By MICHAEL MILLENSON “Dr. Google,” the nickname for the search engine that answers hundreds of millions of health questions every day, has begun including advice from the general public in some of its answers. The “What People Suggest” feature, presented as a response to user demand, comes at a pivotal point for traditional web search…
The Host Julie Rovner KFF Health News @jrovner Read Julie’s stories. Julie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of KFF Health News’ weekly health policy news podcast, “What the Health?” A noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the author of the critically praised reference book “Health Care Politics and Policy A to…
Sumana Reddy, a primary care physician, struggles on thin financial margins to run Acacia Family Medical Group, the small independent practice she founded 27 years ago in Salinas, a predominantly Latino city in an agricultural valley often called “the salad bowl of the world.” Reddy can’t match the salaries offered by larger health systems —…
Food bank shortages caused by high demand and cuts to federal aid programs have some residents of a small community that straddles Idaho and Nevada growing their own food to get by. For those living in Duck Valley, a reservation of about 1,000 people that is home to the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes, there’s just one grocery…
Tom Knight is the Chairman of Healthcare Diversion, a nonprofit that is trying to educate about the topic of drug theft from facilities. This happens both because medical professionals are addicts (and victims themselves) and also because of organized crime and resale. The consequences are awful, with patients receiving water instead of analgesic drugs, getting…
That is the title of a paper by Arnold and Priestley (2025). They examine whether gun purchase wait periods impact suicide rates using both variation in gun laws by state over time as well as variation in a county’s distance to the nearest state without a waiting period. First, some background on US gun purchase…
When a woman collapsed on an escalator at the Buffalo, New York, airport last June, Phil Clough knew what to do. He and another bystander put her flat on her back and checked her pulse (faint) and her breathing (shallow and erratic). Then she stopped breathing altogether. Realizing that she might be having a cardiac…
The Trump administration quietly restored federal family planning money to Tennessee and Oklahoma, despite court rulings that the states weren’t entitled to funds because they refused to provide women information about terminating pregnancies or abortion referrals on request. The decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to restore millions of dollars for the…
Carmen Aiken of Chicago made an appointment for an annual physical exam in July 2023, planning to get checked out and complete some blood work. The appointment was at a family medicine practice run by University of Illinois Health. Aiken said the doctor recommended they undergo a Pap smear, which they hadn’t had in more…