Author: Avisoscuba

Tom Zawierucha, 58, a building services worker in New Jersey, wishes candidates would talk more about protecting older Americans from big medical bills. Teresa Morton, 43, a freight dispatcher in Memphis, Tennessee, with two teenagers, wants to hear more about how elected officials would help working Americans saddled with unaffordable deductibles. Yessica Gray, 28, a customer support representative in Wisconsin, craves relief from high drug prices and medical bills that have driven her and her husband deep into debt. “How much are we going to pay?” she said. “It’s just something that’s always on my mind.” Health care hasn’t figured…

CUTHBERT, Ga. — While customers at Adams Family Pharmacy picked up their prescriptions on a hot summer day, some stopped in for coffee, ice cream, homemade cake, or cookies. It wasn’t a bake sale, but the sweets bring extra revenue as pharmacist and co-owner Nikki Bryant works to achieve profitability at her business on the town square. Bryant said she is doing all she can to bolster it against a powerful force that threatens her and other independent pharmacists: the middlemen who manage virtually all prescriptions written in the U.S., called pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs. Serving as brokers among…

The director of California’s mental health commission traveled to London this summer courtesy of a state vendor while he was helping to prevent a $360 million budget cut that would have defunded the company’s contract. Emails and calendars reviewed by KFF Health News show Toby Ewing, executive director of the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission, made efforts to protect funding for Kooth, a London-based digital mental health company the state hired to develop a virtual tool to help tackle its youth mental health crisis. Ewing pressed key legislative staffers to maintain its contract, even as Democratic Gov. Gavin…

Michelle Andrews Jackie Fortiér reported the audio story. When people check in for their annual mammogram these days, some may face a surprising question: In addition to reviewing the mammogram for breast cancer, would the patient like the radiologist to examine the images for heart disease risk? That’s what happened recently when a colleague visited Washington Radiology, a practice with more than a dozen locations in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. For $119, she was told, the practice would use artificial intelligence software to analyze her mammogram for calcification in the arteries of her breasts, which could indicate she’s at…

As states turn to the health-care system to help address homelessness, experiments with housing and other social services aimed at getting people healthier and off the streets are running up against new, aggressive crackdowns — with some cities ratcheting up enforcement of existing anticamping laws and others passing new restrictions. From Florida to California, elected officials and law enforcement agencies have launched widespread operations targeting homeless people following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June that makes it easier for states, cities and counties to fine and arrest those living outside — even if there is no shelter or housing…

Voters in 10 states will consider whether or not to protect or expand abortion rights in November. That includes battleground states such as Arizona and Nevada and such Republican strongholds as South Dakota and Missouri. In Maryland, where abortion is legal, a proposed amendment is much broader than many abortion-related ballot questions in other states. Called the Right to Reproductive Freedom amendment, it would enshrine in the state constitution a right “to make and effectuate decisions to prevent, continue, or end one’s own pregnancy.” “What we’re saying with this amendment is that the right to reproductive freedom is central to…

En noviembre, los votantes de 10 estados decidirán si protegerán o ampliarán, o no, el derecho al aborto. Entre ellos, se encuentran estados que son terreno fuerte de la batalla electoral como Arizona y Nevada, y bastiones republicanos como Dakota del Sur y Missouri. En Maryland, donde el aborto es legal, una enmienda propuesta es mucho más amplia que muchas de las cuestiones electorales relacionadas con el aborto en otros estados. Llamada enmienda del Derecho a la Libertad Reproductiva, consagraría en la constitución estatal un derecho “a tomar y hacer efectivas decisiones para prevenir, continuar o terminar el propio embarazo”.…

Cuando Pam McClure se enteró que el próximo año ahorraría casi $4,000 en sus medicamentos recetados dijo: “parece demasiado bueno para ser verdad”. Para finales de 2024, habrá gastado casi $6,000 en estos fármacos, incluido uno para controlar su diabetes. McClure, de 70 años, es una de las aproximadamente 3.2 millones de personas con un plan de medicamentos recetados de Medicare cuyos costos de bolsillo se limitarán a $2,000 en 2025 gracias a la Ley de Reducción de la Inflación (IRA, por sus siglas en inglés) de 2022 promulgada por la administración Biden, según un estudio de Avalere/AARP. La IRA,…

Taylor Sisk On learning last year she was pregnant with her second child, Cailyn Morreale was overcome with fear and trepidation. “I was so scared,” said Morreale, a resident of the small western North Carolina town of Mars Hill. In that moment, her joy about being pregnant was eclipsed by fear she would have to stop taking buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid withdrawal that had helped counter her addiction. Morreale’s fear was compounded by the rigidity of the most common approach to treating babies born after being exposed in the womb to opioids or some medications used to…

KFF Health News Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony appeared in a two-part special of Nine PBS’ “Listen, St. Louis with Carol Daniel” to discuss her reporting for the “Silence in Sikeston” project. The first conversation, which aired Oct. 9, explores the connections between a 1942 lynching and a 2020 police shooting in a rural Missouri community — and what those killings say about the nation’s silencing of racial trauma. The second episode, which premiered Oct. 16, explores the health effects of such trauma with mental health counselor Lekesha Davis. These conversations stem from the “Silence in Sikeston” multimedia project by KFF…

When Pam McClure learned she’d save nearly $4,000 on her prescription drugs next year, she said, “it sounded too good to be true.” She and her husband are both retired and live on a “very strict” budget in central North Dakota. By the end of this year, she will have spent almost $6,000 for her medications, including a drug to control her diabetes. McClure, 70, is one of about 3.2 million people with Medicare prescription drug insurance whose out-of-pocket medication costs will be capped at $2,000 in 2025 because of the Biden administration’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, according to an…

KFF Health News senior correspondent Aneri Pattani discussed Ohio’s $2 billion in opioid settlement funds on WOSU Public Media’s “All Sides with Anna Staver” on Oct. 16. Click here to hear Pattani on WOSU Public Media’s “All Sides with Anna Staver” Read Pattani’s coverage of opioid settlements in “Payback: Tracking the Opioid Settlement Cash” KFF Health News senior fellow and editor-at-large for public health Céline Gounder discussed new research that suggests undiagnosed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder may be common in U.S. adults on CBS’ “CBS Mornings” on Oct. 15. Click here to watch Gounder on “CBS Mornings” KFF Health News contributor Andy Miller…

Don Thompson SACRAMENTO, Calif. — This year, Gov. Gavin Newsom affirmed abortion access, calling California “a proud reproductive freedom state” and criticizing Republicans across the country for trying to take away families’ rights. He signed legislation mandating that insurance companies cover in vitro fertilization. He supported restricting students’ cellphone use in schools and signed a nation-leading ban on food dye in school snacks and drinks. And he endorsed a bill allowing businesses to operate Amsterdam-style cannabis cafés. Still, in a heated election cycle with Vice President Kamala Harris, a Californian, on the presidential ticket, the Democratic governor was noticeably reluctant…

Before Hurricane Helene, had you stopped by one of the many breweries, art galleries, or award-winning restaurants in Asheville, North Carolina, and spoken with anyone who lives in these parts — including me — most would have told you they felt pretty safe from climate disasters. The mountains of western North Carolina have been known to flood: The area is bursting with creeks and rivers and enjoys an abundance of rain. There are occasionally wildfires. But the ravages of the climate crisis’s worst impacts — including increasingly powerful hurricanes — felt like a problem for another place. Asheville sits almost…

The CVS representative popped into Lisa Trumble’s third-floor Berkshire Medical Center hospital room in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to announce that everything was arranged for Trumble to return home, where she relies on IV nutrition because of severe intestinal problems that leave her unable to eat. That was on Tuesday, Oct. 8. The next morning a social worker and a doctor woke Trumble to say her discharge was canceled. CVS would no longer provide her home nutrition, and she had to stay in the hospital. A week later, “I’m still here,” she said by telephone Wednesday. “I was dropped between Tuesday night…

The Host The 2024 campaign — particularly the one for president — has been notably vague on policy. But health issues, especially those surrounding abortion and other reproductive health care, have nonetheless played a key role. And while the Affordable Care Act has not been the focus of debate the way it was over the previous three presidential campaigns, who becomes the next president will have a major impact on the fate of the 2010 health law. The panelists for this week’s special election preview, taped before a live audience at KFF’s offices in Washington, are Julie Rovner of KFF…

If you get sick in America, there’s a good chance you’ll end up in debt. Four in 10 U.S. adults have some form of health-care debt, KFF has found. One surprising risk: living in a community where hospitals have consolidated — an increasingly common development as health systems merge or large systems gobble up smaller hospitals. That’s according to a new report shared exclusively with KFF Health News by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit that has been tracking medical debt across the United States for years and worked with KFF Health News on our Diagnosis: Debt project. It’s already well-documented that hospitals raise prices when they gain market…

When Lyft driver Tramaine Carr transports seniors and sick patients to hospitals in Atlanta, she feels like both a friend and a social worker. “When the ride is an hour or an hour and a half of mostly freeway driving, people tend to tell you what they’re going through,” she said. Drivers such as Carr have become a critical part of the medical transportation system in Georgia, as well as in Washington, D.C., Mississippi, Arizona, and elsewhere. While some patients use transportation companies solely dedicated to medical rides or nonemergency ambulance rides to get to their appointments, the San Francisco-based…

KFF Health News and KCUR are following the stories of people injured during the Feb. 14 mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl celebration. Listen to how survivors are seeking a sense of safety. KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Twenty-four minutes before the mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl victory parade in February left one person dead and at least 24 people injured, Jenipher Cabrera felt a bullet pierce the back of her right thigh. The 20-year-old and her family were just four blocks from Union Station, in a river of red-shirted Chiefs fans walking toward…

Vice President Kamala Harris, now on the presidential campaign trail, is making inroads with a key voting bloc: Black women, who are rallying behind her because of her work on issues such as preserving abortion access, curbing gun violence and reducing maternal deaths. What has become clear is not just that this voting group supports her — but the intensity of that support. Eighty-two percent of Black women voters had a favorable view of Harris in August, according to the Pew Research Center, up from 67 percent who said the same in May. Almost 70 percent of this demographic in…

Twice a month, a 40-foot-long truck transformed into a mobile clinic travels the Rio Grande Valley to provide rural Texans with women’s health care, including birth control. The clinic, called the UniMóvil, is part of the Healthy Mujeres program at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine. The U.S. has about 3,000 mobile health programs. But Saul Rivas, an OB-GYN, said he wasn’t aware of any that shared the specific mission of Healthy Mujeres when he helped launch the initiative in 2017. “Mujeres” means “women” in Spanish. It’s now part of a small but growing number of…

During the coronavirus pandemic, states received a rush of funding from the federal government to bolster their fight against the disease. In many cases, that cash flowed into state and local health departments, fueling a staffing surge to handle, among other things, contact tracing and vaccination efforts. But public health leaders quickly identified a familiar boom-and-bust funding cycle as they warned about an incoming fiscal cliff once the federal grants sunset. Now, more than a year since the federal Department of Health and Human Services declared the end of the coronavirus emergency, states — such as Montana, California and Washington…