Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen on Acast. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. The Biden administration this week issued regulations aimed at fixing the Affordable …
‘Separate and Unequal’: Critics Say Newsom’s Pricey Medicaid Reforms Leave Most Patients Behind
LOS ANGELES — It wasn’t exactly an emergency, but Michael Reed, a security guard who lives in Watts, had back pain and ran out of his blood pressure medication. Unsure where else to turn, he went to his local emergency room for a refill. Around the sam…
Abortion Bans Are Motivating Midterm Voters, Poll Shows
Half of voters say the Supreme Court’s decision overturning the constitutional right to an abortion has made them more motivated to vote in next month’s midterm elections, with enthusiasm growing especially among Democrats and those living in states wi…
BMI: The Mismeasure of Weight and the Mistreatment of Obesity
People who seek medical treatment for obesity or an eating disorder do so with the hope their health plan will pay for part of it. But whether it’s covered often comes down to a measure invented almost 200 years ago by a Belgian mathematician as part o…
Climate Change Magnifies Health Impacts of Wildfire Smoke in Care Deserts
DRESSLERVILLE, Nev. — Smoke began billowing into the skies of northwestern Nevada in September, clouding the mountains, dimming the sun — and quashing residents’ hopes that they would be spared from wildfires and the awful air quality the blazes produc…
Hospitals Have Been Slow to Bring On Addiction Specialists
In December, Marie, who lives in coastal Swampscott, Massachusetts, began having trouble breathing. Three days after Christmas, she woke up gasping for air and dialed 911. “I was so scared,” Marie said later, her hand clutched to her chest. Marie, 63, …
Miami’s Little Haiti Joins Global Effort to End Cervical Cancer
More than 300,000 women around the world die from cervical cancer each year. In the U.S., women of Haitian descent are diagnosed with it at higher rates than the general population. The disease is preventable, though, due to vaccines and effective trea…
KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Looking Ahead to the Lame-Duck Session
Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen on Acast. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. When the lame-duck Congress returns to Washington after Election Day, it will face a …
Medical Debt Sunk Her Credit. New Changes From the Credit Reporting Agencies Won’t Help.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — After a year of chemo and radiation, doctors told Penelope “Penny” Wingard in 2014 that her breast cancer was in remission. She’d been praying for this good news. But it also meant she no longer qualified for a program in her state th…
Listen: Medical Bills Upended Her Life and Her Credit Score
This story is part of an ongoing investigation from KHN and NPR into medical debt. Penelope Wingard is tough. She has survived breast cancer, a brain aneurysm, and surgery on both eyes. But saving her life has come at a steep cost. Wingard — who goes b…