The American economy is experiencing a crisis in long-term unemployment that has enormous human and economic costs.

The fierce battle over reform was based on the perception that Americans did not get good value for their money. That perception is wrong.

The health news for the New York City is good — very good, in fact. And it must be especially gratifying to Bloomberg, given his longstanding personal commitment to public health. But it isn’t clear that the official narrative of New York’s health progress actually conforms with the health story for New York over the last decade.

“Americans spend too much on health care.” “We have worse health outcomes than our European counterparts.” Talking points such as these helped drive President Obama’s controversial and sweeping health care reform into law two years ago. But are they accurate?

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.

Insurance should cover effective and appropriate treatment for anorexia nervosa, which may or may not be residential care, for a particular patient. Adding coverage for any medical illness according to category (e.g., residential care) is usually a bad idea.

Successful social security policy for Russia, consequently, will depend upon much more than social programmes alone: it will require the reduction of mortality rates for working-age individuals, the revitalization of higher education, and fundamental reform of the country's institutions and economic policies.

The author examines population movement, mortality rates, and life expectancy in Russia.