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Dental therapists are licensed providers who offer basic care traditionally provided by dentists, including fillings and simple tooth extractions. But opposition from interest groups and the profession’s relative newness mean more than two-thirds of states don’t yet have them.
The number of DOs is surging, and more than half of them practice in primary care, including in rural areas hit hard by doctor shortages.
Montana, Alaska, Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming are among the latest states moving to provide health coverage for up to a year after pregnancy through the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people.
In what’s known as the Medicaid “unwinding,” states are combing through rolls to decide who stays and who goes. But the overwhelming majority of people who have lost coverage so far were dropped because of technicalities, not because officials determined they are no longer eligible.
The federal government’s arcane process for medical coding is influencing which reconstructive surgery options are available, creating anxiety for breast cancer patients.
Cardiovascular disease is the biggest killer of older Americans, with Black and Hispanic people at higher risk. Despite medical advances, researchers say, disparities are expected to worsen in the coming decades.
The debate about whether employees should be required to return to the workplace has generally focused on commuting, convenience, and child care. A fourth C, caregiving, has rarely been mentioned.
Dealing with a stubborn or resistant older parent can be a difficult problem for adult children. Family caregivers and professionals have some hard-won lessons on how to manage these evolving relationships.
Before the covid-19 public health emergency ended, Medicare advocates around the country noticed a rise in complaints from beneficiaries who received at-home covid tests they never requested. Bad actors may have used seniors’ Medicare information to improperly bill the federal government — and could do it again, say federal investigators.
Thousands of South Dakotans are being knocked off Medicaid, only to be eligible to requalify several months later. Even more enrollees are likely to experience a temporary loss of coverage in North Carolina.
KFF Health News 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.
Laws granting rights to unborn children have spread in the decades since the U.S. and Missouri supreme courts allowed Missouri’s definition of life as beginning at conception to stand. Now, a wrongful death lawsuit involving a workplace accident shows how sprawling those laws — often intended to curb abortion — have become.
The controversial practice of administering progesterone to people after they have taken the abortion pill mifepristone may be coming to an end in Colorado. Pills have emerged as the latest front in the war over abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.
Community paramedicine is expanding nationwide, including in rural areas, as health care providers, insurers, and state governments recognize its potential to improve health and save money.
Billions of dollars are headed to state and local governments to address the opioid crisis. Policy experts and advocates expect the federal government to play a role in overseeing the use of the money. Failure to do so, they say, could lead to wasted opportunities. And, since Medicaid helps pay health care costs, the feds could have a claim to portions of states’ opioid settlements.
The median life expectancy for a U.S. baby born with Down syndrome jumped from about four years in 1950 to 58 years in the 2010s. That’s largely because they no longer can be denied lifesaving care, including surgeries for heart defects. But now, aging adults with Down syndrome face a health system unprepared to care for them.
More than 1 in 5 Americans report having been threatened with a firearm, and almost as many say they worry about gun violence every day or almost every day, a new KFF poll shows.
Patients in rural northeastern Nevada soon will have fewer providers and resources, after a local hospital decided to close its medical residency program. Nationally, the number of rural residency slots has grown during the past few years but still makes up just 2% of programs and residents nationwide.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed federal protections for abortions, medical providers in conservative-led states have been fighting legal and political battles — as well as escalating threats from the anti-abortion movement.
Despite record enrollment in health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act, some consumers who bought coverage and agents who helped them do so have had a tough start to the new year: Many say it’s hard to find an in-network doctor or hospital.
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