Little victories in curbing health care costs can add up. In truth, they seem little only next to the titanic $2.6 trillion Americans spend a year on health care. So let us salute them.

Case in point, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (Medpac) proposes ending a ridiculously expensive practice: Medicare paying hospital ...

The sky isn't falling. The train is not wrecking. The end is not nigh. And to drag this out a bit, the tidings are not all bad.

The Social Security and Medicare trustees have spoken ...

I’ll bet that Mark Twain, who wrote “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” would’ve loved a current saga. I call it “The Jumping Congress Critter of Frog Jump.”

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Part 16 of the Harvesting Justice series

In Western Massachusetts on a sunny winter day, a ...

For years, conservatives have pushed for a health-insurance model emphasizing catastrophic coverage. It works as follows:

Consumers pay the cost of ordinary care, such as ...

We may not have time for exercise, but there's always time to read about exercise. And while the motivation to exercise may not be tops, the motivation to shop for "aids" to exercise seems forever strong.

Both activities offer the gratifying sense that we're getting somewhere, fitness-wise. We know that at some ...

The good things that should happen after marijuana is legalized are happening in Colorado. In November, voters in Colorado — and Washington state — legalized pot for recreational use. (Many states allow medical use of marijuana.)

What are the good things?

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During the big health care fight, the right told older Americans that Obamacare was grabbing money from their Medicare and giving it to young people. Now it tells young workers that Medicare and Social Security are draining their take-home pay to support retirees sitting around the pool.

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The latest dispatch from the food wars: For those at high risk of heart disease, following the Mediterranean diet results in 30 percent fewer heart attacks and strokes. Focused on nuts, beans, fatty fish, fruits and vegetables — all washed down with olive oil and wine (separate glasses, please) — the diet is said to ...

As anyone who has ever experienced a panic attack well knows, one of the most difficult aspects of managing anxiety disorders is having to do it in secret for fear of being labeled a freak. I can personally attest that such a fear often makes the problem worse, compounding generalized worry with the specific concern that you ...

When folks pan the Affordable Care Act for being nearly 3,000 pages long, here's a sensible response: It could have been done in a page and a half if it simply declared that Medicare would cover everyone.

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Remember the 1950s horror movie "The Bad Seed"? Any remake should cast Monsanto in the title role, because whenever something scary is being done to our food, you can usually find Monsanto lurking in the shadows.

During the past two decades, this biotech behemoth has used its political connections to obtain a monopolistic ...

Four years ago, Michelle Obama picked up a shovel to make a powerful symbolic statement about America’s food and farm future: She turned a patch of White House lawn into a working organic garden.

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Four years ago, Michelle Obama picked up a shovel and made a powerful symbolic statement about America's food and farm future: She turned a patch of White House lawn into a working organic garden.

That was a great move, earning kudos from just about everyone this side of Monsanto and the pesticide lobby. But now, as she begins ...

Sad, sad, sad that in talking about budget cuts, we use painful words like "extracting billions from Medicare" or "slashing the Medicare entitlement." Has it ever occurred to the gladiators that improving the quality of health care can also save money? If Medicare spends less on a patient because the hospital does a good job the first time, that's what we call a win-win situation. The patient gets better care. The taxpayers get billed only once. Yay.

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Some people are too smart for their own good.

Food geneticists, for example. These technicians have the smarts to tinker with the inner workings of Momma Nature's own good foods — but not the smarts to leave well enough alone.

During the past half-century, their productive tinkering devolved into outright tampering with our food, mostly to serve big agribusiness corporations that wanted nature's design altered in ways ...

The nutty thing about the health care debate that will play a prominent role in the next election is that most Americans want pretty much the same outcome: to control costs without sacrificing quality. And that’s not what either major-party candidate is offering. Few think that Obamacare, a Romneycare descendant that contains the same kind of individual mandate the then-governor of Massachusetts signed into law, will get us to that desired goal. Nor would Mitt Romney, ...