In late August 2020, Ashlee Guidry and her staff kept a wary eye on guidance from local officials as Hurricane Laura passed over Cuba en route to southwestern Louisiana. Guidry was responsible for the safety of dozens of people living at Stonebridge Place, an assisted living and memory care facility in Sulphur. For days, Laura…
By DAVID INTROCASO After having worked in DC for sixteen years, in 2013 I created The Healthcare Policy Podcast. The title was in part intended to be sarcastic because healthcare policymaking in DC is very narrowly drawn. Consequently, healthcare delivery is excessively commodified, reductionistic and financialized or in sum anachronistic and ironically lacking purchase. If the…
By DAVID INTROCASO After having worked in DC for sixteen years, in 2013 I created The Healthcare Policy Podcast. The title was in part intended to be sarcastic because healthcare policymaking in DC is very narrowly drawn. Consequently, healthcare delivery is excessively commodified, reductionistic and financialized or in sum anachronistic and ironically lacking purchase. If the…
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and most private payers in the U.S. have accepted the NCCN guidelines as a mandated reference to determine payment for “off‐label” use of anticancer drugs that are not approved for the specific indication by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Thus, a key question is what types of…
By MICHAEL MILLENSON It was a small anecdote, buried in a lengthy profile in The New Yorker of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, “Donald Trump’s Tariff Dealmaker-in-Chief.” But as a patient safety activist, the stark depiction of the effect of medical error felt like a sudden shock. Lutnick, the article related, knew tragedy early in life: “his mother died…
The Host Julie Rovner KFF Health News @jrovner @julierovner.bsky.social 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…
Taking a page from the private insurance industry’s playbook, the Trump administration will launch a program next year to find out how much money an artificial intelligence algorithm could save the federal government by denying care to Medicare patients. The pilot program, designed to weed out wasteful, “low-value” services, amounts to a federal expansion of…
With the Trump administration scaling back federal efforts to protect Americans from medical bills they can’t pay, advocates for patients and consumers have shifted their work to contain the nation’s medical debt problem to state Capitols. Despite progress in some mostly blue states this year, however, recent setbacks in more conservative legislatures underscore the persistent…
Quinn Cochran-Zipp went to the emergency room three times with severe abdominal pain before doctors figured out she had early-stage cancer in the germ cells of her right ovary. After emergency surgery four years ago, the Greeley, Colorado, lab technician is cancer-free. The two hospitals that treated Cochran-Zipp at the time determined that she qualified…
When the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met last week, confusion filled the room. Members admitted they didn’t know what they were voting on, first rejecting a combined measles-mumps-rubella-chickenpox vaccine for young toddlers, then voting to keep it funded minutes later. The next day, they reversed themselves on the funding. Now Jim O’Neill, the…