After baby Dorian Bennett arrived two months early and spent more than 50 days in the neonatal ICU, his parents received a bill of more than $550,000 — despite having insurance. The Florida hospital had a not-so-helpful suggestion: monthly payments of more than $45,000 for a year.
Gunnison paramedics cover the largest response zone in Colorado. Because of covid and the lack of nearby hospital beds, patients increasingly are transported long distances, leaving few ambulances to respond to emergencies.
Even before the omicron variant of covid starts to spread widely in the U.S., hospitals are filling up with post-holiday delta cases. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court signals — loudly — that 2022 will be the year it rolls back abortion rights in a big way. Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico and Mary Ellen McIntire of CQ Roll Call join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more.
Patients with other ailments are frustrated, and nurses and doctors are stressed and burned out, as unvaccinated covid-19 patients fill ICU and acute care beds.
Law professor Jackie Fox looks at health insurance policies like any other contract, and she has spent 30 years making sound legal arguments to help patients get the care they need.
The fight over covid vaccines continues to intensify, with Republicans on Capitol Hill pushing — with some success — to cancel President Joe Biden’s “test regularly or vaccinate” requirement for private employers. Meanwhile, abortion is not the only health issue before the Supreme Court this term. Joanne Kenen of Politico and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet and Rachel Cohrs of Stat News join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more.
Inside the Black Equity Coalition’s novel effort to share community health intel and scrape government data to understand — and document — the life-threatening differences between white and Black Pittsburgh.
Last week, on the same day the Supreme Court heard a case that could overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling on abortion rights, Texas enacted a law that creates criminal penalties for anyone who prescribes medication abortions via telehealth or mail.
A Supreme Court majority appears ready to overturn nearly 50 years of abortion rights, at least judging by the latest round of oral arguments before the justices. And a new covid variant, omicron, gains attention as it spreads around the world. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet and Shefali Luthra of The 19th join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Blake Farmer of Nashville Public Radio about the latest KHN-NPR “Bill of the Month” episode.
After her son’s death by suicide, a mother promotes mental health for environmentalists. It’s part of a larger push to address the burnout and psychological stress that can affect activists.
