People covered by Medicare tend to have more health problems than younger people. But many of them can ill afford the medications they need. The result is that they may not take them, allowing readily controllable health problems to evolve into unmanaged crises.

I think the history is such that we underestimate the mental health problems, ... As people see what they consider sort of a hopeless situation - bodies floating on the water, the scene like they saw in the Superdome - people are not ready for that. They are not prepared to deal with it.

This is a loss we could ill afford,

An accumulating body of evidence suggests that this translates into health benefits for those who consume cocoa or dark chocolate with a cocoa content of 60 percent or more. Benefits have been seen in endothelial function, a measure of blood vessel health, blood pressure, insulin levels, and serum lipids.

Epidemic obesity is unquestionably a health crisis in the United States, and for that matter, in much of the world. But it is a crisis in slow motion, one that has crept up on us over years, and even decades.

Obesity is arguably the gravest public health threat in the United States today.