Hospitals using volunteers is commonplace. But some labor experts argue that deploying unpaid workers to do work that benefits the organization’s bottom line lets for-profit hospitals skirt federal labor laws, deprives employees of work, and potentially exploits the volunteers.
As flexible treatment options spurred by the covid pandemic wane, patients relying on medications classified as controlled substances worry that without action to extend the loosened rules, it’ll be harder to get their meds.
State lawmakers say their health care goals for the new legislative session are to lower costs and improve access to care. They’ll have to grapple with a full slate of other issues, as well.
An investigation of records from 25 county jails across Pennsylvania showed that nearly 1 in 3 “use of force” incidents by guards involved a confined person who was having a psychiatric crisis or who had a known mental illness.
California state Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman of Stockton has been appointed chair of the Senate’s influential health committee. A licensed social worker, Eggman said she will make mental health care and homelessness front-burner issues.
U.S. airlines have response plans for passengers who run into health issues in flight, but planes carry limited and sometimes incomplete medical supplies that can put travelers at risk.
The year-end spending bill passed by Congress in late December contains a wide array of health-related provisions, including a structure for states to begin to disenroll people on Medicaid whose coverage has been maintained through the pandemic. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is taking steps to make the abortion pill more widely available. Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico, Rachel Cohrs of Stat, and Rachel Roubein of The Washington Post join KHN’s chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner to discuss these topics and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Mark Kreidler, who reported and wrote the latest KHN-NPR “Bill of the Month” feature about a billing mix-up that took about a year to sort out.
Noise pollution is a growing problem that isn’t confined to the ears: It can cause harm throughout the body. California is taking baby steps to address the increasing din from traffic and illegally modified cars, but public health experts urge lawmakers to act more boldly.
This strategy — now in place in at least 10 states — is part of an effort to curb accidental opioid overdose deaths by patients who take these powerful medications.
If family coverage on an employer-sponsored plan is too expensive, a worker’s spouse and dependents may be eligible for Affordable Care Act subsidies under a new federal rule.
