A lab assistant who spoke out about employee safety. A disease intervention specialist who hoped to follow her mother into nursing. A father of three who juggled jobs at three nursing homes. These are some of the people just added to “Lost on the Frontline,” a special series from The Guardian and KHN that profiles health care workers who died of COVID-19.
Nursing homes with COVID-19 infections tend to violate health rules more often and have more complaints and fines, records show. But infections also plague highly rated facilities — while sparing some low-ranked ones.
“The awful truth is families have no control over what’s happening,” one advocate says.
Los Angeles County is providing thousands of coronavirus self-testing kits to its citizens, but public health officials are leery of the shortage of data on whether this easier method ― in which an individual swabs his or her own cheek ― is as reliable as a less comfortable but well-established technique.
When you factor in population size, the U.S. is still behind.
The Supreme Court this week, in an 8-1 decision, ruled that insurers are due the roughly $12 billion that Congress several years ago tried to cut off in payments under the Affordable Care Act’s “risk corridors” provision. And while the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage in many places around the country, states are starting to reopen their economies at the urging of President Donald Trump and over objections of public health officials. Caitlin Owens of Axios and Mary Ellen McIntire of CQ Roll Call join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss this and more. Also, Rovner interviews KHN’s Carmen Heredia Rodriguez, who wrote the latest KHN-NPR “Bill of the Month” installment about COVID testing that should have been free but was not.
The volunteer medical providers at the Tree of Life Free Clinic in Tupelo, Mississippi, give crucial health care to the uninsured in the best of times, drawing crowds who line up for hours. Amid the current COVID pandemic, clinic staffers were advised to close. Instead, they chose to adapt — even without critical N95 masks to protect themselves — as the economic crisis intensifies the need for free care.
The Families First Coronavirus Response Act requires private insurers to pay for certain services related to coronavirus testing at no cost to the patient. But gaps in the protections expose patients to unexpected medical bills.
With most nonemergency procedures shelved for now, many health insurers are expected to see profits in the near term, but the longer view of how the coronavirus will affect them is far more complicated and could well impact what people pay for coverage next year.
The U.S. government spent $36 billion computerizing health records, yet they’re of limited help in the COVID-19 crisis.
