Health

Although state officials have provided the public scant detail about the troubled launch of Maryland’s version of Obamacare, emails and documents show that the project was beset behind the scenes for months by an array of technical issues, warring contractors and other problems. Since Maryland’s online health exchange opened Oct. 1 for people to buy insurance…

Doctors choose the more expensive drug more than half a million times every year, a choice that costs the Medicare program, the largest single customer, an extra $1 billion or more annually, the Washington Post reports.  Spending that much may make little sense for a country burdened by ever-rising health bills, but as is often…

In September, Lynne Spalding checked into San Francisco General Hospital for a bladder infection. Soon after, she went missing. No one ordered a full search for Spalding until nine days after she disappeared. In that time, Lynne Spalding Ford’s family scoured the city and passed out thousands of fliers — only to find out she was dead in…

The Department of Energy says it has protected the public health, and studies about radiation harm aren’t definitive. But with the government’s own records about many of the sites unclear, the Journal has compiled a database that draws on thousands of public records and other sources to trace this historic atomic development effort and its…

The rate of spinal fusion surgery has risen sixfold in the United States over the past 20 years, according to federal figures, and the expensive procedure, which involves the joining of two or more vertebrae, has become even more common than hip replacement, the Washington Post reports. More than 465,000 spinal fusions were performed in…

“This yearlong investigation examines how doctors and lawyers, working at the behest of the coal industry, have defeated the benefits claims of miners sick and dying of black lung, even as disease rates are on the rise and an increasing number of miners are turning to a system that was supposed to help alleviate their…