California has embarked on an ambitious five-year initiative to improve the health of its sickest Medicaid patients by introducing nontraditional services. In the Inland Empire, where many residents have diabetes, one health plan is diving into the experiment by delivering healthy, prepared meals to those lucky enough to get them.
Some foster children with complex mental, behavioral, and physical health needs without a foster placement are having to stay in hotel rooms and even office buildings, a practice called “hoteling.”
Preventive care, like screening colonoscopies, is supposed to be free of charge to patients under the Affordable Care Act. But some hospitals haven’t gotten the memo.
Even in deep-blue California, Democratic lawmakers pulled their proposed covid vaccine requirements before they had a vote. The lawmakers blamed the ebbs and flows of the coronavirus, the public’s short attention span, and opposition from public safety unions.
In California and beyond, physician trainees working long hours for what in some states amounts to little more than minimum wage are organizing to seek better pay, benefits, and working conditions. More than 1,300 of them at three L.A. County public hospitals will vote May 30 on whether to strike.
An aging population in need of regular cancer screenings has driven private equity companies, seeking profits, to invest in many gastroenterology practices and set up aggressive billing practices. Steep prices on routine tests are one consequence for patients.
Two mass shootings in two weeks — one at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 fourth graders and two teachers — have reignited the “guns-as-public-health-problem” debate. But political consensus seems as far away as ever. Meanwhile, the FDA is in the congressional hot seat over its handling of the infant formula shortage. Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, and Rachana Pradhan of KHN join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Dr. Richard Baron, head of the American Board of Internal Medicine, about how doctors should discipline colleagues who spread medical misinformation.
A covid outbreak on a field trip. Another at prom. Yet administrators are reluctant to expose their schools to legal challenges by again requiring masks for students and staffers. That leaves parents fretful and confused.
The deadly synthetic opioid has spread across the nation during the pandemic, and the problem is disproportionately affecting Native Americans.
A Wyoming clinic slated to open this summer would be the only one in the state to provide procedural abortions and the closest option for some people in surrounding states. But its fate is uncertain now that the Supreme Court looks poised to strike down Roe v. Wade.
