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The insurance company said that the birth of the Bull family’s twins was not an emergency and that NICU care was “not medically necessary.” The family’s experience with a huge bill sent to collections happened in 2020, but it exposes a hole in the new No Surprises law that took effect Jan. 1.
Transgender young people and their parents have stepped up to testify against legislation targeting them. But as rhetoric escalates in the political fray, what does the anti-trans legislative push mean for their mental health?
Nicolas Montero is 16, and that’s old enough to get a vaccine on his own in Philadelphia. Vaccine regulations vary around the country and, in more than a dozen states, teens can consent to their own medical care.
Dr. Mai Pham left her corporate career to spark change in a system that is failing millions of Americans with autism and other intellectual and developmental disabilities.
As some states adopt covid vaccine requirements, not everyone agrees mandates for children are the way forward. Taking a page from history: We have two paths to putting the pandemic behind us: a quicker, more certain one of mandatory vaccination or a stuttering, drawn-out, likely more deadly affair.
Many parents of children too young for vaccines are exhausted. Some feel isolated and even forgotten by those who just want to move on even as omicron continues to sweep through parts of the country.
Without a federal law governing private, for-profit residential programs for children with behavioral problems, regulation has been left to the states. But even in states that have sought to increase oversight, deaths and controversial tactics such as seclusion still happen.
Assembly member who represents Oakland, is digging into abortion, vaccines and homelessness and drawing on her own health care experiences as she drafts bills.
Amid covid-related staffing shortages and testing requirements, school systems are stretched thin. And so are parents’ nerves.
Just 18% of 5- to 11-year-olds are fully vaccinated, with rates varying significantly across the country, a KHN analysis of federal data shows. Pediatricians say the slow pace and geographic disparities are alarming, especially against the backdrop of record numbers of cases and pediatric hospitalizations.
Regular use of a more advanced screening method turns a low-cost procedure into a pricier one.
A mother’s immune response to covid can be a greater danger to the fetus than the virus itself.
After baby Dorian Bennett arrived two months early and spent more than 50 days in the neonatal ICU, his parents received a bill of more than $550,000 — despite having insurance. The Florida hospital had a not-so-helpful suggestion: monthly payments of more than $45,000 for a year.
Although covid vaccines have been available to children as young as 5 for more than a month, they’re not being offered in some rural Montana counties, and parents don’t know where to find them in others.
In the middle of a measles outbreak in 1977, the Los Angeles school system required students to be inoculated or stay out of class. Other school systems followed the practice. Will it work again now that the county is insisting that teens have their shots against covid?
Grieving children face grave risks to their well-being, both in the short and long term. But there is no concerted government effort to help the estimated 140,000 children who have lost a parent in the pandemic.
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.
With kids back in school, business is picking back up for professional nitpickers. But how are kids getting head lice if they’re physically distancing in the classroom?
Health officials hope the rollout of covid shots for young children and other initiatives will boost routine vaccine rates that dropped during the pandemic and narrow socioeconomic disparities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers guidance but calls for localities to set quarantine rules for unvaccinated children exposed to someone with covid-19. That's led to a pandemic patchwork of rules.
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