Updated 5:05 p.m. Wed., 03.10.10 - President Barack Obama told a friendly crowd at St. Charles High School today that he can help pay for his health-care reforms, following the example of Harry S Truman, by finding waste and fraud in government spending. (Photo by Bill Greenblatt | UPI)

Posted 11:15 a.m. Tues., 03.10.10 - President Barack Obama will be in St. Charles on Wednesday, trying to drum up support for health-care reform. The Beacon asked a number of local people what they would tell Obama about health care if they had the opportunity. Here are their responses.

Posted 12:10 p.m. Fri., 03.05.10 - A Missouri House budget appropriations committee has stripped all state funding from community health centers. That reducation of 5-15 percent of the health centers' total budgets, coming when high unemployment has increased the demands for their services, would mean layoffs and less care. (Photo from sxc.hu)

Posted 4:40 p.m. Thurs., 03.04.10 - Why is a reform of the U.S. health-care system needed? Health and Human Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says people being priced out of buying insurance is one reason. She also called on insurance companies to voluntarily post their data online, covering such issues as their profits, their payouts in claims and their losses.

Updated 9:35 a.m. Fri., 02.26.10 - Democrats and Republicans spent Thursday in an unprecedented, high-stakes meeting to try to reach consensus on health reform. While they met, some Missourians cheered -- and booed -- them on. Taking the long view, some academics point out that most health-care reform in the past 25 years has been passed by the reconciliation process.

Updated 2:43 p.m. Wed., 02.17.10 - St. Charles County ranks second in healthy residents in Missouri, behind Platte County, according to a first of a kind study rating the overall health of counties in all 50 states. Neither the city of St. Louis or St. Clair County in Illinois did well in the just-released study.

Posted 4:45 p.m. Sun., 02.14.10 - The Missouri Dental Association says that putting all Medicaid dollars for dental services in one pot and setting up a single-payer system to run it would produce a more efficient and less costly system. Such a system, which 16 states have set up, would reduce bureaucracy and attract more dentists to work with needy patients, the association says.

Posted 8:57 p.m. Sun., 02.07.10 - Soon-to-be released data from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality are expected to show that Missouri ranks highest among the 16 states surveyed in the use of antipsychotics for kids under age 18 and also for those under age 6. To address this issue, Missouri is putting together a panel to guide the Missouri Legislature on a way to impose restraints on the extent to which these drugs are prescribed to children under Medicaid.