The coronavirus pandemic is surging anew, with federal health officials warning that just under half of Americans live in parts of the country where transmission rates have increased sharply enough that they should return to wearing face masks in public, indoor settings. Older Americans, officials say, should get a second booster shot if more than four months have passed since their first booster. This is an upgraded recommendation from before, when officials  described the additional…

Americans keep suffering the dire consequences of corporations’ relentless pursuit of profits, their stifling of beneficial competition, and their failure to secure the production of their products. These now include desperately needed, specialized baby formula and contrast dyes used in diagnostic imaging studies for seriously ill and injured patients. A special place in perdition needs to be reserved for those who have put infants at risk of hunger and illness by allowing the feeding…

Hospitals have raised major alarms with insurers, businesses, and patients by asserting that spiking costs for medical staff, especially nurses, will lead them to increase their prices in the days ahead by as much as 15%. This would be a budget-busting move, breaking contracts the caregiving institutions have struck with employers and insurers, leading not only to potential premium shocks but sharply higher charges for patients, the Wall Street Journal reported. The newspaper noted that…

Even as the opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis worsens and breaks annual records for its resulting death toll, the reckoning for parties blamed for fostering the national nightmare is grinding forward. A federal judge in Cleveland has begun hearing arguments whether three giant pharmacy chains should be fined billions of dollars after a jury in November found them culpable for damages they caused in two Ohio counties in the opioid mess. And new disclosures …

President Biden has ordered flags in public buildings across the country to be flown at half staff as the nation officially mourns 1 million American deaths due to the coronavirus pandemic. As he noted in a statement: “One million empty chairs around the dinner table. Each an irreplaceable loss. Each leaving behind a family, a community, and a nation forever changed because of this pandemic. Jill and I pray for each of them. To those…

While the nation’s pediatricians have announced an important, high-minded goal of eliminating racial bias in the medical treatment of children, working parents and other full-time caregivers for kids need a different kind of help, too, for a growing, serious problem — burnout. These seemingly different issues share a common discovery point, rooted in challenges made large by the coronavirus pandemic and the recent unrest over social injustices experienced by communities of color, news media…

Big Pharma has made the nation so pill-obsessed that prescription drugs pose big risks to the safety of the seriously sick and injured and the finances of retirees. Recent news stories have warned, for example, that: The grievous harms created by hospital medication errors arose anew as a major, systemic institutional menace with infuriated nurses’ reaction to the criminal conviction of RaDonda Vaught, R.N., for giving a patient a lethal dose of a drug in…