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Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has a plan to protect farmworkers from extreme heat and wildfire smoke, but farmworkers who pick California grapes say they need more, as climate change brings more extreme weather.
State leaders are cutting public health spending and laying off workers hired during a pandemic-era grant boom. Public health officials say the bust will erode important advancements in the public health safety net, particularly in rural areas.
A collection agency sought court authority to garnish a patient’s wages to pay a disputed surgery bill. But after the patient showed up in court to argue the bill was bogus, the judge declined to let the bill collector seize her money.
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.
For decades, state and federal agencies have restricted or delayed tribes and tribal epidemiology centers from accessing public health data, a blackout that leaves health workers in Native American communities cobbling together information to guide their work, including tracking devastating disease outbreaks.
Although Novo Nordisk and Lilly lump together the pharmacies that compound semaglutide and tirzepatide with internet cowboys selling fake drugs, there is a distinction. The FDA has offered Americans little clarity about the vast gray and black markets for the drugs.
Idaho’s law criminalizing abortion drove a high-profile exodus of OB-GYNs from the state more than a year ago. Now, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back abortion protections enshrined by Roe v. Wade, patients in rural Idaho are forced to leave their community for gynecological care.
Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous county, is spearheading a comprehensive plan to tackle a $2.9 billion medical debt crisis. Hospitals are still getting on board with the project, which is helmed by the public health department.
Vaccine scare tactics haven’t shifted, but more parents are falling for them. Here’s what the rhetoric gets wrong and how it endangers children.
A new analysis shows that students graduating from U.S. medical schools were less likely to apply this year for residency positions in states with abortion bans and other significant abortion restrictions.
Oregon is giving Medicaid patients air conditioners and other equipment to help them cope with soaring heat, smoky skies, and other dangers of climate change. Oregon health officials hope to show other states and the federal government that they can save lives and money.
Tires emit huge volumes of particles and chemicals as they roll along the highway, and researchers are only beginning to understand the threat. One byproduct of tire use, 6PPD-q, is in regulators’ crosshairs after it was found to be killing fish.
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.
Disputes between hospitals and Medicare Advantage plans are leading to entire hospital systems suddenly leaving insurance networks. Patients are left stuck in the middle, choosing between their doctors and their insurance plan. There’s a way out.
After the 1996 Dickey Amendment halted federal spending on research into firearms risks, a small group of academics pressed on, with little money or political support, to document the nation’s growing gun violence problem and start to understand what can be done to curb the public health crisis.
A recently unsealed lawsuit alleges Aledade Inc. developed billing software that boosted revenues by making patients appear sicker than they were.
The expansion of Catholic hospitals nationwide leaves patients at the mercy of the church’s religious directives, which are often at odds with accepted medical standards.
A soon-to-be-finalized legal settlement would offer transgender women in Colorado prisons new housing options, including a pipeline to the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. The change comes amid a growing number of lawsuits across the country aimed at improving health care access and safety for incarcerated trans people.
The designers of the Affordable Care Act might have assumed that they spelled out with sufficient clarity that millions of Americans would no longer have to pay for certain types of preventive care. But they didn’t reckon with America’s ever-creative medical billing juggernaut.
Native Americans die by suicide at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group, yet research into effective and culturally appropriate interventions is uncommon.
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