Category: Health

Courtenay Harris Bond Many people living on the streets in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood — the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast — are in full-blown addiction, openly snorting, smoking, or injecting illicit drugs, hunched over crates or on stoops. Syringes litter sidewalks, and the stench of urine fouls the air. The neighborhood’s afflictions […]

Hannah Crabtree got active on Twitter in 2016 to find more people like herself: those with Type 1 diabetes who’d hacked their insulin pumps to automatically adjust the amount of insulin delivered. Soon, though, Crabtree found a more critical diabetes-related conversation happening on Twitter: rising insulin prices. Crabtree’s mother, who also had diabetes, died in […]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Union-aligned Democrats were set to introduce legislation Wednesday mandating a statewide $25 minimum wage for health workers and support staffers, likely setting up a pitched battle with hospitals, nursing homes, and dialysis clinics. State Sen. María Elena Durazo’s bill would require health facilities and home health agencies to give raises to many […]

LA PLANT, S.D. — Past a gravel road lined with old white wooden buildings is a new, 8-acre village dotted with colorful houses, tepees, and a sweat lodge. The Simply Smiles Children’s Village, in this small town on the Cheyenne River Reservation, is home to a program aimed at improving outcomes and reducing trauma for […]

After several rounds of treatment for a rare eye cancer — weekly drug infusions that could cost nearly $50,000 each — Paul Davis learned Medicare had abruptly stopped paying the bills. That left Davis, a retired physician in Findlay, Ohio, contemplating a horrific choice: risk saddling his family with huge medical debt, if he had to […]

This year’s health policy valentine submissions were full of compassion for patients and concern over the nation’s health care system. KHN’s readers and tweeters are among the most creative news consumers, sending in poetic valentines about physician assistants, the looming Medicaid unwinding, the Affordable Care Act, the upcoming end to the covid-19 public health emergency, […]

Pregnant and scared, Natasha Valle went to a Tennova Healthcare hospital in Clarksville, Tennessee, in January 2021 because she was bleeding. She didn’t know much about miscarriage, but this seemed like one. In the emergency room, she was examined then sent home, she said. She went back when her cramping became excruciating. Then home again. […]

Nonprofit hospitals are fighting Montana’s attempt to boost oversight of the ways they claim they provide benefits to their communities in exchange for millions of dollars in tax breaks. It’s the latest clash in a national struggle between policymakers and the industry over whether hospitals’ charitable giving is enough to justify their tax-exempt status. Montana […]

When covid-19 vaccines became available, Colorado public health officials initially relied on mass vaccination events publicized through Facebook, email, and texts, and required Coloradans to book appointments online. But when that go-big strategy drove large disparities in who was getting vaccinated, public health departments in the Denver area decided to go small instead. They provided […]

Megan Zawacki started working at St. Peter’s Health in Helena, Montana, in 2020 as a physician assistant trained in treating addiction. She had gone through specialized training that allowed her to prescribe Suboxone, a medication to fight opioid addiction, but she couldn’t do so for six months. That’s because Zawacki was hired to work with […]