KHN

Although covid vaccines have been available to children as young as 5 for more than a month, they’re not being offered in some rural Montana counties, and parents don’t know where to find them in others.

In January, California’s Medicaid program will begin offering nontraditional services —such as ridding homes of roaches, replacing mattresses and installing air purifiers — to some low-income asthma patients. But the rollout could be chaotic, with insurance companies struggling to identify groups that can deliver the services.

Gunnison paramedics cover the largest response zone in Colorado. Because of covid and the lack of nearby hospital beds, patients increasingly are transported long distances, leaving few ambulances to respond to emergencies.

Independent pharmacists who want to retire often have trouble attracting new pharmacists to take over their practices, particularly in rural areas. That can cause smaller towns to lose their pharmacies. With many pharmacists near retirement, the problem may only get worse.

Even in states where abortion rights are likely to be preserved, Planned Parenthood turns to “deep canvassing” to fortify support.

Facility fees, designed to help hospitals cover the high cost of staying open 24/7, have long rankled consumers. Now, some patients are assessed the fees while sitting at home for a telehealth appointment.

Patients with other ailments are frustrated, and nurses and doctors are stressed and burned out, as unvaccinated covid-19 patients fill ICU and acute care beds.

Harm-reduction groups say that requiring a doctor to sign off on their orders of the overdose reversal drug is one of the biggest barriers they face in obtaining the lifesaving medication.

Law professor Jackie Fox looks at health insurance policies like any other contract, and she has spent 30 years making sound legal arguments to help patients get the care they need.

In the middle of a measles outbreak in 1977, the Los Angeles school system required students to be inoculated or stay out of class. Other school systems followed the practice. Will it work again now that the county is insisting that teens have their shots against covid?

The decision does not address the fate of abortion rights nationally, but the justices took up those arguments in a separate case earlier this month that will likely be decided in the summer.

A record number of hospitals closed in rural America last year. For the residents of Cuthbert, Georgia, the loss has meant many problems, including delayed care for emergencies that can turn deadly.

In West Virginia, older residents often go without dental care, and a quarter of people 65 and older have no natural teeth, the highest rate of any state in the country. But a powerful senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, has rebuffed efforts to add a dental benefit to Medicare.

A San Francisco-area group that pushes for healthier internet behavior aims to show that being mean isn’t sexy and can lead to mental anguish and unsafe sexual encounters.

The American Medical Association and American Hospital Association are not arguing to halt the law that protects patients from unexpected bills from providers they didn’t know were outside their insurance network. Instead, they want to change the rules for the mediators who will settle the dispute between insurers and providers.

The fight over covid vaccines continues to intensify, with Republicans on Capitol Hill pushing — with some success — to cancel President Joe Biden’s “test regularly or vaccinate” requirement for private employers. Meanwhile, abortion is not the only health issue before the Supreme Court this term. Joanne Kenen of Politico and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet and Rachel Cohrs of Stat News join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more.

Accuracy issues raise red flags because the data is used to plan and direct resources in the nation’s continuing response to the covid-19 pandemic.

As hospitals juggle holiday covid surges and all their other patients, the global supply chain crisis has left them short of critical supplies.

Montana nonprofit hospitals receive millions of dollars in tax exemptions as charities each year in exchange for giving back to their communities. A KHN review found that some of Montana’s richest medical centers are falling behind most state and national hospitals.

Tim Fall, a sitting judge in California’s Yolo County, decided to break the silence on his mental health issues with a book published during a campaign year. Depression and anxiety, he says, shouldn’t disqualify candidates from any profession.