A standard connector for feeding tubes was supposed to improve patient safety by preventing accidental misconnections to equipment used for IVs or other purposes. But critics say the design instead could keep patients from real food and inadvertently creates a host of new risks, including for vulnerable premature infants.
The annual accounting of national health spending is out. And the 2018 health bill for the U.S. was $3.6 trillion, consuming nearly a fifth of the nation’s economy. Meanwhile, Congress is nearing the end of the year without having finished either its annual spending bills or several other high-priority health items. Kimberly Leonard of the Washington Examiner, Joanne Kenen of Politico and Mary Agnes Carey of Kaiser Health News join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss this and more. Also, Rovner interviews KHN’s Markian Hawryluk about the latest KHN-NPR “Bill of the Month.”
Millions of injuries and malfunctions once funneled into a hidden Food and Drug Administration database are now available.
Millions of injuries and malfunctions once funneled into a hidden Food and Drug Administration database are now available.
Special interests and congressional inaction blocked efforts to track the safety of electronic medical records, leaving patients at risk.
The subculture around vaping has been fueled by social media, and traditional regulations don’t easily address potential pitfalls.
As states and communities ban the sale of flavored tobacco products linked to vaping, anti-smoking activists are piggybacking on the momentum to target menthol cigarettes. But some African Americans say menthol cigarette bans will lead to discrimination.
The agency approved Gilead’s “game changer” hepatitis C cure, bypassing concerns raised by its own federal inspectors.
With federal authorities offering few details about what is causing the deadly outbreak of vaping-related lung illnesses, vaping advocates are crafting an alternative narrative reverberating through online communities.
A Sacramento woman is in a coma after using a face cream from Mexico. It is the nation’s first case of methylmercury poisoning from a cosmetic, and public health officials can do almost nothing to prevent other contaminated cosmetics from hitting the shelves.
