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Latest KFF Health News Stories

Listen: Inexpensive Nerve Drug Often Abused As Opioid Epidemic Grows

KFF Health News Original

Gabapentin, a medication approved to help patients with nerve pain or epilepsy, is being abused by people addicted to opioids to help prolong their high or stave off withdrawal from other drugs. Kaiser Health News reporter Carmen Heredia Rodriguez talks about the problem during a wide-ranging health discussion on the NPR program “On Point.”

Listen: Why Red States Challenging ACA Tread Precariously On A Popular Protection

KFF Health News Original

Many of the GOP-led states seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act could end up jeopardizing the health of their own residents, who suffer from preexisting conditions at rates higher than the national average. The ACA requires insurers to cover people with histories of illness and not charge them more for it. If the law is overturned, that protection could be lost, as California Healthline reporter Harriet Rowan explains on “The VICE Guide to Right Now” podcast.

Podcast: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’ Let’s Talk Politics

KFF Health News Original

In this episode of KHN’s “What the Health?” Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Alice Ollstein of Talking Points Memo and Rebecca Adams of CQ Roll Call talk about health care’s emergence as a possible voting issue in the coming midterm elections. Plus, Rovner interviews KHN’s Emmarie Huetteman about July’s “Bill of the Month”: a transgender woman’s “bait-and-switch” $92,000 surgical bill.