KFF Health News Weekly Edition: March 15, 2024
How Your In-Network Health Coverage Can Vanish Before You Know It
Elisabeth Rosenthal
One of the most unfair aspects of medical insurance is this: Patients can change insurance only during end-of-year enrollment periods or at the time of “qualifying life events.” But insurers’ contracts with doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies can change abruptly at any time.
A New Orleans Neighborhood Confronts the Racist Legacy of a Toxic Stretch of Highway
Drew Hawkins, Gulf States Newsroom
New federal funds aim to address an array of problems created by highway construction in minority neighborhoods. These are economic, social, and, perhaps above all, public health problems. In New Orleans’ Treme neighborhood, competing plans for how to deal with harm done by the Claiborne Expressway reveal the challenge of how to mitigate them meaningfully.
When Copay Assistance Backfires on Patients
Julie Appleby
Drugmakers offer copay assistance programs to patients, but insurers are tapping into those funds, not counting the amounts toward patient deductibles. That leads to unexpected charges. But the practice is under growing scrutiny.
Maybe It’s a Health Care Election After All
Health care wasn’t expected to be a major theme for this year’s elections. But as President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump secured their respective party nominations this week, the future of both Medicare and the Affordable Care Act appears to be up for debate. Meanwhile, the cyberattack of the UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Change Healthcare continues to do damage to the companies’ finances with no quick end in sight. Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, and Joanne Kenen of Johns Hopkins University and Politico Magazine join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Kelly Henning of Bloomberg Philanthropies about a new, four-part documentary series on the history of public health, “The Invisible Shield.” Plus, for “extra credit” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week that they think you should read, too.
Montana, an Island of Abortion Access, Preps for Consequential Elections and Court Decisions
Arielle Zionts
A 25-year-old state Supreme Court ruling protects abortion rights in conservative Montana. That hasn’t stopped Republicans and anti-abortion advocates from trying to institute a ban.
They Were Injured at the Super Bowl Parade. A Month Later, They Feel Forgotten.
Bram Sable-Smith and Peggy Lowe, KCUR
In the first of our series “The Injured,” a Kansas family remembers Valentine’s Day as the beginning of panic attacks, life-altering trauma, and waking to nightmares of gunfire. Thrown into the spotlight by the shootings, they wonder how they will recover.
Exclusive: Social Security Chief Vows to Fix ‘Cruel-Hearted’ Overpayment Clawbacks
Fred Clasen-Kelly
New Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley is promising to change how the agency reclaims billions of dollars it wrongly pays to beneficiaries, saying the existing process is “cruel-hearted and mindless.”
Concerns Grow Over Quality of Care as Investor Groups Buy Not-for-Profit Nursing Homes
Harris Meyer
For-profit groups own more than 70% of U.S. nursing homes. Industry leaders and researchers wonder whether corporations and investors can succeed where not-for-profit organizations have struggled. Or, will quality of care suffer in the name of making money?
Secret Contract Aims to Upend Landmark California Prison Litigation
Don Thompson
California has commissioned an exhaustive study of whether its prisons provide a constitutional level of mental health care, which it could use to try to end one of the lawsuits that have federal courts overseeing the state’s prisons. But corrections officials won’t disclose even basic details of the consultants’ contract, including its cost to taxpayers.
West Virginia City Once Battered by Opioid Overdoses Confronts ‘Fourth Wave’
Taylor Sisk
Years of struggle prepared residents in Cabell County, West Virginia, to confront the latest wave of the opioid epidemic as mixtures of fentanyl and other drugs claim lives nationwide.
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A New $16,000 Postpartum Depression Drug Is Here. How Will Insurers Handle It?
April Dembosky, KQED
A pill form of an effective drug for postpartum depression hit the market in December, but most insurers do not yet have a policy on when or whether they will pay for it. The hurdles to obtain its predecessor medication have advocates worried.
How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Pits Parental Rights Against Public Health
Amy Maxmen
Framed in the rhetoric of choice, Tennessee’s new law governing childhood vaccinations is among more than a dozen recently passed or pending nationwide that set parental freedom against community and children’s health.
California Voters Are Skeptical That More Money Is the Answer to Homelessness
Angela Hart
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature ballot measure to address mental illness, addiction, and homelessness with a $6.4 billion bond and other reforms, is barely ahead in the ongoing ballot count. The slim margin reflects a growing unease among Californians over the governor’s homelessness initiatives.
California Attorney General Boosts Bill Banning Medical Debt From Credit Reports
Molly Castle Work
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has thrown his weight behind state Sen. Monique Limón’s legislation to bar unpaid medical bills from showing up on consumer credit reports. If passed, California would join just a few other states with such protections.
The Medicare Episode
Dan Weissmann
On this episode of “An Arm and a Leg,” host Dan Weissmann breaks down the complicated and expensive world of Medicare with practical tips to pick the right plan and avoid penalties.
Why Covid Patients Who Could Most Benefit From Paxlovid Still Aren’t Getting It
Arthur Allen
Price worries, bureaucratic obstacles, and “I’m-over-covid-itis” slow uptake of a drug that’s complicated to take but often effective.