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The availability of covid testing and turnaround times for results still vary widely around the country, some 19 months since the pandemic was declared a national crisis. A jumbled testing system, technician burnout and squirrely spikes in demand are all part of the problem.
Hundreds of towns, cities and states across the U.S. have ignored part of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and now it’s costing them billions of dollars to comply.
In a practice dating to the 1980s, many hospitals require people with alcohol-related liver disease to complete a period of sobriety before they can be added to the waiting list for a liver. But this thinking may be changing.
KHN 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.
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.
At issue is whether transplant patients who refuse the shots are not only putting themselves at greater risk for serious illness and death from covid-19, but also squandering scarce organs that could benefit others.
As scientists argue whether a previous bout of covid offers the same amount of protection as vaccinations, people turn to the courts to decide.
Following a February KHN investigation into covid vaccine accessibility, the Department of Justice reached an agreement with five New York government agencies to make their websites accessible to people who are visually impaired.
The American Rescue Plan Act, passed by Congress in March, provides $130 billion to cities, counties and tribes — with few restrictions on how the money can be spent.
The polarizing abortion issue threatens to tie up Congress, the Supreme Court and the states for the coming year. Meanwhile, Congress kicks the can down the road to December on settling its spending priorities. Joanne Kenen of Politico and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Yasmeen Abutaleb of The Washington Post and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more.
Also this week, Rovner interviews KHN’s Aneri Pattani, who delivered the latest KHN-NPR “Bill of the Month” episode about a covid test that cost as much as a luxury car.
After experiencing multiple quarantines and school closures in less than two months, covid vaccine approvals for 5- to 11-year-olds can’t come soon enough for a KHN editor in Montana.
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.
Even though they perform the same intimate tasks as nursing home and hospital workers, in-home health aides initially were left out of California’s vaccine mandate. They must be fully vaccinated by Nov. 30.
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.
An estimated 300,000 people were held in solitary confinement in U.S. jails and prisons at the height of the pandemic. An international movement is pushing to limit the form of incarceration due to its damaging physical and psychological effects.
As the pandemic has raged so has the country’s drug epidemic. California is looking to a controversial solution for certain drug users, but despite its effectiveness, critics have scoffed at the idea calling it unethical or a bribe.
The Biden administration is requiring workers at health care facilities that accept Medicare and Medicaid payments to be vaccinated. For the minority of nursing students who have refused a shot, the new policy could mean they can’t get the training they need in a hospital or other health care venue.
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.
San Juan County, Colorado, is one of the most vaccinated counties in the U.S. Leaders across the country continue to expound on the vaccine as the path forward in the pandemic. But San Juan’s experience the past few weeks with its first covid hospitalizations shows that, even with an extremely vaccinated population, masks are still necessary.
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.
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