Category: NPR

Biden’s Health Play In A COVID-19 Economy: Lower Medicare’s Eligibility Age To 60

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden proposes letting 60-year-olds enroll in Medicare. He’d pay for the expansion out of general tax revenue, he says, not the Medicare fund.

COVID-19 Patients Given Unproven Drug In Texas Nursing Home, Garnering Criticism

A Texas doctor decided to give dozens of coronavirus patients at a nursing home a controversial, experimental medication, in some cases without telling their families first. He defends the decision.

Places Which Most Need Medical Equipment Often Forced To Buy On Open Market

The Trump administration has enlisted some of the biggest U.S. corporations to help boost the supply of medical equipment. But many of the supplies still aren’t going where they’re needed most.

New York Lung Doctors Rush To Spread Their Expertise To Other Physicians

Pulmonologists at some New York City hospitals are changing the ways they work to keep up with critically ill COVID-19 patients. They are changing who does what — and training lots of people.

Could Lessons From The Early Fight Against AIDS Inform The Coronavirus Response?

Doctors and activists who worked through the early years of AIDS say there are similarities between those days and the current pandemic — and insights that could help shape strategy.

Many Venezuelan Hospitals Lack Basics To Function, Let Alone Handle COVID-19

Doctors tell NPR many health workers have left the country and many hospitals don’t have necessities, including soap and running water.

How San Francisco’s D.A. Is Decreasing The Jail Population Amid COVID-19

Chesa Boudin’s radical leftist parents were imprisoned when he was a toddler. Now he’s working to reduce the inmate population in San Francisco — and worrying about his dad, who remains in prison.

Fauci Says U.S. Coronavirus Deaths May Be ‘More Like 60,000’; Antibody Tests On Way

The predicted death toll has fallen, Dr. Anthony Fauci says, due to Americans’ embrace of physical separation and other restrictions.

Psychiatrists Lean Hard On Teletherapy To Reach Isolated Patients In Emotional Pain

Remote mental health treatment isn’t the same as in-person visits with a psychiatrist, but faced with a pandemic, many people have been forced to make do. Regulators are making that access easier.

‘It’s Like Walking Into Chernobyl,’ One Doctor Says Of Her Emergency Room

Some health care workers say they’re exhausted and burning out from the stress of treating a stream of critically ill patients in an increasingly overstretched health care system.