The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
States and the federal government are experimenting with steps that will allow people to start working again and returning to more typical lifestyles. But public health experts offer their thoughts on the related risk-benefit calculations.
As some states begin the delicate task of lifting stay-at-home orders and allowing businesses to reopen, many employers are considering whether their strategy should include wide testing of workers.
Emergency department volumes are down 40 to 50 percent across the country. Doctors worry a new wave of cardiac patients is headed their way 鈥 people who have delayed care and will be sicker and more injured when they finally seek care.
Frustration from inside the Trump administration over the management of the COVID-19 pandemic is starting to become public, as whistleblowers 鈥 some anonymous, some named 鈥 tell how the effort is being undermined by favoritism, incompetence and a disdain for science. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court heard a case that could threaten the Affordable Care Act鈥檚 birth control benefit. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News and Rachana Pradhan of Kaiser Health News join KHN鈥檚 Julie Rovner to discuss this and more. Also, for 鈥渆xtra credit,鈥 the panelists recommend their favorite stories of the week they think you should read, too.
At the start of the spring planting season, farmers across the U.S. heartland were already trying to recover from last year鈥檚 flooding amid worsening economic conditions when the pandemic struck. Farm bankruptcies and suicides continue to climb. A lack of mental health resources in rural America makes finding help more complicated.
In one conservative pocket of Montana, a local health board member who opposes vaccinations helped fight the state鈥檚 stay-at-home rules. But now, as the state slowly reopens, she faces a backlash of her own.
Indiana prisoners said they can’t protect themselves from the virus, as the governor resists calls to reduce overcrowding. “Scared for our lives,” said an inmate.
Nothing in this viral meme is accurate. And there are other places to place blame.
Elizabeth and Robert Mar would have celebrated 50 years of marriage in August. Instead, they died within a day of each other. Their two very different deaths illustrate how palliative care is changing to help patients and families cope with the coronavirus pandemic.
Nursing homes with COVID-19 infections tend to violate health rules more often and have more complaints and fines, records show. But infections also plague highly rated facilities 鈥 while sparing some low-ranked ones.
鈥淭he awful truth is families have no control over what鈥檚 happening,鈥 one advocate says.
It鈥檚 hard to overstate how uneven access to critical coronavirus test kits remains in the nation鈥檚 largest state. Even as some Southern California counties are opening drive-thru sites to make testing available to any resident who wants it, a rural northern county is testing raw sewage to determine whether the coronavirus has infiltrated its communities.
California legislators resume their work Monday after more than a month off. While the coronavirus pandemic has shifted the state鈥檚 priorities, many lawmakers say they still intend to push non-COVID health care bills to tax soda, ban vape flavors and more.
Because the public health system mostly operates in the background, it rarely gets the attention or funding it deserves 鈥 until there鈥檚 a crisis.
KHN鈥檚 Julie Rovner joins a panel of journalists on 鈥1A鈥 to talk about promising results in a study of the drug remdesivir and other developments in the battle against the coronavirus.
Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes wades through hundreds of health care policy stories each week, so you don’t have to.
When you factor in population size, the U.S. is still behind.
Los Angeles County is providing thousands of coronavirus self-testing kits to its citizens, but public health officials are leery of the shortage of data on whether this easier method 鈥 in which an individual swabs his or her own cheek 鈥 is as reliable as a less comfortable but well-established technique.
The nursing schools at UCLA, UCSF and UC-Davis have joined hands in a new one-year online training program for mental health care as a surge of patients is expected due to the social isolation and economic impact of COVID-19.
The Supreme Court this week, in an 8-1 decision, ruled that insurers are due the roughly $12 billion that Congress several years ago tried to cut off in payments under the Affordable Care Act鈥檚 鈥渞isk corridors鈥 provision. And while the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage in many places around the country, states are starting to reopen their economies at the urging of President Donald Trump and over objections of public health officials. Caitlin Owens of Axios and Mary Ellen McIntire of CQ Roll Call join KHN鈥檚 Julie Rovner to discuss this and more. Also, Rovner interviews KHN鈥檚 Carmen Heredia Rodriguez, who wrote the latest KHN-NPR 鈥淏ill of the Month鈥 installment about COVID testing that should have been free but was not.
