Today's Globe: national health reform, children's screen time, women drinkers' heart risk, radiation from CT scans

Powerful special interest groups that helped torpedo healthcare reform 16 years ago are now advocating significant changes in the nation's health insurance and delivery system.

Spending a lot of time watching TV, playing video games, and surfing the Web makes children more prone to a range of health problems including obesity and smoking, US researchers said yesterday.

Women who consume more than two alcoholic drinks a day have a higher risk of getting the most common type of heart rhythm disturbance, which can raise the chances of having a stroke, researchers said yesterday.

As many as 7 percent of patients from a large hospital system had enough radiation exposure from CT scans during their lifetime to slightly raise their risk of cancer, researchers said yesterday.