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The technology has generated notices with errors, sent Medicaid paperwork to the wrong addresses, and been frozen for hours at a time, according to state audits, court documents, and interviews. While it can take months to fix problems, America’s poorest residents pay the price.
As billions of dollars from settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors go to state and local governments, efforts to reduce the epidemic’s harm can be hamstrung by drug paraphernalia laws. Health authorities say distributing clean syringes to users can save lives, but in states like Pennsylvania, it may be illegal.
Federal regulators face a growing challenge — how to prevent rogue health insurance agents from switching unknowing consumers’ Obamacare coverage without making the enrollment process so cumbersome that enrollment declines.
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.
Facing widening racial disparities in overdose deaths, Philadelphia officials are sending workers and volunteers to knock on doors across the city, aiming to equip households with naloxone and other drug overdose prevention supplies. City officials hope a proactive approach will normalize naloxone as an everyday item in people’s medicine cabinets and prevent overdoses, especially among Black residents.
The national opioid settlements don’t prohibit using money for initiatives already supported by other means, but doing so could dilute the impact.
A first-of-its-kind survey of Medicaid enrollees found that nearly a quarter who were dropped from the program in the last year’s unwinding say they’re uninsured.
The broad availability of over-the-counter dental products containing fluoride has some community leaders arguing that its addition to public drinking water is no longer necessary. But public health experts worry that, much like vaccines, fluoridation may be a victim of its own success.
Most of the doctors the FDA tapped to advise it on an Abbott medical device had financial ties to the company. The FDA didn’t disclose the payments.
Insurance agents say it’s too easy to access consumer information on the Affordable Care Act federal marketplace. Policyholders can lose their doctors and access to prescriptions. Some end up owing back taxes.
Hospitals are increasingly stretching a velvet rope, offering “concierge service” to an affluent clientele. Critics say the practice exacerbates primary care shortages.
New Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley is promising to change how the agency reclaims billions of dollars it wrongly pays to beneficiaries, saying the existing process is “cruel-hearted and mindless.”
For-profit groups own more than 70% of U.S. nursing homes. Industry leaders and researchers wonder whether corporations and investors can succeed where not-for-profit organizations have struggled. Or, will quality of care suffer in the name of making money?
A recently unsealed lawsuit alleges Aledade Inc. developed billing software that boosted revenues by making patients appear sicker than they were.
Illegal supplies of fentanyl are being cut with xylazine, a powerful horse tranquilizer. Overdoses involving this veterinary sedative are growing nationally and now Florida officials are tracking the deaths.
Cities are experimenting with new ways to meet the rapidly increasing demand for behavioral health crisis intervention, at a time when incidents of police shooting and killing people in mental health crisis have become painfully familiar.
Casinos in several states are fighting efforts to ban smoking, and trying to roll back existing anti-smoking laws. One planned facility even moved outside a city’s limits because of voter-approved smoking restrictions.
Mental health courts have been touted as a means to help reduce the flow of people with mental illness into jails and prisons. But the specialized diversion programs can struggle to live up to that promise, and some say they’re a bad investment.
The Social Security Administration is reclaiming billions of dollars in alleged overpayments from some of the nation's poorest and most vulnerable, leaving some people homeless or struggling to stay in housing, beneficiaries and advocates say.
As opioid settlement dollars land in government coffers, a swarm of businesses are positioning themselves to profit from the windfall. But will their potential gains come at the expense of the settlements’ intended purpose — to remediate the effects of the opioid epidemic?
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