans that currently cover them —  or, more precisely, the price of that…

Doctors practice new hip replacement techniques on a cadaver.

As chairman of the House Republican Health Care Solutions Group, Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Springfield, knows a thing or two about health care. But some of what he knows just isn’t true.
“I’m 59,”…

Thousands of angry protesters turned out at town hall meetings in Hillsboro, Cape Girardeau and across the country this week. They had come to pledge their unstinting support for the world’s 37th best-performing health care system.
The protesters vowed to protect a…

And now for something completely different: An emotion-free issue raised in the health reform debate.
It starts with a deceptively simple question. We all trust our doctors to recommend what is best when we get sick. But how does your doctor…

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…

Indian children where skull masks at an anti-tobacco rally in Calcutta.

Cigarettes are a potent delivery device for the drug nicotine. But unlike most other drugs in widespread use, nicotine isn’t regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
This week, the…

President Barack Obama speaks at a White House meeting with health groups Monday.

Promises to cut health costs in the future are a bit like protestations of love in the back seat of a parked car: No matter how heart-felt they…

“In the long run, we’re all dead.”
— John Maynard Keynes

The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that a swine flu pandemic is likely imminent. “It’s really all of humanity that’s under threat,” said Dr. Margaret Chan, the organization’s director general.
Frightening though…

AmerenUE’s plan to build a second nuclear power plant in Callaway County may be in jeopardy. But if so, it won’t have been CWIP that killed it.
CWIP, of course, stands for construction work in progress. It refers to a state…