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Rage has long shadowed American health care. It’s rarely produced big change.

Among the biggest-grossing films in America in February 2002 were a war drama about American troops in Somalia ("Black Hawk Down"), an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie ("Collateral Damage"), and a future Oscar winner about a brilliant mathematician struggling with schizophrenia ("A Beautiful Mind").

18 Dec 2024

How a duty to spend wisely on worker benefits could loosen PBMs’ grip on drug prices

Ann Lewandowski knows all about pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, the companies that shape the U.S. drug market. Her job, as a policy advocate at drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, was to tell patient and physician groups about the PBMs' role in high drug prices.

18 Dec 2024

Breakthrough pig kidney transplant ends dialysis for Alabama woman

An Alabama woman is free from dialysis and in better health after surgeons at NYU Langone Health performed a gene-edited pig kidney transplant last month.

17 Dec 2024

Trump’s picks for top health jobs not just team of rivals but ‘team of opponents’

Many of President-elect Donald Trump's candidates for federal health agencies have promoted policies and goals that put them at odds with one another or with Trump's choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., setting the stage for internal friction over public health initiatives.

17 Dec 2024

Trump threat to immigrant health care tempered by economic hopes

President-elect Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations and tougher immigration restrictions is deepening mistrust of the health care system among California's immigrants and clouding the future for providers serving the state's most impoverished residents.

17 Dec 2024

AASM urges permanent telehealth coverage for improved sleep care

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has issued a new position statement advocating for permanent telehealth coverage, emphasizing its essential role in providing high-quality, patient-centered care for individuals with sleep disorders.

16 Dec 2024

Removing a splinter? Treating a wart? If a doctor does it, it can be billed as surgery

When George Lai of Portland, Oregon, took his toddler son to a pediatrician last summer for a checkup, the doctor noticed a little splinter in the child's palm.

13 Dec 2024

Strategies to overcome social challenges in cancer prevention

Researchers at University of California San Diego and collaborating institutions have shed light on the ways that social risks, such as housing or food insecurity, pose barriers to routine cancer screenings.

13 Dec 2024

UMD researcher aims to uncover "ghost networks" in Medicare Advantage health insurance plans

Dr. Mika Hamer is about to go ghost hunting. Thanks to a $100K grant from the Robert Johnson Wood Foundation (RWJF), the University of Maryland School of Public Health researcher aims to uncover the extent of so-called "ghost networks" in Medicare Advantage health insurance plans.

12 Dec 2024

Federal judge halts Dreamers’ brand-new access to ACA enrollment in 19 states

A federal judge in North Dakota has ruled in favor of 19 states that challenged a Biden administration rule allowing — for the first time — enrollment in Affordable Care Act coverage by people brought to the U.S. as children without immigration paperwork, known as "Dreamers."

10 Dec 2024

Financial hardship still prevents many asthma patients from taking medications

Despite a fall in the number of people with asthma over the past decade who say that cost has stopped them taking their meds as prescribed, financial hardship still remains a deterrent for 1 in 6 with the condition, suggests research published online in the respiratory medicine journal Thorax.

10 Dec 2024

A reduction in BMI among adults is associated with lower health care spending, study suggests

A study reveals that weight loss can lead to significant healthcare savings, with 7% savings for a 5% BMI reduction and 30% for a 25% reduction in adults.

6 Dec 2024

KFF Health News' 'What the Health?': A colorful cast could lead key health agencies

President-elect Donald Trump has continued naming out-of-the-box choices to lead key federal health agencies.

5 Dec 2024

How potential Medicaid cuts could play out in California

In 2017, the Republicans who controlled Congress tried mightily to slash federal spending on Medicaid, the government-funded health program covering low-income families and individuals.

5 Dec 2024

Common farming pesticides linked to rheumatoid arthritis

Exposure to specific pesticides is linked to increased rheumatoid arthritis risk, with notable dose-response trends for malathion and carbofuran among older licensed applicators in the Agricultural Health Study.

4 Dec 2024

Nursing homes fell behind on vaccinating patients for covid

It seems no one is taking covid-19 seriously anymore, said Mollee Loveland, a nursing home aide who lives outside Pittsburgh.

4 Dec 2024

Upcoding practices by hospitals lead to billions in extra payments

In five states over nearly a decade, hospitals have increased how frequently they document patients as needing the highest intensity care, which has led to hospitals receiving billions in extra payments from health plans and government programs, according to a new RAND study.

3 Dec 2024

Study reveals vast majority of U.S. states experiencing decline in drugstores

About 1 in 3 U.S. retail pharmacies have closed since 2010, with the vast majority of states experiencing an overall decline in drugstores in recent years, according to a new study from researchers at USC and the University of California, Berkeley.

3 Dec 2024

Nursing home industry wants trump to rescind staffing mandate

Covid's rampage through the country's nursing homes killed more than 172,000 residents and spurred the biggest industry reform in decades: a mandate that homes employ a minimum number of nurses.

3 Dec 2024

CMS introduces new payment model to improve kidney transplant outcomes

A new final rule issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this week for a mandatory alternative payment model called the Increasing Organ Transplant Access (IOTA) Model aimed to improve the number of life-saving kidney transplants for patients whose kidneys have failed.

2 Dec 2024