Health insurers are increasingly relying on outside firms to help rein in the skyrocketing costs of imaging scans like MRIs. But when these middlemen clash with doctors about what tests are needed, consumers can get caught in the crossfire.

As a baby boomer growing up without fluoridation, I had 14 cavities before my 18th birthday, including seven at one particularly mortifying dental visit.

A generation later, my teenage daughters, who've grown up in a fluoridated city, have a combined total of none.

As the slowing economy swells the ranks of the unemployed -- and uninsured -- more people are getting help from prescription-drug assistance programs normally aimed at providing medications to the poorest Americans.

Battling a health insurer when it refuses to cover certain treatments can be aggravating and time-consuming. But if you choose to join the growing number of people who are appealing coverage denials, there are several strategies that can bolster your case.

HONG KONG -- Chinese doctors have long experimented with combinations of herbs to cure disease. If a plant extract helped to fight an infection, why bother trying to figure out which molecule did the trick? It worked, and that's what counted.

The Food and Drug Administration has bungled its effort to build a new system for detecting the side effects of medicines after they go on the market, delaying its implementation by at least four years, according to a report commissioned by the agency itself.

As a result, the agency must continue to rely on its existing "dysfunctional" computer system as a primary tool for tracking the safety of medications sold in the U.S., according to the November 2006 report, which hasn't been made public.