Wisconsin already faced a shortage of caregivers who offer crucial health services and independence to their clients. Then the pandemic struck. In a survey of nearly 500 Wisconsinites with disabilities and older adults, every respondent said the pandemic had disrupted their caregiving service.
Although the federal government has poured billions of dollars into hospitals to defray their losses from the coronavirus outbreak, new streams of fundraising have emerged — including health worker-themed beer that adds “a drop in the bucket.”
Arizona is a coronavirus hot spot, with the average of daily cases more than doubling from two weeks ago.
Public health officials are asking for more money in California’s state budget. But unlike some rich and powerful health care interests, they don’t have an army of lobbyists to curry favor with lawmakers.
Andre Guest was just fine one day. The next, he was fighting for his life.
Although laws prohibit price gouging on precious resources in times of emergency, states have been forced to compete for a share of the nation’s stockpile of ventilators — used to treat the sickest COVID patients — or pay top dollar on sideline deals. With quality and quantity control lacking, what happens when the pandemic’s second wave hits?
But some of those options, like special enrollment periods, are time-sensitive.
The shortages are so dire that nursing homes and other health centers are going to extraordinary lengths for masks, gowns and essential materials.
Health clinics in isolated African American communities in the San Francisco Bay Area provide crucial services to neglected populations. But like thousands of other community clinics around the nation, their finances have been wrecked by the pandemic shutdown.
Months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the public seems more confused than ever. And health officials still are not all on the same page; this week the World Health Organization had to walk back an official’s statement about how commonly the virus is spread by people without symptoms. Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times, Paige Winfield Cunningham of The Washington Post and Mary Ellen McIntire of CQ Roll Call join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss this and more. Also, Rovner interviews Michael Mackert, a professor and health communications expert at the University of Texas-Austin, about how health information can best be translated to the public.
