Only simple words are needed: government must help provide for the weakest and most vulnerable of its citizens.  Kevin Sack's look at Medicaid's quick decline in the New York Times makes it clear that if government is to justify its existence, it must help the neediest.  In a complicated ...

The Food and Drug Administration claims that the company Basic Food Flavors has knowingly sold vegetable protein laced with salmonella. The Washington Post's Lyndsey Layton reports that a food maker who purchased products from Basic Food Flavors tipped off the FDA and the agency subsequently inspected the Food Flavors plant. But why did federal regulators wait until after the dangerous vegetable protein was discovered to inspect the offending plant? Well, because of the U.S. Senate. "Legislation that would require companies to take measures to prevent contamination was overwhelmingly passed by the House last year," Layton writes,  "but has been held up in the Senate."

By Marci Greenstein National Institutes of Health chief, Dr. Frances Collins was talking up his agency’s partnership with the Food and Drug Administration on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show last week.  The move is intended to speed up the process for getting drugs from laboratories to the marketplace.  What’s surprising is that this collaboration hasn't happened sooner.  How often have we heard about patients desperate to get drugs that are successful in clinical trials but are moving at a snail’s pace through the FDA’s regulatory maze?

By Marci Greenstein As anyone who has seen the movie “The Graduate” will tell you, the word “plastics” was once seen as the gateway to an exciting new world of opportunities.  But nowadays plastics -- more specifically, the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) in plastics -- strike fear into the ...

The New York Times' Kevin Sack and Robert Pear have a very informative article about how recession-caused budget deficits are forcing state governments to make cuts in Medicaid. The big takeaway here is what a low priority the federal government has made Medicaid: The Medicaid program already pays doctors and hospitals at levels well below those of Medicare and private insurance, and often below actual costs. Large numbers of doctors, therefore, do not accept Medicaid patients, and cuts may further discourage participation in the program, which primarily serves low-income children, disabled adults and nursing home residents. Unlike Medicare, Medicaid is partly funded by states. This means that while Medicaid is an entitlement program like Medicare and Social Security, eligible Medicaid patients are actually not "entitled" to much: each state gets to decide how much health coverage someone on medicaid gets.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder has an interesting look at Michelle Obama's announced push to end childhood obesity. I am somewhat sympathetic to the view that government warnings about the "obesity epidemic" can be seen as paternalistic and invasive. However, the ...

The New York Times' Jason DeParle and Robert Gebeloff have a good piece that explains how food stamps have helped millions of people in the recession. One problem, though, with the social safety net in the recessions is that welfare, or direct cash assistance, has not increased as food stamps have:

Dating back to Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America," the federal government has funded abstinence only sex education programs. This is despite countless studies that these programs do not lead to increased abstinence and that, in fact, "comprehensive" sex education programs better prevent teenage pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Now -- just as the Obama administration and a Democratic Congress have eliminated funding for abstinence only programs -- the New York Times' Tamar Lewin reports on a study that shows one abstinence only program that does work. However, the article offers a couple of caveats before lawmakers rush to return abstinence-only sex education into the Health and Human Services Department budget.

Now here's an example of how the Obama administration's proposed 2010 budget can work to help people hit by the recession -- the Wall Street Journal's Janet Adamy reports that the administration will slip in an extra $25 billion to help cover the costs of state medicaid payments. With ...

So says the New York Times' David Leonhardt, who decries the lack of a leader at the Center for Medicare Services in the Dept. of Health and Human Services. This vacant federal agency leadership position can't be blamed on the Senate: Barack Obama and Health and Human Services ...