As Biden Fights Overdoses, Harm Reduction Groups Face Local Opposition
The Biden administration’s latest plan to address opioid overdose deaths includes $30 million for harm reduction measures, but many conservative states don’t allow them.
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The Biden administration’s latest plan to address opioid overdose deaths includes $30 million for harm reduction measures, but many conservative states don’t allow them.
Trauma surgeons say that the weapons used in mass shootings are not new but that more of these especially deadly guns are on the street, causing injuries that are difficult to survive.
Some consumers who think they are signing up for Obamacare insurance find out later they actually purchased a membership to a health care sharing ministry. But regulators and online advertising sites don’t do much about it.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency will reimburse many families up to $9,000 in funeral expenses for loved ones who died of covid-19. But fewer than half of eligible families have applied, while others have run into application problems.
Some doctors are getting licensed in multiple states so they can use telemedicine and mail-order pharmacies to provide medication abortions to more women. At the same time, states are cracking down on telemedicine abortions, blunting the efforts of out-of-state doctors.
Despite increased public awareness, research advances, and wider insurance coverage for autism therapies, children often wait months — in some cases more than a year — to get an autism diagnosis and begin intervention services. The waits can be longer for Black and Latino children, and families in rural areas are also disadvantaged, without access to providers.
Almost a year after the American Rescue Plan Act allocated what could amount to $25 billion to home and community-based services run by Medicaid, many states have yet to access much of the money due to delays and red tape.
Service dogs can help people with ailments from autism to epilepsy, but a trained dog can cost up to $40,000 — and insurance won’t cover it.
The top 12 states using antibody therapies produced by Regeneron and Lilly — which research shows don’t work against the omicron variant — include several Southern states with some of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates, but also California, which ranks among the top 20 for fully vaccinated residents.
Relatives say it is important they be allowed to go into nursing homes because staff shortages are affecting care. And many are still upset about lengthy separations from loved ones during lockdowns earlier in the pandemic.
High demand for covid screening and scarce supply have opened the door to bad actors, and officials in some states are sounding the alarm about dubious street testing operators that could put people’s personal data, their health or wallets at risk.
More than 20 years after the terrorist attacks, the World Trade Center Health Program is considering covering the most common form of uterine cancer, in what patient advocates say is a key acknowledgment of the women affected by the 9/11 fallout.
As hospital systems and insurers adjust to the pandemic, their contract negotiations grow increasingly fraught. Contracts for in-network care are ending without a new deal, leaving patients suddenly with out-of-network bills or scrambling to find new in-network providers.
Theater companies and musical ensembles are restarting live performances after a crippling pandemic pause. In some conservative states, artists find creative ways to get around state laws that go against public health recommendations.
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.
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.
Hundreds of towns, cities and states across the U.S. have ignored part of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and now it’s costing them billions of dollars to comply.
The American Rescue Plan Act, passed by Congress in March, provides $130 billion to cities, counties and tribes — with few restrictions on how the money can be spent.
Following a February KHN investigation into covid vaccine accessibility, the Department of Justice reached an agreement with five New York government agencies to make their websites accessible to people who are visually impaired.
Since August, school bus drivers and monitors have died of covid-19 in at least 10 states, including Georgia and Florida. Masks are required on school buses, but enforcing the rules in districts without school mask mandates is especially hard to do.
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