US health care — coverage, costs, policy changes and what they mean for what you pay.
ER & Urgent Care
Nearly 90% of nonprofit hospitals say they automatically screen patients for financial assistance, yet hospitals billed patients at least $2 billion in a year that they likely did not owe. Here is how "presumptive eligibility" works, which states force hospitals to use it, and how to make sure it works for you.
4 days ago · 6 min read
A federal panel voted 7-2 that Grail's Galleri test does more good than harm for adults 50 and older. It was the first endorsement of its kind. The same panel split 6-4 on whether the test works, and the fine print explains why your colonoscopy still matters.
The administration says it canceled 315,000 enrollments it calls fraudulent or unauthorized, will re-verify 419,000 more and is freezing new brokers for six months. Some of it targets real scams. Some of it flags people for income they have not finished earning yet.
More than 28,000 Americans died by gun suicide last year, over half of all suicides. Doctors still cannot reliably tell which patient is in danger. What does work is putting time and distance between a crisis and a loaded gun.
A study of about 1,900 Massachusetts residents found that medically tailored meals cut emergency room visits by a fifth and hospital admissions by nearly a third, and essentially paid for themselves. Thirteen states have federal permission to run programs like it. All of them are now staring at a $900 billion hole in projected Medicaid funding.
Your $0 mammogram, your $0 colonoscopy, your $0 statin and your $0 HIV-prevention pill all trace back to a letter grade from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. That task force has not issued a recommendation in over a year. It now has a new chair, a radiologist, two cardiologists, a gastroenterologist and a finance professor — and no published conflict-of-interest disclosures.
The CDC is investigating illnesses tied to intravenous glutathione compounded with an ingredient labeled for dietary supplements, not for injection. Three Texas pharmacies have recalled product, one of them nationwide. Here is what went wrong, and the one question that would have caught it at the front desk.
A data marketing company says people who install its browser-tracking software are its partners, and therefore entitled to buy its employer health coverage — the kind that answers to no state insurance commissioner. Court papers suggest the Labor Department may settle. About 50,000 people already hold these policies.
38 articles