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Over the past decade, California has seen a sustained rise in the proportion of people who opt to give birth at home or in midwife-run birthing centers rather than in a hospital. Covid has further fueled that trend.
The nine commercial insurers in Medi-Cal must reapply by submitting bids for new contracts. The state hopes the process will improve care for low-income residents and tighten accountability, something critics say has been missing.
Doctors are trying to figure out why some kids become much sicker than others and, in rare cases, don’t survive.
As students return to campus, schools across the country are taking steps to enforce public health advice to keep people safe from covid. In deeply conservative South Carolina when elected officials tried to stop that, a professor took on the establishment and won.
Studies have shown that better ventilation and air circulation can greatly reduce covid-19 transmission. But rather than stocking up on HEPA filters, some school districts are turning to high-tech air purification strategies.
As the delta variant overtakes Mississippi and other undervaccinated parts of the country, one 13-year-old girl’s experience with covid and MIS-C shows a community’s reluctance to embrace public health precautions and continued vulnerability to the pandemic.
Back-to-school season has fueled immediate covid outbreaks. Instead of beefing up protections, some districts are letting students go without masks, physical distancing and quarantines. And parents are left to make impossibly tough decisions.
The FDA’s formal approval of the first vaccine to prevent covid-19 may or may not prompt doubters to go out and get shots, but it has clearly prompted employers to make vaccination a work requirement. Meanwhile, moderates and liberals in the U.S. House put aside their differences long enough to keep a giant social-spending bill on track, at least for now. Joanne Kenen of Politico, Tami Luhby of CNN and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.
Missouri’s ambitious school testing plan landed with a thud. What it can teach us now about keeping the delta variant out of classrooms.
Some counties are changing their covid quarantine policies in line with a law that bans discrimination based on a person’s vaccine status. But one county has decided to defy the rule.
Suicides have risen among Black, Hispanic and other communities of color during covid. But the rates were already escalating before the pandemic struck.
Students in many places are starting the new school year with their masks off — even in one Colorado county that was one of the nation’s first delta variant hot spots.
A Long Island, New York, school system has partnered with a hospital to create a mental health safety net for children. The heart of the initiative is a new behavioral health center, which the hospital opened to help children avoid unnecessary hospitalization.
The U.S. Senate worked well into its scheduled August recess to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a budget blueprint that outlines a much larger bill — covering key health priorities — to be written this fall. Meanwhile, the latest surge of covid is making both employers and schools rethink their opening plans. Joanne Kenen of Politico, Mary Ellen McIntire of CQ Roll Call and Yasmeen Abutaleb of The Washington Post join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.
Children under 12 can’t get a vaccine, so parents are concerned about how to keep them safe as classes resume — especially as the delta variant spreads.
With schools reopening, poll finds two-thirds of parents support mandating masks for unvaccinated students, but resistance to vaccinating students remains high. “My child is not a test dummy,” one Black parent told pollsters. Some parents deferred the decision to their teens.
The Florida governor’s order said schools couldn’t mandate that students wear masks and that the state could deny funding to school districts that didn’t comply.
The pandemic forced new parents to find help with breastfeeding online. Now, some offerings are remaining virtual to help expand access to lactation support.
U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas) introduced a bill to do away with a health insurance rule that dictates which parent’s plan becomes a new baby’s primary insurer. This could save some parents from unexpected, sometimes massive medical bills. Davids took up the issue after a KHN/NPR Bill of the Month story on one family’s unexpected $207,455 NICU bill.
While covid is generally mild in children, doctors report a growing number of long-haul covid symptoms and MIS-C cases, particularly among Black and Latino children.
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