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A recent broadcast of “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” frequently cited Ńîąóĺú´«Ă˝Ň•îl Health News in its examination of how billions of dollars from the opioid settlements are being spent.
Public health authorities are closely watching an unusual strain of bird flu that has infected dairy cows in nine states and at least one dairy worker. Meanwhile, another major health system suffered a cyberattack, and Congress is moving to extend the availability of telehealth services. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Sandhya Raman of CQ Roll Call, and Rachel Cohrs Zhang of Stat join Ńîąóĺú´«Ă˝Ň•îl Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Atul Grover of the Association of American Medical Colleges about its recent analysis showing that graduating medical students are avoiding training in states with abortion bans and major restrictions.
“An Arm and a Leg” is looking for listener stories about facility fees for a new project.
Hundreds of Native American tribes are getting money from settlements with companies that made or sold prescription painkillers. Some are investing it in sweat lodges, statistical models, and insurance-billing staffers.
Most U.S. hospitals aggressively pursue patients for unpaid bills. One New York hospital system decided to work with them instead.
For the second year in a row, medical school graduates across specialties are shying away from applying for residency training in states with abortion bans or significant restrictions, according to a new study. Meanwhile, Medicare’s trustees report that the program will be able to pay its bills longer than expected — which could discourage Congress from acting to address the program’s long-term financial woes. Lauren Weber of The Washington Post, Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins University schools of nursing and public health and Politico Magazine, and Anna Edney of Bloomberg News join Ńîąóĺú´«Ă˝Ň•îl Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more.
The U.S. is one of nine countries that do not guarantee paid sick leave. Since the covid pandemic, advocates in states including Missouri, Alaska, and Nebraska are organizing to take the issue to voters with ballot initiatives this November.
Despite the rise of gun violence in America, few medical guidelines exist on removing bullets from survivors’ bodies. In the second installment of our series “The Injured,” we meet three people shot at the Kansas City Super Bowl parade who are dealing with the bullets inside them in different ways.
Puff inhalers can be lifesavers for people with asthma and other respiratory diseases, but some types release potent greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. That, in turn, worsens wildfires, contributes to air pollution, and intensifies allergy seasons — which can increase the need for inhalers. Some doctors are helping patients switch to more eco-sensitive inhalers.
A six-week abortion ban took effect in Florida this week, dramatically restricting access to the procedure not just in the nation’s third-most-populous state but across the South. Patients from states with even more restrictive bans had been flooding in since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Meanwhile, the CEO of the health behemoth UnitedHealth Group appeared before committees in both the House and Senate, where lawmakers grilled him about the February cyberattack on subsidiary Change Healthcare and how its ramifications are being felt months later. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet, and Rachana Pradhan of Ńîąóĺú´«Ă˝Ň•îl Health News join Ńîąóĺú´«Ă˝Ň•îl Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more. Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week they think you should read, too.
A TikTok user claims to have developed an allergy from DIY gel nails. What gives? An allergist weighed in. Let’s walk through what happened in this viral video.
After grave missteps in the covid pandemic, the World Health Organization revisited the science and now confirms that many respiratory viruses are inhaled as airborne particles. The new framework implies that stopping transmission relies on costly measures like ventilation and masking.
Agreeing to an out-of-network doctor’s own financial policy — which generally protects their ability to get paid and may be littered with confusing insurance and legal jargon — can create a binding contract that leaves a patient owing.
In this episode of “An Arm and a Leg,” host Dan Weissmann explores what the fallout from a cyberattack says about antitrust concerns in health care.
Florida has served as a haven for Southern pregnant women with little or no access to abortions. But the Florida Supreme Court upheld a six-week abortion restriction that begins in May — so now women across much of the South seeking abortions will have to look farther afield.
For the second time in as many months, the Supreme Court heard arguments in an abortion case. This time, the justices are being asked to decide whether a federal law that requires emergency care in hospitals can trump Idaho’s near-total abortion ban. Meanwhile, the federal government, for the first time, will require minimum staffing standards for nursing homes. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Tami Luhby of CNN, and Joanne Kenen of Johns Hopkins University and Politico Magazine join Ńîąóĺú´«Ă˝Ň•îl Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more. Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week they think you should read, too.
Some of the nearly 130,000 Montanans who have lost Medicaid coverage as the state reevaluates eligibility are homeless. That’s in part because Montana kicked more than 80,000 people off the program for technical reasons rather than income ineligibility. For unhoused people who were disenrolled, getting back on Medicaid can be extraordinarily difficult.
Nurses are telling lawmakers that there are not enough of them working in hospitals and that it risks patients’ lives. California and Oregon legally limit the number of patients under a nurse’s care. Other states trying to do the same were blocked by the hospital industry. Now patients’ relatives are joining the fight.
Congress this week had the chance to formally air grievances over the cascading consequences of the Change Healthcare cyberattack, and lawmakers from both major parties agreed on one culprit: consolidation in health care. Plus, about a year after states began stripping people from their Medicaid rolls, a new survey shows nearly a quarter of adults who were disenrolled are now uninsured. Jessie Hellmann of CQ Roll Call, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet, and Lauren Weber of The Washington Post join Ńîąóĺú´«Ă˝Ň•îl Health News’ Mary Agnes Carey to discuss these stories and more. Also this week, Ńîąóĺú´«Ă˝Ň•îl Health News’ Julie Rovner interviews Caroline Pearson of the Peterson Health Technology Institute.
A first-of-its-kind survey of Medicaid enrollees found that nearly a quarter who were dropped from the program in the last year’s unwinding say they’re uninsured.
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