VALLEJO, Calif. — Three people gathered in a classroom on a recent rainy afternoon listened intently as Derrick Cordero urged them to turn their negative feelings around. “What I’m hearing is that you’re a self-starter,” he told one participant, who had taken up gardening but yearned for a community with which to share the hobby. Cordero, 48, is guiding the discussion at Holding Hope, a weekly therapy group for people struggling with mental health. Anyone receiving mental health services through Solano County can participate. A former member, Cordero is now the group’s volunteer peer leader. H...
Kaiser Health News
ST. LOUIS — In early February, abortion rights supporters gathered to change Missouri history at the Pageant — a storied club where rock ’n’ roll revolutionary Chuck Berry often had played: They launched a signature-gathering campaign to put a constitutional amendment to voters this year to legalize abortion in the state. “We have fought long for this moment,” the Rev. Love Holt), the emcee, told the crowd. “Just two years after Missouri made abortion illegal in virtually all circumstances, the people of our state are going to forever protect abortion access in Missouri’s constitution.” The ba...
Kaiser Health News
Four years after hospitals in New York City overflowed with covid-19 patients, emergency physician Sonya Stokes remains shaken by how unprepared and misguided the American health system was. Hospital leadership instructed health workers to forgo protective N95 masks in the early months of 2020, as covid cases mounted. “We were watching patients die,” Stokes said, “and being told we didn’t need a high level of protection from people who were not taking these risks.” Droves of front-line workers fell sick as they tried to save lives without proper face masks and other protective measures. More t...
Kaiser Health News
Billy Abbott, a retired Army medic, wakes at 6 every morning, steps on the bathroom scale, and uses a cuff to take his blood pressure. The devices send those measurements electronically to his doctor in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and a health technology company based in New York, to help him control his high blood pressure. Nurses with the company, Cadence, remotely monitor his readings along with the vital signs of about 17,000 other patients around the nation. They call patients regularly and follow up if anything appears awry. If needed, they can change a patient’s medication or dosage without f...
Kaiser Health News
In early 2019, Jennifer Hepworth and her husband were stunned by a large bill they unexpectedly received for their daughter’s prescription cystic fibrosis medication. Their payment had risen to $3,500 from the usual $30 for a month’s supply. That must be a mistake, she told the pharmacy. But it wasn’t. It turned out that the health insurance plan through her husband’s job had a new program in which it stopped applying any financial assistance they received from drugmakers to the family’s annual deductible. Insurers or employers can tap into funds provided to patients by drugmakers through copa...
Kaiser Health News
Aside from a few discarded hypodermic needles on the ground, the Hunter’s Field Playground in New Orleans looks almost untouched. It’s been open more than nine years, but the brightly painted red and yellow slides and monkey bars are still sleek and shiny, and the padded rubber tiles feel springy underfoot. For people who live nearby, it’s no mystery why the equipment is in relatively pristine shape: Children don’t come here to play. “Because kids are smart,” explained Amy Stelly, an artist and urban designer who lives about a block away on Dumaine Street. “It’s the adults who aren’t. It’s the...
Kaiser Health News
Sarah Feldman, 35, received the first ominous letters from Mount Sinai Medical last November. The New York hospital system warned it was having trouble negotiating a pricing agreement with UnitedHealthcare, which includes Oxford Health Plans, Feldman’s insurer. “We are working in good faith with Oxford to reach a new fair agreement,” the letter said, continuing reassuringly: “Your physicians will remain in-network and you should keep appointments with your providers.” Over the next few months, a flurry of communications about the dispute from both the hospital and the insurance company arrived...
Kaiser Health News
The Host Julie RovnerKFF 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 noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the author of the critically praised reference book “Health Care Politics and Policy A to Z,” now in its third edition. The general election campaign for president is (unofficially) on, as President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have each apparently secured enough delegates to become his respective party’s nominee. And health care is tur...
Kaiser Health News
KFF Health News and KCUR are following the stories of people injured during the Feb. 14 mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl celebration. Listen to how one Kansas family is coping with the trauma. Jason Barton didn’t want to attend the Super Bowl parade this year. He told a co-worker the night before that he worried about a mass shooting. But it was Valentine’s Day, his wife is a Kansas City Chiefs superfan, and he couldn’t afford to take her to games since ticket prices soared after the team won the championship in 2020. So Barton drove 50 miles from Osawatomie, Kansas, to downt...
Kaiser Health News
A years-long battle over abortion access in a sprawling and sparsely populated region of the U.S. may come to a head this year in the courts and at the ballot box. Challenges to several state laws designed to chip away at abortion access are pending in Montana courts. Meanwhile, abortion rights advocates are pushing a ballot initiative that would add extra protections to the state constitution. And two open state Supreme Court seats could shape whether the high court upholds past decisions that protected abortion rights in the state. Abortion remains legal in the conservative stronghold becaus...
Kaiser Health News
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