Inmates’ Distrust of Prison Health Care Fuels Distrust of Covid Vaccines
One November night in a Missouri prison, Charles Graham woke his cellmate of more than a dozen years, Frank Flanders, saying he couldn’t breathe. Flanders pressed the call button. No one answered, so he kicked the door until a guard came. Penny Kopp and son Frank Flanders took this photo on one of Kopp’s last […]
Nosing In on Kids Who Had Covid and Lost Their Sense of Smell
Orange. Eucalyptus. Lavender. Peppermint. Doctors at Children’s Hospital Colorado and Seattle Children’s Hospital will use scents like these to treat children who lost their sense of smell to covid-19. Parents will attend clinics and go home with a set of essential oils for their child to sniff twice a day for three months. Clinicians will […]
KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Getting Down to Work at HHS
Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen on PRX. As questions swirl about the covid vaccine made by AstraZeneca, public health experts are worried the confusion could create more doubts among people already hesitant to get a vaccine. Meanwhile, the first Senate-confirmed officials are settling into their offices at the Department of Health and […]
Lots of Health Insurance Help in Covid Relief Law — But Do Your Homework First
There’s something for everyone with private health insurance in the American Rescue Plan Act, but determining the best way to benefit may be confusing. The $1.9 trillion covid relief law that President Joe Biden signed this month will make coverage significantly more affordable for millions of people who either who have marketplace coverage, are uninsured […]
Democrats Gave Americans a Big Boost Buying Health Insurance. It Didn’t Come Cheap.
When Democrats pushed through a two-year expansion of the Affordable Care Act in the covid-relief bill this month, many people celebrated the part that will make health insurance more affordable for more Americans. But health care researchers consider this move a short-term fix for a long-term crisis, one that avoids confronting an uncomfortable truth: The […]
Birx Joins Air-Cleaning Industry Amid Land Grab for Billions in Federal Covid Relief
The former top White House coronavirus adviser under President Donald Trump, Dr. Deborah Birx, has joined an air-cleaning company that built its business, in part, on technology that is now banned in California due to health hazards. The company is one of many in a footrace to capture some of the $193 billion in federal […]
Democrats Eye Medicare Negotiations to Lower Drug Prices
Democrats, newly in control of Congress and the White House, are united behind an idea that Republican lawmakers and major drugmakers fiercely oppose: empowering the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate the prices of brand-name drugs covered by Medicare. But they do not have enough votes without Republican support in the Senate for […]
‘Press 1 for English’: Vaccination Sign-Ups Prove Daunting for Speakers of Other Languages
[UPDATED April 9: After publication of this article, Virginia officials on March 29 added language options for callers to select on the state’s vaccine pre-registration hotline, including Arabic, Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), Korean and Vietnamese. Those languages are among the most widely spoken non-English languages in the state, besides Spanish. The “press 2” phone line option […]
Indiana School Goes Extra Mile to Help Vulnerable Kids Weather Pandemic
After covid-19 forced Olivia Goulding’s Indiana middle school to switch back to remote learning late last year, the math teacher lost contact with many of her students. So she and some colleagues came up with a plan: visiting them under the guise of dropping off Christmas gifts. One day in December, they set out with […]
‘An Arm and a Leg’: In Vaccinating Philadelphia, A Mix of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen. In Philadelphia, the good, the bad and the ugly have all been on vivid display in the covid vaccine rollout. The Bad comes with a giant serving of gall: For a while, the city put its mass-vaccination program in the hands of Andrei Doroshin, a 22-year-old with […]