USA Today focuses in on health care

USA Today focuses in on health careAll three front-page USA Today articles are focused on health care today:

• Retiree benefits grow into 'monster' (a very UK-sounding headline) explains that the cost of future government obligations is $500,00 per household. Medicare accounts for more than half of that total; it's twice as much as Social Security. That's why I favor the rule that limits Medicare's claim on general revenues
• Doctors will transplant a face --but whose? describes the Cleveland Clinic's quest to be the first hospital to do a total transplant (including ears and head). Apparently it's hard to find the right patient. Not only that, it's hard to find a donor!
• Psychiatric drugs fare favorably when companies pay for studies tells us something we already knew. But the interesting data point I picked up was that the share of drug company-funded studies in the four most prestigious journals rose from 25% to 57% between 1992 and 2002. That's a problem

In the days and weeks after September 11, I remember looking forward to the day when at least one of the three front page stories in the Wall St. Journal was about something unrelated to the attacks. It happened eventually. But while health care won't always occupy all three slots in the USA Today (or the Journal) it's likely to be a dominant topic for the next 30 years at least.