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Under a rule that kicked in Jan. 1, hospitals are required to make public the prices they negotiate with insurers. That’s a lot more information than was previously required, which was only the posting of “chargemasters” — the hospital-generated list prices that few consumers or health plans actually pay.
A growing body of research shows that overuse and misuse of antibiotics in children’s hospitals is helping fuel superbugs, which typically strike frail seniors but are increasingly infecting kids. And the pandemic is making things worse.
As long as humans encroach on nature, pandemics are inevitable — making it important to concentrate resources in areas where people and wildlife are linked.
In some parts of the country, the surge in covid cases is overwhelming coroners, morgues, funeral homes and religious leaders. It has required ingenuity and even changed the rituals of honoring the dead.
While many private insurers cap what members pay in health costs, Medicare does not. Democrats and Republicans in Congress have proposed annual limits ranging from $2,000 to $3,100. But there’s disagreement about how to pay for that cost cap.
Yolanda Coar was 40 when she died of COVID-19 in August 2020 in Augusta, Georgia. She was also a nurse manager, and one of nearly 3,000 frontline workers who have died in the U.S. fighting this virus, according to an exclusive investigation by The Guardian and KHN.
In a fracas between a largely rural county and neighboring cities, class and politics are just as relevant as the coronavirus. People are getting “stupid and mean,” as one mayor put it.
It typically takes years of persuasion to change habits in the name of health safety. Local officials who are stuck with the responsibility of enforcing statewide pandemic-related mandates are trying to transform behavior fast.
There are already signs that the distribution of the COVID vaccines will be messy, confusing and chaotic.
The National Academy of Sciences cites journalists’ “Lost on the Frontline” project in a push to expand federal tracking of worker fatalities.
At least 2,900 health workers have died since the pandemic began. Many were minorities with the highest levels of patient contact.
The coronavirus pandemic colored just about everything in 2020. But there was other health policy news that you either never heard or might have forgotten about: the Affordable Care Act going before the Supreme Court with its survival on the line; ditto for Medicaid work requirements. And a surprise ending to the “surprise bill” saga. Joanne Kenen of Politico, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News and Sarah Karlin-Smith of Pink Sheet join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more.
Months before federal officials authorized experimental vaccines to ward off the coronavirus in humans, scientists tried a veterinary vaccine in endangered ferrets. Drugmakers are researching similar efforts for other animals proving vulnerable to the virus, such as farmed minks, in part to guard against virus mutations that could pose new risks to people.
A gynecologist in Carlsbad, New Mexico, tested the 60-year-old grandmother for various sexually transmitted infections without her knowledge. Her share of the lab fee was more than $3,000.
The federal government expects vaccinations to be available to everyone who wants them by summer — though glitches are inevitable. If enough of us get vaccinated, we could wave goodbye to the pandemic in 2021.
Recent deaths on a small Native American reservation in Montana have underlined the heightened risks for Indigenous youths and how suicide prevention programs are struggling to operate during the pandemic.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said in July that California would target businesses that flagrantly violate public health orders. But the state’s strategy of education over enforcement means that businesses that don’t comply face few — if any — consequences.
After missteps in Washington, each state and county is left to juggle where to send vaccines first and how to get them to each nursing home, hospital local health department and even school.
A long-debated measure to stop doctors, hospitals and other health care providers from billing patients for charges not covered by their insurance will gain congressional approval as part of the sweeping government spending package.
Democrats are treating health care as a more critical issue than their Republican counterparts in Georgia’s two U.S. Senate runoffs. It’s a strategy they hope will woo independents and motivate base voters. The results will determine which party controls the chamber during the first years of the Biden administration.
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