“Almost 5 million able-bodied Medicaid recipients ‘simply choose not to work’ and ‘spend six hours a day socializing and watching television.’” Scott Jennings on “CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip” on July 1 Republicans defended the GOP megabill’s Medicaid changes as targeting a group of people they believe shouldn’t qualify: people who can work but instead…
When Lawrence and Penny Higgins of Fairfield, Maine, first learned in 2020 that high levels of toxic chemicals called PFAS taint their home’s well water, they wondered how their health might suffer. They had consumed the water for decades, given it to their pets and farm animals, and used it to irrigate their vegetable garden…
ALBANY, Ga. — Belinda McLoyd has been thinking about peanut butter. McLoyd, 64, receives a small monthly payment through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps. “They don’t give you that much to work with,” she said. To fit her tight budget, she eats ramen noodles — high on sodium and…
By OWEN TRIPP So much of the early energy around generative AI in healthcare has been geared toward speed and efficiency: freeing doctors from admin tasks, automating patient intake, streamlining paperwork-heavy pain points. This is all necessary and helpful, but much of it boils down to established players optimizing the existing system to suit their…
Many people don’t understand why pharmaceuticals cost so much money. Don’t pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money? The answer is ‘yes’, but only if the drugs are successful. A paper by Wouters et al. (2024) found that: Based on data for 361 of 558 new therapeutic agents approved over the study period (median follow-up…
Dominique Wells is COO of Conduit Health Partners which is a spin off from the (now) Bon Secours Mercy Health system. Their role is to provide back up for nursing staff for health systems in very specific areas, notably patient transfer operations, nurse triage and patient communications. Dominque and her team showed me a brief…
Every time Ashton Alexander sees an ad for Georgia Pathways to Coverage, it feels like a “kick in the face.” Alexander tried signing up for Pathways, the state’s limited Medicaid expansion, multiple times and got denied each time, he said, even though he met the qualifying terms because he’s a full-time student. Georgia is one…
https://kffhealthnews.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/mp_20250718_seg_MMR_-_Rural_Health_64.mp3 The Rural Health Transformation Program calls for federal regulators to hand states $10 billion a year for five years starting in fiscal year 2026. But the “devil’s in the details in terms of implementing,” said Sarah Hohman, director of government affairs at the National Association of Rural Health Clinics. “An investment of this amount…
SHREVEPORT, La. — When Robert Smith met his future girlfriend in 2010, he wanted to take things slowly. For Smith, no relationship had been easy in the years since he was diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV. People often became afraid when they learned his status, even running away when he coughed. The…
KFF Health News Nevada correspondent Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez discussed the potential impact of Medicaid cuts on rural hospitals on KNPR’s “State of Nevada” on July 17. Click here to hear Orozco Rodriguez on “State of Nevada.” Read Orozco Rodriguez’s “‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ Would Batter Rural Hospital Finances, Researchers Say.” KFF Health News chief Washington…