In the US, opioid abuse has become and epidemic. However, in the past year, there is some hope that this epidemic is starting to reverse. Opioid deaths have fallen by 16.9% in the past year. Why have deaths fallen? According to The Economist, no one is sure: One possibility is a supply shock…the amount of…
In 2024, our nationwide team of gumshoes set out to answer your most pressing questions about medical bills, such as: Can free preventive care really come with add-on bills for items like surgical trays? Or, why does it cost so much to treat a rattlesnake bite? Or, if it’s called an urgent care emergency center,…
Bill Hall, 71, has been fighting for his life for 38 years. These days, he’s feeling worn out. Hall contracted HIV, the virus that can cause AIDS, in 1986. Since then, he’s battled depression, heart disease, diabetes, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, kidney cancer, and prostate cancer. This past year, Hall has been hospitalized five times with dangerous…
“An Arm and a Leg” updates a popular episode from 2019 — a story about giving. In 1980, a young father named Denny Buehler was battling leukemia and needed to travel from Ohio to Seattle for treatment. To raise money for the trip, his friends and family organized a softball tournament. Denny passed away a…
LAS VEGAS — Case manager Bryon Johnson flashed a light into a dark tunnel beneath the glitz of the Las Vegas Strip on a recent fall afternoon. He stepped into an opening in a concrete ditch littered with trash and discarded clothing to search an underground world for his homeless clients. Beneath the Caesars Palace…
LAS VEGAS — Maurice Clark huddled in his tent along dusty railroad tracks as two homeless-outreach workers began asking him questions to determine whether he would qualify for free or subsidized housing. Did he use drugs? Had he ever been in jail? How many times had he been to an emergency room? Had he been…
MIAMI — When leaders of Florida’s most populous county met in September to pick a site for what could become the nation’s largest trash incinerator, so many people went to the government center to protest that overflow seating spilled into the building’s atrium. “MIRAMAR SAYS NO TO INCINERATOR! NOT IN OUR BACKYARD,” read green T-shirts…
John Zutter is the CEO of Lantern Care which is a company managing specialty care. It has evolved from a centers of excellence model, and changed its name from Employers Direct earlier this year. The trick is product expansion into the expensive stuff, especially cancer care, infusion and specialty surgery. John has thought a lot…
KFF Health News senior fellow and editor-at-large for public health Céline Gounder discussed the incoming Trump administration — notably, the possibility of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary— on the “On With Kara Swisher” podcast on Dec. 19. She also discussed the health stories that shaped 2024 on CBS on Dec….