Category: Health & Insurance

October 1, 2020

Public health measures like wearing a mask and avoiding close contact with others could help prevent the forthcoming influenza season from complicating the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Thursday. The […]

September 28, 2020

When it comes to health care, President Donald Trump has promised far more than he has delivered. But that doesn’t mean his administration has had no impact on health issues — including the operation of the Affordable Care Act, prescription […]

September 23, 2020

Reopening colleges drove a coronavirus surge of about 3,000 new cases a day in the United States, according to a draft study released Tuesday. The study, done jointly by researchers at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Indiana University, the University […]

September 22, 2020

David Usher is sitting on $1.7 million he’s scared to spend. The money lent from the federal government is meant to help hospitals and other health care providers weather the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet some hospital administrators have called it a […]

September 10, 2020

Nurses at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center were on edge as early as March when patients with COVID-19 began to show up in areas of the hospital that were not set aside to care for them. The Centers for Disease […]

August 24, 2020

The Trump administration’s latest effort to use COVID-19 rapid tests — touted by one senior official as a “turning point” in arresting the coronavirus’s spread within nursing homes — is running into roadblocks likely to limit how widely they’ll be […]

August 19, 2020

You may already know that your payroll taxes help fund Medicare, which you’re generally eligible for at age 65. That doesn’t let you off the hook for further outlays once you sign up, however. Depending on the particulars of your […]

August 17, 2020

As the coronavirus began to spread through Minneapolis this spring, Health Commissioner Gretchen Musicant tore up her budget to find funds to combat the crisis. Money for test kits. Money to administer tests. Money to hire contact tracers. Yet even […]

August 11, 2020

California lawmakers are barreling toward an end-of-month deadline to pass or kill bills amid the biggest public health crisis the state has faced in a century. Yet even in a year consumed by sickness, they’re considering significant — sometimes controversial […]

August 3, 2020

The proposed merger of a well-regarded secular hospital system and a larger Roman Catholic system in Washington state has triggered new alarms about religious restrictions on patients’ access to care. Virginia Mason Health System and CHI Franciscan announced plans in […]

August 3, 2020

The World Health Organization said Monday there may never be a magical cure for the coronavirus even as scientists and drugmakers across the globe race to find a safe and effective vaccine. Scientists have made progress in identifying treatments that […]

July 31, 2020

These days, Los Angeles acting teacher Deryn Warren balances her pain with her fear. She’s a bladder cancer patient who broke her wrist in November. She still needs physical therapy for her wrist, and she’s months late for a cancer […]

July 28, 2020

Steve Alvarez started feeling sick around Father’s Day weekend this year. His symptoms started as mild, but developed into a fever, chills and shortness of breath he couldn’t shake. “Just when I started to get to feeling better and I […]

July 20, 2020

Younger people are less likely to be hospitalized or die of COVID-19 than their elders, but they circulate more freely while carrying the disease, and their cases are harder to trace. Together, these facts terrify California hospital officials. People under […]

July 10, 2020

As a teenager, Paulina Castle struggled for years with suicidal thoughts. When her mental health was at its most fragile, she would isolate herself, spending days in her room alone. “That’s the exact thing that makes you feel significantly worse,” […]

July 1, 2020

The U.S. public health system has been starved for decades and lacks the resources to confront the worst health crisis in a century. Marshaled against a virus that has sickened at least 2.6 million in the U.S., killed more than […]

June 29, 2020

From Corcoran and Avenal state prisons in the arid Central Valley to historical San Quentin on the San Francisco Bay, California prisons have emerged as raging COVID-19 hot spots, even as the state annually spends more on inmate health care […]

June 26, 2020

Davetta Brooks, 75, who has heart failure, a fractured hip and macular degeneration, is afraid. Conditions in her low-income senior building on Chicago’s Near West Side — the Congressman George W. Collins Apartments — are “deplorable,” she said. Residents are […]

June 23, 2020

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic state lawmakers agreed Monday on a state budget plan that would avoid the deep cuts to essential health care services that the governor had initially proposed. Even though the state faces a massive […]

June 17, 2020

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Stacy Ellingen, 34, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, lost two of the three caregivers she depends on to dress, shower, eat and use the bathroom. The caregivers — both University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh students — returned to their […]