Author: Avisoscuba
It’s that time of year again: In most states, the Affordable Care Act’s annual open enrollment season for health plans begins Nov. 1 and lasts through Jan. 15. Current enrollees who do not update their information or select an alternative will be automatically reenrolled in their current plan or, if that plan is no longer available, into a plan with similar coverage. Last year marked a record enrollment of about 21 million people. This time around, consumers will find a few things have changed. Don’t Fall for Advertising Scams While some health plans offer small-dollar gift cards or other incentives…
Estamos en esa época del año otra vez. En la mayoría de los estados, la temporada de inscripción abierta de la Ley de Cuidado de Salud a Bajo Precio (ACA) para los planes de salud comienza el 1 de noviembre y dura hasta el 15 de enero. Los consumidores que no actualicen su información o seleccionen una alternativa serán automáticamente reinscriptos en su plan actual o, si ese plan ya no está disponible, en uno con cobertura similar. El año pasado se registró un récord de inscripciones, con unas 21 millones de personas. Esta vez, los consumidores descubrirán que han…
Cara Anthony SIKESTON, Mo. — In the summer of 2021, Sikeston residents organized the biggest Juneteenth party in the city’s history. Sikeston police officers came too, both to provide security for the event and to try to build bridges with the community. But after decades of mistrust, some residents questioned their motives. In the series finale of the podcast, a confident, outspoken Sikeston teenager shares her feelings in an uncommonly frank conversation with Chief James McMillen, head of Sikeston’s Department of Public Safety, which includes Sikeston police. Host Cara Anthony asks what kind of systemic change is possible to reduce…
Jackie Fortiér Casi el 90% de los bebés que tuvieron que ser hospitalizados con covid-19 tenían madres que no se vacunaron mientras estaban embarazadas, según nuevos datos publicados por los Centros para el Control y Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC). Los hallazgos aparecen en el Informe Semanal de Morbilidad y Mortalidad de la agencia. Los bebés que fueron demasiado pequeños para vacunarse tuvieron la tasa de hospitalización por covid más alta de cualquier grupo de edad, excepto las personas mayores de 75 años. El estudio, que analizó los datos médicos de bebés desde octubre de 2022 hasta abril de 2024 en…
While hot-button health care issues such as abortion and the Affordable Care Act roil the presidential race, Democrats and Republicans in statehouses around the country have been quietly working together to tackle the nation’s medical debt crisis. New laws to curb aggressive hospital billing, to expand charity care for lower-income patients, and to rein in debt collectors have been enacted in more than 20 states since 2021. Democrats championed most measures. But the legislative efforts often passed with Republican support. In a few states, GOP lawmakers led the push to expand patient protections. “Regardless of their party, regardless of their…
OAKLAND, California – El paciente tendría poco más de 60 años y era un hombre afroamericano con enfisema. El oxímetro colocado en la yema de su dedo registraba un nivel de saturación de oxígeno en sangre muy superior al 88%, el índice que indica un riesgo urgente de falla orgánica y muerte. Sin embargo su médica, Noha Aboelata, creyó que estaba más enfermo que lo que indicaba el aparato. Así que lo envió a hacerse unos análisis de laboratorio que confirmaron su sospecha: el hombre necesitaba oxígeno suplementario en casa. Meses después, en diciembre de 2020, Aboelata volvió a pensar…
OAKLAND, Calif. — The patient was in his 60s, an African American man with emphysema. The oximeter placed on his fingertip registered well above the 88% blood oxygen saturation level that signals an urgent risk of organ failure and death. Yet his doctor, Noha Aboelata, believed the patient was sicker than the device showed. So she sent him for a lab test, which confirmed her suspicion that he needed supplemental oxygen at home. Months later, in December 2020, Aboelata thought back to her patient as she read a New England Journal of Medicine article showing that pulse oximeters were three…
When Anna Nusslock showed up at her local hospital 15 weeks pregnant and in severe pain earlier this year, she said, a doctor delivered devastating news: The twins she and her husband had so desperately wanted were not viable. Further, her own health was in danger, and she needed an emergency abortion to prevent hemorrhaging and infection. Providence St. Joseph Hospital, in the small Northern California coastal city of Eureka, refused to provide the care she required because doctors could detect fetal “heart tones,” Nusslock said at a news conference Monday. California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against…
The Host When it comes to health care, this year’s presidential campaign is increasingly a matter of which candidate voters choose to believe. Democrats, led by Vice President Kamala Harris, say Republicans want to further restrict reproductive rights and repeal the Affordable Care Act, pointing to their previous actions and claims. Meanwhile, Republicans, led by former President Donald Trump, insist they have no such plans. Meanwhile, with open enrollment approaching for Medicare, the Biden administration dodges a political bullet, avoiding a sharp spike next year in Medicare prescription drug plan premiums. This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of KFF Health…
As Nov. 5 approaches and the struggle for control of the U.S. House reaches a fever pitch, Democrats are doing everything they can to tie their Republican opponents to their antiabortion voting records. Some Republican candidates, meanwhile, seem to be softening their positions. And political analysts say it’s part of a larger trend playing out nationwide, up and down the ballot. “The politics of abortion and reproductive health can get voters to participate at higher rates,” said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University. “Republicans have to moderate their stance if they’re going to be in the…
More than four years ago, former President Donald Trump’s administration accelerated the development and rollout of the covid-19 vaccine. The project, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, likely saved millions of lives. But a substantial number of Republican voters now identify as vaccine skeptics — and Trump rarely mentions what’s considered one of the great public health accomplishments in recent memory. “The Republicans don’t want to claim it,” Trump told an interviewer in late September. Instead, on at least 17 occasions this year, Trump has promised to cut funding to schools that mandate vaccines. Campaign spokespeople have previously said that pledge would…
Nearly 90% of babies who had to be hospitalized with covid-19 had mothers who didn’t get the vaccine while they were pregnant, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings appear in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Babies too young to be vaccinated had the highest covid hospitalization rate of any age group except people over 75. The study looked at infant medical data from October 2022 to April 2024 in 12 states and underscores the critical importance of vaccinating pregnant people. It also echoes what physicians have anecdotally reported for…
ADAIR, Iowa — The blue-and-white highway sign for the eastbound rest stop near here displays more than the standard icon of a person in a wheelchair, indicating facilities are accessible to people who can’t walk. The sign also shows a person standing behind a horizontal rectangle, preparing to perform a task. The second icon signals that this rest area along Interstate 80 in western Iowa has a bathroom equipped with a full-size changing table, making it an oasis for adults and older children who use diapers because of disabilities. “It’s a beacon of hope,” said Nancy Baker Curtis, whose 9-year-old…
Jacob Gardenswartz “Donald Trump said he was going to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. He never did. We did.” Vice President Kamala Harris at the ABC News presidential debate, Sept. 10 Since Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race, she and former President Donald Trump have sparred over their approaches to lowering prescription drug costs. Harris has described this as an important campaign promise that Trump made but didn’t deliver on. “Donald Trump said he was going to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices,” Harris said during the ABC News debate on Sept. 10 in Philadelphia. “He never…
Soon after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roe v. Wade abortion ruling in 1973, Laura Esserman used her high school graduation speech to urge her classmates to vote for the Equal Rights Amendment to expand women’s access to property, divorce, and abortion. Five decades later, with 14 states banning abortion in almost all circumstances, the University of California-San Francisco breast cancer surgeon has once again taken up the fight for women’s reproductive rights. Since 2021, when Texas prohibited most abortions, she has boycotted the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium — a conference she had regularly attended, and frequently headlined,…
Dave Lantz is no stranger to emergency department or doctor bills. With three kids in their teens and early 20s, “when someone gets sick or breaks an arm, all of a sudden you have thousand-dollar medical bills,” Lantz said. The family’s health plan that he used to get as the assistant director of physical plant at Lycoming College, a small liberal arts school in central Pennsylvania, didn’t start to cover their costs until they had paid $5,600 in medical bills. The Lantzes were on the hook up to that annual threshold. The high-deductible plan wasn’t ideal for the family of…
KFF Health News and PolitiFact staffs Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz met in an Oct. 1 vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News that was cordial and heavy on policy discussion — a striking change from the Sept. 10 debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Vance and Walz acknowledged occasional agreement on policy points and respectfully addressed each other throughout the debate. But they were more pointed in their attacks on their rival’s running mates for challenges facing the country, including immigration and inflation. The moderators, “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah…
It was expected that the past year and a half would be a fraught time for Medicaid, the workhorse of the nation’s health system, which covers more people than any other government health insurance program. In April 2023, states resumed screening people for Medicaid eligibility and terminating coverage for those they said no longer qualified or failed to renew, which had been prohibited under pandemic-era protections. Many health advocates feared the uninsured rate, which had just hit historic lows, would resurge. But while more than 25 million Americans have lost Medicaid coverage during the Medicaid “unwinding,” many also gained coverage…
Vice President Kamala Harris is seeing a surge of support from Black women voters, galvanized in part by her work on health care issues such as maternal mortality, reproductive rights, and gun control. The enthusiasm may be key for Democratic turnout at the polls in critical battleground states. Black women have always been among the most reliable voters in the Democratic base and were central to former President Barack Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012. Enthusiasm was also robust for President Joe Biden in 2020. But this year, before he bowed out of the race and Harris became the Democratic…
Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names. Clarifying the FDA’s Role and Authority Over Direct-to-Consumer Drug Ads While several inaccuracies in the recent opinion piece about direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertisements by KFF Health News’ Elisabeth Rosenthal have been corrected in response to FDA’s direct requests, in this letter the FDA seeks to provide additional information about the agency’s oversight to readers and correct any misimpressions that may remain (“Perspective: With TV Drug Ads, What You See Is Not Necessarily What You Get,” Sept.…
En un anuncio de campaña este mes, Derek Tran, un demócrata del condado de Orange, California, criticó a su oponente, la representante republicana Michelle Steel, por apoyar una prohibición nacional del aborto y votar para limitar el acceso a anticonceptivos. El retador demócrata Will Rollins también señaló a su rival, el representante Ken Calvert, y a los “extremistas de MAGA” en un anuncio reciente por respaldar un proyecto de ley que podría criminalizar a los profesionales médicos que brindan abortos. A pocas cuadras de la ruta estatal 14 en Lancaster, a unas 70 millas al norte del centro de Los…
(Oona Zenda/KFF Health News) Boo! We scared you. Now it’s your turn to give our newsroom a scare. Submissions are now open for KFF Health News’ sixth annual Halloween haiku competition. KFF Health News has been publishing reader-submitted health care haikus for years and is on pins and needles to read how this spooky season inspires you. We want your best scary health care or health policy haiku. We’ll share favorites on our social media channels, and members of our staff will pick the winners, announced on Thursday, Oct. 31. Rules: Submit your haiku to https://kffhealthnews.org/contact-haiku/ with the link to…