DON'T EVER GIVE UP
2021-10-17 How to Crush Medical Debt: 5 Tips for Using Hospital Charity Care Emily Pisacreta What if a law passed but no one enforced it? That’s essentially what has happened with one small but helpful rule about hospitals and financial assistance for medical bills. The Affordable Care Act, the health law also known as Obamacare, […]
2021-10-16 Insurance Focused on Virtual Visits? The Pros and Cons of a New Twist in Health Plans Julie Appleby, Kaiser Health News At the height of the covid-19 pandemic, people often relied on telemedicine for doctor visits. Now, insurers are betting that some patients liked it enough to embrace new types of health coverage that […]
2021-12-27 (Originally posted 2021-10-15) Surprise-Billing Rule ‘Puts a Thumb on the Scale’ to Keep Arbitrated Costs in Check Julie Appleby, Kaiser Health News Patients are months away from not having to worry about most surprise medical bills — those extra costs that can amount to hundreds or thousands of dollars when people are unknowingly treated […]
2010-10-14 Health Industry Wields Power in California’s High-Stakes Battle to Lower Health Care Costs Angela Hart and Samantha Young SACRAMENTO — Gavin Newsom put California’s health care industry on notice when he was a candidate for governor, vowing in 2018 to go after the insurance companies, doctors and hospitals that leave many Californians struggling with […]
6 Months to Live or Die: How Long Should an Alcoholic Liver Disease Patient Wait for a Transplant? Aneri Pattani October 13, 2021 The night before Brian Gorzney planned to check into rehab for alcohol use, he began vomiting blood. First at 2 a.m. Then 5. And again at 11. When he arrived at the […]
2021-10-10 Organ Centers to Transplant Patients: Get a Covid Shot or Move Down on Waitlist JoNel Aleccia, Kaiser Health News A Colorado kidney transplant candidate who was bumped to inactive status for failing to get a covid-19 vaccine has become the most public example of an argument roiling the nation’s more than 250 organ […]
2021-10-08 Needle Exchanges Are Targeted by Eco-Rooted Lawsuits. A New California Law Will Stop That. Rachel Bluth, Kaiser Health News SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — For more than 30 years, public health officials and nonprofits in California have provided clean hypodermic needles to people who use them to inject drugs. For nearly that entire time, opponents […]
2021-10-03 Hospitals Confront Climate Change as Patients Sick From Floods and Fires Crowd ERs Miranda Green When triple-digit temperatures hit the Pacific Northwest this summer, the emergency room at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center was ill prepared. Doctors raced to treat heat-aggravated illness in homeless people, elderly patients with chronic ailments, and overdosing narcotics users. […]
2021-09-27 Biosimilar Drugs Are Cheaper Than Biologics. Are They Similar Enough to Switch? Michelle Andrews It took years for Elle Moxley to get a diagnosis that explained her crippling gastrointestinal pain, digestion problems, fatigue, and hot, red rashes. And after learning in 2016 that she had Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammation of the digestive […]
2021-09-26 Low Wages and Pandemic Gut Staffing Support for Those With Disabilities Andy Miller Ernestine “Erma” Bryant likes her job, but the pay is a problem. She works in a caregiver role as a “direct support professional” in Tifton, Georgia, helping people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities with basic functions such as dressing, […]