The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
121-140 of 1,138 results
Republicans, on the hunt for spending cuts, are eyeing a special kind of Medicaid tax that nearly every state uses to boost funding for hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers.
Breakups between health providers and Advantage plans are increasingly common. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has allowed whole groups of patients to leave their plans.
Get our weekly newsletter, The Week in Brief, featuring a roundup of our original coverage, Fridays at 2 p.m. ET.
In the wake of an executive order by President Donald Trump opposing gender-affirming surgeries for minors, hospitals are pausing procedures — even those already scheduled. Families fear the eventual loss of all gender-affirming care for their transgender kids.
Montana’s powerful hospital lobby was instrumental in renewing the state’s Medicaid expansion program and has also fended off most legislation to increase state oversight of their business.
The U.S. faces a crucial shortage of medical providers, especially in rural areas. The problem has been building for a while, experts say, but the pandemic accelerated it by pushing many doctors over the edge into early retirement or other fields.
Get our weekly newsletter, The Week in Brief, featuring a roundup of our original coverage, Fridays at 2 p.m. ET.
Amid a youth mental health crisis and a shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds, residents of a St. Louis suburb opposed a plan to build a 77-bed pediatric mental health hospital. Resistance to such facilities has occurred in other communities as misconceptions about mental health spur fear.
Technological gaps handicap rural hospitals as billions in federal funding to modernize infrastructure lags. The reliance on outdated technology and piecemeal systems challenge staffs and erode patient care.
Some rural hospitals have canceled — or are considering ending — contracts with insurance companies that offer Medicare Advantage plans, saying the private policies jeopardize their finances and impede patient care.
Health care price transparency is one of the few bipartisan issues in Washington, D.C. But much of the information that hospitals and health plans have made available to the public is not helpful to patients, and there’s no conclusive evidence yet that it’s lowering costs or increasing competition.
Recent arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in northern Virginia have put immigrant communities in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area on alert. Health clinics that serve those communities say they are working to continue to care for patients amid detention and arrest fears.
As Congress mulls significant cuts to Medicaid, Native American tribes are bracing for potentially devastating financial fallout. That’s because Medicaid is the largest third-party payer for Native American health programs, funding that has helped address chronic underfunding of the Indian Health Service.
Democratic state lawmakers in California have proposed bills to protect women, transgender people, and immigrants in response to concerns that their health data could be used against them. If the measures reach his desk, Gov. Gavin Newsom could lay such legislation aside to focus on securing federal funds.
Hospital-based violence intervention programs have operated in the U.S. since the mid-1990s. The public health approach to gun violence works, by many accounts. But recent moves by the White House are raising anxiety about the programs’ future.
Many patients ready to leave the hospital end up lingering for days or weeks — occupying beds that others need and driving up costs — because of a lack of open spots at nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities. A few health systems are addressing this problem by moving post-acute rehab into the home.
A San Francisco man had friends drive him to the hospital after he was hit by a car. Doctors checked him out, then sent him by ambulance to a trauma center — which released him with no further treatment. The ambulance bill? Almost $13,000.
Health officials expect a measles outbreak in West Texas to exceed 100 cases because of low vaccination rates and undetected infections. Vaccine misinformation and new laws may make such situations more common and harder to contain.
Delays in urgent CDC analyses of seasonal flu and bird flu, and the agency’s silence, will harm Americans as outbreaks escalate, doctors and public health experts warn.
More than 60,000 people bleed to death every year in the United States. Many of those deaths occur before the patient reaches a trauma center where blood transfusions can be given.
© 2026 KFF