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Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West is testing the waters on a $25 minimum wage for support staff at health care facilities in Southern California. Opposition from hospitals and health facilities is driving an expensive battle.
Hospitals, boosted by private equity-backed staffing companies, have embraced a new idea: the obstetrics emergency department. Often, it is just a triage room in the labor-and-delivery area, but it bills like the main emergency department.
Independent medical practices keep closing as doctors join behemoth hospital groups or leave the field. Research suggests that鈥檚 bad news for patients. Studies repeatedly conclude that consolidation in the health care industry is driving up costs while showing no clear evidence of improved care.
MLK Community Hospital in South Los Angeles is surrounded by poverty, homeless encampments, and food deserts. Even though California Gov. Gavin Newsom is funneling billions of taxpayer money into an ambitious initiative to provide some low-income patients with social services, hospital executives and other critics say it won鈥檛 improve access to basic care.
Hospitals have specialists ready to offer consult and care for concerns from cancer to childbirth but often no one with expertise in addiction medicine. Patients with a history of substance use 鈥 who are discharged without care 鈥 are at risk for overdose.
Hundreds of medical centers along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts face serious risks from even relatively weak storms as climate change accelerates sea-level rise 鈥 not to mention big ones like Category 4 Hurricane Ian.
If an embryo has implanted in a fallopian tube, ending the pregnancy is imperative to protect the patient鈥檚 life. Women鈥檚 health advocates have raised concerns that the needed treatment may be hampered by restrictive abortion laws in some states. Yet women seeking treatment in states with more liberal abortion laws may still find the process expensive and harrowing.
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.
KHN Midwest correspondent Lauren Weber talks with NPR's "Consider This" podcast about her reporting on families confronted with medical bills while grieving the loss of a baby who received expensive hospital care.
Sterling Raspe lived just eight months. In this KHN video, her father shows the 2-inch stack of medical bills generated by Sterling鈥檚 care.
Congress has once again decided not to decide how to fund the federal government in time for the start of the fiscal year, racing toward a midnight Sept. 30 deadline to pass a stopgap bill that would keep the lights on for two more months. However, it does appear the FDA鈥檚 program that gets drugmakers to help fund some of the agency鈥檚 review staff will be renewed in time to stop pink slips from being sent. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Rachel Cohrs of Stat, and Victoria Knight of Axios join KHN鈥檚 Julie Rovner to discuss these topics and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews filmmaker Cynthia Lowen, whose new documentary, 鈥淏attleground,鈥 explores how anti-abortion forces played the long game to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Russell Cook was expecting a quick and inexpensive visit to an urgent care center for his daughter, Frankie, after she had a car wreck. Instead, they were advised to go to an emergency room and got a much larger bill.
When Indigenous people started moving to cities in large numbers after World War II, many found hardship and discrimination there 鈥 but not the health care they were entitled to. Episode 12, the season finale, explores the efforts of urban Indian health providers to close those gaps by providing affordable, culturally competent care.
Some hospitals notch big profits while patients are pushed into debt by skyrocketing medical prices and high deductibles, a KHN analysis finds.
Montana is one of the latest states seeking to increase oversight of nonprofit hospitals鈥 giving to ensure they justify their tax-exempt status.
Medical records can contain seemingly objective descriptions that are actually full of coded language and subtext. How does that affect care?
On top of fearing for their children鈥檚 lives, new parents of very fragile, very sick infants can face exorbitant hospital bills 鈥 even if they have insurance. Medical bills don鈥檛 go away if a child dies.
Two Missouri towns are without operating hospitals after private equity-backed Noble Health left both facilities mired in debt, lawsuits, and federal investigations. The hospitals鈥 new operator, Platinum Health, agreed to buy them in April for $2 and laid off the last employees in early September.
As private equity groups are swarming into aging America鈥檚 eye care, the consolidation is costing the U.S. health care system and patients more money.
After a unanimous ruling from the high court, doctors who are accused of writing irresponsible prescriptions can go to trial with a new defense: It wasn鈥檛 on purpose.
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