How mergers between Catholic institutions and secular hospitals are changing the nature of health care.

What the health care industry can learn from how The Cheesecake Factory does business.

A longtime Harper’s contributor considers America as he dies: “When I died, I died of many things: the failing systems; the weakening of age; the exhaustion of the long war against dying. Finally, I succumbed to the lack of ethics in a California hospital, killed by filth and neglect.”

A 7,000-word anatomy of the chaotic 9 minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its health care ruling.

The author on his mother’s deteriorating health and the “price of longevity.”

Ina May Gaskin and the battle for at-home births.

Recently discharged, an undocumented immigrant discusses his treatment.

In a city with a large immigrant population, it is not rare for hospitals to have one or more patients who, for reasons unrelated to their medical condition, do not seem to leave. At Downtown, where a bed costs the hospital more than $2,000 a day, there are currently three long-term patients who no longer need acute care but cannot be discharged because they have nowhere to go. The hospital pays nearly all costs for these patients’ treatment. One man left recently after a stay of more than five years.

On the combined force of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Virginia, a Tea Party stalwart.

How focusing on the neediest patients could radically reduce health care costs.

How misdirected incentives in the bewildering medical supply industry keep innovative, life-saving equipment from reaching hospitals.