Author: Avisoscuba
SACRAMENTO, California — Un número creciente de personas —muchas de ellas mayores y sin hogar— están muriendo de frío durante el invierno. La hipotermia causada por la exposición a bajas temperaturas fue la causa principal, o que contribuyó, a la muerte de 166 californianos el año pasado, más del doble que hace una década, según datos provisionales de certificados de defunción del Centro para el Control y Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC). La tasa ajustada por edad de 3.7 muertes por millón de residentes en 2023 fue la más alta en el estado en al menos 25 años. Las muertes por…
“El futuro está aquí”, anunciaba el correo electrónico. Hilda Jaffe, que entonces tenía 88 años, les estaba diciendo a sus hijos que pensaba vender la casa familiar de Verona, Nueva Jersey. Había decidido empezar una nueva vida, por su cuenta, en un apartamento de una habitación en Hell’s Kitchen, en Manhattan. Catorce años después, Jaffe, que ahora tiene 102 años, sigue viviendo sola, a pocas cuadras de las frenéticas luces parpadeantes y las multitudes que recorren Times Square. No es la típica persona mayor: una centenaria que se mantiene físicamente ágil y mentalmente alerta, que lleva las bolsas de las…
California’s controversial experiment to order mental illness and drug treatment for some of its sickest residents is rolling out statewide, but the latest data shows the new initiative is falling far short of early objectives. The Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Act — known as Care — recently expanded from 11 pilot counties to all 58, and is one of the many ways state and local governments across the nation are trying to grapple with a metastasizing crisis of severe mental illness and substance use. “There are a lot of people who have had untreated illness for so long, and…
Elisabeth Rosenthal When George Lai of Portland, Oregon, took his toddler son to a pediatrician last summer for a checkup, the doctor noticed a little splinter in the child’s palm. “He must have gotten it between the front door and the car,” Lai later recalled, and the child wasn’t complaining. The doctor grabbed a pair of forceps — aka tweezers — and pulled out the splinter in “a second,” Lai said. That brief tug was transformed into a surgical billing code: Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code 10120, “incision and removal of a foreign body, subcutaneous” — at a cost of…
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A growing number of people — many of them older and homeless — are freezing to death during winter. Hypothermia from exposure to cold temperatures was the underlying or contributing cause of death for 166 Californians last year, more than double the number a decade ago, according to provisional death certificate data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The age-adjusted rate of 3.7 deaths per million residents in 2023 was the highest in the state in at least 25 years. Hypothermia deaths have also increased nationwide, with about 2,520 Americans dying last year, up…
The Host Julie Rovner KFF Health News @jrovner 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 to Z,” now in its third edition. The shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York City prompted a surprising wave of sympathy for the perpetrator, rather than the victim, from Americans who say they have been wronged by their health…
KFF Health News’ “Navigating Aging” columnist, Judith Graham, spent six months this year talking to older adults who live alone by choice or by circumstance — most commonly, a spouse’s death. They shared their hopes and fears, challenges, and strategies for aging solo. Graham moderated a live event on Dec. 11, hosted by KFF Health News and The John A. Hartford Foundation. She invited five seniors ranging in age from 71 to 102 and from across the country — from Seattle; Chicago; Asheville, North Carolina; New York City; and rural Maine — to talk candidly about the ways they are…
The share of people who are Hispanic or Latino has grown to a little more than a quarter of the population in Elko, Nevada, a small city in the remote northeastern corner of the state. That growth in diversity has also led to an increasing number of people who speak a language other than English at home, with Spanish spoken in nearly 15 percent of households in Elko County, which has a population of about 54,000. That increasing diversity is part of a wider trend. While rural America remains largely White and predominantly English-speaking, its White population decreased by about…
Martha Bebinger, WBUR Anna Goldman, a primary care physician at Boston Medical Center, got tired of hearing that her patients couldn’t afford the electricity needed to run breathing assistance machines, recharge wheelchairs, turn on air conditioning, or keep their refrigerators plugged in. So she worked with her hospital on a solution. The result is a pilot effort called the Clean Power Prescription program. The initiative aims to help keep the lights on for roughly 80 patients with complex, chronic medical needs. The program relies on 519 solar panels installed on the roof of one of the hospital’s office buildings. Half…
A former Montana health department staffer who described himself as the lead author of legislation to scrutinize nonprofit hospitals’ charitable acts said new rules implementing the bill amounted to a hospital “wish list” and that the state needs to go back to the drawing board. The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services recently adopted the rules outlining how the state will collect data on nonprofit hospitals’ charitable acts with the goal of eventually creating giving standards. That could include benchmarks, such as how much financial aid hospitals must provide patients. The state’s rules come more than four years…
Juana Valle never imagined she’d be scared to drink water from her tap or eat fresh eggs and walnuts when she bought her 5-acre farm in San Juan Bautista, California, three years ago. Escaping city life and growing her own food was a dream come true for the 52-year-old. Then Valle began to suspect water from her well was making her sick. “Even if everything is organic, it doesn’t matter, if the water underground is not clean,” Valle said. This year, researchers found worrisome levels of chemicals called PFAS in her well water. Exposure to PFAS, a group of thousands…
Julie Appleby, KFF Health News Un juez federal en Dakota del Norte falló a favor de 19 estados que impugnaron una regla de la administración Biden que permite —por primera vez— que las personas traídas a Estados Unidos de niños, sin papeles, conocidas como Dreamers, se inscribieran para obtener cobertura de salud a través de los mercados establecidos por la Ley de Cuidado de Salud a Bajo Precio (ACA). La decisión prohíbe a los beneficiarios del programa de Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia (DACA) en esos 19 estados inscribirse o recibir subsidios para pagar los planes de…
A federal judge in North Dakota has ruled in favor of 19 states that challenged a Biden administration rule allowing — for the first time — enrollment in Affordable Care Act coverage by people brought to the U.S. as children without immigration paperwork, known as “Dreamers.” The move effectively bars those who have qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in those 19 states from enrolling in or getting subsidies for ACA plans. It does not appear to affect enrollment or coverage in other states, lawyers following the case said Tuesday. The Biden administration is likely to appeal,…
It’s been about two years since most states began receiving millions of dollars in opioid settlement payments from companies that made or distributed prescription painkillers. But whether you can track how that windfall has been spent depends largely on where you live. That’s because there is no federal standard dictating the information that must be made public. That determination falls to states. Christine Minhee, founder of OpioidSettlementTracker.com, found last year that 12 states promised to publicly report expenditures of 100 percent of their funds in a way any person could find and understand. But when Minhee and I checked up…
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)spent years complaining that the Biden administration was slow-walking federal approval of his plan to import lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada — a concept endorsed by Donald Trump in 2020 just before his first presidential term ended. But nearly a year since the Food and Drug Administration green-lit the state’s importation strategy, Florida has no planned date to begin bringing drugs over the border, according to a state official familiar with the program who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Florida is the first and only state that has been…
“The future is here,” the email announced. Hilda Jaffe, then 88, was letting her children know she planned to sell the family home in Verona, New Jersey. She’d decided to begin life anew — on her own — in a one-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan. Fourteen years later, Jaffe, now 102, still lives alone — just a few blocks away from the frenetic flashing lights and crowds that course through Times Square. She’s the rarest of seniors: a centenarian who is sharp as a tack, who carries grocery bags in each hand when she walks back from her…
Eloisa Mendoza has spent 18 years helping people who aren’t fluent in English navigate complex legal documents. She guides them through stressful events and accompanying dense paperwork, such as citizenship applications, divorces, and birth certificate translations. Mendoza works in Elko, Nevada, situated in a remote region in the state’s northeastern corner. Her work has become increasingly important as the town’s Hispanic or Latino population has grown to about 26%. The share of people age 5 or older who speak a language other than English at home increased to 18% as of 2022, while Spanish is the language spoken in nearly…
La disponibilidad de vacunas seguras y eficaces contra covid a menos de un año del inicio de la pandemia marcó un hito en los tres siglos de historia de la vacunación: comenzaba, aparentemente, una era de protección contra las enfermedades infecciosas. Sin embargo, una reacción generalizada contra las intervenciones del estado en la salud pública permitió que el presidente electo Donald Trump nombrara a Robert F. Kennedy, el más conocido activista antivacunas del país como máximo responsable del área de Salud. Ahora, expertos afirman que una confluencia de factores podría causar el resurgimiento de epidemias mortales de enfermedades como el…
Judith Graham Jeff Kromrey, de 69 años, se sentará con su hija la próxima vez que lo visite y le enseñará cómo acceder a sus cuentas en Internet en caso que sufra una crisis de salud inesperada. Gayle Williams-Brett, también de 69, planea empezar un proyecto que lleva meses posponiendo: organizar toda su información financiera. Michael Davis, de 71, va a redactar un testamento y va a pedirle a un amigo íntimo que sea su representante para asuntos de salud y albacea de su patrimonio. Estas personas mayores se han inspirado para emprender estas y otras acciones en un curso…
Jeff Kromrey, 69, will sit down with his daughter the next time she visits and show her how to access his online accounts if he has an unexpected health crisis. Gayle Williams-Brett, 69, plans to tackle a project she’s been putting off for months: organizing all her financial information. Michael Davis, 71, is going to draft a living will and ask a close friend to be his health care surrogate and executor of his estate. These seniors have been inspired to take these and other actions by an innovative course for such “solo agers”: Aging Alone Together, offered by Dorot,…
Veteran California public servant Will Lightbourne has stepped in as interim executive director of the state’s mental health commission after its previous executive director resigned following conflict of interest allegations. Lightbourne served as head of the state’s Department of Social Services for seven years before retiring in 2018 and had already returned to service once, as interim head of the Department of Health Care Services at the height of the covid-19 pandemic. On Nov. 4, he was tapped to lead the state’s Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission after executive director Toby Ewing announced he would step down. Documents…
KFF Health News senior correspondent Arthur Allen discussed the fragility of our vaccine infrastructure on The Atlantic’s “Radio Atlantic” on Dec. 5. Click here to hear Allen on “Radio Atlantic” Read Allen’s “Scientists Fear What’s Next for Public Health if RFK Jr. Is Allowed To ‘Go Wild’” KFF Health News contributor Andy Miller discussed U.S. obesity rates on WUGA’s “The Georgia Health Report” on Nov. 29. Click here to hear Miller on “The Georgia Health Report” KFF Health News senior correspondent Julie Appleby discussed how Wisconsinites can get health insurance from the federal marketplace on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Wisconsin Today”…