With the tax-free money in a health savings account, a person can pay for eyeglasses or medical exams, as well as a $1,700 baby bassinet or a $300 online parenting workshop.

Those same dollars can’t be used, though, to pay for most baby formulas, toothbrushes — or insurance premiums.

President Donald Trump and some Republicans are pitching...Read more

CHICAGO — Carey Carlock never imagined she’d have so much trouble finding a therapist for her teenage child.

She was a hospital CEO, on the board of a prominent local mental health organization and well connected. Yet the Oak Park mother couldn’t locate a therapist in her community who took her health insurance.

“I found that to just ...Read more

The Trump administration is touting its $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program as the largest-ever U.S. investment in rural health care. But the government made minimal mention of Native American tribes in sparsely populated areas and in need of significant improvements to health care access.

Federally recognized tribes can’t ...Read more

ROCHESTER, Minn.— A new year offers new beginnings and an opportunity to reset your eating habits after the holidays. Andrea Delgado, a Mayo Clinic dietitian, says it's best to eliminate what you don't need, including party food leftovers.

If your refrigerator is holding onto less-than-healthy holiday leftovers into the new year, it is OK to ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration is investigating whether COVID-19 vaccines caused deaths in adults, as part of a safety review that earlier appeared to just be focused on children.

The investigation, being conducted across different divisions of the FDA, comes at a time when U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans plan to vote this week on a likely futile plan to counter Democrats’ push to extend expiring Obamacare subsidies as health care costs for more than 20 million people are set to spike on Jan. 1.

Neither the Republican legislation announced Tuesday nor Democrats’ proposed three-year extension are expected to ...Read more

BOSTON — Governor Maura Healey is demanding congressional Republicans vote to extend a set of tax credits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to prevent what she calls skyrocketing health care costs across the country, as well as here in Massachusetts.

Healey held a press conference Tuesday at the State House demanding the extension and ...Read more

The government shutdown may be over, but Congress still hasn’t solved the biggest problem left on its plate: Extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies to avoid a doubling of insurance premiums or replace them with something new altogether. Lawmakers have committed to a vote in December.

While public debate about the issue has centered...Read more

The United States is poised to lose its measles-free status next year. If that happens, the country will enter an era in which outbreaks are common again.

More children would be hospitalized because of this preventable disease. Some would lose their hearing. Some would die. Measles is also expensive. A new study— not yet published in a ...Read more

Elisabeth Yoder’s son, Darragh, was 15 months old in August when he developed what at first looked to his parents like hand, foot, and mouth disease. The common viral infection generally clears up in less than a week, but Darragh’s condition worsened over several days. His skin turned bright red. Blisters gave way to skin peeling off his ...Read more

About 400,000 Californians could find it difficult to afford health coverage from their Obamacare plans next month as subsidies expire and premiums skyrocket.

And chances are shaky Congress will provide much help before Jan. 1, even as an unpredictable election year looms.

Lawmakers are scheduled to be in session this week and next before ...Read more

At La Belle Bridal Boutique in Beaver, Abigail Bailey is shopping for a Hailey Bieber-inspired corseted lace wedding gown. About a dozen friends and family members have joined her, toasting non-alcoholic champagne in celebration of a day made possible by an experimental brain surgery.

About a year ago, Bailey was so sick from illness and ...Read more

Medication-delivering drones and telehealth at local libraries are among the ideas state leaders revealed in November for spending their share of a $50 billion federal rural health program.

The Trump administration, which has promised “radical transparency,” said in an FAQ that it plans to publish the “project summary” for states that ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to approve new recommendations delaying the child hepatitis B vaccine for infants Friday, providing a win for the Make America Healthy Again movement while troubling many health officials in Baltimore and across the nation.

If enacted, the new policies would have the Centers ...Read more

Recent weeks have brought good news about vaccines, with studies indicating that flu vaccination reduces heart disease, shingles vaccines can prevent or slow dementia, and a single human papilloma virus shot protects a girl from cervical cancer for the rest of her life.

But in the upside-down world of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert ...Read more

DEAR MAYO CLINIC: A friend just underwent a rotator cuff repair and is recovering well. But I was wondering, what if you get to a point where repairing the tear is no longer an option? Is there anything else that can help with pain and improve shoulder function? And what about stem cells or this platelet-rich plasma I hear about?

ANSWER: ...Read more

After an active case of tuberculosis was detected in the Sacramento area, you may be wondering about your risks of contracting the highly contagious disease.

An individual with contagious tuberculosis was recently identified within the UC Davis “campus community,” the university said in a Tuesday, Dec. 2 news release.

In conjunction with ...Read more

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel that advises the agency on recommendations for vaccines delayed a planned vote Thursday on changes for the hepatitis B shot long recommended for newborns, putting off a decision with major implications for the Bay Area.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has scrutinized ...Read more

The leader of the free world is having trouble walking and talking. We need to know why.

In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has struggled to walk a straight line, and not for the first time. He was unable to state which part of his body was medically scanned — or why. He fell asleep in an Oval Office press conference and wandered off at ...Read more

ATLANTA — Catching hepatitis B is wildly more dangerous for babies than adults.

Most adults quickly recover and become immune. But about 90% of newborns with hepatitis B develop a long-haul version of the disease, then are at higher risk of liver cancer or cirrhosis.

Eventually, it kills about one in four people who were infected as newborns...Read more