Month: December 2022

Darius Tahir

Heather Meador y Anna Herber-Downey usan aplicaciones de citas en el trabajo, y su jefe lo sabe.

Ambas son enfermeras de salud pública en el Departamento de Salud Pública del condado de Linn, en el este de Iowa. Aprendieron que estas apps son la forma más eficiente de informar a los usuarios que algunas de las personas que conocieron en estos sitios pueden haberlos expuesto a infecciones de transmisión sexual (ITS).

Un surgimiento a nivel nacional de las ITS, con un aumento del 10% y 7% respectivamente en casos informados de gonorrea y sífilis, de 2019 a 2020, según los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC), está siendo implacable con Iowa. El dúo descubrió que la llamada telefónica, un método tradicional de rastreo de contactos, ya no funciona bien.

“Cuando comencé hace 12 años, llamábamos a todos”, dijo Meador, supervisora de la rama

December 2, 2022

KHN senior correspondent Angela Hart joined the nonpartisan group Democracy Winters on Nov. 19 to discuss the politics of health care in California. She focused on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s major health care initiatives, including a transformation of the state Medicaid program that will bring nontraditional, social services to some enrollees — with a focus on homeless patients.

She also discussed Newsom’s plan for California to produce generic insulin under the CalRx label and sell it at a lower cost than is currently available. And she described Newsom’s on-again, off-again relationship with the politically volatile issue of single-payer health care.  

Read Hart’s coverage of those issues here.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit

Lauren Weber and Hannah Recht

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A Missouri man who is deaf and blind said a medical bill he didn’t know existed was sent to debt collections, triggering an 11% rise in his home insurance premiums.

An insurer has suspended a blind woman’s coverage every year since 2010 after mailing printed “verification of benefits” forms to her California home that she cannot read, she said. The issues continued even after she got a lawyer involved.

And another insurer kept sending a visually impaired Indiana woman bills she said she could not read, even after her complaint to the Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights led to corrective actions.

Health insurers and health care systems across the U.S. are breaking disability rights laws by sending inaccessible medical bills and notices, a KHN investigation found. The practice

Renuka Rayasam and Fred Clasen-Kelly

ATLANTA — When Louana Joseph’s son had a seizure because of an upper respiratory infection in July, she abandoned the apartment her family had called home for nearly three years.

She suspected the gray and brown splotches spreading through the apartment were mold and had caused her son’s illness. Mold can trigger and exacerbate lung diseases such as asthma and has been linked to upper respiratory tract conditions.

But leaving the two-bedroom Atlanta apartment meant giving up a home that rented for less than $1,000 a month, a price that is increasingly hard to find even in the nation’s poorest neighborhoods.

“I am looking everywhere,” said Joseph, who is 33. “Right now, I can’t afford it.”

Since then, Joseph, her 3-year-old son, and her infant daughter have teetered on the edge of homelessness. They have shuffled between sleeping in an extended-stay motel and staying with