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Reversing guidance from the Biden administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau concludes that states cannot bar medical debt from their residents’ credit reports.
Health care professionals fear that new caps on federal student lending, set to start in July, will put medical school out of reach for many who want to become doctors and exacerbate physician shortages. Others say unlimited federal lending has fed a rise in academic costs, saddling families and, ultimately, taxpayers with debt.
Despite a poisonous political climate, hundreds of volunteer advocates put partisan differences aside and pressed Congress to help people with cancer.
Amid concerns that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is undermining trust in vaccines and public health science, some states are seeking new sources of scientific consensus and changing how they regulate insurance companies, prescribers, and pharmacists. Colorado has been at the front of this wave.
As a warming climate intensifies storms, 51Ƶ Health News has identified more than 170 U.S. hospitals at risk of significant and potentially dangerous flooding. Climate experts warn that the Trump administration’s cuts leave the nation less prepared.
Some injured patients say they wish they had tried harder to check the backgrounds of doctors and clinics they trusted, but those records are hard to find.
Under a new law, many Americans will have to meet a work requirement to obtain and keep their Medicaid coverage. But due to an exemption, millions living in areas of high unemployment could be spared.
Some states are enacting medical debt laws as the Trump administration pulls back federal protections. Elsewhere, industry opposition has derailed legislation.
The decisions by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices matter, because insurers and federal programs rely on them, but they are not binding. States can follow the recommendations, or not.
Despite billions of tax dollars and two decades of effort invested in improving health care data sharing, Americans’ medical records often remain siloed, leading to duplicate testing, increased costs, and wasted time for patients and doctors.
The Trump administration has pushed a significant amount of health costs to states, whose budgets may already be strained by declining state tax revenues, a slowdown in pandemic spending, and economic uncertainty. State and local governments now face difficult decisions.
In a survey by the National Funeral Directors Association, more than 60% of respondents said they would be interested in exploring green and natural burial alternatives.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is hunting for Medicaid waste, fraud, and abuse in at least six Democratic-led states that expanded coverage to low-income and disabled immigrants without legal status, according to records obtained by 51Ƶ Health News and The Associated Press.
Conventional wisdom says GLP-1 drugs must be taken indefinitely to maintain weight loss. But a growing number of researchers, payers, and providers are challenging that consensus and exploring whether — and how — to taper patients off expensive GLP-1 drugs.
About 90,000 people spent months in limbo as central Missouri’s major, and often only, provider fought over insurance contracts. Patients getting caught in the crossfire of disputes has become a familiar complication, as about 8% of hospitals have left an insurer network since 2021. Trump administration policies could accelerate the trend.
Trump officials sowed fear and confusion among CDC scientists, slowing their response to the measles outbreak in West Texas. Cases surged and sparked new outbreaks across the U.S. and Mexico. Together, these linked outbreaks have sickened more than 4,500 and killed at least 16 in the U.S. and Mexico.
The cost of health insurance is rising faster than the price of eggs or gasoline.
Alarmed at Republicans’ deep cuts to health care and restrictions on reproductive rights, advocates are supporting California’s effort to counter a mid-decade gerrymander by the Texas GOP to pad their party’s fragile U.S. House majority.
Young adults without jobs that provide insurance find their options are limited and expensive. The problem is about to get worse.
A joint investigation by 51Ƶ Health News and NBC News found that cosmetic surgery chains have been the target of scores of medical malpractice and negligence lawsuits, including 12 wrongful death cases.
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