Category: Health

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 […]

Time is running out for free-to-consumer covid vaccines, at-home test kits, and even some treatments. The White House announced this month that the national public health emergency, first declared in early 2020 in response to the pandemic, is set to expire May 11. When it ends, so will many of the policies designed to combat […]

The Host Health care was a recurring theme throughout President Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address on Capitol Hill this week. He took a victory lap on recent accomplishments like capping prescription drug costs for seniors on Medicare. He urged Congress to do more, including making permanent the boosted insurance premium subsidies added […]

Sam Whitehead In early 2020, as they tried to fight covid-19 across two rural counties in North Carolina, the staff of Granville Vance Public Health was stymied, relying on outdated technology to track a fast-moving pandemic. Lisa Macon Harrison, the agency’s health director, said her nurses’ contact-tracing process required manually entering case information into five […]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Driving through the industrial outskirts of Sacramento, a stretch of warehouses, wholesale suppliers, truck centers, and auto repair shops northeast of downtown, it’s hard to square California’s $18 billion investment in homeless services with the roadside misery. Tents and tarps, run-down RVs, and rusted boats repurposed as shelter line one side of […]

When a private equity firm closed Seasons Midwifery and Birth Center in Thornton, Colorado, in October, the state lost one of its few non-hospital birthing centers and 53 families with pregnancy due dates in November and December were left scrambling to find providers. But then staffers and community advocacy groups stepped in to fill the […]