Los Angeles Times

California consumers don't have easy access to prices for medical care, according to a report card that gave the state a grade of D for its dismal showing.

California consumers don't have easy access to prices for medical care, according to a national report card that gave the state a letter grade of D for its dismal showing.

Prices for generic prescription drugs can often go on a roller coaster. The FDA should take action to help consumers find out the true cost of such medicine.

Wanda Ferrin fills her husband's prescription for the generic antibiotic doxycycline at a Target in Simi Valley. For years, the medication has cost her $6 a month.

L.A. County supervisors are supporting five state bills that would help counties create court-ordered outpatient mental health treatment programs.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has thrown its weight behind Laura's Law — which allows counties to create court-ordered outpatient mental health treatment for the severely ill who have cycled through hospitals or jails and refused voluntary care — saying in a resolution that such programs have been shown to "significantly reduce" homelessness, hospitalization and arrest.

L.A. County health and probation officials are trying to better identify and treat problems of girls in custody that often go undiagnosed and untreated.

Latrice lifts the sleeve of her gray sweatshirt to reveal small, dark lines — scars from slicing her forearm over and over to drown out pain from years of sexual abuse. She says she was an alcoholic, dropped out of school in the eighth grade and got pregnant at 16.

Julie Weiss lost her father to pancreatic cancer in 2010. Now she has a goal of running 52 more races, for her father and many others, to reach the $1-million mark.

If all goes according to plan, Julie Weiss will cross two finish lines when she completes the Los Angeles Marathon on Sunday.

Two doctors from Keck Medical Center at USC set the record straight on preparing for and recovering from a marathon. They talked with The Times and answered readers' questions on Monday. Some excerpts of the online chat follow. Or listen to the entire conversation here.

Things seemed simpler this year at the enormous annual trade show for the natural products industry. There was a bit of a back-to-the-old-days vibe among the thousands of things to eat or drink, to use to clean your person or your house, to improve your digestion or your sleep.

Alzheimer's patients and their families should understand what Medicare does and doesn't cover as a part of long-term financial planning.

For seniors and their families, Alzheimer's disease and its hefty price tag are an increasingly scary prospect.

California needs 20,000 workers to sign people up in the new health insurance exchange. In the process, they would have access to sensitive consumer data.

State officials say they need 20,000 people for the job of signing up millions of Californians for health insurance in the coming months, but a battle is brewing over whether these workers should undergo background checks and fingerprinting.

Lawmakers want the medical board to use a state database to identify doctors who prescribe drugs recklessly.

SACRAMENTO — After hearing emotional testimony from parents whose children died of drug overdoses, lawmakers in Sacramento called Monday for the Medical Board of California to mine a statewide database of prescriptions to help identify doctors who recklessly prescribe narcotics.

CT scans of people who lived on three continents as much as 5,000 years ago suggest humans may have a basic predisposition to cardiovascular problems, researchers say.

People tend to think of heart disease as a scourge of modern life, brought on by vices such as greasy fast food, smoking and the tendency to be a couch potato.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a longtime critic of the county's health bureaucracy, has begun gathering signatures for a 2014 city ballot measure.

A nonprofit group that delivers services to people with HIV and AIDS wants voters to force the city of Los Angeles to create its own health department, separate from the county.

The governor wants to scale back some of the Medi-Cal benefits that the Legislature has proposed. But Democrats see this as a good time to fill some aid gaps.

SACRAMENTO — As Democratic lawmakers speed to implement President Obama's healthcare overhaul in California, they are finding themselves at odds with the leader of their own party: Gov. Jerry Brown.

Plantar fasciitis. If you haven't had to deal with it personally, just ask around. Chances are you know lots of people who can describe it in great detail: stabbing heel pain and agonizing steps followed by a frustratingly slow recovery. Plantar fasciitis — an inflammation of the plantar facsia, a thick band of tissue that runs along the arch from the heel to the toes — has become so ubiquitous that podiatrists can practically make the diagnosis before a patient even sets foot in their office.

Take your pick next weekend: a 26.2-mile sweat-slicked slog or a 3.1-mile jog in which you are likely to get blasted with powders in all the colors of the rainbow.

Putting the Wilson Steam 99S, Babolat AeroPro Drive, Head YouTek Graphene Speed Pro and Prince EXO3 Warrior 100 to the test.

Put a bunch of brand new, high-tech tennis rackets in front of a handful of pretty good middle-aged 4.0 players (7.0 being Roger Federer and 1.0 being an untrained monkey), and they won't care what kind of Nobel Prize-winning innovations went into building them. But they will tell you what works. Here's how they rated the hottest new tennis technology, all about $200 retail, on a cold winter night in suburbia under the lights.

If you don't want your upper arms waving long after you've said goodbye, you'll need to work on your triceps.

Not so long ago, people made juice by squeezing oranges on a little cone-shaped tool. How quaint, compared with the machines and shops and ingredients that are part of the world of juicing.

A national review of the Army's behavioral health workforce outlines delays in care, inaccurate diagnoses and a need for more workers.

SEATTLE — Problems with combat stress in soldiers have escalated so rapidly that the Army has doubled its behavioral health workforce over the last five years and still needs to hire more help, according to a nationwide review of the military's troubled system for handling the mental wounds of war.

Bacteria don't discriminate between the homeless and the affluent; the contagion does not respect neighborhood boundaries.

There's a $200-million hotel on the drawing board for downtown Los Angeles, so tourists from around the globe can kick up their heels at LA Live.