Medicaid&theUninsured 110421

3 States Limit Nursing Home Profits in Bid to Improve Care
By Susan Jaffe Following the devastating impact of covid-19 on nursing homes, state lawmakers want to be sure that government and private payments primarily go to improve care and staffing.

Nursing Home Residents Overlooked in Scramble for Covid Antibody Treatments
By JoNel Aleccia A federal allocation plan meant to ensure equitable distribution of powerful monoclonal antibody treatments for high-risk patients fails to prioritize nursing home residents, a population that remains particularly vulnerable even after vaccination.

Confronting Ageism in Health Care: A Conversation for Patients, Caregivers and Clinicians
A frank, practical and empowering conversation about this pervasive, systemic problem of bias, discrimination or stereotyping based on age.

‘They Treat Me Like I’m Old and Stupid’: Seniors Decry Health Providers’ Age Bias
By Judith Graham Ageism in health care settings, which can result in inappropriate or dangerous treatment, is getting new attention during the covid pandemic, which has killed more than half a million Americans age 65 and older.

Direct Primary Care, With a Touch of Robin Hood
By Bernard J. Wolfson Photos by Heidi de Marco Some doctors, sick of mainstream health care’s red tape, are finding refuge in practices that combine concierge medicine with charity care.

How to Crush Medical Debt: 5 Tips for Using Hospital Charity Care
By Emily Pisacreta The law says nonprofit hospitals are supposed to offer low-income patients financial assistance. But the average person doesn’t know about it. Here’s how to get help.

6 Months to Live or Die: How Long Should an Alcoholic Liver Disease Patient Wait for a Transplant?
By Aneri Pattani In a practice dating to the 1980s, many hospitals require people with alcohol-related liver disease to complete a period of sobriety before they can be added to the waiting list for a liver. But this thinking may be changing.

Unvaccinated? Don’t Count on Leaving Your Family Death Benefits
By Michelle Andrews Some front-line workers who die of covid-19 have been considered eligible for accidental death benefits because it is presumed their infection was contracted on the job. But some employers now suggest that if the workers didn’t follow established safety protocols, such as getting vaccinated, those benefits may be denied.

‘An Arm and a Leg’: Need Surgery to Save Your Life? Tips for Getting Insurance to Pay
By Dan Weissmann Laurie Todd calls herself the “Insurance Warrior” and is sharing her strategies for getting health insurance companies to bend to her will.

‘An Arm and a Leg’: Hello? We Spend 12 Million Hours a Week on the Phone With Insurers
By Dan Weissmann In this episode, we get our bearings on self-funded insurance plans, and how they affect the average — sometimes burned-out — American worker trying to get answers about insurance.

Children With Disabilities Face Special Back-to-School Challenges
By Heidi de Marco For children with special needs returning to an L.A. classroom, mask-wearing is the least of their troubles.

‘Down to My Last Diaper’: The Anxiety of Parenting in Poverty
By Jenny Gold Diapers are a baby essential, but no federal program helps families cover their considerable cost. Jennifer Randles, a professor of sociology at Fresno State in California, spoke with KHN about her novel research exploring the outsize role “diaper math” plays in the lives of low-income moms.

Community Clinics Shouldered Much of the Vaccine Rollout. Many Haven’t Been Paid.
By Rachana Pradhan and Rachel Bluth Federally qualified health centers from California to Michigan are mired in a bureaucratic mess over how they should be paid under Medicaid for each dose of covid vaccine given. In California alone, clinics await reimbursement for at least 1 million shots, causing a “massive cash flow problem.”

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Dems Agree to Agree, But Not on What to Agree On
Negotiations on the health parts of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda are getting serious but have yet to produce a deal every Democrat can support. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration remains without a nominated leader but manages to take the first steps toward approving over-the-counter hearing aids. Joanne Kenen of Politico and Johns Hopkins, Tami Luhby of CNN and Rachel Cohrs of Stat join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Plus, for extra credit, the panelists recommend their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read too.

Watch: Going Beyond the Script of ‘Dopesick’ and America’s Real-Life Opioid Crisis
KHN teamed up with Hulu for a discussion of America's opioid crisis, following the Oct. 13 premiere of the online streaming service’s new series “Dopesick.”

Atención primaria directa con un toque de Robin Hood
By Bernard J. Wolfson St. Luke's Family Practice es una respuesta local a los problemas sistémicos de la sanidad estadounidense, como el agotamiento de los médicos, la insatisfacción de los pacientes y el hecho de que millones de personas sigan careciendo de asistencia. 

“Me tratan como si fuera vieja y estúpida”: adultos mayores denuncian a profesionales de salud que los discriminan por edad
By Judith Graham Las experiencias de Whitney revelan la discriminación por edad en los entornos de atención médica, un problema de larga data que está recibiendo nueva atención durante la pandemia de covid, que ha matado a más de medio millón de estadounidenses de 65 años y más.