Category: NPR

A 4-year-old girl was playing with her dolls and next thing you know, she had two tiny doll shoes stuck in her nose. A trip to urgent care, then the emergency room left her parents with a giant bill.

One medical student was addicted to opioids. Another relied on them to control disabling pain. Both think their experiences will help them be better doctors when it comes to prescribing opioids.

About 5 million vets live in rural America and when it comes to health-care, there can be both literal and logistical obstacles. The Department of Veterans Affairs thinks telehealth clinics may help.

Health care sharing ministries offer consumers an alternative to traditional insurance, and people are drawn to their lower premiums. But one company is accused of selling illegal insurance products.

For older, often frail cancer patients, geriatric assessments can help doctors gauge the patients’ physical, mental and functional capacity, and choose an appropriate treatment approach.

“Street medicine” programs, like one in Atlanta, seek out people living in back alleys and under highways. The public health outreach improves patients’ health and is cost-effective, hospitals find.

ACA plans for 2020 are cheaper than last year — premiums lower, on average. And in some areas, people who qualify for federal subsidies could end up with no monthly payment. But read the fine print.

Five U.S. territories say if Congress doesn’t quickly allocate more funding for their Medicaid programs, they will be forced to make brutal triage decisions that will likely cost American lives.

When passing the ACA, Democrats touted the fact that they had included many measures to pay for the bill’s expanded coverage. But nearly 10 years later, Congress has eliminated many of those taxes.

Researchers edited the DNA in bone marrow cells taken from a Mississippi woman with sickle cell disease to produce a treatment that could alleviate the excruciating effects of her inherited illness.