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Congress returns from its summer recess with a long list of tasks and only a few work days to get them done. On top of the annual spending bills needed to keep the government operating, on the list are bills to renew the global HIV/AIDS program, PEPFAR, and the community health centers program. Meanwhile, over the recess, the Biden administration released the names of the first 10 drugs selected for the Medicare price negotiation program.
Twelve of the largest drugstores in the U.S. sent shoppers’ sensitive health information to Facebook or other platforms, according to an investigation by The Markup and KFF Health News.
The federal government’s ambitious plan to end the HIV epidemic, launched in 2019, has generated new ways to reach at-risk populations in targeted communities across the South. But health officials, advocates, and people living with HIV worry significant headwinds will keep the program from reaching its goals.
A U.S. District Court ruling overturned the section of the Affordable Care Act that makes preventive health services — from colonoscopies to diabetes screenings and more — available at no cost to consumers.
Research shows offering clean syringes to people who misuse IV drugs is effective in combating the spread of HIV. But an epidemiologist and advocates say state and local officials in West Virginia, home to one of the worst HIV outbreaks in recent years, have taken measures that render syringe exchange less accessible.
The Affordable Care Act required that health insurers provide many medical screenings and prevention services at no out-of-pocket cost to health plan members. But insurers and employers may consider adding cost sharing for preventive services now that a federal court ruled the ACA’s mandate is unconstitutional.
A federal judge in Texas — the same one who tried to strike down the Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional in 2018 — has ruled against some of the ACA’s preventive benefits, including the requirement that employers cover medication to prevent HIV. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs tries to make abortions slightly more available to veterans and their dependents. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet, and Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews KHN’s Lauren Sausser, who reported and wrote the latest KHN-NPR “Bill of the Month” installment.
Five years after HIV tore through a rural Indiana town as a result of widespread drug use, a syringe and needle exchange program was set up in rural Nevada to prevent a similar event.
Some people living with HIV and some state health officials are raising concerns about part of the federal effort to end the HIV epidemic: a new technology that analyzes blood samples to find emerging outbreaks. The critics say it’s too invasive and stigmatizing and might not be more effective than older public health approaches.
The man who forged a successful working relationship with Democratic health giants, such as Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Henry Waxman, fell back on his deep conservative roots as opposition grew to the Affordable Care Act and the administration of President Barack Obama.
The Department of Labor issued rules in July clarifying that health plans need to cover the costs of prescription drugs proven to prevent HIV infection, along with related lab tests and medical appointments, at no cost to patients. More than half a year later, the erroneous billing continues.
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
Safety-net clinics especially are bracing for how the drugmaker’s policy shift could reduce their budgets and hamstring their ability to provide care to an at-risk population.
Public health resources have shifted from one pandemic to the other, and experts fear steep declines in testing and diagnoses mean more people will contract HIV and die of AIDS.
Most private insurance will be required to cover drugs, like Truvada, that offer protection against HIV infection, without making plan members share the cost.
President-elect Joe Biden inherits a global health landscape changed by the Trump administration more than under any Republican president since Ronald Reagan.
For those who are sexually active, condoms are widely recognized as the most effective method for preventing HIV and other diseases, if used correctly. But a fact sheet with “unapproved condom imagery” was taken down from a federal website, KHN has learned.
KHN Midwest editor and correspondent Laura Ungar shares her expertise on Vice President Mike Pence’s public health track record as he leads the nation’s novel coronavirus response. Ungar covered a 2015 Indiana HIV outbreak and its fallout amid Pence's tenure as governor.
In February 2015, an unprecedented HIV outbreak fueled by intravenous drug use hit the small city of Austin, Indiana. Under pressure, then-Gov. Mike Pence reluctantly allowed a syringe exchange. Five years later, HIV is undetectable in most of the outbreak patients. Still, the lessons haven’t been learned nationwide. Fewer than a third of the 220 counties deemed by the federal government as vulnerable to similar outbreaks have active syringe-exchange programs.
Chinese doctors and public health officials are turning to a variety of drugs as they seek an effective treatment for patients sickened by the novel coronavirus. The evidence behind some of these medicines is flimsy, researchers acknowledge, but human trials are the only way to know whether these drugs work.
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