Latest KFF Health News Stories
Editorial writers weigh in on issues surrounding women’s reproductive rights.
Media outlets report on news from California, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, Maryland, Virginia, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Georgia and Washington.
The tragedy continues one year after a gunman took the lives of 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. While local leaders distributed information about how students can get help, others say the services being offered don’t go far enough.
This Year’s Flu Season Wasn’t As Extreme As The Last One, But It’s The Longest Lasting In Decades
Usually, flulike symptoms drop quickly after the peak of the season, which usually occurs mid- to late-February, but this season those symptoms have plateaued. “It looks like we still have a ways to go,” said Lynnette Brammer, the head of the CDC’s Domestic Influenza Surveillance team. In other public health news: memory, cancer treatment, sleep deprivation, contrast agents for CT scans, older fathers, stillbirths and more.
The disease is too complex, experts argue. But drugmakers are still hoping for a foot in that lucrative door. In other pharmaceutical news: insulin drug pricing, pharmacy benefits managers, postpartum depression drugs, a rare genetic disease, and more.
The FDA’s longstanding position is that implants are essentially safe as long as women understand they can have complications. But that mentality could be changing.
A spokesman for the agency said 1.8 million people had both their banking information and addresses revealed, and about 725,000 people had just their addresses shared. The victims included those from the California wildfires in 2017 and Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.
The new guidance all applies to group homes and home-based care settings. In other news, the number of providers participating in CMS’ advanced bundled payment model has dropped.
“To be honest, when we started this, I didn’t think it was as big an issue as it obviously is,” said Daniel Nathrath, CEO of Ada Health. The phenomenon, though, is, in some respects, no surprise: There’s a large body of research showing that people are more willing to confess potentially taboo thoughts to a computer than to a fellow human a few feet away.
GoFundMe Joins Social Media Peers In Cracking Down On Antivaccination Movement
“Campaigns raising money to promote misinformation about vaccines violate GoFundMe’s terms of service and will be removed from the platform,” GoFundMe spokesman Bobby Whithorne said. The company joins other high-profile tech companies that are stepping up to regulate their online communities. Other vaccination news comes out of Kentucky, Oregon, Michigan and Minnesota.
The Guggenheim’s decision follows in the footsteps of Britain’s National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Museum in cutting off ties with the family’s charitable arm. The Sacklers are currently mired in a court battle over their role in the opioid epidemic.
Twice in recent months, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has sided with liberal justices in abortion cases–a sign that to some suggests that the court isn’t likely to rewrite its longstanding holding, laid down in Roe v. Wade, that a woman has a constitutional right to an abortion before the fetus attains viability. Meanwhile, there’s a growing push on the Democrats’ side to allow abortion coverage in publicly funded health programs. And in Ohio, health officials cut off funding to Planned Parenthood following court ruling over public money going to the group.
For all the attacks it weathers, the health care system makes up a fifth of the nation’s economy and is quite baked into the country’s landscape. Completely upending that would be a large disruption at the level that experts say is unprecedented. Meanwhile, despite other countries having “universal coverage” in concept, their systems are different enough from the “Medicare for All” proposals that have gained steam in the U.S. that they don’t really serve as helpful models.
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
Opinion writers weigh in on these health topics and others.
Editorial pages focus on these health policies and others.
Each week, KHN’s Shefali Luthra finds interesting reads from around the Web.
Media outlets report on news from D.C., Texas, Rhode Island, New York, Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona, Ohio, Florida, Minnesota, California, Missouri, Louisiana, Maryland and Massachusetts.
News from state legislatures comes out of Louisiana, Iowa, New York, Minnesota, Connecticut, Florida and California.
An analysis finds that 78 percent of all individuals included in genomic studies of disease up to 2018 were of European descent. In other public health news: loneliness in teens, childhood trauma, trigger warnings, cancer and vaccines by mail.
