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California’s health insurance exchange will reduce how much some patients pay for care next year, including hospital deductibles, appointment copays, and prescription drugs. Lawmakers pressed Gov. Gavin Newsom to make good on a four-year-old pledge to use proceeds from a tax penalty on uninsured people to help people pay for treatment.
Medical and RV industry professionals say hospitals that offer RV parking are easing access to health care for some patients who drive long distances for treatment, like many rural residents.
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, a national hotline, reached its first-year milestone this month.
The owner of one of California’s largest chains of pain management clinics has agreed to pay California, Oregon, and the federal government to settle Medicare and Medi-Cal fraud allegations.
Congress has until October to avert cuts to a Medicaid program intended to support safety-net hospitals that, in practice, improves the bottom lines of other hospitals, too. Hospital leaders say now is not a good time for the cuts — which lawmakers have so far postponed 13 times.
Although nearly 40% of Americans 60 and older are obese, Medicare doesn’t cover weight loss medications. Meanwhile, studies haven’t thoroughly examined new drugs’ impact on older adults.
FDA Commissioner Robert Califf has called misinformation one of the deadliest killers in the United States. As the FDA tries to fight that scourge, it sometimes stumbles.
House Republican legislation promises more health insurance options but fewer protections, even as the Biden administration seeks to rein in short-term plans, which were expanded in the Trump era.
KFF Health News 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.
A bankruptcy judge will soon decide whether a Central Valley hospital needs to liquidate to repay its creditors. Its largest creditor, St. Agnes Medical Center, is the very entity that backed out of purchasing the Madera Community Hospital last December.
With the community’s help, former co-workers came together to fill gaps in care left by the loss of doctors and departments at a Gallup, New Mexico, hospital.
State officials have promised to boost funding for California’s Medicaid program by $11.1 billion starting next year, with most of that money earmarked for higher payments to doctors, hospitals, and other providers. But the details have yet to be worked out, and powerful health industry groups are jockeying for position.
Doctors and hospitals hold an exalted position in American life, retaining public confidence even as other institutions such as government, law enforcement, and the media are losing people’s trust. But with health care debt out of hand, medical providers risk their good standing.
It’s been the summer of broken weather records around the world — for heat, rain, and wildfire smoke — advertising the risks of climate change in a big way. But, apparently, it’s not enough to break the logjam in Washington over how to address the growing climate crisis. Meanwhile, in Texas, women who were unable to get care for pregnancy complications took their stories to court, and Congress gears up to — maybe — do something about prescription drug prices. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Shefali Luthra of The 19th, and Rachel Cohrs of Stat join Julie Rovner, KFF Health News’ chief Washington correspondent, to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Meena Seshamani, the top administrator for the federal Medicare program.
A little-noticed provision of sweeping legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration would make it easier to fly human organs from donor to recipient.
As politicians bash privately run hospitals for their aggressive debt collection tactics, consumer advocates say one North Carolina family’s six-figure medical bill is an example of how state attorneys general and state-operated hospitals also can harm patients financially.
Efforts to improve addiction care in jails and prisons are underway across the country. But a rural Alabama county with one of the nation’s highest overdose rates shows how change is slow, while law enforcement officials continue to treat addiction as a crime rather than a medical condition.
The Food and Drug Administration’s approval is viewed as groundbreaking, but many details still must be figured out.
Many people working in global health thought eradicating smallpox was impossible. They were wrong. Season 2 of the Epidemic podcast, “Eradicating Smallpox,” is a journey to South Asia during the last days of variola major smallpox. Explore the timeline to learn about significant dates in the final push to end the virus.
To defeat smallpox in South Asia, public health workers had to navigate the region’s layered cultural ideas about the virus. They also dreamed big. In Episode 1, host Céline Gounder wonders how the U.S. might tap into similar “moral imagination” to prepare for the next public health crisis.
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