Latest KFF Health News Stories
“The resources and terms of the agreement will help abate the ongoing crisis the state is facing,” state Attorney General Mike Hunter (R) said in a statement released after the hearing. The deal does not release Teva from any separate claims that might be brought by individual cities or counties.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer ruled that the clinic has not yet exhausted its options outside of court to handle the dispute over its license to perform abortions. The judge directed Planned Parenthood to take the issue up with the Administrative Hearing Commission, a panel that typically handles disputes between state agencies and businesses or individuals. Abortions are allowed to continue at the clinic until Friday.
Court Clears Way For Transgender Kansans To Change Birth Certificates To Reflect Their Sex
Kansas becomes the 48th state to allow these birth certificate changes. A lawsuit filed by three transgender Kansas residents and the Kansas Statewide Transgender Education Project alleged that state policy against changing the gender on birth records violated the equal protection and due process clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
Could Aggression Detector Software Identify Potential Mass Shooters In Schools Before They Strike?
In the wake of devastating school shootings, more officials are open to such out-of-the-box thinking as installing aggression detectors in their hallways. But ethical questions remain. In other public health news: genetic tests, arsenic, microbes, autism, wildfires, and more.
Some Of Worst-Run Nursing Homes In Country Are Taxpayer-Backed With Mortgages Insured By HUD
The number of taxpayer-backed nursing homes with serious deficiencies highlights the federal government’s spotty history of monitoring for-profit facilities. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s mortgage insurance program is a vital financial lifeline to the nursing home industry, but some people contend that the program must do more to ensure better business practices.
Twenty Democratic presidential hopefuls are slated to take the stage in Miami for highly anticipated debates that will stretch over Wednesday and Thursday. Health care, an emerging dividing issue for the candidates, is expected to feature prominently during the nights’ arguments. In other 2020 election news, Maine’s House speaker, Sara Gideon, announces her candidacy against Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who received criticism over her stance on then-nominee Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And Beto O’Rourke proposes a war tax to fund veterans’ health care.
The health care law established so-called risk corridors meant to help insurance companies cope with the risks they took on when they decided to participate in the marketplaces. The law’s drafters hoped that payments into the program would offset payments out. However, losses substantially outpaced gains. The government was supposed to make up much of the difference, but Congress later enacted a series of appropriation riders that seemed to bar the promised payments.
President Donald Trump released an executive order on Monday that would compel insurers, doctors and hospitals to be more transparent about health care costs, which have always been a closely guarded secret in the industry. But, because of the peculiarities of health care, it’s not clear that the move will have the intended effect. What could happen is that once companies know what their competitors are charging, they could all raise their prices in concert.
The children had been detained for weeks without access to soap, clean clothes or adequate food, The Associated Press found in a damning investigation. “There is a stench that emanates from some of the children because they haven’t had an opportunity to put on clean clothes and to take a shower,” said Elora Mukherjee, the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. It is not clear where the children have been moved, and some attorneys say the possibilities may not be an improvement. In related news, HHS Secretary Alex Azar says the rhetoric surrounding the issue is “outrageous” while Democrats’ infighting is threatening to derail emergency funding to the border.
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
Opinion writers weigh in on these health topics and others.
The closings continue a trend for the state that has lost 30 nursing homes in the past 18 months. The attorney general is investigating the recent closings that are forcing hundreds of vulnerable Medicaid patients to be uprooted. News on nursing homes comes from Connecticut, Ohio and Michigan, as well.
The Oregonian/OregonLive launched an investigation into the Oregon Health Authority’s management of moving patients out of specialized care. Chris Bouneff, director of Oregon’s branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said the newsroom’s findings are “disturbing.” “We don’t have many others who look after us,” Bouneff said of people with severe mental illness. “And if that state agency can’t do it, and it didn’t do it in this instance, who can we trust?”
Cerner System Malfunction Leads To Two-Hour Outage Of Medical Records At Dozens Of Hospitals
Universal Health Services said read-only versions were available during the time, but declined to say how many patients’ records were affected. Other technology news: A period-tracking app might hold clues to fertility.
“It is long past time to recognize and apologize for our role in the discrimination and trauma caused by our profession and say, ‘We are sorry,'” said American Psychoanalytic Association President Dr. Lee Jaffe. Other news on the LGBTQ community focuses on transgender health and safety.
The rounds from that style of weapon are three times faster and strike with more than twice the force of other bullets. “Organs aren’t just going to tear or have bruises on them, they’re going to be, parts of them are going to be destroyed,” says Cynthia Bir. In other public health news: gene-edited babies, alcohol, vitiligo, the cautious generation, cancer, CBD, and more.
Rollout Of New Complex Medicaid Plan In Nebraska Keeps Many From Getting Medical Care, Advocates Say
“They’re grudgingly implementing the policy — and I think ‘grudgingly’ is the operative word,” said state Sen. John McCollister. News on Medicaid is also from Georgia.
While experts say a prominent legal expert’s warnings over the constitutionality of legislation address surprise medical bills are weak, it is still unlikely that any new regulations will skate through without being challenged in court.
The federal government now estimates that a record 50 million rural Americans live in what it calls “health care shortage areas,” where the number of hospitals, family doctors, surgeons and paramedics has declined to 20-year lows. A look at a pop-up clinic in Tennessee shows just how bad that reality is for the people living it.
The judge in the battle over the last-remaining abortion clinic in Missouri had given the state a deadline to make a decision over the license, saying officials couldn’t just allow it to lapse.
