The proposal being weighed by federal officials would allow employers and insurers to decide that drug companies’ assistance doesn’t count toward their members’ deductible or out-of-pocket maximum spending limits. If plans opted for that approach, only payments made by patients themselves would be included in the calculation toward reaching those limits.
As wardens across the country grapple with COVID-19 outbreaks, inmates are being released to prevent widespread contagion in overcrowded prisons.
Twins Edna Mayes and Ethel Sylvester, 92, are relying on each other through the pandemic, in which one of the hidden dangers is to their mental health.
“I know we will succeed somewhat and we will fail somewhat,” says one of the plan’s chief architects. “We won’t be able to find every single person — but we will hopefully prevent a lot of deaths.”
Across the U.S., pediatric practices that provide front-line care for the nation’s children are struggling to adjust to crashing revenues, terrified parents and a shortage of protective equipment — and all while being asked to care for young patients who could well be vectors for transmission without showing symptoms.
The pandemic has exposed massive cracks in the foundations of the U.S. public health system. Getting the country back to normal, experts say, will require a major investment in Public Health 101: training a corps of workers who can track people with the virus and prevent them from passing it to others.
Twenty- and 30-somethings were initially told the coronavirus was more likely to strike older people. But then people in younger age groups started getting seriously sick.
State and city officials are using a dose of humor to urge residents to stay home in the serious mission of controlling COVID-19.
Lack of protective gear and fears about all the unknown aspects of COVID-19 are parts of the mosaic of stress facing doctors and nurses on the front lines of the pandemic.
A couple decided to donate a new test from their company to enable coronavirus testing for everyone in their ski resort community. It was an experiment that promised to show what widespread testing could do to fight the spread of COVID-19. But even the best-intended plans run into problems during this pandemic.
