The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom dedicated nearly all of his State of the State address Wednesday to homelessness. To fix that problem, he said, the state must address another one: mental health care.
It all comes down to how you define it.
Surprise bills are just the latest weapons in a decades-long war among health care industry players over who gets to keep the fortunes generated each year from patient illness: $3.6 trillion in 2018. The practice is an outrage, yet no one in the health care sector wants to unilaterally make the type of big concessions that would change things.
In February 2015, an unprecedented HIV outbreak fueled by intravenous drug use hit the small city of Austin, Indiana. Under pressure, then-Gov. Mike Pence reluctantly allowed a syringe exchange. Five years later, HIV is undetectable in most of the outbreak patients. Still, the lessons haven’t been learned nationwide. Fewer than a third of the 220 counties deemed by the federal government as vulnerable to similar outbreaks have active syringe-exchange programs.
In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, school districts, especially those with large Chinese student populations, are in uncharted territory as they apply new federal travel rules to their students. Some also are weighing requests from parents that are more about fear than science, such as whether to allow students with no travel history to stay home from school.
Although a new state tax penalty and state financial aid motivated people to sign up for health insurance this year, Covered California is reopening enrollment for those who said they weren’t aware of them.
Doctors specialize in the science of healing, but tattoo artist Eric Catalano specializes in the art of it. The single father of three does up to eight reconstructive medical tattoos for free each “Wellness Wednesday” in his small Illinois shop, drawing in nails on finger amputees, mocking up belly buttons after tummy tucks and fleshing out lips on a woman mauled by a dog.
As community hospitals struggle, they often turn to large religious-based hospital groups to bail them out. But that can limit the types of services they offer, especially reproductive health treatment such as abortion.
Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes wades through hundreds of health care policy stories each week, so you don’t have to.
As the numbers of coronavirus fatalities and infections rise, the threat posed by the outbreak in China can seem frightening. But public health officials say the risk in the United States is low. Experts discuss some important issues that can help U.S. residents understand how the epidemic is unfolding.
State legislatures are considering new bills proposing a permanent time standard instead of the spring-forward and fall-back clock changes. Most people want to stop adjusting clocks, but scientists and politicians are at odds over which time is better for society and our health.
Biden’s statement misses the mark because of messy math.
For this bonus episode of “An Arm and a Leg,” Dan Weissmann gives up the host’s chair and answers questions from reporter and colleague Sally Herships.
President Donald Trump’s proposed budget includes billions of dollars in health spending cuts, Congress gets back to work on surprise medical bills, and health care remains a top issue for the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), a former Health and Human Services secretary, joins the panel at a special taping before a live audience in Washington, D.C. Paige Winfield Cunningham of The Washington Post, Rebecca Adams of CQ Roll Call and Joanne Kenen of Politico join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more.
While Missouri has yet to have a confirmed case of coronavirus, the threat of the disease is siphoning resources from an already stretched-thin public health system.
In the first nine months of an alternative pain management program in Missouri, only a small fraction of the state’s Medicaid recipients have accessed the chiropractic care, acupuncture, physical therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy meant to combat the overprescription of opioids.
Chinese doctors and public health officials are turning to a variety of drugs as they seek an effective treatment for patients sickened by the novel coronavirus. The evidence behind some of these medicines is flimsy, researchers acknowledge, but human trials are the only way to know whether these drugs work.
Indiana was ground zero for shifting ideas about needle exchanges after a small town had an HIV outbreak in 2015 brought on by needle-sharing. But even as other parts of the country start to embrace needle exchanges amid the ongoing opioid epidemic, the sites remain controversial in Indiana. Only nine of the state’s 92 counties have them, after a series of closures and reopenings.
As lawmakers consider bills to protect patients against surprise medical bills, doctors have waged a stealth on-the-ground campaign to win over members of Congress. Here’s how they did it.
By writing in payment limits when signing hospital forms, patients might have leverage in negotiations over disputes that arise from surprise medical bills.
