A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has concluded that there's an extra 13 auto accident deaths attributable to Income Tax Day (i.e., generally April 15, but which falls on April 17 this year). This is a drop in the bucket compared to the actual carnage that might be reasonably attributed to paying taxes in America.

All levels of government face growing pressures to restrain spending. One downside to the rapid growth in tax-financed health spending that I have documented in several prior posts is the vulnerability of the health system to measures taken to curb government spending. But the degree of such vulnerability varies dramatically across different components of the health sector.

A key government panel voted this month to whack what Medicare pays most doctors to treat patients. It's an important step on the path to ObamaCare--because the only way to make European-style health entitlements work in America is to pay US doctors lower European wages.

Durably improving health is really, really hard. I've discussed this in the context of drug discovery, which must contend with the ever-more-apparent reality that biology is incredibly complex, and science remarkably fragile. Here, I'd like to focus on another challenge: measuring and improving the quality of patient care.

Last month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released its latest projections of health spending. These official projections showed that the health share of GDP would rise to 19.8 percent by 2020. But just as official estimates substantially understate the role of government in health spending, they fail to highlight a point that should be of concern to all Americans.

The pitting of insurers against health care providers for pieces of the Medicare pie is now an annual Washington event.

Last June, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued the maker of an antidepressant for withholding unfavorable information about the safety and effectiveness of a drug. The suit, filed in the New York Supreme Court and settled this summer, claimed that GlaxoSmithKline conducted at least five studies on the...

The National Kidney Foundation's recalcitrance on financial incentives for organ donors is hurting the very constituency it purports to serve.