Health Care Costs

When Preston Nafz was 12, he asked his dad for permission to play lacrosse. “First practice, he came back, he said, ‘Dad, I love it,’” recalled his father, Lothar Nafz, of Hoover, Alabama. “He lives for lacrosse.” But years of youth sports took a toll on Preston’s body. By the time the teenager limped off […]

Californians with medical debt will no longer have to worry about unpaid medical bills showing up on their credit reports under legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, adding the nation’s most populous state to a growing effort to protect consumers squeezed by unaffordable medical bills. The bill, by Sen. Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) and […]

Los californianos con deuda médica ya no se tendrán que preocupar por facturas impagas en sus informes de crédito, gracias a una legislación firmada recientemente por el gobernador Gavin Newsom, sumando al estado más poblado del país a un esfuerzo creciente para proteger a los consumidores afectados por gastos médicos inasequibles. El proyecto de ley, […]

Donald Trump could have destroyed the Affordable Care Act, but “he chose to build upon [it].” Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) on “Meet the Press,” Sept. 15 Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) on Sept. 15 told viewers of NBC’s “Meet the Press” that former President Donald Trump built up the Affordable Care Act, even though Trump could […]

North Carolina officials had been quietly laboring for months on an ambitious plan to tackle the state’s mammoth medical debt problem when Gov. Roy Cooper stepped before cameras in July to announce the initiative. But as Cooper stood by the stairs of the executive mansion and called for “freeing people from medical debt,” the future […]

On March 30, 2019, a swerving car upended Tom Burke’s life. Severely injured after the crash, Burke was airlifted from the Fort Liberty U.S. Army base in North Carolina to UNC Medical Center, in Chapel Hill, where doctors performed surgeries to rebuild his leg. Medicaid covered most of the cost, but Burke was still left […]

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Like most medical offices, the small suite of exam rooms at the PhiferCares Clinic fills daily with patients seeking help with bumps and bruises, sore throats, and stuffy noses. But there’s an important difference about this clinic in central Alabama: No one gets a bill, including for prescriptions. That’s because the clinic […]

Six weeks after an emergency cesarean section, with her newborn twins still in neonatal intensive care, Maya Gobara went to a pharmacy in West Little Rock, Arkansas, to fill a prescription. “The pharmacy told me I didn’t have insurance,” Gobara said. Arkansas is the only state that has not taken the step to expand what’s […]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom will soon decide whether the most populous U.S. state will join 25 others in regulating the middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, whom many policymakers blame for the soaring cost of prescription drugs. PBMs have been under fire for years for alleged profiteering and anticompetitive conduct, […]

Ballad Health, an Appalachian company with the nation’s largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly, may soon be required to improve its quality of care or face the possibility of being broken up. Government documents obtained by KFF Health News reveal that Tennessee officials, in closed-door negotiations, are attempting to hold the monopoly more accountable after years of […]