KHN

San Juan County, Colorado, is one of the most vaccinated counties in the U.S. Leaders across the country continue to expound on the vaccine as the path forward in the pandemic. But San Juan’s experience the past few weeks with its first covid hospitalizations shows that, even with an extremely vaccinated population, masks are still necessary.

Mimi Hall and Dr. Gail Newel, health director and health officer for Santa Cruz County, California, will receive PEN America’s 2021 PEN/Benenson Courage Award for soldiering forward in their work amid death threats and personal attacks.

Despite big 2020 campaign promises to deliver lower costs on prescription drugs, Democrats have failed to unite around a legislative plan.

Negotiations continue on Capitol Hill over President Joe Biden’s health agenda — along with a long list of other items. With Republicans on the sidelines, liberal Democrats delayed a House vote on a Senate-passed infrastructure bill to extract moderates’ support for a social-spending bill that includes expansions of benefits for Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s new rules to prevent “surprise” medical bills pleases some health stakeholders and angers others. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Tami Luhby of CNN and Kimberly Leonard of Insider join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also, Rovner interviews Anna Flagg of the Marshall Project about how a century-old report on medical education contributed to racial inequities that persist today.

The pandemic is devastating rural America, where lower vaccination rates are compounding the already limited medical care.

Patients sickened in heat waves, flooding and wildfire have raised awareness of climate change’s impact on health. Now, some hospitals are building solar panels and cutting waste to reduce their own carbon footprints, with support from a new office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But the industry is moving slowly.

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More than 2 million low-income adults are uninsured because their states have not accepted Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Congressional Democrats want to offer them coverage in the massive spending bill being debated, but competition to get into that package is fierce.

A patient from Dallas got a PCR test in a free-standing suburban emergency room. The out-of-network charge: $54,000.

Efforts to give 2.2 million Americans health insurance hang in the balance as Congress debates a massive spending bill. The so-called Medicaid gap is felt most acutely in Texas, where about half of those who stand to gain coverage live.

Among the people still reluctant to get vaccinated — and pushing against mandates — are firefighters, many of whom also respond to medical calls as paramedics and EMTs and have witnessed the ravages of the pandemic firsthand.

Sediment from massive blazes chokes rivers and reservoirs, contaminating water supplies. The problem is only getting worse as climate change intensifies wildfires and lengthens the fire season.

There are many ways to cleanse indoor air of dangerous smoke particles, which are particularly harmful to people with chronic respiratory and cardiac conditions. Some are expensive, but cheap alternatives exist.

The ad, advanced by a right-leaning seniors advocacy organization, mischaracterizes proposals to bargain on drug prices, regarding both the effects on the Medicare program and on beneficiaries.

The condition can be an early signal of Alzheimer’s disease, but not always. Other health concerns could be causing thinking or memory problems, and the new drug, Aduhelm, would not be appropriate for those patients.

Britney Spears was forced into psychiatric care — and compelled to pay for it. That can happen to any patient who has an episode of serious mental illness, piling financial woes onto their stress and vulnerability.

Since August, school bus drivers and monitors have died of covid-19 in at least 10 states, including Georgia and Florida. Masks are required on school buses, but enforcing the rules in districts without school mask mandates is especially hard to do.

Group homes and facilities that serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities were hurting for staffers before the pandemic. Now the nationwide job crunch and pandemic pressures are making it even worse.

Coronavirus outbreaks have shuttered K-12 classrooms across the U.S., affecting tens of thousands of K-12 students. To avoid the same fate, some school districts are tapping federal dollars to set up testing programs and step up their vigilance against the virus.

KHN’s Sarah Jane Tribble and Arthur Allen join Science Friday host Ira Flatow to recap the evolving news in the run-up to offering booster shots for the covid vaccine.