Why Young Americans Dread Turning 26: Health Insurance Chaos
Young adults without jobs that provide insurance find their options are limited and expensive. The problem is about to get worse.
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Young adults without jobs that provide insurance find their options are limited and expensive. The problem is about to get worse.
In this video report, InvestigateTV and 杨贵妃传媒視頻 Health News take viewers to Alabama, Idaho, and West Virginia to explore how gaps in internet connectivity and telehealth access cause residents to live sicker and die younger on average than their peers in well-connected regions.
For-profit hospitals provide most inpatient physical therapy but tend to have worse readmission rates to general hospitals. Medicare doesn鈥檛 tell consumers about troubling inspections.
A Colorado bill banning surprise billing for ambulance rides passed unanimously in both legislative chambers, only to be met with a veto from the governor. As more states pass such legislation, some are hitting the same snag 鈥 concerns about raising premiums.
In 2017, when President Donald Trump tried to repeal Obamacare and roll back Medicaid coverage, Republican governors helped turn Congress against it. Now, as Trump tries again to scale back Medicaid, Republican governors 鈥 whose constituents stand to lose federal funding and health coverage 鈥 have gone quiet on the health consequences.
A Trump administration reworking of a $42 billion broadband expansion program will trigger delays as millions of rural Americans wait for promised connections and the telehealth services they bring.
Health insurers issue millions of prior authorization denials every year, leaving many patients stuck in a convoluted appeals process, with little hope of meaningful policy change ahead. For doctors, these denials are frustrating and time-consuming. For patients, they can be devastating.
The Trump administration has paused implementation of a rule limiting miners鈥 exposure to airborne silica dust days after a federal court agreed to put it on hold to hear an industry challenge. The protections are meant to head off a surge in cases of black lung disease. Meanwhile, any enforcement of new standards might be meager due to workforce cuts.
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Taxpayers 鈥 through federal infrastructure programs 鈥 have paid billions of dollars to internet companies to hook up rural Americans. Some communities have nothing to show for it, leaving medically vulnerable rural patients disconnected and without access to telehealth.
Consumers who were enrolled fraudulently in Affordable Care Act coverage could receive unexpected tax bills 鈥 the first and possibly only clue they were a victim of fraud. Getting help may become difficult as federal workers are laid off and funding for assistance programs is cut.
Frustrated by high health care prices, many who backed President Donald Trump support strong government actions to protect patients. It鈥檚 unclear whether GOP leaders will listen.
Mississippi, Tennessee, and West Virginia 鈥 states with some of the worst health outcomes 鈥 also have some of the highest childhood vaccination rates. But doctors and health officials worry a rising tide of vaccine skepticism is causing those public health bright spots to dim.
Health workers and researchers say an HIV outbreak in West Virginia that three years ago was called 鈥渢he most concerning鈥 in the U.S. continues to spread after state and local officials restricted syringe service programs.
GLP-1 agonist medications such as Ozempic accounted for 10% of the North Carolina state employee health plan鈥檚 prescription drug spending, so the state is no longer covering them for weight loss alone. Still, it did decide to cover them for Medicaid patients鈥 weight loss. A look inside the state鈥檚 coverage calculus.
Amid what has been called the fourth wave of the opioid epidemic, doctors and researchers are walking back medication-heavy methods of treating babies born experiencing opioid withdrawal symptoms, replacing the regimen with the simplest care: parenting.
The generally combative face-off was marked by a series of false and sometimes bizarre statements from former President Donald Trump.
Congress and state legislatures are considering age bans and other limits for Instagram and TikTok out of concern that they harm kids鈥 mental health. But some researchers and pediatricians question whether there鈥檚 enough data to support that conclusion.
Years of struggle prepared residents in Cabell County, West Virginia, to confront the latest wave of the opioid epidemic as mixtures of fentanyl and other drugs claim lives nationwide.
Framed in the rhetoric of choice, Tennessee鈥檚 new law governing childhood vaccinations is among more than a dozen recently passed or pending nationwide that set parental freedom against community and children鈥檚 health.
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