Latest KFF Health News Stories
The Public Health Consequences of Public Housing Failures
Every year more than 10,000 taxpayer-supported public housing units are lost to disrepair. But federal lawmakers routinely ignore the full amount, around $115 billion, needed to keep the units in “decent, safe and sanitary” condition. One-time funds for public housing repairs were cut from the final version of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to appeal […]
How North Carolina Made Its Hospitals Do Something About Medical Debt
State officials threatened to withhold public money from hospitals, pioneering a strategy that could become a national model.
She Was Accused of Murder After Losing Her Pregnancy. SC Woman Now Tells Her Story.
Amari Marsh, now 23, was a student at South Carolina State University when she lost her pregnancy in 2023. She was charged with murder and faced at least 20 years in prison. A grand jury cleared her in August. Now she’s sharing her story.
Florida’s New Covid Booster Guidance Is Straight-Up Misinformation
State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo spread more anti-vaccine misinformation by telling Floridians to avoid mRNA vaccines. Vaccine experts and historians can’t remember another state health leader urging residents to avoid an FDA-approved vaccine.
Across North Carolina, Medical Debt Exacts a Heavy Toll
The state has among the highest levels of medical debt in the country, data shows.
La nueva guía de Florida sobre los refuerzos de covid es pura desinformación
Clínicos y científicos denuncian este mensaje como una táctica de miedo con motivación política que también debilita los esfuerzos para proteger contra enfermedades como el sarampión y la tos ferina.
Journalists Give Insights Into Opioid Settlements and Picking a Nursing Home
KFF Health News and California Healthline staff took to the airwaves recently to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
Rural NC County Is Set To Reopen Its Shuttered Hospital With Help From a New Federal Program
One rural North Carolina county is on track to be among the first where a hospital reopens owing to a new federal hospital classification meant to help save small, struggling facilities.
Fighting Staff Shortages With Scholarships, California Bill Aims To Boost Mental Health Courts
A new bill would create a scholarship program for students who agree to work with specialized courts in California to get patients into treatment, but some people argue the state shouldn’t restrict scholarship aid to a new, untested program given broader behavioral health workforce shortages.
Las clínicas de abortos, y sus pacientes, se movilizan a medida que cambian las leyes estatales
El fallo de la Corte dejó en manos de los estados las políticas sobre el aborto. Desde entonces, 14 estados promulgaron prohibiciones a la práctica que contemplan unas pocas excepciones, mientras que otros han restringido el acceso.
Abortion Clinics — And Patients — Are on the Move as State Laws Shift
Last month, Planned Parenthood Great Plains opened its newest clinic in Pittsburg, Kan., a city of about 21,000 people mere minutes from the borders of both Missouri and Oklahoma. It’s the second new clinic the regional affiliate has opened in Kansas in a little over two years, to accommodate the growing number of patients coming […]
Abortion Clinics — And Patients — Are on the Move, as State Laws Keep Shifting
Clinics in states where most abortions are legal, such as Kansas and Illinois, are reporting an influx of inquiries from patients hundreds of miles away — and are expanding in response. Despite the Supreme Court’s overturning of federal protections in 2022, abortions are now at their highest numbers in a decade.
These Alabama Workers Were Swamped by Medical Debt. Then Their Employer Stepped In.
A decades-old manufacturing company opened a clinic and made primary care and prescriptions free for employees and their families.
California Medicaid Ballot Measure Is Popular, Well Funded — And Perilous, Opponents Warn
Proposition 35, which would use revenue from a tax on managed-care plans to raise the pay of health care providers who serve Medi-Cal patients, has united a broad swath of California’s health care, business, and political establishments. But a newly formed, smaller group of opponents says it will do more harm than good.
Arkansas’ Governor Says Medicaid Extension for New Moms Isn’t Needed
Federal law requires states to provide pregnancy-related Medicaid coverage through 60 days after delivery. Arkansas has not expanded what’s called postpartum Medicaid coverage, an option that gives poor women uninterrupted health insurance for a year after they give birth.
California May Regulate and Restrict Pharmaceutical Brokers
California lawmakers are moving to rein in the pharmaceutical middlemen they say drive up costs and limit consumers’ choices. The bill sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom would require pharmacy benefit managers to be licensed in California and would ban some business practices. Newsom vetoed a previous effort three years ago.
Tennessee Tries To Rein In Ballad’s Hospital Monopoly After Years of Problems
Ballad Health, a 20-hospital system with the nation’s largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly, serves patients in Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina.
Watch: New Documentary Film Explores a Lynching and a Police Killing 78 Years Apart
The “Silence in Sikeston” documentary film explores how the nation’s first federally investigated lynching and a police killing 78 years apart haunt the same rural Missouri community. The film from KFF Health News and Retro Report explores the lasting impact of such trauma — and what it means to speak out about it.
Silence in Sikeston: Hush, Fix Your Face
In Episode 2 of the “Silence in Sikeston” podcast, host Cara Anthony speaks with Sikeston, Missouri, resident Larry McClellon, who grew up being told not to talk about the 1942 lynching of Cleo Wright. He is determined to break the cycle of silence in his community. Anthony also unearths a secret in her own family and grapples with the possible effects of intergenerational trauma.
Decades of National Suicide Prevention Policies Haven’t Slowed the Deaths
Despite years of national strategies to address the suicide crisis in the U.S., rates continue to rise. A chorus of researchers and experts say the interventions will work — but that they’re simply not being adopted by state and local governments.
