If We Want to Fix Health Care, It’s Now or Never

Baby Boomers Haven’t Busted America’s System yet—but We Need to Figure out How to Pay Less for Better Patient Outcomes

Are the baby boomers going to bust the health care system?

That’s the big question Wall Street Journal reporter Anna Wilde Mathews posed in her opening remarks to a Zócalo/Health Futures Council at Arizona State University event last night, held at the Arizona Science Center in Phoenix. With America’s elderly population on a path to nearly double by 2050—up to 83.7 million—and health costs only rising, the country is charging headfirst toward the biggest strain its health care system has ever seen.

“Will we be able to get the care when we …

By Paul Bisceglio | April 27, 2016

A Silver Tsunami Is About to Hit U.S. Health Care

Retiring Baby Boomers Will Drown a Stressed System—or Save It

April 25, 2016

Every day between 2010 and 2029, 10,000 Baby Boomers retire. Some say that the aging of this massive generation—which makes up slightly more than a quarter of the U.S. population—threatens …

National Oversight or Not, All Health Care, Like All Politics, Is Local

Leaders of Britain’s NHS and America’s Mayo Clinic Enviously Eye Each Other’s Domains

By Andrés Martinez | April 7, 2016

At first glance, America’s fragmented, private health care delivery system and Britain’s state-run National Health Service have little in common. But both nations’ contrasting approaches to caring for their populations …

Is Universal Health Care an Impossible Fantasy?

It’s Difficult to Imagine a Single-Payer System That’s Both Politically and Practically Viable in America

April 6, 2016

For more than a century, America has argued about how to share the costs of health care. Drawing from new government-sponsored insurance programs in Germany and England, Progressive reformers made …

Technology Doesn’t Ruin Health, People Do

If We Want to Think Clearly and Stay Fit, We Are the Ones Who Have to Unplug, Say UCLA Chancellor Gene Block and Other Researchers

By Jia-Rui Cook | March 29, 2016

As we hurtle with delight into a future where a wristwatch can tell us how many steps we’ve taken each day and a few taps on a screen can bring …

Smartphones Make Us Sick, No Matter How Many Health Apps We Download

While Our Favorite Handheld Companions Count Our Steps, They’re Also Triggering Obesity, Addiction, and Car Accidents

March 25, 2016

Last November, a national survey by New York University’s Langone Medical Center found that 58 percent of adult respondents have downloaded health apps on their smartphones—and that almost half these …

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