The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
While insulin is the poster child for outrageous prescription costs, patients are paying ever more to treat depression, asthma, HIV, cholesterol and more. And the pandemic has overtaken efforts to force the issue in Congress.
President Donald Trump has the legal power to authorize a COVID vaccine over the objections of the Food and Drug Administration and vaccine manufacturers. Such a move could further erode public trust in a vaccine and foist an unsafe shot on Americans.
Few places loom as large in the race for the White House as here in Pinellas County, the largest swing county in the ultimate swing state. And polls show that many people will have the pandemic and its public health and economic consequences on their minds when they cast their votes.
With the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a lawsuit brought by Republican state officials has become the latest existential threat against the federal health law, scheduled for oral arguments at the Supreme Court a week after the general election in November.
Laura Derrick’s personal fight for affordable health care eventually landed her in the middle of a historic political fight ― and a movement that transformed American health policy.
California’s death count for the first five months of the pandemic was 13% higher than average for the same period during the prior three years. Subtract the deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 and experts say that still leaves scores of “excess” deaths among people of color that likely were mistakenly excluded from the coronavirus death tally.
The legislation falls short of the big challenge.
As fires burn longer and closer to cities throughout the West, researchers are trying to understand the lasting health impacts by studying a Montana town previously smothered by wildfire smoke.
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
The Trump administration is primed to approve a plan designed to help lower costs of some prescription drugs by allowing states to import them from Canada. The announcement could come before Election Day, and Florida appears to be in line to go first.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, more patients are administering dialysis to themselves at home rather than receiving it in a clinic. Although home dialysis limits exposure to the virus, it comes with its own challenges.
More than 70,000 residents and staff members at nursing homes and assisted living facilities have died of COVID-19, and others are under strict rules designed to keep the disease from spreading. That has evoked concern that living in a communal facility could be dangerous.
President Donald Trump this week issued a prescription drug pricing order unlikely to lower drug prices, and he contradicted comments by his director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the need for mask-wearing and predictions for vaccine availability. Meanwhile, scandals erupted at the CDC, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration. And the number of people without health insurance grew in 2019, reported the Census Bureau, even while the economy soared. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Tami Luhby of CNN and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss this and more. Plus, for extra credit, the panelists recommend their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.
Epidemiologists and disease modelers tried to predict what would happen when students moved back to campus. Although some universities listened to their advice, that didn’t stop outbreaks from happening.
Rural hospitals have been closing at a quickening pace in recent years, but a number of inner-city hospitals now face a similar fate. Experts fear that the economic damage inflicted by the COVID pandemic is helping push some of these urban hospitals over the edge at the very time their services are most needed.
Midwifery was a tradition among slaves from Africa, but in more recent decades, pregnant Black women have generally shunned the approach. Now, home births and midwives are making a comeback in the Black community.
A KHN review found more than 20 states either don’t count or have incomplete data on the use of COVID-19 antigen tests, leaving the public in the dark about the true scope of the pandemic.
Respiratory symptoms stemming from coronavirus infection and smoke inhalation are too similar to distinguish without a full workup. This is complicating the jobs of health care workers as wildfires rage up and down the West Coast.
The National Institutes of Health has suggested minorities should be overrepresented in COVID-19 vaccine trials — perhaps at rates that are double their percentage of the U.S. population. But efforts to recruit patients from racial minority groups are just beginning, while some trials have already advanced to phase 3.
