Aging

“It’s President Biden who is proposing to cut Medicare Advantage.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in a tweet on February 6, 2023 More than 60 million people rely on Medicare for health coverage, and raising the alarm about potential cuts to the program is a perennial talking point among both Republicans and Democrats. On Feb. 6, […]

[UPDATED on April 4] Jimmy Dee Stout was serving time on drug charges when he got grim news early last year. Doctors told Stout, now 62, the sharp pain and congestion in his chest were caused by stage 4 lung cancer, a terminal condition. “I’m holding on, but I would like to die at home,” […]

After several rounds of treatment for a rare eye cancer — weekly drug infusions that could cost nearly $50,000 each — Paul Davis learned Medicare had abruptly stopped paying the bills. That left Davis, a retired physician in Findlay, Ohio, contemplating a horrific choice: risk saddling his family with huge medical debt, if he had to […]

The Host Julie Rovner KFF Health News @jrovner @julierovner.bsky.social 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 […]

After railing at the injustices of U.S. health care for decades, Sen. Bernie Sanders in January became the new chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee. The job gives the health care industry’s biggest Washington nemesis an unprecedented opportunity to shape health care reform in Congress. But the sort of radical changes […]

When Margarette Nerette arrived in the United States from Haiti, she sought safety and a new start. The former human rights activist feared for her life in the political turmoil following the military coup that overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991. Leaving her two small children with her sister in Port-au-Prince, Nerette, then 29, came […]

After the nursing home where Leann Sample worked was bought by private investors, it started falling apart. Literally. Part of a ceiling collapsed on a nurse, the air conditioning conked out regularly, and a toilet once burst on Sample while she was helping a resident in the bathroom, she recalled in a court deposition. “It’s […]

Today, KHN has released details of 90 previously secret government audits that reveal millions of dollars in overpayments to Medicare Advantage health plans for seniors. The audits, which cover billings from 2011 through 2013, are the most recent financial reviews available, even though enrollment in the health plans has exploded over the past decade to […]

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WAUKON, Iowa — Marjorie Kruger was stunned to learn last fall that she would have to leave the nursing home where she’d lived comfortably for six years. The Good Samaritan Society facility in Postville, Iowa, would close, administrators told Kruger and 38 other residents in September. The facility joined a growing list of nursing homes […]