In a sunny patch of grass in the middle of Indianapolis’ Crown Hill Cemetery, 45 people recently gathered around a large blackboard. The words “Before I Die, I Want To …” were stenciled on the board in bold white letters. Sixty-two-year-old Tom Davis led us through the thousands of gravestones scattered across the cemetery. He’d […]

Dr. James Gill walked through the morgue in Farmington, Connecticut, recently, past the dock where the bodies come in, past the tissue donations area, and stopped outside the autopsy room. “We kind of have a typical board listing all of the decedents for the day,” Gill said, pointing to the list of names on a […]

For the roughly 15,000 people who need a liver transplant, it’s a waiting game. With demand for donated livers far outstripping supply, patients may spend months or years on a transplant waitlist, their position in the line gradually improving as they get sicker. A recent study suggests that this system may be changing but not necessarily […]

Medical students cram a lot of basic science and medicine into their first two years of training. But most learn next to nothing about the intricacies of the health care system they are soon to enter. That’s something the medical school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., is trying to remedy. “Clinicians today have […]

If you smoke marijuana and you’re shopping for life insurance, chances are you can find a company that won’t penalize you for your habit, but you may have to weed out several insurers to find the best policy. Eighty percent of the 148 underwriters who were surveyed by reinsurer Munich Re at the Association of […]

As lawmakers grapple with how best to combat the nation’s prescription painkiller abuse crisis, a recent survey is shedding light on how patients who get these medications  — drugs such as OxyContin, methadone or Vicodin — sometimes share or mishandle them. According to findings detailed in a research letter published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, […]

As the summer unfolds, readers want to know about travel insurance while the Zika virus threatens, student health plans and mental health coverage. Q. My wife and I have a trip planned to South America, but we’re increasingly worried about the Zika virus. We bought travel insurance when we booked the trip. If we cancel, […]

Mosquitoes bearing Zika — a virus that can cause birth defects when contracted by pregnant women — are expected to reach the United States as soon as this summer, with Florida and Texas likely to be among the hardest-hit states. But support for women’s health care, along with family planning resources, has either been scaled back or […]

The federal government, which spends billions of dollars each year covering unintended pregnancies, is encouraging states to adopt policies that might boost the number of Medicaid enrollees who use long-acting, reversible contraceptives. LARCs, as they are known, “possess a number of advantages,” Vikki Wachino, deputy administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, wrote to […]