health care

If certain health providers and legislators get their way, Michigan's mental health system could soon be privatized.

Pretty much everyone agrees that closer coordination of mental and physical health care would be a good thing for patients.

After all, the mind is connected to the body, but just how to get there has been up for fierce debate going on two years now.

The recent publication of Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury focused our attention on President Trump's fitness to hold office.

Wolff claims White House aides harbor deep concerns about the president's mental health, although those same aides publicly deny that.

One of the very top mental health concerns in this country is anxiety. It’s sometimes hard to be clear about what anxiety is and how to recognize it, especially in children, but identifying a mental health issue like anxiety early on can make a huge difference for a child’s future success.

More than 300 thousand people in Michigan depend on public mental health care, and the state is wrestling with the question of who should oversee and administer those services.

Michigan is debating whether mental health funding will be taken away from community mental health groups and transferred instead to private insurers in Michigan’s Medicaid Health plans.

In 1960, the first oral contraceptive was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as contraception.

That drug, Enovid, changed the course of history for women.

Yet Beverly Strassmann, a professor of anthropology and a researcher at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, has a challenge for the drug companies that make hormonal birth control: don’t rest on your laurels.

Her research indicates it might be past time for pharmaceutical companies to tweak the formulation of the pill.

The Next Idea

Usually, when we hear the word “hacking,” we think of someone breaking into something — like your computer or customer data at a credit card company. But there’s a constructive, positive spin on the word hack too.

A2 Health Hacks is a weekend-long exercise where people come together to find new solutions to old problems in health care.  

New medical marijuana laws mean that by this time next year, things will be very different for the medical marijuana industry in Michigan. The state will be handing out licenses to growers, testing facilities, transporters and dispensaries.

That means the state will have to regulate and license this business as it expands.

It will also mean new taxes. Some predict that the medical marijuana industry could generate revenues topping $700 million in Michigan.

Fewer teens  are dying from accidents and disease, but teen deaths from suicide continue to rise.

The Michigan chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is offering two programs to high schools for students, teachers and parents in an effort to address this issue.

The phrase "you have cancer" might be one of the most terrifying collections of words a person can hear in their lifetime.

Many readers have heard that phrase spoken to them, or  have had a close friend or relative experience it. The level of anxiety and other psychological issues that accompany a cancer diagnosis can be overwhelming for many people.

To help combat that, there is now a subspecialty of oncology. It’s called psycho-oncology.

In a close vote of 217 to 213, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a new health care insurance plan this afternoon.

For weeks, Republicans have struggled to gain enough votes to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.