At age 66, South Carolina physician Paul Rousseau decided to retire after tending for decades to the suffering of people who were seriously ill or dying. It was a difficult and emotionally fraught transition. “I didn’t know what I was going to do, where I was going to go,” he told me, describing a period…
When Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance claimed Haitian immigrants had caused infectious-disease rates to “skyrocket” in Springfield, Ohio, local health commissioner Chris Cook checked the records. They showed that in 2023, for example, there were four active tuberculosis cases in Clark County, which includes Springfield, up from three in 2022. HIV cases had risen,…
KFF Health News Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony took a reporting trip to the small southeastern Missouri city of Sikeston and heard a mention of its hidden past. That led her on a multiyear reporting journey to explore the connections between a 1942 lynching and a 2020 police killing there — and what they say about…
Pete Hudson is one of the OGs of digital health. As an emergency room doc he was fed up with his friends bothering him with their medical problems and he created a tool called iTriage, which helped patients figure out what condition they had, and where to go to deal with it. This was fifteen…
In her first months as a community health worker, Jee Hyo Kim helped violent crime survivors access supportive services and resources. When a client with post-traumatic stress disorder sought a therapist, she linked him to one that fit his needs. She helped clients afraid to leave their homes obtain food delivery vouchers. As one client…
Most employers have little idea what the pharmacy benefit managers they hire do with the money they exchange for the medications used by their employees, according to a KFF survey released Wednesday morning. In KFF’s latest employer health benefits survey, company officials were asked how much of the rebates collected from drugmakers by pharmacy benefit…
It sounds like a joke: poppy seeds infused with opioids. Indeed, it was a plotline on the sitcom Seinfeld. But for some it has been a tragedy. People have died after drinking tea brewed from unwashed poppy seeds. And after eating lemon poppy seed bread or an everything bagel, mothers reportedly have been separated from…
An $88 “observation room” fee for a checkup didn’t sit right with Kari Greene, an “Arm and a Leg” listener from Oregon. When the price went up to $99 the next year, Kari complained to her benefits representative, who thought it was weird, too — but couldn’t do anything about it. In states like Connecticut…
When Interest Rates Go Low, Should Public Debt Go High?ROI for SDOH interventions.Consumption responses to sweetened beverage taxes.Do health care quality improvement policies work for all?“Provider respondents reported spending time equivalent of more than 100 000 full-time registered nurses per year on prior authorization. ”
Californians in November will weigh in on a ballot initiative to increase scrutiny over the use of health-care dollars — particularly money from a federal drug discount program — meant to support patient care largely for low-income or indigent people. The revenue is sometimes used to address housing instability and homelessness among vulnerable patient populations. Voters…