Bill Gates and New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have pledged $500 million for a global anti-smoking campaign.The campaign, nicknamed Mpower, will urge governments in poor- and middle-income countries to raise tobacco taxes, outlaw smoking in public places, outlaw advertising to children, ban free giveaways of cigarettes, implement ...

An alarming 62 percent of medications purchased through online pharmacies are fake or substandard, according to a comprehensive report  from the European Alliance for Access to Safe Medicines. The report - ''The Counterfeiting Superhighway'' - provides an in-depth analysis of more than 100 online pharmacies. It looked at common ...

New York Medicaid program has announced it will not pay for what it terms 14 ''never events.'' I recently wrote a blog discussing the fact that Medicare, a major healthcare payer, will no longer pay hospitals for the cost of care deriving from medical mistakes or nosocomial infections. State Medicaid programs have been hit with lowered federal ...

''Bring out your dead.'' That was the call heard through the streets during the 1918 flu pandemic, when the deaths surpassed modern resources and casket shortages forced families to surrender their loved ones to a wagon piled with bodies. Not a pretty image. Now, we're faced with the likely possibility that another flu pandemic will arrive on the ...

Many people across the country celebrated the 4th of July with fireworks, backyard barbecues and visiting family.  These acts are a celebration of the birth of a free country.  On July 4th of 1776, our forefathers signed the Declaration of Independence which forever allowed us to become (as Frances Scott Key wrote in our national ...

Recently, CNN ran an article about company wellness programs. It discusses the benefits of having health coaches at work, encouraging employees to go to a gym and to eat right, and offering weight-loss and smoking cessation programs. The article's author contributes this partially to the rising cost of healthcare, which makes sense ...

Signing Grandma and Grandpa up for martial arts can do more than improve their self-defense skills, it could give them a new defense against sleep problems. More than half of all older adults complain about having difficulties sleeping, but many don't seek out treatment. Practicing tai chi chih, the Westernized version of a 2,000-year-old Chinese ...

That's how graduate student and writer Paul Devlin started off his open letter to Michelle Obama at the end of April. He went as far as saying that the future of the free world and perhaps Barack Obama's campaign depends on him getting his nicotine fix: Maybe he could have one this weekend? He really needs to win Indiana. Also, keep in ...

Nowadays, the pressure is on for smokers to quit - but some feel their habit and its health risks are no one's business but their own. Dear Abby published a letter from ''Not Ready to Kick the Butts in Kenosha,'' a smoker who was sick of hearing lectures about why he should quit. He asked how to politely tell the concerned individuals to ...

USA Today recently ran a story on ''undercover patients''-- people who get paid to fake physical illness so they can grade a medical facility's services. The American Medical Association is considering endorsing this practice during its 5-day meeting starting on Saturday. Although this appears to be an adequate way to get a handling on which ...