Early in the pandemic, insurers expected the costs of treating COVID-19 would vastly increase medical spending. Instead, non-COVID care has plummeted and insurers have pocketed the result. Still, few industry observers are predicting broad-based premium cuts in 2021, though some health plans have proposed lowering their rates.
Will Lightbourne, the new director of the California Department of Health Care Services, says government must address the racial disparities laid bare by COVID-19 and improve care for the state’s most vulnerable residents.
Newly released employment data underscores the lingering toll the pandemic has taken on a range of outpatient services in California and across the U.S., from pediatric and family medical practices to dental offices, medical labs and home health care.
While Congress negotiates liability protection for reopening businesses as part of its latest pandemic bailout package, some employers are already requiring workers to sign waivers agreeing not to sue if they get COVID-19 on the job.
Newsletter editor Lauren Olsen wades through hundreds of health care policy stories each week, so you don’t have to.
Like other people, many men who have sex with men have done all they could to avoid the coronavirus. Now some are braving renewed contact while balancing risk.
With COVID-19 tests bogged down in backlogs, some states that relied on private laboratories, such as Quest Diagnostics, are trying to adapt as caseloads rise.
State officials had projected that 2 million Californians would join Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance program for low-income people, by July because of the economic devastation wrought by COVID-19. Yet enrollment has barely budged, and why is unclear.
Check out KHN’s video series — Behind The Byline: How the Story Got Made. Come along as journalists and producers offer an insider’s view of health care coverage that does not quit.
The pandemic has given the National Institutes of Health an opportunity to show the value of its $1.5 billion “All of Us” research program. A major effort to make the platform’s database representative of America resulted in minorities making up more than half of its more than 270,000 volunteers.
