The nation’s most thinly staffed nursing homes would be required to hire more workers under new rules proposed on Friday, Sept. 1 by the Biden administration, the greatest change to federal nursing home regulations in three decades. The proposed standard was prompted by the industry’s troubled performance earlier in the coronavirus pandemic, when 200,000 nursing…
by Martha Bebinger KFF Health News An important email appeared in the inboxes of a small group of health care workers north of Boston as this summer started. It warned that local temperatures were rising into the 80s. An 80-plus-degree day is not sizzling by Phoenix standards. Even in Boston, it wasn’t high enough to…
As summer edges toward fall, thoughts turn to, well, vaccines. Yes, inevitably, it’s time to think about the usual suspects — influenza and covid-19 shots — but also the new kid in town: recently approved vaccines for RSV, short for respiratory syncytial virus. But who should get the various vaccines, and when? “For the eligible…
Even with extensive caregiving experience, Patti LaFleur was unprepared for the crisis that hit in April 2021, when her mother, Linda LaTurner, fell out of a chair and broke her hip. LaTurner, 71, had been diagnosed with early-onset dementia seven years before. For two years, she’d been living with LaFleur, who managed insulin injections for…
by Angela Hart KFF Health News SACRAMENTO — Weeks after Democratic lawmakers forced Gov. Gavin Newsom to make good on a four-year-old pledge to use tax penalty proceeds from fining the uninsured to increase health insurance subsidies for low- and middle-income Californians, Covered California officials announced they will funnel that money into reducing out-of-pocket spending for many…
by Judith Graham KFF Health News MILLIONS of people enter later life carrying an extra 10 to 15 pounds, weight they’ve gained after having children, developing joint problems, becoming less active, or making meals the center of their social lives. Should they lose this modest extra weight to optimize their health? This question has come…
by Colleen DeGuzman KFF Health News What do kidney and pancreas transplants have to do with airplane regulations? Tucked into the hundreds of pages of legislative language to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration is a provision to change the life-or-death process by which human organs are flown commercially from donor to recipient. But where on…
by Renuka Rayasam KFF Health News JASPER — Megan Dunn, who has struggled with addiction since her teens, points to the moment her life went “deeply downhill.” After dropping out of high school, she gave birth at age 19 to a son she named Preston. Six weeks later, Dunn said, he died of sudden infant…
by Darius Tahir, KFF Health News Public health has had its day in court lately. And another day. And another day. Over the course of the pandemic, lawsuits came from every direction, questioning public health policies and hospitals’ authority. Petitioners argued for care to be provided in a different way, they questioned mandates on mask…
by Andy Miller KFF Health News The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reducing funding to states for child vaccination programs, according to an agency email obtained by KFF Health News. The funding cut “is a significant change to your budget,” said the email to immunization managers, dated June 27 and signed by two…
Doctors are concerned that a Supreme Court ruling issued June 29 will have far-reaching effects not only on the diversity of doctors and other care providers in training but ultimately also on patient care. The decision found it is unconstitutional for colleges and universities to use race as a factor in student admissions, which will…
by Don Thompson KFF Health News The idea seems simple enough. Preserve all the rituals of smoking: Light up a cigarette, inhale the smoke, including the nasty stuff that can kill you, and exhale. But remove most of the nicotine, the chemical that makes tobacco so darn hard to quit, to help smokers smoke less….
by Gina Jiménez California Healthline Vanessa Langness had always been a bit worried about the chemicals she worked with as a biomedical researcher, but when she got pregnant in October, her concerns grew. The 34-year-old based in Santa Maria, California, suspected the ethidium bromide she was using in the lab for molecular cloning could put…
by Angela Hart KFF Health News SACRAMENTO — California’s homelessness crisis is a homegrown problem that is deepening amid a shortage of affordable housing and emergency shelter, and it’s often the brutal conditions of living on the street that trigger behavioral health problems, such as depression and anxiety, researchers found in a comprehensive study on…
by Sarah Boden KFF Health News Angela Reynolds knew her mother’s memory was slipping, but she didn’t realize how bad things had gotten until she started to untangle her mom’s finances: unpaid bills, unusual cash withdrawals, and the discovery that, oddly, the mortgage on the family home had been refinanced at a higher interest rate….
by Noam N. Levey KFF Health News HUMAN Rights Watch, the nonprofit that for decades has called attention to the victims of war, famine, and political repression around the world, is taking aim at U.S. hospitals for pushing millions of American patients into debt. In a new report, published June 15, the group calls for…
It was a late-spring House of Representatives hearing, where members of Congress and attendees hoped to learn lessons from the pandemic. Witness Marty Makary made a plea. “I want to thank you for your attempts at civility,” Makary, a Johns Hopkins Medicine researcher and surgeon, said softly. Then his tone changed. His voice started to…
by Calli McMurray KFF Health News As hot days become more extreme and common, California education researchers are urging that school districts be required to develop heat plans to keep students safe, just as they have policies for severe storms and active shooters. A policy brief published last month by the UCLA Luskin Center for…
About 810,000, or 1 in 10, Los Angeles County adults together owe more than $2.6 billion in medical debt as of 2021, a new analysis has found — a staggering sum that suggests extending health coverage to more people doesn’t necessarily protect them from burdensome debt. The report from the county Department of Public Health,…
More than 600,000 Americans have lost Medicaid coverage since pandemic protections ended on April 1. And a KFF Health News analysis of state data shows the vast majority were removed from state rolls for not completing paperwork. Under normal circumstances, states review their Medicaid enrollment lists regularly to ensure every recipient qualifies for coverage. But…
SACRAMENTO — When Gov. Gavin Newsom took office four years ago, the Democrat went after Republicans on the national stage as they sought to gut the Affordable Care Act. Key to his ambitious health care agenda: reinstating the fine on Californians who don’t have health coverage, which had been eliminated at the federal level. It…
by Samantha Young and Angela Hart KFF Health News SACRAMENTO — One of the country’s richest hospitals, which caters to Hollywood elites, accepted nearly $28 million last year from an unusual source: a charity that siphons money from other California hospitals, many of which serve the state’s poorest residents. Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles…
by Susan Jaffe California Healthline Medicare coverage for at-home COVID-19 tests ended last week, but the scams spawned by the temporary pandemic benefit could have lingering consequences for seniors. Medicare advocates around the country who track fraud noticed an eleventh-hour rise in complaints from beneficiaries who received tests — sometimes by the dozen — that…
It was a regrettable mistake. But Kim Sylvester thought she was doing the right thing at the time. Her 80-year-old mother, Harriet Burkel, had fallen at her home in Raleigh, North Carolina, fractured her pelvis, and gone to a rehabilitation center to recover. It was only days after the death of Burkel’s 82-year-old husband, who’d…
by April Dembosky, KQED and Amelia Templeton, Oregon Public Broadcasting and Carrie Feibel, KFF Health News Many of the unhoused people in Portland, Oregon, live in tents pitched on sidewalks or in aging campers parked in small convoys behind grocery stores. Mental illness can be part of the story of how a person ends up…
What use could health care have for someone who makes things up, can’t keep a secret, doesn’t really know anything, and, when speaking, simply fills in the next word based on what’s come before? Lots, if that individual is the newest form of artificial intelligence, according to some of the biggest companies out there. Companies…
If you are enrolled in Medi-Cal, as more than one-third of Californians are, make sure your county knows how to reach you, or you could lose your health coverage unnecessarily. You will likely hear and see public messages over the coming weeks urging you to update your contact information. Heed them. Then, sometime between now…
by Don Thompson, KFF Health News California’s attorney general is warning two tobacco companies that their new cigarettes appear to violate a state ban on most flavored tobacco products that was upheld by voters last year. Attorney General Rob Bonta sent letters to R.J. Reynolds and ITG Brands LLC, dated April 25, warning that the…
The Biden administration on Thursday cautioned Americans about the growing risks of medical credit cards and other loans for medical bills, warning in a new report that high interest rates can deepen patients’ debts and threaten their financial security. In its new report, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated that people in the U.S. paid…
Lost careers. Broken marriages. Dismissed and disbelieved by family and friends. These are some of the emotional and financial struggles long covid patients face years after their infection. Physically, they are debilitated and in pain: unable to walk up the stairs, focus on a project, or hold down a job. Facing the end of the…
