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Health plans limit physical or occupational therapy sessions to as few as 20 a year, no matter the patient’s infirmities. The limits persist despite federal rules banning insurers from setting annual dollar limits on the care they will provide.
As politicians demand that more Medicaid recipients work, many people with disabilities say their state programs’ income and asset caps force them to limit their work hours or turn down promotions.
Union Health has made a new bid to buy its only rival hospital in Terre Haute, Indiana. The system passed one hurdle after lawmakers watered down a bill that threatened the proposed deal. That means the merger will now face a likely showdown with Indiana’s new governor.
Mississippi, Tennessee, and West Virginia — states with some of the worst health outcomes — also have some of the highest childhood vaccination rates. But doctors and health officials worry a rising tide of vaccine skepticism is causing those public health bright spots to dim.
After rival hospitals in Terre Haute scuttled plans to merge, a state senator has introduced a bill to forbid similar mergers by repealing a state law he helped write.
Researchers found toxic “forever chemicals” in drinking water wells dotting California’s rural farming regions, far from known contamination sources. The discovery complicates the state’s drinking water problem, which disproportionately affects farmworkers and communities of color.
Access to information in languages other than English is protected by various federal, state, and local policies. But researchers tracking them say that as rural America grows more diverse, people not proficient in English face added barriers to critical public health information and services.
Two Indiana hospital rivals withdrew their application to merge after facing pushback from the Federal Trade Commission and the public.
This year’s start date in most states is Nov. 1, and consumers may encounter new scams as well as important rule changes.
Longer life spans, rising rates of divorce, widowhood, and childlessness, and smaller, far-flung families are fueling a “gray revolution” in older adults’ living arrangements. It can have profound health consequences.
The end of pandemic-era Medicaid coverage protections coincided with changes in more than a dozen states to expand coverage for lower-income people, including children, pregnant women, and the incarcerated.
Hundreds of Native American tribes are getting money from settlements with companies that made or sold prescription painkillers. Some are investing it in sweat lodges, statistical models, and insurance-billing staffers.
Nurses are telling lawmakers that there are not enough of them working in hospitals and that it risks patients’ lives. California and Oregon legally limit the number of patients under a nurse’s care. Other states trying to do the same were blocked by the hospital industry. Now patients’ relatives are joining the fight.
TMJ disorders affect as many as 1 in 10 Americans and yet remain poorly understood and ineffectively treated. Many common treatments used by dentists lack scientific evidence.
As enrollment in private Medicare Advantage plans grows, so do concerns about how well the insurance works, including from those who say they have become trapped in the private plans as their health declines.
More than 1 million immigrants, most lacking permanent legal status, are covered by state health programs. Several states, including GOP-led Utah, will soon add or expand such coverage.
In the past year, opioid settlement money has gone from an emerging funding stream for which people had lofty but uncertain aspirations to a coveted pot of billions being invested in remediation efforts. Here are some important and evolving factors to watch going forward.
Some states haven't begun using opioid settlement funds intended to help curb the opioid epidemic. Meanwhile, more than 100,000 Americans died of an overdose last year.
At least 17 states have issued PFAS-related fish consumption advisories, KFF Health News found. But with no federal guidance, what is considered safe to eat varies significantly among states, most of which provide no regulation.
Providers and health care advocates warn a proposed rule change in Montana would jeopardize immunity levels in child care centers and communities. Efforts to change vaccination exemption rules are underway in other states, too.
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