When the Blackfeet tribe shut down the roads leading to the eastern side of Glacier National Park, businesses worried for their future. But it worked, and with one of the nation’s highest covid vaccination rates, the reservation has reopened to visitors.
More than 80 million Americans with low incomes were receiving health coverage through the federal-state program in January. The program now covers nearly 1 in 4 people nationwide.
Health care insiders get surprise medical bills, too. One of them shares tips for writing an insurance appeal.
HCA charges patients an “activation fee” of up to $50,000 for trauma teams at centers located in half its 179 hospitals — and they often don’t need trauma care, an analysis of insurance claims data shows.
Phone visits became an option for many Medicare and Medicaid patients during the pandemic. Now policymakers are deciding whether they’re worth the money.
Agricultural workers living in employer-owned housing can have trouble getting health care. It’s symptomatic of bigger gaps in worker protections that the pandemic spotlighted, say proponents of a newly passed Colorado bill for farmworker rights.
The federal approval of a controversial drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease has reignited the debate over drug prices and the way the Food and Drug Administration makes decisions. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden seeks to gain goodwill overseas as he announces the U.S. will provide 500 million doses of covid vaccine to international health efforts. Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet, Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times and Joanne Kenen of Politico join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also, Rovner interviews Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the new administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. And to mark the podcast’s 200th episode, the panelists discuss what has surprised them most and least over the past four years.
When estimating how well a patient’s kidneys are working, doctors frequently turn to an equation that depends on a question: Is the patient Black? Kidney experts are now debating how to remove the race adjustment and whether the question is a function of sound science. It’s considered just the first step in dismantling institutional racism in kidney care.
Two medical schools vie to open in Montana, highlighting the rapid spread of for-profit schools and their previously tarnished business model.
Republicans, Democrats and the public at large agree that prices for prescription drugs are too high. But no one seems to know how to fix it. Vanderbilt University drug price researcher Stacie Dusetzina explains the basics of why drugs cost so much and why it’s hard to do something about it. Joanne Kenen of Politico, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet and Anna Edney of Bloomberg News join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss the prospects for policy changes.
