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Citizens Medical Center is, by most measures, a respected and respectable hospital. A non-profit, their mission is to serve their community of South Texas. And in their mission, they’ve been mostly successful, appearing on Thomas Reuters’ list of top 100 American hospitals three times over the past decade. 

And yet, the Victoria, Texas hospital has people across the country outraged. The reason: a hiring policy they instituted last year. In short, the policy requires potential employees to have a body mass index below 35. This means that a man who is 5-foot-10 and 245 pounds would not meet the hospital’s hiring requirements.

In his new PBS documentary, "U.S. Health Care: The Good News," T.R. Reid, veteran foreign correspondent for The Washington Post and author of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, explores the places that manage to balance fiscal and physical health.

When "Obamacare" first debuted, opponents of the legislation criticized its cost and reach—not the possibility that it might be unconstitutional. But this week the Supreme Court spent three days hearing arguments on the mandated health care law. Brooke speaks to Politico's Josh Gerstein about how challenging Obamacare on constitutional grounds went from a zany fringe idea to a mainstream conversation.

It's absolutely wrong for the government to force a church to provide health coverage that covers birth control, in most cases. But it has nothing to do with religion.

Georgetown Professor E.J. Dionne, Washington Post columnist and and senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, talks about Obama's proposal for religious institutions to cover contraception in their healthcare plans. 

Next week voters in Ohio, Mississippi and Maine will face a number of controversial ballot measures — from collective bargaining to health care to voting and abortion. In Ohio, a law limiting the collective bargaining of public employees is up for repeal. In Mississippi, they are fiercely debating whether a fertilized egg should be declared a person. Anna Sale, reporter for WNYC's political website It's a Free Country, joins previews these issues and talks about the potential impact on the 2012 election.

A new report ranks America's 405 best hospitals based on their quality of treatment for heart attacks, pneumonia, and other critical ailments. Some of the nation's leading health care providers are not on the list. Dr. Mark Chassin, president of the Joint Commission, the hospital certification organization that conducted the study, said, "We recognize that improvement has been happening across the country on these measures, but there are some hospitals that have achieved extraordinary levels of performance."

David Ansell tells the story of one of America's oldest and most unusual urban hospitals, Chicago's Cook County Hospital—both a renowned teaching hospital and the healthcare provider of last resort for the city's uninsured. County: Life, Death, and Politics at Chicago’s Public Hospital covers more than 30 years of its history, beginning in the late 1970s when the author began his internship there. Ansell writes of the doctors and patients, politics, and public health, and gives an account of a young doctor’s medical education in urban America, set against a backdrop of race, segregation and poverty.

Cuts to entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid are continue to be used as bargaining chips as the debate over the budget rages on in Washington. Already some states have begun cutting back their Medicaid programs. 

But a new study out today in the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that people on Medicaid see doctors more regularly, and are more financially stable and less depressed than the uninsured. These findings could be crucial selling points as lawmakers debate the effectiveness versus cost of the health program.

Kevin Outterson, associate professor of Law and associate professor of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights at Boston University School of Law, discusses Vermont's efforts to introduce a single payer healthcare system.

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April is Autism Awareness month, and advocates are pushing for new legislation in Albany sponsored by Autism Speaks that would require insurance companies to cover treatment for the developmental disorder.

Jim Tallon, president of the United Hospital Fund, talks about the new budget agreement and its effect on New York's healthcare.

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Another judge has struck down the Obama administration’s sweeping health care reform law. So far two federal judges have ruled in favor of the law’s legality, while two have ruled it unconstitutional. Twenty-six states' attorneys general brought this latest lawsuit and it’s unclear how the ruling will be interpreted in each of them. This time Judge Rodger Vinson, of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Florida ruled that the mandate to buy health insurance was so intertwined with the rest of the law that the entire act was unconstitutional.

Carl Elliott, professor at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, discusses the problems with medicine’s growing commercialism. In White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine, he looks at the social and legislative changes that have blurred the line between consumer capitalism and medicine.

Mark Levine, New York magazine contributing writer, says St. Vincent's was just the first NYC hospital to fail financially.

Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter talks about her 35 years of advocacy work in the field of mental health. She describes a system that continues to fail those in need. In Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis, she gives a powerful account of a subject previously shrouded in stigma and shadow.

In the final edition of our five-part series AIDS: Then & Now, we look at HIV around the World, and discuss how the virus has transformed lives all over the globe. Plus we’ll look at places where infection rates are changing: either raising or falling. We're joined by: Dr. Gottfried Hirnschall, Director of the HIV Department of the World Health Organization; Dr. Chris Beyrer, Professor, Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; and Gilles Van Cutsem, Medical Coordinator for Doctors without Borders.

Scenes of fear, pain, and trust between doctors and patients give viewers an intimate look at what happens at the hospital in "Boston Med," a new documentary series on ABC. The show is neither "reality TV" nor the fictionalized medical fantasy land that we see on "Grey's Anatomy" and "House." In fact, it's a very real documentary that provides an unflinching look at the relationships between doctors and patients. We talk to the show's executive producer and one of the featured doctors about gaining access and building trust, and why they made this documentary.