While Medicare was designed as health insurance for those 65 and older, it also covers people with disabilities who are young enough to still get pregnant. Yet they often struggle to get their birth control covered and end up with large medical bills — or instead opt for hysterectomies or tubal ligations, which Medicare sometimes will cover.
Health insurers and health care systems across the country are violating disability rights laws by sending medical bills that blind and visually impaired people cannot read, a KHN investigation has found. By hindering the ability of blind Americans to know what they owe, some bills get sent to debt collections.
Many Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities do not have long-term plans for when family members can no longer care for them. Families, researchers, and advocates worry that has set the stage for a crisis in which people with disabilities could end up living in institutional settings.
Some people with long covid have fallen through the cracks of the government’s disability system, which was time-consuming and difficult to navigate even before the pandemic.
Some people with long covid have fallen through the cracks of the government’s disability system, which was time-consuming and difficult to navigate even before the pandemic.
Veterans Affairs’ electronic health records aren’t friendly to blind- and low-vision users, whether they’re patients or employees. It’s a microcosm of America’s health care system.
The cheaper over-the-counter aids are for adults with mild to moderate hearing loss — a market of tens of millions of people, many of whom have until now been priced out because prescription devices can cost thousands of dollars.
The Biden administration has decided to try to fix the so-called “family glitch” in the Affordable Care Act without an act of Congress. The provision has prevented workers’ families from getting subsidized coverage if an employer offer is unaffordable. Meanwhile, Medicare’s open enrollment period begins Oct. 15, and private Medicare Advantage plans are poised to cover more than half of Medicare’s 65 million enrollees. Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times, Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico, and Rachel Cohrs of Stat join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these topics and more. Plus, for extra credit, the panelists recommend their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read.
A federal disability program meant to provide basic income for people unable to work has left many of its recipients homeless. Advocates for the poor say the crisis is growing worse as rents rise and Congress decides whether to make changes to the program that would affect millions of people.
Iowa, under federal pressure to improve care for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, is set to join 45 other states that have closed most or all of their state institutions for such residents.
