Category: Hospitals

A Colorado Town Is About as Vaccinated as It Can Get. Covid Still Isn’t Over There.

San Juan County, Colorado, is one of the most vaccinated counties in the U.S. Leaders across the country continue to expound on the vaccine as the path forward in the pandemic. But San Juan’s experience the past few weeks with its first covid hospitalizations shows that, even with an extremely vaccinated population, masks are still necessary.

Readers and Tweeters Feel Americans’ Pain

KHN gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.

Hospitals Confront Climate Change as Patients Sick From Floods and Fires Crowd ERs

Patients sickened in heat waves, flooding and wildfire have raised awareness of climate change’s impact on health. Now, some hospitals are building solar panels and cutting waste to reduce their own carbon footprints, with support from a new office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But the industry is moving slowly.

The Part of the ‘Free Britney’ Saga That Could Happen to Anyone

Britney Spears was forced into psychiatric care — and compelled to pay for it. That can happen to any patient who has an episode of serious mental illness, piling financial woes onto their stress and vulnerability.

At an Overrun ICU, ‘the Problem Is We Are Running Out of Hallways’

Billings Clinic in Montana is past the tipping point as it looks for places to add intensive care unit beds and is on the cusp of rationing care to deal with the surge of sick covid patients in a state with significant anti-vaccination sentiment.

‘An Arm and a Leg’: They Turned Grief Into Action

This episode highlights how New York enacted a charity care law, one of the precursors to the federal provision on charity care in the Affordable Care Act.  

Covid-Overwhelmed Hospitals Postpone Cancer Care and Other Treatment

Patients with advanced cancer and heart disease are among those who have had to have surgeries and other treatments delayed and rescheduled as a high number of critically ill, unvaccinated covid patients strain the medical system.

The Changing Costs of Covid Care

In this commentary for Barron’s, Cynthia Cox explores the impact to the American public as the U.S. health insurance system adjusts to the COVID-19 pandemic. She uses the experience of the past year and a half to raise questions about broader issues of…

Preventable Costs of Unvaccinated COVID-19 Patients Rise Sharply in August as Hospitalizations Surge

A surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations among people who have not been vaccinated in August is adding billions of dollars in preventable costs to the nation’s health-care system, an updated KFF analysis finds. In August, the new analysis estimates that th…

ICUs Are Filled With Covid — And Regret

Unvaccinated people are filling intensive care beds and dying of covid in record numbers in Tennessee and other Southern states. Many tell their nurses and doctors they regret the decision not to get the vaccine when they could.