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Big Bend Regional Medical Center, the only hospital in a sparsely populated region of West Texas, announced that because of a nursing shortage its labor and delivery unit must close for days at a time and patients must go instead to a hospital an hour away.
In Texas’ border communities, which are overwhelmingly Hispanic, covid-19 death rates for people under age 65 were double those in the rest of the state and three times the national average. They were also significantly higher than rates in New Mexico border areas.
Black Americans’ vaccination rates still trail all other groups, while Hispanics show improvement. Native Americans show the strongest rates nationally.
Democratic leaders in Congress have vowed to pass legislation to address high prescription drug prices this year, but some moderates in their own party appear to be balking. Meanwhile, younger teens are now eligible for a covid-19 vaccine and the Biden administration reinstated anti-discrimination policy for LGBTQ people in health care. Joanne Kenen of Politico, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet and Rachel Cohrs of Stat join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more.
In 2015, Houston police officers stepped into Alan Pean’s hospital room, closed the door and shot him through the chest. Nearly six years later, his survival has brought the Pean family a wrenching legacy and conflicted sense of purpose.
The Biden administration has started to speed efforts to reverse health policies forged under Donald Trump. Most recently, the administration overturned a ban on fetal tissue research and canceled a last-minute extension of a Medicaid waiver for Texas. That latter move may delay the Senate confirmation of President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Medicare and Medicaid programs, as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) seeks to fight back. Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Rachel Cohrs of Stat and Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Plus, for extra credit, the panelists recommend their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.
California stresses equity for minority groups. Texas is all about personal choice and liberty. Both are struggling to vaccinate Latinos and contending with vaccine hesitancy among conservative communities.
For some, a vaccine appointment a few hours away is no biggie. For others, it’s a major barrier to gaining protection from the coronavirus.
As the recent winter storm disaster in Texas showed, many long-term care sites aren’t required to have backup power supplies or other redundancies to keep residents safe when disaster strikes.
Spiritual leaders risk their own lives and health to tend to covid’s victims and their loved ones.
In the hours before President Joe Biden was inaugurated, the Federal Emergency Management Agency allowed a Texas mask maker to ship the high-quality masks overseas.
The east side of Austin has few of the chain stores key to the Texas vaccination plan. But local officials have done pop-up vaccination events in the community to get more shots to Blacks and Latinos.
Hospitals dealing with staff shortages during the current covid surge are unable to tap into one valuable resource: foreign-trained doctors, nurses and other health workers, many with experience treating infectious diseases. Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Nevada are the only states to have eased credentialing requirements during the pandemic.
In some parts of the country, the surge in covid cases is overwhelming coroners, morgues, funeral homes and religious leaders. It has required ingenuity and even changed the rituals of honoring the dead.
Thousands of animals in the U.S. have been tested for the coronavirus, as researchers work to understand its transmission and which other species might be at risk. So far, dozens have tested positive, mostly cats and dogs exposed to sick owners.
A 28-year-old Texas doctor tested positive in early July and died in September — one of a dozen young health workers nationwide whose deaths from the coronavirus have been profiled by KHN and The Guardian as part of the "Lost on the Frontline" project.
A KHN review found more than 20 states either don’t count or have incomplete data on the use of COVID-19 antigen tests, leaving the public in the dark about the true scope of the pandemic.
Two emergency room doctors, one in New York and the other in Houston, discuss their cities’ coronavirus outbreaks — and responses.
During the pandemic, nearly 700,000 additional Texans have lost health insurance. The Lone Star State already had more uninsured people than any other. It has given people with COVID symptoms pause before seeking medical care.
In Houston, now a hot spot for COVID cases, not everyone agrees on how to deal with the pandemic.
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