Latest KFF Health News Stories
Children With Disabilities Face Special Back-to-School Challenges
For children with special needs returning to an L.A. classroom, mask-wearing is the least of their troubles.
California’s Mental Health Crisis: What Went Wrong? And Can We Fix It?
KHN’s Angela Hart leads a lively discussion on the challenges facing California’s mental health care system and potential solutions. The panel was part of a broader symposium on mental health and addiction hosted by the Sacramento-based publication Capitol Weekly.
Health Industry Wields Power in California’s High-Stakes Battle to Lower Health Care Costs
Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to regulate out-of-control health care spending in California. The effort is being shaped by the very health industry players that would be regulated.
Community Clinics Shouldered Much of the Vaccine Rollout. Many Haven’t Been Paid.
Federally qualified health centers from California to Michigan are mired in a bureaucratic mess over how they should be paid under Medicaid for each dose of covid vaccine given. In California alone, clinics await reimbursement for at least 1 million shots, causing a “massive cash flow problem.”
New California Law Bans Harassment at Vaccination Sites, but Free Speech Concerns Persist
Effective immediately, it will be a misdemeanor in California to harass people on their way to get a covid, or any other, vaccine. But First Amendment experts say the new law violates free speech protections and could face a constitutional battle.
Needle Exchanges Are Targeted by Eco-Rooted Lawsuits. A New California Law Will Stop That.
Opponents of free needle programs in California are using environmental regulations to shut them down. On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will end that strategy.
Racism a Strong Factor in Black Women’s High Rate of Premature Births, Study Finds
Dr. Paula Braveman, director of UCSF’s Center on Social Disparities in Health, shares her insights on a provocative new study that identifies racism as a decisive factor in the gap in preterm birth rates between Black and white women.
Youthful Advisers Help Shape a Mental Health Program for Their Peers
Officials are enthusiastic about the Allcove initiative, modeled on an Australian program. But it will need to show effectiveness and find funding.
Santa Cruz Health Officials Honored for Persevering in Covid Battle Against Tide of ‘Denialism’
Mimi Hall and Dr. Gail Newel, health director and health officer for Santa Cruz County, California, will receive PEN America’s 2021 PEN/Benenson Courage Award for soldiering forward in their work amid death threats and personal attacks.
Hospitals Confront Climate Change as Patients Sick From Floods and Fires Crowd ERs
Patients sickened in heat waves, flooding and wildfire have raised awareness of climate change’s impact on health. Now, some hospitals are building solar panels and cutting waste to reduce their own carbon footprints, with support from a new office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But the industry is moving slowly.
Wildfire Smoke Is Here to Stay. Here’s How to Clean the Air Inside Your Home.
There are many ways to cleanse indoor air of dangerous smoke particles, which are particularly harmful to people with chronic respiratory and cardiac conditions. Some are expensive, but cheap alternatives exist.
California Moves on Climate Change, but Rejects Aggressive Cuts to Greenhouse Emissions
Drought, wildfires, extreme heat: California lawmakers cast climate change as the culprit in an emerging series of public health threats, setting aside billions to help communities respond. But they stopped short of more aggressively reducing the state’s share of the greenhouse emissions warming the planet.
Home Births Gain Popularity in ‘Baby Bust’ Decade
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.
California’s Reboot of Troubled Medi-Cal Puts Pressure on Health Plans
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.
Leader of California’s Muscular Obamacare Exchange to Step Down
Peter Lee helped create Covered California, which has been lauded as a national example among the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces, and he fiercely opposed Republican efforts to repeal the federal health reform law.
No Papers, No Care: Disabled Migrants Seek Help Through Lawsuit, Activism
A class action lawsuit seeks better care for immigrants with physical disabilities or mental illness who were detained after trying to enter the country. Other disabled immigrants without legal status are also finding it difficult to get care.
How Fauci and the NIH Got Ahead of the FDA and CDC in Backing Boosters
With real-time data streaming in from highly specialized researchers in the U.S. and abroad, NIH scientists became convinced that boosting the covid-19 vaccine was needed to save lives, prompting the president to announce a plan with a Sept. 20 start date. Scientists at the regulatory agencies weren’t yet convinced. A meeting Friday will determine what happens next. Here’s the story from behind the scenes.
It’s Not Just Covid: Recall Candidates Represent Markedly Different Choices on Health Care
Those seeking to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom in Tuesday’s recall election disagree with him on more than mask and vaccine mandates. The conservative candidates tend to favor free-market solutions over Newsom’s expansion of publicly funded health coverage.
‘Religious’ Exemptions Add Legal Thorns to Looming Vaccine Mandates
No major religion’s teachings denounce vaccination, but that hasn’t kept individual churches and others from providing religious “cover” for people to avoid submitting to vaccination as a workplace requirement.
California Set to Spend Billions on Curing Homelessness and Caring for ‘Whole Body’ Politic
California is embarking on a five-year experiment to infuse its health insurance program for low-income people with billions of dollars in nonmedical services spanning housing, food delivery and addiction care. Gov. Gavin Newsom said the goal is to improve care for the program’s sickest and costliest members and save money, but will it work?
