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Poisons from Jacksonville, Florida’s “Brown’s Dump” seeped into the lifeblood of residents. The harm to their physical and mental health is tied today to another public health crisis: high rates of gun violence among children.
Rising healthcare costs are upending the lives of Americans. People are forgoing health insurance, rationing medications, cutting back on doctor visits, and putting off health procedures they can’t afford. But bringing the costs down won’t be easy.
Healthcare makes up a growing share of the U.S. economy — and household budgets. We break down how much money the nation is spending and on what.
Hospitals can prevent medical debt by preemptively wiping out a patient’s bill. But a Tradeoffs analysis finds that few nonprofit facilities in Texas use this tool to the maximum benefit of patients.
Hospitals can prevent medical debt by offering financial help before sending big bills. A Tradeoffs investigation found that nearly half of nonprofit facilities in Texas say they will bill patients before screening them for aid. And most will not offer refunds to patients who pay and are later found to qualify for free care.
President Donald Trump has championed sprawling health policy changes under the Make America Healthy Again movement, but a KFF-Associated Press survey of rural voters found people aren’t seeing the initiatives reach their communities.
Staff raced against rising floodwater to evacuate 36 residents from a nursing home in New Richland, Minnesota. It’s one of 100 facilities KFF Health News identified as facing some of the nation’s worst flood risk.
Rural voters rank the cost of living and cost of healthcare as top issues they want to hear about from midterm candidates as they face a tightening pocketbook pinch.
Some mental health experts favor suicide prevention steps that are applied broadly, with protections that aren’t tied to an individual’s specific risk.
Opioid settlement cash was meant to abate the addiction crisis. But a new investigation reveals millions in Louisiana was spent on law enforcement gear and police technology instead of lifesaving treatment.
An analysis of hospital claims data in Florida found that firearm injuries of children disproportionately hit families in a handful of ZIP codes, almost all of them in Jacksonville, Orlando, Miami, or Tampa Bay.
A century-old rural Michigan hospital converted to a stripped-down model Congress created to help keep small facilities afloat, then it closed. The emergency hospital model, created a few years ago, is stabilizing some hospitals, arrived too late for others, and now faces major challenges under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The tiny federal agency that tracks consumer product safety is pressuring hospitals to turn over patient records from emergency room visits, including about injuries that have nothing to do with consumer products.
KFF Health News is working to collect and post approved plans as more states respond to emails and public records requests for their documents.
Insurers that sell plans in Obamacare marketplaces across 16 states and the District of Columbia have asked regulators to approve a 14% median premium increase for 2027, according to a new Peterson-KFF analysis.
Drugmakers provide financial assistance to help patients afford increasingly expensive medications. But some insurers do not count those payments toward a plan’s deductible or out-of-pocket maximum and make patients pay instead.
Uninsured patients made up about 1 in 4 of the more than 20,000 gunshot wound inpatient hospitalizations in Florida from 2018 to 2024, an analysis of state data by KFF Health News and The Trace found. They also had shorter hospital stays than those with any form of coverage.
Immigrant detainees have told courts across the nation that detention officials have failed to treat or stabilize their conditions, from pregnancy to prostate cancer, suggesting that systemic lapses in care extend well beyond record deaths in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
Patients’ experiences encapsulate breakdowns in a healthcare system that traps patients in debt. The industry’s key players blame one another.
Infectious disease specialists say the viruses are unlikely to become pandemics, but some are still raising concerns about the federal health response and what it portends should a pandemic similar to or worse than covid occur.
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