Pregnant women who have had a cesarean section before most likely end up having one again, according to one in three hospitals that say a repeat cesarean is the only option.
Experts say that 9 out of 10 women end up getting a cesarean if they’ve had one before, a fact that worried those in attendance at a national conference this week on vaginal birth after cesarean, or VBAC.
There is no agreement about how often VBAC should be attempted, but experts agree that the current rate of cesarean births is too …

President Barack Obama says his health care overhaul plan is needed to stop insurance companies from raising prices and refusing to cover people who are already sick.
Obama says insurers believe they can continue raising rates and refusing to cover the ill because there is so little competition among health insurers.
The White House released excerpts of a speech he will deliver later Monday in Philadelphia. In it, Obama asks, “How much higher do premiums have to rise until we do something about it?”
Insurers have blamed rising rates on the growing price …

Billionaire Warren Buffett says health care costs are a major drain on U.S. businesses and act like an “economic tape worm.”
The head of the holding company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said Monday on CNBC that America’s health care system needs fundamental reform to attack costs because it’s not practical to continue devoting roughly 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product to health care.
Buffett says much of the rest of the world is paying about 9 percent of their GDP on health care and have more doctors and nurses per person.
He …

Personal spending jumped by a larger amount than expected in January but Americans’ incomes barely budged as millions of Social Security recipients did not get their usual cost of living boost. The weak income growth could depress spending in the months ahead, acting as a further drag on the fragile economic recovery.
The Commerce Department said Monday that personal spending rose by 0.5 percent in January, slightly better than expected. But incomes edged up only 0.1 percent, significantly lower than the 0.4 percent gain that economists had expected.
The income gain was …

Democrats pushed hard to revive President Barack Obama’s stalled health care overhaul on Friday — and pointed to glimmers of hope — but the long odds facing them seemed little changed after Obama’s extraordinary summit with both parties’ leaders.
At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama would unveil a “way forward” next week on legislation that has been his foremost domestic priority. Obama, who will first discuss the strategy with Democratic congressional leaders, said at Thursday’s bipartisan marathon that he’s open to several Republican ideas, including medical malpractice …