Category: Health

If you are enrolled in Medi-Cal, as more than one-third of Californians are, make sure your county knows how to reach you, or you could lose your health coverage unnecessarily. You will likely hear and see public messages over the coming weeks urging you to update your contact information. Heed them. Then, sometime between now […]

MOSCOW, Idaho — Mackenzie Davidson grew up in a Mormon household and sheepishly admits she knew little about pregnancy. “This is embarrassing,” she said, sitting outside a café along a street thronged with students in this college town. “But I didn’t know that you had to have sex to have kids until I was 13 […]

Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is stepping down at the end of June after 2½ tumultuous years leading the nation’s primary public health agency — and much of the Biden administration’s effort to combat the covid-19 pandemic. “I took on this role, at your request, with the goal of […]

California’s attorney general is warning two tobacco companies that their new cigarettes appear to violate a state ban on most flavored tobacco products that was upheld by voters last year. Attorney General Rob Bonta sent letters to R.J. Reynolds and ITG Brands LLC, dated April 25, warning that the packaging and promotional materials for nine […]

(Oona Tempest / KFF Health News) CLAYTON, Mo. — Kaitlyn Anderson was six months pregnant when a driver killed her and a Missouri Department of Transportation colleague in 2021 while they were doing roadwork near St. Louis. Her fetus also died. Although Anderson’s family tried to sue the department on her behalf, workers’ compensation laws […]

ATLANTA — Elizabeth Burns had just come inside from gardening in 2021 when she caught a TV news report about a rocklike material contaminating a nearby community’s soil with lead. She was stunned. Her own backyard had many such chunks. The news segment identified the material as slag, a waste byproduct likely from long-closed metal-smelting […]

Republican leaders’ banishment of a transgender lawmaker from floor debates in the recently ended Montana legislative session seized the nation’s attention. It also overshadowed significant health policy changes and historic levels of health care spending. The session likely will be remembered for GOP leaders removing Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr, one of two transgender representatives in […]

Rates of gun assaults on children roughly doubled during the covid-19 pandemic, according to a study that looked at gun deaths and injuries in four major cities. Black children were the most frequent victims. A wider analysis from Boston University included a review of gun assaults between mid-March 2020 and December 2021 in Chicago, Philadelphia, […]

Claire Cleveland In Glenwood Springs, Colorado, registered nurse Katie Laven answers calls from people who’ve started the two-pill medication abortion regimen and want to stop the process. “They are just in turmoil,” said Laven, who works at the Abortion Pill Rescue Network and answers some of the roughly 150 calls it says come in each […]

The Biden administration on Thursday cautioned Americans about the growing risks of medical credit cards and other loans for medical bills, warning in a new report that high interest rates can deepen patients’ debts and threaten their financial security. In its report, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated that people in the U.S. paid $1 […]