The US healthcare system, in its present state, is a failure. It fails those with and without coverage. We spend more, care for fewer and are sicker than the citizens of any other industrialized nation.

Why are prescription drugs so damn expensive? Or that test your doctor ordered–requiring you to be contorted into some ornate machine–that costs thousands of dollars?

The salaries of American doctors are huge, terrifying, for anyone trying to bring down health care costs in the United States. Why are American doctors so damn expensive? Medical school is a big part of the answer.

The only good insurance customer is the healthy and irresponsible consumer–the prototypical healthy 30 year old who refuses to get a flu shot or annual checkup. Everyone else gets turfed. Ah, turfed. Allow me to introduce you to one of the cherished terms of medical care in the United States. You turf difficult, or undesirable, [...]

… isn’t about the uninsured. Paul Begala put it concisely on Real Time with Bill Maher last week: (Most relevant part starts at 3:35.) My transcript: What we’ve really spent our money on, in this system, is trying to figure out to not cover people who have paid for their premiums. There was a hearing [...]

As a pathogen, influenza is the cat’s pajamas; influenza puts the ortho in orthomyxovirus, the segments in its RNA genome and the misery in sneeze droplets everywhere. Let’s unpack H1N1 and H5N1. The ‘N’ in both stands for neuraminidase, a fancy way for saying “snot eating enzyme.” The virus needs to get to the juicy [...]

Dendreon, a Seattle-based biotech startup, just completed a successful phase III trial on an entirely new kind of cancer treatment.

In the past few months, I bet you’ve seen at least one ad like these. When I first saw these ads, I was impressed. Most direct-to-consumer drug advertising is loathsome, filled with moronic non sequiturs–what does kayaking have to do with a nucleoside analog used to treat herpes–or simply build up anxiety about a problem, [...]

In my week of carefully recording my weight and diet, using the excellent CRON-o-Meter program, I gained a half pound–from 163.5 to 164.0 pounds in the seven day moving average. Just to emphasize, I wasn’t trying to lose weight, rather just to record what a typical week of eating was like for me. A few [...]

Since moving to Seattle I’ve gained thirty pounds. On my slight five-foot-ten frame, that represents about a fifth more of me since 2001. How did that happen? Very slowly, and with both fat and muscle gains contributing. Arriving at 135 pounds to Seattle, I was close to being underweight, my BMI above 18.5. Now at [...]