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A Tulsa-based gas station chain is using its knowledge of how to serve customers and locate shops in easy-to-find spots to enter the urgent care industry, which has doubled in size over the past decade. Experts question how the explosion of convenient clinics will affect care costs and wait times.
Recovering from emergency gallbladder surgery, a Tennessee woman said she spent months without a permanent mailing address and never got a bill. She was sued by the health system two years later.
As more states restrict gender-affirming care for transgender people, some are relocating to more welcoming destinations, such as California, Illinois, Maryland, and Nevada, where they don't have to worry about being locked out of medical care.
Laws granting rights to unborn children have spread in the decades since the U.S. and Missouri supreme courts allowed Missouri鈥檚 definition of life as beginning at conception to stand. Now, a wrongful death lawsuit involving a workplace accident shows how sprawling those laws 鈥 often intended to curb abortion 鈥 have become.
Missouri is considering making it a felony to jack up temporary health care staffing prices during a statewide or national emergency. It鈥檚 one of at least 14 states looking to reel in travel nurse costs, after many hospitals struggled to pay for needed staffers earlier in the covid pandemic.
Eli Lilly's news that it plans to cut insulin costs for patients will help, not hinder, the recent efforts in California and by entrepreneurs such as Mark Cuban to offer lower-cost alternatives, drug pricing experts said.
Twitter has been a hotbed for the burgeoning insulin access movement and activism surrounding other medical conditions. For people with diabetes, the platform has helped propel concern about insulin prices into policy. Can it continue to win with hashtags?
Howard Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett and chairman of his own charitable foundation, gave $30 million to build an addiction treatment center in the central Illinois community where he farms. But the money was a one-time gift for infrastructure, so the clinic is on its own to keep it running.
Jeff and Kareen King joined a medical cost-sharing plan advertised as a "refreshing non-insurance approach" to paying for health care. It had a big proviso: Preexisting conditions like Jeff's heart condition were not fully covered for the first two years. He needed heart surgery after just 16 months.
Federally funded clinics and their doctors are protected against lawsuits by federal law, with taxpayers footing the bill. The health centers say that allows them to better serve their low-income patients, but lawyers say the system handcuffs consumers with a cumbersome legal process and makes it harder for the public to see problems.
Complaints about misleading health insurance marketing are soaring. State insurance commissioners are taking notice. They鈥檝e created a shared internal database to monitor questionable business practices, and, in the future, they hope to provide a public-facing resource for consumers. In the meantime, consumers should shop wisely as open enrollment season begins.
A medical billing specialist investigated her husband鈥檚 ER bill. Her sleuthing took over a year but knocked thousands of dollars off the hospital鈥檚 charges 鈥 and provides a playbook for other consumers.
After reporting from KHN, NPR, and CBS News, a patient鈥檚 $2,700 ambulance bill was pulled back from collections.
Nonprofit federally funded health centers are a linchpin in the nation鈥檚 health care safety net because they treat the medically underserved. The average profit margin is 5%, but some have recorded margins of 20% or more in three of the past four years.
After a car wreck, three siblings were transported to the same hospital by ambulances from three separate districts. The sibling with the most minor injuries got the biggest bill.
People talk about the sacrifices they made when health care forced them into debt.
Some consumers who think they are signing up for Obamacare insurance find out later they actually purchased a membership to a health care sharing ministry. But regulators and online advertising sites don鈥檛 do much about it.
The pandemic crisis has overwhelmed understaffed state Medicaid agencies, already delaying access to the insurance program in Missouri. As the public health emergency ends, low-income people nationwide could find it even harder to have coverage.
Five states have created 鈥渁ssistant physician鈥 licenses that allow medical school graduates to practice without completing residency training. But a federal indictment in Missouri of one assistant physician has some original supporters trying to rein in the medical specialty.
Missouri has more people waiting to have their Medicaid applications processed than it has approved since the expansion of the federal-state health insurance program. Although most states process Medicaid applications within a week, Missouri is taking, on average, more than two months. Patient advocates fear that means people will stay uninsured longer, leading them to postpone care or get stuck with high medical bills.
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