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With schools reopening, poll finds two-thirds of parents support mandating masks for unvaccinated students, but resistance to vaccinating students remains high. 鈥淢y child is not a test dummy,鈥 one Black parent told pollsters. Some parents deferred the decision to their teens.
When the program began half a century ago, backers believed the benefits would expand over time, but politics and concerns about money have stymied most efforts. Now congressional Democrats are looking to add vision, dental and hearing care.
The Florida governor鈥檚 order said schools couldn鈥檛 mandate that students wear masks and that the state could deny funding to school districts that didn鈥檛 comply.
Doctors tied to professional sports teams share in investment bonanza.
Amid a surge in covid-19 cases driven by the highly contagious delta variant, nearly 1,500 health systems across the nation are requiring their employees to get vaccinated. In Montana and Oregon, that鈥檚 not an option.
Abigail Matos-Pag谩n, a critical care expert who has galvanized relief efforts after hurricanes and earthquakes, is on a mission to inoculate as many Puerto Rican residents as possible.
Aggressive sales tactics have allegedly led surgeons to use defective or wrong-size implants, screws or other products on patients, including former Olympian Mary Lou Retton.
A proposal breezing through the state legislature would make it illegal to obstruct someone from getting a covid-19 shot, or any other vaccine, but some free speech experts say it goes too far.
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here鈥檚 a collection of their appearances.
As the nation confronts the delta variant, many consumers are again facing delays getting tested. The problem appears most acute in the South and Midwest, where new infections are growing the fastest.
Facing bankruptcy, Detroit largely dismantled its public health department in 2012, and the city essentially went two years without a government-run public health system. Five years later, this major American city offers a grim cautionary tale.
Pharmacy benefit managers have curtailed in-person audits of pharmacy claims during the pandemic, switching to virtual audits done by computer. That has markedly increased the number of claims they can review 鈥 and the chances for payment denials 鈥 squeezing pharmacies and bringing in more cash for the benefit companies.
The latest research shows that although deaths in nursing homes received enormous attention, far more older adults who perished from covid lived outside of institutions. People with dementia and other severe neurological conditions, chronic kidney disease and immune deficiencies were hit especially hard.
Covid is back with a vengeance, with some people clamoring for booster shots while others harden their resistance to getting vaccinated at all. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration is pushing hard on drugmaker Pfizer鈥檚 request to upgrade the emergency authorization for its vaccine and give it final approval. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Rachel Cohrs of Stat and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KHN鈥檚 Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also, for 鈥渆xtra credit,鈥 the panelists suggest their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.
Providence, the country鈥檚 10th-biggest hospital chain, says it鈥檚 too expensive to upgrade an older hospital, so it will join forces with giant Kaiser Permanente to build a new one.
State health officials say the federal government will likely reject any work or community engagement requirements, which were key to Republican lawmakers agreeing to extend the program that insures 100,000 low-income Montana adults.
The Medicare rule, designed by the Trump administration to take money away from drug industry brokers and provide refunds to patients, has not been implemented. But budget analysts say if it were, it would cost the government money. So senators are pushing the rule aside and claiming to save billions of dollars, which they want to use instead on new projects.
The success in getting shots to older adults is likely due to states prioritizing that effort when the vaccines became available and motivation among the elderly after the virus killed so many in their age group.
Health insurers could do more to encourage vaccination, including letting the unvaccinated foot their bills.
The pandemic forced new parents to find help with breastfeeding online. Now, some offerings are remaining virtual to help expand access to lactation support.
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