Health Care Costs

One evening in February 2017, Sarah Dudley’s husband, Joseph, started to feel sick. He had a high fever, his head and body ached, and he seemed disoriented, she said. The Dudleys had a decision to make: go to the hospital emergency room or to an urgent care clinic near their home in Des Moines, Iowa. […]

Cuando llegó la policía, encontró a Ishmail Thompson desnudo delante de un hotel cerca de Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Acababa de golpear a un hombre. Tras su detención, un especialista en salud mental de la cárcel del condado dijo que Thompson debía ir al hospital para recibir atención psiquiátrica. Sin embargo, tras unas horas en el hospital, […]

[UPDATED at 7 p.m. ET] Dr. Paul Jeffords and his colleagues at Atlanta-based Resurgens Orthopaedics were worried about their ability to survive financially, even though their independent orthopedic practice was the largest in Georgia, with nearly 100 physicians. They nervously watched other physician practices sell out entirely to large hospital systems and health insurers. They […]

Grace Elizabeth Elliott got a mysterious hospital bill for medical care she had never received. Even after the hospital acknowledged its error, a collection agency pursued Elliott for the debt. KHN Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Rosenthal joins “CBS This Morning” to talk about how difficult a clerical error can be to fix and how patients can respond […]

¿Necesitas tratamiento médico en 2023 y quieres reducir los gastos de bolsillo antes de ir al médico? Hay una nueva herramienta para lograrlo. Al menos para los pacientes asegurados. Desde el 1 de enero, las aseguradoras y los empleadores que ofrecen planes de salud deben proporcionar calculadoras en línea para que los pacientes obtengan estimaciones […]

Need medical treatment this year and want to nail down your out-of-pocket costs before you walk into the doctor’s office? There’s a new tool for that, at least for insured patients. As of Jan. 1, health insurers and employers that offer health plans must provide online calculators for patients to get detailed estimates of what […]

Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen. In this year’s final episode, the editorial team behind the “An Arm and a Leg” podcast looks back on the stories from 2022 that hit close to home, including insulin pricing, surprise billing, and prenatal testing. Then, host Dan Weissmann shares updates on two court cases. “An […]

In 2022, readers shared more than 1,000 personal stories of medical billing problems, contributing one patient at a time to an ongoing portrait of the rippling financial consequences of becoming sick or injured in the United States. Many of the submissions received during the fifth year of KHN-NPR’s “Bill of the Month” investigative series conveyed […]

Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen. Click here for a transcript of the episode. Health coverage generally does not cover dental work. But Susan Rice of Atlanta should have been the exception: She was hit by a speeding car, causing extensive damage to her own “grill.” She’s been fighting to get her oral […]

Earlier this year, Grace Elizabeth Elliott got a mysterious hospital bill for medical care she had never received. She soon discovered how far a clerical error can reach — even across a continent — and how frustrating it can be to fix. During a college break in 2013, Elliott, then 22, began to feel faint […]