Author: Avisoscuba
ORANGEBURG, S.C. — Amari Marsh had just finished her junior year at South Carolina State University in May 2023 when she received a text message from a law enforcement officer. “Sorry it has taken this long for paperwork to come back,” the officer wrote. “But I finally have the final report, and wanted to see if you and your boyfriend could meet me Wednesday afternoon for a follow up?” Marsh understood that the report was related to a pregnancy loss she’d experienced that March, she said. During her second trimester, Marsh said, she unexpectedly gave birth in the middle of…
Every year more than 10,000 taxpayer-supported public housing units are lost to disrepair. But federal lawmakers routinely ignore the full amount, around $115 billion, needed to keep the units in “decent, safe and sanitary” condition. One-time funds for public housing repairs were cut from the final version of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to appeal to centrist Senate Democrats who cited the cost. The results have been disastrous for the more than 1 million people who rely on public housing — mostly low-income, Black and Hispanic tenants — especially as rental prices and eviction rates soar. It’s not just a…
In what has become a pattern of spreading vaccine misinformation, the Florida health department is telling older Floridians and others at highest risk from covid-19 to avoid most booster shots, saying they are potentially dangerous. Clinicians and scientists denounced the message as politically fueled scaremongering that also weakens efforts to protect against diseases like measles and whooping cough. A prominent Florida doctor expressed dismay that medical leaders in the state, leery of angering Gov. Ron DeSantis, have been slow to counter anti-vaccine messages from Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, including the latest covid bulletin. Ladapo is a DeSantis appointee and the…
On March 30, 2019, a swerving car upended Tom Burke’s life. Severely injured after the crash, Burke was airlifted from the Fort Liberty U.S. Army base in North Carolina to UNC Medical Center, in Chapel Hill, where doctors performed surgeries to rebuild his leg. Medicaid covered most of the cost, but Burke was still left with more than $10,000 in bills. He was confined to a wheelchair for two years after the accident, unable to work his car sales job. As a result, he said, he couldn’t pay the outstanding hospital bill and his account was turned over to a…
KFF Health News senior correspondent Aneri Pattani discussed opioid settlements and the Supreme Court’s overturning of a bankruptcy deal involving Purdue Pharma on the “Front Porch Book Club” podcast on Sept. 17. Pattani, joined by journalist Ed Mahon, also discussed how much opioid settlement money Pennsylvania is receiving, who makes the spending decisions, and how members of the public can get involved on “City Cast Pittsburgh” on Sept. 18. Click here to hear Pattani on “Front Porch Book Club” Read Pattani’s reporting for the series “Payback: Tracking the Opioid Settlement Cash” Click here to hear Pattani and Mahon on “City…
Taylor Sisk WILLIAMSTON, N.C. — On a mid-August morning, Christopher Harrison stood in front of the shuttered Martin General Hospital recalling the day a year earlier when he snapped pictures as workers covered the facility’s sign. “Yes, sir. It was a sad day,” Harrison said of the financial collapse of the small rural hospital, where all four of his children were born. Quorum Health operated the 49-bed facility in this rural eastern North Carolina town of about 5,000 residents until it closed. The hospital had been losing money for some time. The county’s population has slightly declined and is aging;…
Molly Castle Work A seemingly innocuous proposal to offer scholarships for mental health workers in California’s new court-ordered treatment program has sparked debate over whether the state should prioritize that program or tackle a wider labor shortage in behavioral health services. Nine counties have begun rolling out the Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment Act, which Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed into law in 2022 to get people with untreated schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, many of them incarcerated or homeless, into treatment. But often those skilled clinicians have been pulled by counties from other understaffed behavioral health programs. “There’s just…
The Host Recent comments from former President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers preview potential health policy pursuits under a second Trump administration. Trump is yet again eyeing changes to the Affordable Care Act, while key lawmakers want to repeal Medicare drug price negotiations. Also, this week brought news of the first publicly reported death attributed to delayed care under a state abortion ban. Vice President Kamala Harris said the death shows the consequences of Trump’s actions to block abortion access. This week’s panelists are Emmarie Huetteman of KFF Health News, Joanne Kenen of Politico and the Johns Hopkins University’s schools…
Last month, Planned Parenthood Great Plains opened its newest clinic in Pittsburg, Kan., a city of about 21,000 people mere minutes from the borders of both Missouri and Oklahoma. It’s the second new clinic the regional affiliate has opened in Kansas in a little over two years, to accommodate the growing number of patients coming from Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas and even Louisiana. For many people in the South, Kansas is now the nearest place to get a legal abortion. Fourteen states have enacted abortion bans with few exceptions since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision…
Soon after a series of state laws left a Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbia, Missouri, unable to provide abortions in 2018, it shipped some of its equipment to states where abortion remained accessible. Recovery chairs, surgical equipment, and lighting from the Missouri clinic — all expensive and perfectly good — could still be useful to other health centers run by the same affiliate, Planned Parenthood Great Plains, in its three other states. Much of it went to Oklahoma, where the organization was expanding, CEO Emily Wales said. When Oklahoma banned abortion a few years later, it was time for that…
Central Oregon Pathology Consultants has been in business for nearly 60 years, offering molecular testing and other diagnostic services east of the Cascade Range. Beginning last winter, it operated for months without being paid, surviving on cash on hand, practice manager Julie Tracewell said. The practice is caught up in the aftermath of one of the most significant digital attacks in American history: the February hack of payments manager Change Healthcare. COPC recently learned Change has started processing some of the outstanding claims, which numbered roughly 20,000 as of July, but Tracewell doesn’t know which ones, she said. The patient…
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Like most medical offices, the small suite of exam rooms at the PhiferCares Clinic fills daily with patients seeking help with bumps and bruises, sore throats, and stuffy noses. But there’s an important difference about this clinic in central Alabama: No one gets a bill, including for prescriptions. That’s because the clinic is owned by a manufacturing company with a specific agenda. “We don’t want you to spend money on health care,” said Russell DuBose, vice president of human resources at Phifer. Phifer, a global manufacturer of window screens, opened the clinic five years ago in a…
The proponents of Proposition 35, a November ballot initiative that would create a dedicated stream of funding to provide health care for California’s low-income residents, have assembled an impressive coalition: doctors, hospitals, community clinics, dentists, ambulance companies, several county governments, numerous advocacy groups, big business, and both major political parties. The Yes on Prop 35 campaign has raised over $48 million as of Sept. 9, according to campaign filings with the secretary of state. The measure would use money from a tax on managed-care health plans mainly to hike the pay of physicians, hospitals, community clinics, and other providers in…
When the Agriculture Department posted a recall of chicken nuggets that might be contaminated, it directed consumers to return them or throw the stuff away. When the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that poorly designed baby loungers could suffocate babies, it warned consumers to immediately stop using them. But when it comes to medical devices, the Food and Drug Administration and manufacturers routinely allow doctors and hospitals to continue using equipment that, as the government sees it, could injure or kill the patients it’s supposed to help. KFF Health News recently highlighted the issue of non-recall recalls in an examination…
Six weeks after an emergency cesarean section, with her newborn twins still in neonatal intensive care, Maya Gobara went to a pharmacy in West Little Rock, Arkansas, to fill a prescription. “The pharmacy told me I didn’t have insurance,” Gobara said. Arkansas is the only state that has not taken the step to expand what’s called postpartum Medicaid coverage, an option for states paid for almost entirely by the federal government that ensures poor women have uninterrupted health insurance for a year after they give birth. Forty-six states now have the provision, encouraged by the Biden administration, and Idaho, Iowa,…
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom will soon decide whether the most populous U.S. state will join 25 others in regulating the middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, whom many policymakers blame for the soaring cost of prescription drugs. PBMs have been under fire for years for alleged profiteering and anticompetitive conduct, but efforts to regulate the industry at the federal level have stalled in Congress. The three largest PBMs are owned by insurers and retail pharmacy chains, and about 80% of prescription drug sales in the United States are controlled by them: OptumRx, owned by UnitedHealth…
Ballad Health, an Appalachian company with the nation’s largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly, may soon be required to improve its quality of care or face the possibility of being broken up. Government documents obtained by KFF Health News reveal that Tennessee officials, in closed-door negotiations, are attempting to hold the monopoly more accountable after years of complaints and protests from patients and their families. Ballad, a 20-hospital system in northeastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, was created six years ago through monopoly agreements negotiated with both states. Since then, Ballad has consistently fallen short of the quality-of-care goals, according to annual reports…
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania. — En marzo de 2023, la falsa alarma de que un hombre armado andaba recorriendo escuelas secundarias católicas desencadenó una fuerte respuesta policial y evacuaciones aterradoras en la ciudad. También impulsó a la diócesis a repensar lo que constituye un entorno de aprendizaje modelo. Meses después de que cientos de estudiantes se toparan con fuerzas policiales especiales de SWAT, la diócesis de Pittsburgh comenzó a formar su propia fuerza policial armada. Wendell Hissrich, el ex director de seguridad de la ciudad que tuvo una larga carrera como jefe de unidad del FBI, fue contratado ese año para formar…
Si tú o alguien que conoces pudiera estar pasando por una crisis de salud mental, comunícate con la línea directa de suicidio y crisis 988, marcando o enviando un mensaje de texto al “988”. Cuando el hermano menor de Pooja Mehta, Raj, murió por suicidio a los 19 años en marzo de 2020, ella se sintió “inesperadamente sorprendida”. El último mensaje de texto de Raj fue para su compañero de laboratorio en la universidad sobre cómo organizar las preguntas de una tarea. “No dices que vas a tomar las preguntas del 1 al 15 si planeas estar muerto una hora…
Gerri Norington, 78, never wanted to be on her own as she grew old. But her first marriage ended in divorce, and her second husband died more than 30 years ago. When a five-year relationship came to a close in 2006, she found herself alone — a situation that has lasted since. “I miss having a companion who I can talk to and ask ‘How was your day?’ or ‘What do you think of what’s going on in the world?’” said Norington, who lives in an apartment building for seniors on the South Side of Chicago. Although she has a…
Cara Anthony In 1942, a young Black man named Cleo Wright was removed from a Sikeston, Missouri, jail and lynched by a white mob. Nearly 80 years later, another young Black man, Denzel Taylor, was shot at least 18 times by police in the same small community. In the hourlong “Silence in Sikeston” documentary film broadcast on WORLD’s “Local, USA,” KFF Health News and Retro Report explore how the impact of these men’s killings tells a story about trauma and racism, but also resilience and healing. Stemming from a reporting trip by KFF Health News Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony in…
Cara Anthony SIKESTON, Mo. — For residents of Sikeston, as for Black Americans around the country, speaking openly about experiences with racial violence can be taboo and, in some cases, forbidden. As a child, Larry McClellon’s mother told him not to ask too many questions about the 1942 lynching of Cleo Wright in their hometown of Sikeston. McClellon, now an outspoken activist, wants his community to acknowledge the city’s painful past, as well as the racism and violence. “They do not want to talk about that subject,” McClellon said. “That’s a hush-hush.” Also in this episode, host Cara Anthony uncovers…