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Every day, the scene plays out in hospitals across America: Older men and women lie on gurneys in emergency room corridors moaning or suffering silently as harried medical staff attend to crises. Even when physicians determine these patients need to be admitted to the hospital, they often wait for hours — sometimes more than a day — in the ER in pain and discomfort, not getting enough food or water, not moving around, not being helped to the bathroom, and not getting the kind of care doctors deem necessary. “You walk through ER hallways, and they’re lined from end to end with patients on stret...
California Healthline
The Biden administration finalized nursing home staffing rules Monday that will require thousands of them to hire more nurses and aides — while giving them years to do so. The new rules from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are the most substantial changes to federal oversight of the nation’s roughly 15,000 nursing homes in more than three decades. But they are less stringent than what patient advocates said was needed to provide high-quality care. Spurred by disproportionate deaths from covid-19 in long-term care facilities, the rules aim to address perennially sparse staffing tha...
California Healthline
Carrie Lester looks forward to the phone call every Thursday from her doctors’ medical assistant, who asks how she’s doing and if she needs prescription refills. The assistant counsels her on dealing with anxiety and her other health issues. Lester credits the chats for keeping her out of the hospital and reducing the need for clinic visits to manage chronic conditions including depression, fibromyalgia, and hypertension. “Just knowing someone is going to check on me is comforting,” said Lester, 73, who lives with her dogs, Sophie and Dolly, in Independence, Kansas. At least two-thirds of Medi...
California Healthline
Insulin for Medicare beneficiaries “was costing 400 bucks a month on average. It now costs $35 a month.” President Joe Biden, in a March 22 speech The cost of insulin in the United States has risen considerably in recent years, with some estimates finding that Americans have paid around 10 times as much for the drug as people in other developed countries. But recent changes by the federal government and drug manufacturers have started to drive insulin prices down, something President Joe Biden often mentions at campaign events. Biden told the crowd at a March 19 campaign reception in Reno, Nev...
California Healthline
How patients are seeing their doctor is changing, and that could shape access to and quality of care for decades to come. More than 100 million Americans don’t have regular access to primary care, a number that has nearly doubled since 2014. Yet demand for primary care is up, spurred partly by record enrollment in Affordable Care Act plans. Under pressure from increased demand, consolidation, and changing patient expectations, the model of care no longer means visiting the same doctor for decades. KFF Health News senior correspondent Julie Appleby breaks down what is happening — and what it me...
California Healthline
The new chief of the Social Security Administration outlined for senators Wednesday a plan to tackle overpayments and clawbacks, which affect millions of beneficiaries and, he said, have caused “grave injustices” and left people “in dire financial straits.” As a joint investigation by KFF Health News and Cox Media Group television stations reported in September, the agency has harmed people it is supposed to help by reducing or halting benefit checks to recoup billions of dollars in payments it sent them but later said they should never have received. Testifying at two Senate hearings on March...
California Healthline
The Social Security Administration’s new chief is promising to overhaul the agency’s system of clawing back billions of dollars it claims was wrongly sent to beneficiaries, saying it “just doesn’t seem right or fair.” In an interview with KFF Health News, SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley said that in the coming days he would propose changes to help people avoid crushing debts that have driven some into homelessness and caused financial hardships for the nation’s most vulnerable — the poorest of the poor and people with disabilities or persistent medical conditions or who are at least age 65. O...
California Healthline
Shelly Olson’s mother, who has dementia, has lived at the Scandia Village nursing home in rural Sister Bay, Wisconsin, for almost five years. At first, Olson said, her mother received great care at the facility, then owned by a not-for-profit organization, the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society. Then in 2019, Sanford Health — a not-for-profit, tax-exempt hospital system — acquired the nursing home. The covid-19 pandemic struck soon after. From then on, the facility was regularly short of staff, and residents endured long wait times and other care problems, said Olson, a registered nur...
California Healthline
Medicare may sound like an escape from the expensive world of U.S. health insurance, but it’s more complicated, and expensive, than many realize. And decisions seniors make when they sign up for the federal health insurance program can have huge consequences down the road. Host Dan Weissmann speaks with Sarah Jane Tribble, KFF Health News’ chief rural health correspondent, about one of the biggest choices seniors must make: whether to enroll in traditional Medicare or the privatized version, Medicare Advantage. Then, Weissmann shares practical tips about how soon-to-be seniors can avoid penalt...
California Healthline
President Joe Biden touted his administration’s accomplishments in health care in a wide-ranging State of the Union address on Thursday evening that touched on subjects such as immigration, the economy, crime, job growth, infrastructure, and the Israel-Hamas war. With Biden and former President Donald Trump now the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees, Biden used the roughly 68-minute speech to counter his lackluster public approval ratings and draw clear contrasts between his administration’s policies and those of Trump and some congressional Republicans. But he never mentioned Trum...
California Healthline
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