KHN

Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, are intermediary companies that negotiate the price of prescription drugs. PBMs are at the center of a tangled knot of pharmacies, drugmakers, and health insurers. Experts say they play a big...

The Host Julie Rovner KFF Health News @jrovner Read Julie’s stories. Julie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of KFF Health News’ weekly health policy news podcast, “What the Health?” A...

Montana state Sen. Becky Beard thought she’d found a fix for a shortage of assisted living care options for Montanans who can’t afford to pay for it themselves — a shortage she became aware of while searching for a...

Public health has had its day in court lately. And another day. And another day. Over the course of the pandemic, lawsuits came from every direction, questioning public health policies and hospitals’ authority. Petitioners...

Amanda Condo works at her family’s Pennsylvania dairy farm, but her son often won’t drink milk at school. He doesn’t like the flavor. That’s because the cafeteria at his elementary school serves only skim...

Advocates who counsel and aid Idaho teenagers seeking abortion care filed suit Tuesday against Republican Attorney General Raúl Labrador in a bid to overturn the state’s abortion travel ban. The travel ban, which took...

Excessive drinking during the covid-19 pandemic increased alcoholic liver disease deaths so much that the condition killed more Californians than car accidents or breast cancer, a KFF Health News analysis has found. Lockdowns...

If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing “988,” or the Crisis Text Line by texting “HOME” to 741741. Aimee Quicke has...

POTTSTOWN, Pa. — The public school system here had to scramble in 2018 when the local hospital, newly purchased, was converted to a tax-exempt nonprofit entity. The takeover by Tower Health meant the 219-bed Pottstown Hospital...

A proposed federal rule calls for forcing companies to disclose whether their products contain toxic “forever” chemicals, the government’s first attempt at cataloging the pervasiveness of PFAS across the United...

As more than $50 billion makes its way to state and local governments to compensate for the opioid epidemic, people with high hopes for the money are already fighting over a little-known bureaucratic arm of the process: state...

California has agreed to improve health care for newly released prison inmates who are disabled, including through a series of measures that advocates say will help almost everyone trying to make the transition from...

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. About three weeks before his May...

Nieltje Gedney was half-asleep in her West Virginia home, watching murder mysteries over the hum of a bedside hemodialysis machine, when she felt something warm and wet in her armpit. A needle inserted into her arm had fallen...

On July 1, Idaho became the only state without a legal requirement or specialized committee to review maternal deaths related to pregnancy. The change comes after state lawmakers, in the midst of a national upsurge in maternal...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reducing funding to states for child vaccination programs, according to an agency email obtained by KFF Health News. The funding cut “is a significant change to your...

Doctors are concerned that a Supreme Court ruling issued June 29 will have far-reaching effects not only on the diversity of doctors and other care providers in training but ultimately also on patient care. The decision found it...

This week the FDA is expected to approve what many scientists and doctors believe is the first drug to show promise of slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. But while patient advocates are celebrating, critics...

As a teenager attending Chrysalis Therapeutic Boarding School for Girls, a private, alternative therapeutic program in Eureka, Montana, from 2001 to 2004, Meg Applegate was subjected to emotional abuse and not given medical care...

LORIMOR, Iowa — Babe the goat is trendier than she looks. Babe lives a quiet life on a hillside farm in southern Iowa, where she grazes on grass with a small herd of fellow goats. Her owner, Stacy Wistock, milks her twice a day....