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The nation鈥檚 Catholic health systems were largely founded and led by nuns with a mission to serve the sick regardless of their creed or financial means. Today, no nuns run any U.S. Catholic health system, while many of these hospitals pull in billions, according to their financial reports.
The coronavirus pandemic underscored the importance of paid sick leave, a benefit to help workers and their families when they fall ill. Now voters in Missouri, Nebraska, and Alaska are deciding whether employers must provide it.
As states wait for Deloitte to make fixes in computer systems, Medicaid beneficiaries risk losing access to health care and food.
The technology has generated notices with errors, sent Medicaid paperwork to the wrong addresses, and been frozen for hours at a time, according to state audits, court documents, and interviews. While it can take months to fix problems, America鈥檚 poorest residents pay the price.
If Indiana officials approve a proposed hospital merger in western Indiana in the coming months, the state will have its first hospital monopoly created by a 鈥淐ertificate of Public Advantage.鈥 Other such deals have resulted in government reports documenting diminished care in Tennessee and North Carolina.
Democrats running for office are using abortion rollbacks to galvanize voters, with abortion rights ballot initiatives amplifying their lines of attack. In Missouri, the leading Democratic candidate for the Senate also blames Republican Sen. Josh Hawley for threatening access to IVF.
Medical providers say they're still coping with the Change Healthcare cyberattack disclosed in February even though parent company UnitedHealth Group reported that much is back to normal and its revenue is up over last year.
Ballad Health was granted the nation鈥檚 largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly in 2018. Since then, its emergency rooms have become more than three times as slow.
Health providers may bill however they choose 鈥 including in ways that could leave patients with unexpected bills for 鈥渇ree鈥 care. Routine preventive care saddled an Illinois couple with his-and-her bills for 鈥渟urgical trays.鈥
A majority of medical schools now offer dual MD-MBA programs, compared with just a quarter two decades ago. The number of medical students seeking a business degree has nearly tripled. This begs the question: Whom will these doctors serve more, patients or shareholders?
The bottleneck caused by states鈥 reevaluation of Medicaid enrollees has swept up low-income families that rely on other safety-net services.
As Medicaid programs across the nation review enrollees' status in the wake of the pandemic, patients struggle to navigate the upheaval.
Ballad Health, the only hospital system across a large swath of Tennessee and Virginia, has fallen short of quality-of-care and charity care obligations 鈥 even as it鈥檚 sued thousands of patients for unpaid bills.
Increasingly, hospitals are merging across separate markets within states. It鈥檚 a move that health economists and the Federal Trade Commission have been closely watching, as evidence shows such mergers raise prices for patients with no improvement in care.
A widow encountered a perplexing reality in medical billing: Providers can come after patients to collect well after a bill has been paid.
Patient advocates are tackling the 鈥渙verwhelming task鈥 of connecting people with health insurance as millions lose coverage due to the end of pandemic protections on Medicaid eligibility.
To drive down costs, insurers are bypassing hospital system pharmacies and delivering high-priced infusion drugs, including some used in chemotherapy, via third-party pharmacies. Smarting from losing out on billing for those drugs, hospitals and clinics are trying to convince states to limit this practice, known as "white bagging."
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