The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
HCA charges patients an 鈥渁ctivation fee鈥 of up to $50,000 for trauma teams at centers located in half its 179 hospitals 鈥 and they often don鈥檛 need trauma care, an analysis of insurance claims data shows.
Health care insiders get surprise medical bills, too. One of them shares tips for writing an insurance appeal.
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here鈥檚 a collection of their appearances.
Agricultural workers living in employer-owned housing can have trouble getting health care. It鈥檚 symptomatic of bigger gaps in worker protections that the pandemic spotlighted, say proponents of a newly passed Colorado bill for farmworker rights.
Phone visits became an option for many Medicare and Medicaid patients during the pandemic. Now policymakers are deciding whether they鈥檙e worth the money.
Experts told us that the system鈥檚 capacity has improved and people now have access to different testing options.
Citing the deaths of thousands of health care workers, the new rules will force employers to report fatalities or hospitalizations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and provide higher-quality protective gear, among other actions.
The federal approval of a controversial drug to treat Alzheimer鈥檚 disease has reignited the debate over drug prices and the way the Food and Drug Administration makes decisions. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden seeks to gain goodwill overseas as he announces the U.S. will provide 500 million doses of covid vaccine to international health efforts. Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet, Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times and Joanne Kenen of Politico join KHN鈥檚 Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also, Rovner interviews Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the new administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. And to mark the podcast鈥檚 200th episode, the panelists discuss what has surprised them most and least over the past four years.
Safety-net clinics especially are bracing for how the drugmaker鈥檚 policy shift could reduce their budgets and hamstring their ability to provide care to an at-risk population.
Direct primary care and health care sharing ministries can offer people more accessible or cheaper health care options, but they lack the benefits of traditional insurance and aren鈥檛 regulated.
Medical subscriptions, a $199 million CEO payday and the race to fix primary care in the U.S. One Medical is betting big that a subscription model can fix primary care. But the firm faces competition from CVS, Target and large hospital systems.
California Democratic lawmakers are asking Gov. Gavin Newsom to approve $100 million per year to fund programs that address health inequality and structural racism.
Connecticut residents who learned how to communicate with family and friends through digital technology when their nursing homes closed to visitors last year used that skill to testify remotely during legislative hearings on bills affecting them.
Young women have closed the gender gap for excessive drinking. And that was before the pandemic. The trend is particularly troubling because women are at greater risk for blackouts, liver disease, cardiovascular diseases and certain cancers linked to alcohol use.
A new movie produced by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine group tries to capitalize on the covid-19 pandemic, the racial justice movement and renewed interest in the history of medical racism.
As vaccine expiration dates loom, states with hundreds of thousands of doses on hand say demand is tanking and there鈥檚 no easy way to donate to other states or countries that might want them
The technology that schools have been snapping up in the fight against covid 鈥渉as not shown significant disinfection effectiveness鈥 to install on its planes, Boeing found. Now the company鈥檚 study is being debated in a proposed class-action suit.
When estimating how well a patient鈥檚 kidneys are working, doctors frequently turn to an equation that depends on a question: Is the patient Black? Kidney experts are now debating how to remove the race adjustment and whether the question is a function of sound science. It鈥檚 considered just the first step in dismantling institutional racism in kidney care.
Community health centers were born in the 1960s to reach low-income communities. But some rural health experts say federally qualified health centers were a missing piece in achieving early equity in the vaccine rollout.
Two medical schools vie to open in Montana, highlighting the rapid spread of for-profit schools and their previously tarnished business model.
