Longer Looks: New York And Surprise Medical Bills; The Fertility Doctor’s Secret; And Medicare For America
Each week, KHN's Shefali Luthra finds interesting reads from around the Web.
Vox:
Surprise Medical Bills: How New York Tackled The Issue With Arbitration, And Won
When Claudia Knafo needed spine surgery in 2012, she interviewed multiple surgeons and ultimately settled on one whose website claimed to take her health insurance. She called the doctor’s office and confirmed he was in network. At an appointment before her surgery, she handed over her insurance cards to be photocopied. Knafo’s operation was successful and her recovery smooth. But a few weeks later, she got bad news: The website was wrong and the surgeon wasn’t in network. He didn’t have any contract with her health plan. (Sarah Kliff, 3/19)
The Atlantic:
The Fertility Doctor's Secret
The first Facebook message arrived when Heather Woock was packing for vacation, in August 2017. It was from a stranger claiming to be her half sibling. She assumed the message was some kind of scam; her parents had never told her she might have siblings. But the message contained one detail that spooked her. The sender mentioned a doctor, Donald Cline. Woock knew that name; her mother had gone to Cline for fertility treatments before she was born. Had this person somehow gotten her mother’s medical history? (Sarah Zhang, 3/18)
Slate:
Beto O’Rourke Health Plan Is Not Medicare For All, But It Is Ambitious.
Beto O’Rourke may not be feverishly churning out policy white papers like some of his presidential rivals, but over the last few days, the hand-wavy former representative from Texas has at least started clarifying his position on health care. And for a candidate who seems to be carving out space in the Democratic field as a relative moderate, it’s strikingly ambitious. (Jordan Weissmann, 3/18)
New York Magazine:
Tia Is The Gynecologist For The Self-Care Generation
Tia, a new women’s wellness clinic in New York, wants to disrupt health care, and specifically, gynecology, by asking patients to track not just their periods, but their every physical and emotional fluctuation. (Katie Heaney, 3/20)
The Atlantic:
Measles Outbreaks Cost Workers Without Paid Sick Leave
In June 2014, Rex Archer, the director of health in Kansas City, Missouri, quarantined five families during a measles outbreak because several of the families’ members had contracted measles. The residents were told to stay in their home and avoid returning to work for several days. (Olga Khazan, 3/19)
The New Yorker:
A Battle For My Life
The actor Emilia Clarke tells the story of surviving two brain aneurysms that struck just as “Game of Thrones” was making her a star. (Emilia Clarke, 3/21)