Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, calls on state and federal health inspectors to focus on how facilities keep infections from spreading, especially in areas that have reported coronavirus cases.
Even in a solidly blue state where voters were demanding relief from high health care costs, the idea of a government-run public option for health insurance faced a “steam train of opposition.”
States tried to tighten vaccine requirements last year in the midst of measles outbreaks, but a backlash against a tougher law in Maine put a referendum on the ballot there. Voters weigh in on Super Tuesday.
In advance of the Super Tuesday primary, California’s Los Angeles County is rotating new touch-screen voting machines among 41 locations, including adult day care centers and jails, to increase voting among populations with historically low turnout.
For those who are sexually active, condoms are widely recognized as the most effective method for preventing HIV and other diseases, if used correctly. But a fact sheet with “unapproved condom imagery” was taken down from a federal website, KHN has learned.
Health policy is complicated. As a result, many journalists ― and sometimes policymakers ― have defaulted to talking about its politics. That means opponents often have shaped the debate about the federal health law’s implementation and effects to foment public fear or anger.
The spread of coronavirus disease to a skilled nursing facility in Washington state underscores the risk the deadly new virus poses in elder care facilities, where illnesses caused by more common pathogens, like seasonal influenza, often spread rapidly.