All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

A new Pentagon report concludes that more than a third of Americans between 17 and 24 are unfit for military duty because of physical or medical problems - and the main reason is obesity. The percentage of young adults considered obese is now four times what it was just a generation ago.

Add to that men and women ineligible because of a limited education, criminal records, or illegal drug use - and the report concludes almost three-quarters of potential recruits are unable to enlist. Military leaders call that a threat to national security.

The obstacle facing the Pentagon is a symptom of a much larger disease.

This war may not be in Afghanistan or Iraq but the battle of the bulge in this country is just as dangerous and costly. Fitness to serve is one thing, but in or out of uniform, Americans need to focus on fitness to live long and health lives.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that nothing is certain except death and taxes.

The health care reform proposal involves both of those boogey-men -two realities that Americans have never really embraced.

The plan calls for voluntary end-of-life counseling. Medicare would reimburse doctors for having that talk with patients every five years and lawmakers now have the unenviable task of explaining this doesn't mean rationing health care or deciding who lives or dies.

Experts say the government could save as much as 90 billion dollars in 10 years by preventing over-treatment for the dying. But others wonder why it's necessary to pay doctors for something they should be doing anyway and worry that when cost is connected to care, the latter will suffer.

While we do not have to go gently into that good night, there's no reason not to have a reasonable conversation with your family and doctor about the quantity of care you want and the quality of life you'll have.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

On a campaign stop in 2008, then candidate Barack Obama firmly declared "we'll tell the pharmaceutical companies 'thanks but no thanks for overpriced drugs.'"

Cut to August, 2009.

As he tries to lower the temperature in the health care debate those drug companies are now part of his prescription They're pledging to spend as much as $150 million for an ad campaign promoting the plan and $80 billion over a decade to help pay for it.

It's an unlikely alliance for a man they once considered a foe.

In exchange, they stand to gain protection against government price controls on drugs.

It's a strange turnabout for a man who called a law preventing Medicare from negotiating costs a "profound mistake."

Members of his own party say this asks too little of drug companies. The cost of drugs after all is one reason why health care is out of control.

Let's hope this new deal isn't just treating the symptoms instead of curing the disease.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

If 6,300 Americans were dead in the streets -- victims of violent murders in a drug war -- the outrage would fill the front pages of every newspaper, and dominate every cable news program.

We would declare war on the drug lords.

The Mexican government says that's the number of people killed last year -- more than all the coalition deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Mexico's President, Felipe Calderon, has taken action.

His government reversed previous policies and cracked down on drugs -- and the people who sell them. But his nation is losing ground and needs help.

Visiting Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: "It is America's insatiable appetite for illegal drugs that fuels the drug trade."

Ninety percent of the guns used in that brutal battle come from the United States.

It's as much our war as theirs. We share the blame. It's time to share the outrage.

That's a page from my notebook.

This week, the American Academy of Pediatricians recommended that some kids as young as 8 take drugs to fight high cholesterol. And suggested that we start checking cholesterol in toddlers as young as 2.

Americans seem to be looking for a quick fix for everything from brittle bones to anxiety, from sleeplessness to erectile dysfunction. And there's a drug - or drugs - for all of them.

Is it all a bit too much? Click on the monitor for more.

Sharyl Attkisson is an investigative correspondent for CBS News.

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I can only imagine that they tell themselves the cheap, illegally imported chemotherapy drugs are safe – that they're just as good as any of the more expensive versions that are sold legally in the United States.

That's the only thing that makes it even slightly comprehensible as to why trusted oncologists – cancer doctors – would opt to buy delicate, lifesaving I.V. chemotherapy drugs on-the-cheap from a source in which there's no way to know whether the medicine has been produced properly, transported properly or stored properly. Even if the drugs somehow could be guaranteed safe, the story is still shocking: Doctors aren't passing along the savings (for buying the cheap, imported drugs) to their ill patients. Instead, they're pocketing the profits.

The makers of some of today's popular prescription drugs have been reticent to publish the complete results of clinical studies.

But consumers deserve nothing short of full disclosure.

For more of this page from my Notebook, just click the monitor at left.

As a CBS News correspondent, I learn something new every day. My latest education: oral contraception and its history. It came through reporting on Lybrel, the controversial new birth-control pill that was just approved by the FDA.

Lybrel eliminates the monthly menstrual cycle — indefinitely. Women take it every single day for as long as they hope to avoid pregnancy.

The choice to keep or dispense with periods is now up to the women of America. Lybrel's maker, Wyeth, and even doctors involved in its clinical trials say it's no riskier than taking traditional birth-control pills.

Other health care professionals would prefer more study on Lybrel's long-term effects. But no matter where you fall in the argument, here are some facts I found very interesting:

All forms of the pill work by stopping ovulation and suppressing periods.
That should mean, technically, women taking the traditional "three weeks on/one week off" pill packet shouldn't bleed every month. But they do.

According to longtime contraceptive researcher Sheldon Segal, a professor of pharmacology at Cornell Medical School, those aren't "real periods." Women on traditional birth-control pills aren't shedding an unfertilized egg with the uterine lining. They're experiencing hormone withdrawal bleeds from the placebo effect.

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