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Hundreds of people and the Federal Trade Commission weighed in on a proposed hospital merger in Terre Haute, Indiana, with most arguing that the creation of a monopoly would increase costs and worsen patient care.
Pregnant women are being asked to make large cash payments months before they deliver their babies. Some patient advocates worry this billing practice allows providers to hold treatment hostage.
Ballad Health, a 20-hospital system with the nation's largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly, serves patients in Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina.
Every family has secrets. I spent the past few years reporting about racial violence in Sikeston, Missouri. Interviewing Black families there helped me uncover my family's traumatic past, too.
As states wait for Deloitte to make fixes in computer systems, Medicaid beneficiaries risk losing access to health care and food.
In many places, victims of the opioid epidemic are silenced in decision-making about how to use opioid settlement money, a first-of-its-kind survey conducted by KFF Health News and Spotlight PA found.
“Certificate of need” laws, largely supported by the hospital industry, limit health facility construction in 35 states and Washington, D.C. Georgia lawmakers decided its law was complicating the reviving of two hospitals critical to their communities.
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.
The percentage of people who say they’ve tried to end a pregnancy without medical assistance increased after "Roe v. Wade" was overturned. One of the most common reasons for seeking a self-managed abortion was privacy concerns.
For years, Tennessee has required anyone convicted of prostitution while HIV-positive to register as a sex offender for life. In response to DOJ and ACLU discrimination suits, the state has agreed to reverse course.
911 outages have hit at least eight states this year. They’re emblematic of problems plaguing emergency response communications due in part to wide disparities in capabilities and funding.
Millions of Americans suffer from temporomandibular joint, or TMJ, disorders. The high cost and poor insurance coverage of TMJ care can bury patients in debt even as the treatments do more harm than good.
A Florida woman with no training in mental health services pretended to be a licensed social worker during online therapy sessions with Brightside Health patients.
Dozens of small cities and towns across the United States struggle not just with health care access and the loss of jobs, but also with the burden of what to do with big, empty buildings.
Since being diagnosed with HIV in 2022, Fernando Hermida has had to move three times to access treatment. A KFF Health News-Associated Press analysis found gay and bisexual Latino men account for a fast-growing proportion of new diagnoses and infections, showing they are falling behind in the fight against HIV.
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.
If Indiana officials approve a proposed hospital merger in western Indiana in the coming months, the state will have its first hospital monopoly created by a “Certificate of Public Advantage.” Other such deals have resulted in government reports documenting diminished care in Tennessee and North Carolina.
Most states that saw enrollment in the Obamacare marketplace double from 2020 to 2024 are in the South. But the enhanced federal subsidies that attracted people with $0 premiums and low out-of-pocket costs will expire next year.
Ballad Health, a 20-hospital system in Tennessee and Virginia, benefits from the largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly in the United States and is the only option for hospital care for a large swath of Appalachia.
Johns Dental Laboratories stopped making the Anterior Growth Guidance Appliance last year after a KFF Health News-CBS News investigation into allegations of patient harm. The company had “never” reported any complaints about its products to the FDA, according to the agency.
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