by Ana B. Ibarra Kaiser Health News ’Tis the season to be a little too merry, and law enforcement officials across the country are once again reminding revelers not to drive if they’ve been drinking. Along with those warnings comes a bit of good news: Deaths involving drunken driving are only about half of what…
by Julie Rovner Kaiser Health News If Friday night’s district court ruling that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional were to be upheld, far more than the law’s most high-profile provisions would be at stake . In fact, canceling the law in full — as Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, ordered in his…
by Rachel Bluth More Americans are now employed in health care than in any other industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tallies job creation, says that for most of this year the health sector outpaced the retail industry. Only government, on all levels, employs more people. One of the consistent features of the BLS…
The woman arrived at the University of South Florida’s navigator office in Tampa a few weeks ago with a 40-page document describing a short-term health insurance plan she was considering. She was uncomfortable with what the broker had said about the coverage, she told Jodi Ray, a health insurance navigator who helps people enroll in…
by Barbara Feder Ostrov | California Healthline MORE than half of California’s nursing homes are asking to be exempted from new state regulations that would require them to spend more time directly caring for their patients. The state’s new staffing requirements for nursing homes, quietly passed in last year’s budget bill, seem universally unpopular. Patient advocates…
by Jordan Rau The federal government has taken a new step to reduce avoidable hospital readmissions of nursing home patients by lowering a year’s worth of payments to 778 California nursing homes. It gave bonuses to nearly 317 others in the state. These financial incentives, determined by each home’s readmission rates, significantly expand Medicare’s effort…
by Harriet Blair Rowan California’s Department of Public Health says the flu killed 329 people under age 65 in the last flu season, from October 2017 to August 2018. But that is likely only a small fraction of the total deaths in the nation’s most populous state because the department didn’t count the hundreds of…
by Katherine Kam The students listened attentively as Ryan Wong explained how casinos keep customers chasing that elusive jackpot. Labyrinthine layouts force guests to walk past card tables and slot machines in search of well-concealed restrooms and exits, said Wong, an intern at the nonprofit NICOS Chinese Health Coalition, a San Francisco partnership of health…
by Michelle Andrews Don’t procrastinate. Most consumers who buy their own insurance on the federal health insurance marketplace face a Dec. 15 deadline. Advocates are reminding these customers that if they miss the deadline, they may not have a plan that starts in January 2019. Despite repeated efforts by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care…
by Harriet Rowan At 11 a.m. last Friday, November 16, thousands of former Paradise, Calif., residents were taking stock of all they had lost to the worst wildfire in the state’s history while they continued the grim task of looking for missing loved ones. At the same moment, with smoke from the deadly Camp Fire…
by Liz Szabo A widely anticipated study has concluded that neither vitamin D nor fish oil supplements prevent cancer or serious heart-related problems in healthy older people, according to research presented Saturday at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions. Researchers defined serious heart problems as the combined rate of heart attacks, stroke and heart-related deaths….
by Ana B. Ibarra SACRAMENTO — What do hip-hop dancing and health insurance have in common? For one, you sure do hope that the break dancer busting backflips is covered. Beyond that, Covered California, the state’s Obamacare health insurance exchange, is betting that one will bring attention to the other. So, on a stage designed…
by Samantha Young Californians on Tuesday, November 6, elected a governor who campaigned for a complete overhaul of how people get their health coverage — but they shouldn’t hold their breath. Rather, as Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom and the Democratic-controlled legislature take steps to provide more people with health insurance, they’ll likely approach it piecemeal over…
by Barbara Feder Ostrov “Anna” will not stop calling. She really, really wants to sell you health insurance. What a lot of consumers really, really want is to smack Anna upside her robocalling head. As health insurance open-enrollment season gets underway in California and nationwide, automated phone calls offering Affordable Care Act or other health…
by Liz Szabo When Kristen Kilmer was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer at age 38, her first thought was of her 8-year-old daughter. Kilmer lost her own mother as a teenager and was determined to get more time with her only child. Kilmer searched for experimental treatments, opting for an unproven approach in which researchers…
By Phil Galewitz HEALTH care has emerged as the top issue for voters headed into the midterm elections, but fewer than half of them say they are hearing a lot from candidates on the issue, according to a new poll released Thursday. Seven in 10 people list health care as “very important” as they make…
Before the midterm elections heated up, dozens of drugmakers had already poured about $12 million into the war chests of hundreds of members of Congress. Since the beginning of last year, 34 lawmakers have each received more than $100,000 from pharmaceutical companies. Two of those — Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican majority…
by Julie Rovner Ensuring that people with preexisting health conditions can get and keep health insurance is the most popular part of the Affordable Care Act. It has also become a flashpoint in this fall’s campaigns across the country. And not only is the ACA, which mostly protects people who buy their own coverage, at…
by Phil Galewitz The Trump administration wants Medicare for the first time to embrace telemedicine across the country by paying doctors $14 for a five-minute “check-in” phone call with their patients. But many physicians say the proposed reimbursement will cover a service they already do for free. And the Medicare reimbursement — intended to motivate…
by Susan Jaffe Starting next year, Medicare Advantage plans will be able to add restrictions on expensive, injectable drugs administered by doctors to treat cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, macular degeneration and other serious diseases. Under the new rules, these private Medicare insurance plans could require patients to try cheaper drugs first. If those are not effective, then the patients…
by Phil Galewitz The percentage of people without health insurance continued to decline in California last year, according to a closely watched report from the Census Bureau released Wednesday. The state’s uninsured rate edged down even as Republicans in Washington, D.C. sought to roll back the Affordable Care Act. The rate of uninsurance dropped in…
by Anna B. Ibarra SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It turns out that California and the Trump administration do agree on at least one thing: Don’t mess with coffee. Trump’s hand-picked food and drug czar, Scott Gottlieb, said Wednesday, August 29, that he “strongly supports” a proposal by officials in Sacramento to exempt the morning elixir from…
by Rachel Bluth The number of children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has reached more than 10 percent, a significant increase during the past 20 years, according to a study released Friday. The rise was most pronounced in minority groups, suggesting that better access to health insurance and mental health treatment through the Affordable…
by Anna Gorman AS he grew older, Dale Kunitomi paid closer attention to his health — and to his doctor’s advice. When he noticed rectal bleeding in 2010, he went to see his physician, who ordered a colonoscopy. The diagnosis: colon cancer. Kunitomi, now 74, underwent surgery, radiation and chemotherapy — and now he has…
Debbie Dobrosky noticed a peculiar hue in the sky on Monday — “a very ugly yellow casting” — as she peeked outside. A large cloud of smoke had begun to cover the sun. By Tuesday, the smoke was so heavy that “even inside my apartment I’ve had to use my inhaler twice this morning, which is…
by Julie Appleby and Alex Leeds Matthews THE planned expansion of short-term health plans under a new Trump administration rule unveiled this week is on a crash course with a brick wall in California. The Golden State’s Democrat-dominated legislature is close to banning such plans, which offer consumers lower premiums in exchange for skimpier benefits that do not meet the Affordable Care…
by Michelle Andrews As students enter college this fall, many will hunger for more than knowledge. Up to half of college students report that they were either not getting enough to eat or were worried about it, according to published studies. “Food insecurity,” as it’s called, is most prevalent at community colleges, but it’s common at…
by Alex Smith Jose Belardo of Lansing, Kan., spent most of his career in the U.S. Public Health Service. He worked on the front lines of disasters in such other countries as Haiti, Colombia, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. At home with his three kids and wife, Elaine, he’d always been unfailingly reliable, so when…
by Chad Terhune SAN FRANCISCO — Stepping into the land of the Trump resistance, Seema Verma flatly rejected California’s pursuit of single-payer health care as unworkable and dismissed the Affordable Care Act as too flawed to ever succeed. Speaking Wednesday at the Commonwealth Club here, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services…
The Trump administration has summoned at least 70 children under 1 year old to immigration court for their own deportation proceedings since Oct. 1, according to new Justice Department data provided exclusively to Kaiser Health News. These children, who may be staying with a sponsor or in a foster care arrangement, need frequent touching and…
