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Doctors and patients try to shame insurers online to reverse prior authorization denials

Sally Nix was furious when her health insurance company refused to pay for the infusions she needs to ease her chronic pain and fatigue.

23 Aug 2023

Seeking Medicare coverage for weight loss drugs, pharma giant courts Black influencers

Pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk has turned to influential Black Americans in pursuit of what would be a lucrative victory: having Medicare cover a new class of weight loss drugs, including the company's highly sought Wegovy, which can cost patients more than $1,000 a month.

8 Aug 2023

How the Texas trial changed the story of abortion rights in America

During the five decades that followed Roe v. Wade, lawsuit after lawsuit in states across the country chipped away at abortion rights. And again and again, the people who went to court to defend those rights were physicians who often spoke in clinical and abstract terms.

7 Aug 2023

Medi-Cal’s fragmented system can make moving a nightmare

When Lloyd Tennison moved from Walnut Creek to Stockton last year, he assumed his coverage under Medi-Cal, California's safety-net health insurance program, would be transferred seamlessly.

7 Jul 2023

Legal pot is more potent than ever — and still largely unregulated

Marijuana and other products containing THC, the plant's main psychoactive ingredient, have grown more potent and more dangerous as legalization has made them more widely available.

9 May 2023

The confusing fate of the abortion pill

The abortion pill mifepristone is now ground zero in the abortion debate.

13 Apr 2023

Idaho dropped thousands from Medicaid in the pandemic’s first years

During the first two years of the covid-19 pandemic, while the federal government was trying to prevent people on Medicaid from losing health coverage, Idaho dropped nearly 10,000 people from the safety-net program.

1 Mar 2023

Why two states remain holdouts on distracted driving laws

Max Herrick pulled over on the interstate near Harrisonville, Missouri, on a spring night in 2020 to offer antifreeze to a woman whose car had overheated.

6 Feb 2023

Researchers explore mass gatherings and COVID-19 transmission

A recent study examines how mass gatherings in Hong Kong were associated with the local transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

3 Feb 2023

ER doctors call private equity staffing practices illegal and seek to ban them

A group of emergency physicians and consumer advocates in multiple states are pushing for stiffer enforcement of decades-old statutes that prohibit the ownership of medical practices by corporations not owned by licensed doctors.

22 Dec 2022

KHN investigation: The system feds rely on to stop repeat health fraud is broken

The federal system meant to stop health care business owners and executives from repeatedly bilking government health programs fails to do so, a KHN investigation has found.

12 Dec 2022

When malpractice occurs at community health centers, taxpayers pay

Silvia Garcia's 14-year-old son was left permanently disabled and in a wheelchair after a community health center doctor in New Mexico failed to diagnose his appendicitis despite his complaint of severe stomach pain.

28 Nov 2022

Hemp-derived delta-8 skirts marijuana laws and raises health concerns

Suzan Kennedy has smoked marijuana, and says her Wisconsin roots mean she can handle booze, so she was not concerned earlier this year when a bartender in St. Paul, Minnesota, described a cocktail with the cannabinoid delta-8 THC as "a little bit potent."

23 Sep 2022

Study defines how cannabis cells make cannabinoids

For the first time, plant biologists have defined the high-efficiency "hacks" that cannabis cells use to make cannabinoids (THC/CBD). Although many biotechnology companies are currently trying to engineer THC/CBD outside the plant in yeast or cell cultures, it is largely unknown how the plant does it naturally.

3 Aug 2022

Two Tennessee abortion clinics, awaiting high-court ruling, grapple with uncertainty

Corinne Rovetti is worried about what will happen to the Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health if the Supreme Court overturns the constitutional right to abortion.

17 Jun 2022

Comparison of the strictness of the Shanghai lockdown policy with that of other countries

Researchers investigated whether strict lockdowns could effectively reduce the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant transmission in Shanghai.

9 Jun 2022

Digital media can promote safer behavior in authoritarian communities during the pandemic, experts say

Ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel have been more affected by the COVID-19 pandemic than other segments of the Israeli population.

18 Mar 2022

‘The charges seem crazy’: Hospitals impose a ‘facility fee’ — for a video visit

When Arielle Harrison's 9-year-old needed to see a pediatric specialist at Yale New Haven Health System in June, a telehealth visit seemed like a great option. Since her son wasn't yet eligible to be vaccinated against covid-19, they could connect with the doctor via video and avoid venturing into a germy medical facility.

17 Dec 2021

Study provides new insights into how cannabis extracts may work to treat epilepsy

Research from pharmacologists at the University of Sydney provides new insights into how cannabis extracts may work to treat epilepsy.

6 Oct 2021

The pandemic forced my transgender wife to fight our insurer over hormones

For the past eight years, my wife, Ky Hamilton, has undergone gender-affirming hormone therapy. As a transgender woman, she injects Depo-Estradiol liquid estrogen into her thigh once a week.

5 Oct 2021