As Water Reuse Expands, Proponents Battle the ‘Yuck’ Factor
As drought and climate change threaten water supplies, municipalities around the country are ramping up water reuse efforts. But they have to overcome the “yuk” factor.
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As drought and climate change threaten water supplies, municipalities around the country are ramping up water reuse efforts. But they have to overcome the “yuk” factor.
Florida’s six-week abortion law allows exemptions in cases of rape, incest, and human trafficking, and to save the health or life of the mother. But the recent history of such exemptions in other states suggests that very few women will be able to take advantage of them.
As much of the U.S. faces extremely high summer temperatures, Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has taken steps that effectively eliminate mandated water breaks for construction workers. In response, protesters from the Lone Star State came to Washington, D.C., to press for federal protections for such outdoor workers.
President Joe Biden is kicking off his reelection campaign in part by trying to finish a decades-long effort to establish parity in insurance benefits between mental and physical health. Meanwhile, House Republicans are working to add abortion and other contentious amendments to must-pass spending bills. Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico, Anna Edney of Bloomberg, and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KFF Health News’ chief Washington correspondent, Julie Rovner, to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews KFF Health News’ Céline Gounder about her podcast “Epidemic.” The new season focuses on the successful public health effort to eradicate smallpox.
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.
The first FDA-authorized cigarettes with 95% less nicotine than traditional smokes will go on sale in California, Florida, and Texas starting in early July. Anti-smoking groups oppose greenlighting just one plant biotech’s products and instead urge federal regulators to set a low-nicotine standard for the entire industry.
As evidence supporting medication treatment for opioid addiction mounts, judges, district attorneys, and law enforcement officials in rural America are increasingly open to it after years of insisting on abstinence only.
Physicians and attorneys say it’s a question of when — not if — a pregnant person dies from lack of care in a state with an abortion ban, potentially setting the stage for a malpractice lawsuit that could pressure providers to reconsider delaying or denying care.
A federal program meant to reduce maternal and infant mortality in rural areas isn’t reaching Black women who are most likely to die from pregnancy-related causes.
As more states restrict gender-affirming care for transgender people, some are relocating to more welcoming destinations, such as California, Illinois, Maryland, and Nevada, where they don't have to worry about being locked out of medical care.
The pandemic disrupted the massage industry. Now those who specialize in hospice massage therapy are in demand and redefining their roles.
Montana, Alaska, Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming are among the latest states moving to provide health coverage for up to a year after pregnancy through the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people.
The federal government’s arcane process for medical coding is influencing which reconstructive surgery options are available, creating anxiety for breast cancer patients.
After local leaders in rural Nevada reached an impasse over a proposed Planned Parenthood clinic, an anti-abortion activist pitching local abortion bans across the U.S. arrived at their remote City Hall.
Before the covid-19 public health emergency ended, Medicare advocates around the country noticed a rise in complaints from beneficiaries who received at-home covid tests they never requested. Bad actors may have used seniors’ Medicare information to improperly bill the federal government — and could do it again, say federal investigators.
The computer program, designed in 1996 to be a secure location for foster children’s medical and school records and histories of neglect and abuse, is older than Google — and has had far fewer updates.
As marijuana has become far more mainstream, potent, and sometimes dangerous, uneven regulation at the state and federal levels leaves consumers at risk.
Laws granting rights to unborn children have spread in the decades since the U.S. and Missouri supreme courts allowed Missouri’s definition of life as beginning at conception to stand. Now, a wrongful death lawsuit involving a workplace accident shows how sprawling those laws — often intended to curb abortion — have become.
The controversial practice of administering progesterone to people after they have taken the abortion pill mifepristone may be coming to an end in Colorado. Pills have emerged as the latest front in the war over abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.
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