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President Joe Biden’s Cabinet members are fanning out across the country to promote benefits coming to rural America from covid relief and infrastructure legislation.
Congenital syphilis rates keep climbing, according to newly released federal data. But the primary funding source for most public health departments has been largely stagnant, its purchasing power dragged even lower by inflation.
Colorado was among the first states to embrace wastewater testing to track the coronavirus, an important public heath intervention that can give early warning of outbreaks.
Bucking the alarming spike in overall homicides in recent years, the homicide rate involving young children is down 70% in California from three decades ago. The nation has seen a parallel, albeit slower, decline.
Loan closets are playing an important role as supply chain issues and the rising price of aluminum have led to shortages in medical equipment such as wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, and knee scooters.
Nearly all psychiatric residential treatment centers for children in South Carolina operate as for-profit businesses — some backed by private equity — and many prioritize out-of-state kids because it’s better for the bottom line. The scramble to secure treatment for children and teenagers has become so competitive that South Carolina will spend millions more each year as of April 1 to keep out-of-state patients from flooding the state’s treatment facilities.
Becca Levy of Yale University talks with “Navigating Aging” columnist Judith Graham about how people can alter ingrained perceptions of aging — which are often formed unconsciously and are unrecognized.
KHN staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
The company awarded the state’s Medi-Cal Rx contract was taken over by another company, Centene. That left the state with a contractor it didn’t pick — one that has been accused of overbilling nine other state Medicaid programs and is now under investigation by California.
To contain the spread of covid, hospitals and nursing homes barred visits. The separation and isolation took a toll on patients and families. Florida is one of the latest states to ensure access for visitors.
President Joe Biden welcomed former President Barack Obama back to the White House this week to announce a new policy for the Affordable Care Act that would make subsidies available to more families with unaffordable employer coverage. Meanwhile, Congress struggled to find a compromise for continued federal funding of covid-19 vaccines, testing, and treatments. Tami Luhby of CNN, Shefali Luthra of The 19th, and Jessie Hellmann of CQ Roll Call join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more.
A bill one family considered paid wrongfully resurfaced, resurrecting painful memories. It’s a scenario that’s not uncommon but grievously unsettling.
Emergency medical services are a lifeline in regions with scarce medical care. But paramedics, trained to respond to patients with life-threatening injuries, are in short supply where they’re needed most.
About 50% of the covid-19 patients who got the last-ditch life support treatment at Vanderbilt University Medical Center died. Researchers wanted to know what happened to the many patients they had to turn away because ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machines and the specialized staffers needed were in short supply. The grim answer: 90% of those turned away perished.
Federal health officials haven’t taken a clear position on whether a high-dose influenza vaccine — on the market since 2010 — is the best choice for people 65 and older. Many in that group already opt for the costlier enhanced shot. Those who get the standard vaccine are disproportionately members of ethnic and racial minorities.
As overdoses surge and opioid settlement dollars flow, funding to North Carolina rehab foreshadows national discussion about the best approaches to treatment.
It is a perilous time to throw low- and middle-income Americans off the insurance cliff: A new omicron subvariant is spreading, and a program that provided coronavirus testing and covid-19 treatment at no cost to the uninsured has expired.
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.
Many sleep scientists maintain that people who prefer to stay up late could improve their mental and physical health by synchronizing their natural sleep cycles with workday demands. The flexible work schedules that came with covid’s work-from-home trend, according to one new study, backs up this idea.
The more than $16 billion, decade-long effort by the Department of Veterans Affairs was designed to provide seamless electronic health records for patients from enlistment in the military past discharge.
