The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
24,341-24,360 of 113,179 results
Some treatments have resulted in severe injuries, including blindness, and are imperiling the reputation of a promising industry, experts say. Scientists liken procedures promising to cure diseases like macular degeneration and ALS to modern snake oil. In other public health news: HIV, diets, fatherhood, transplants, texting dangers, supplements, diabetes, heart disease, and Sjogren’s syndrome.
This is the first study to focus on cardiovascular care, which is not currently covered by the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. The study urges continued long-term monitoring of the first responders.
The study also found that in counties where health insurance is lacking, and in those where military veterans represent a larger proportion of the population, suicide rates were higher over the 18-year period studied.
While ambulances are normally supposed to take emergency patients to the closest facility that offers that right kind of care, a new study finds that when it comes to minority patients that's not always the case. One possible explanation: Patients or their families may choose to go to a more distant hospital because it’s where they go for routine primary care.
Hospitals are closing at startling rates in rural and economically depressed areas that are already struggling to recover from financial downturns. Other hospital news comes out of New York and Florida.
Drugmakers have come under intense fire following news of more deaths of patients rationing their insulin. Novo Nordisk is the latest company to try to address the high costs of their drug. The company will start a new cash discount program that will allow many American patients to buy a month’s supply for $99 starting next year.
Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals would pay $24 million in cash to two Ohio counties, as well as donate $6 million in drugs that include addiction treatment medications. The tentative agreement — which applies only to the two counties and does not resolve other legal claims against Mallinckrodt — comes out of a flurry of intensive bargaining in recent weeks among groups of defendants and plaintiffs in opioid cases nationwide. In other news on the national drug crisis: what a Purdue Pharma bankruptcy looks like for defendants; the epidemic as an existential crisis to a tribe; the controversy of safe injection sites; and more.
Some investigators have zeroed in on vitamin E oil as a possible culprit to the outbreak of cases across the country, but other experts remain skeptical that it's any one ingredient that's causing the illness. Federal health officials are warning users that the riskiest behavior is using vaping products bought on the street instead of from a retailer. Meanwhile, media outlets round-up what the symptoms are, how many cases have cropped up in which states, what public health officials are doing about the outbreak, and more.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said that, if she is elected president, by the end of her first term the VA would expand access to health care and housing assistance to the more than 500,000 veterans with other-than-honorable discharges. "People with PTSD tend to act out. They tend to self-medicate. Which means they're going to be on drugs or they may be an alcoholic. And then they're going to get into fights and they have a really short fuse. And guess what happens? All of a sudden you don't qualify for VA," Harris said.
“We’re tackling reducing health care costs, and you’re going to have insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, doctors, a whole variety of people affected who have misgivings about it,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Lawmakers in both chambers are pursuing health care wins ahead of next year's elections.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he's waiting to see what President Donald Trump comes up with and that he won't hold votes on gun legislation that he thinks won't get anywhere. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have sent a letter to the president urging him not to squander this momentum for regulations by "by acceding to NRA-backed proposals or other weak ideas that will do nothing to stop the continuing, horrific spread of gun violence and may, in some cases, actually make our communities less safe.”
Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
Editorial pages focus on these public health issues and others.
Opinion writers weigh in on vaping's impact on health.
Media outlets report on news from Texas, California, New York, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Georgia, Wyoming, Louisiana, North Carolina and New Hampshire.
Experts say ultrasounds have been used to monitor pregnancy for decades, and there’s no meaningful evidence that they can cause harm to a developing fetus. But some women say they would rather trust their bodies than take the chance. In other public health news: aid-in-dying, biobanks, measles, blood pressure, PTSD and ovarian cancer, a left-handedness gene, and more.
When mandatory evacuation orders come down at popular retirement communities located all along the southeastern seaboard, the elderly might have few options. News on the health industry's response to Dorian comes from Georgia and Florida, as well.
The expensive new therapies can be life-changing, but working out how to pay for them has become a pain point for the health industry. “Employers are saying, ‘I just can’t afford it,’” said CVS Health Chief Medical Officer Troy Brennan. In other pharmaceutical news: drugmakers' try to gain traction for next-generation sequencing but the going is slow; and Pfizer gets fast-track approval for a rare lung cancer drug.
Some Democrats are wary about handing a health care win to President Donald Trump and Republicans this close to elections. That doesn't even account for the big players in the industry gearing up to block the bills with all the lobbying power they can muster. In other health industry and costs news: hospital mergers, Medicare Advantage, providers' affiliates, and using Groupon for medical treatments.
The Trump administration policy sparked national outrage when stories emerged about how children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases would be impacted. Advocates say that for immigrants seeking medical deferments, deportation could very well equal a death sentence.
© 2026 KFF