KHN

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento and Solano counties are in a standoff with the state over mental health coverage for a portion of Medicaid patients in those counties — a dispute that threatens to disrupt care for nearly 50,000...

Jessica Layman estimates she has called more than 150 doctors in the past few years in her search for someone to prescribe opioids for her chronic pain. “A lot of them are straight-up insulting,” said the...

McROBERTS, Ky. — Like most coal miners’ loved ones, Liz Williams has endured many days and nights of worry. Throughout the four decades her husband, Michael, worked in underground Appalachian mines, Liz was aware of the...

Diego never imagined he’d carry a gun. Not as a child, when shots were fired outside his Chicago-area home. Not at age 12, when one of his friends was gunned down. Diego’s mind changed at 14, when he and his friends...

When Paula Chestnut needed hip replacement surgery last year, a pre-operative X-ray found irregularities in her chest. As a smoker for 40 years, Chestnut was at high risk for lung cancer. A specialist in Los Angeles recommended...

When Sandeep Swami received a $1,339 bill for a quick and uneventful emergency room visit for his 11-year-old daughter, he pushed back.  The charge was a “facility fee” for the hospital, though the treatment entailed...

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

When Deb Horning’s youngest daughter was 5, she got her measles, mumps, and rubella shot like many other kindergartners. But unlike many other moms, Horning had to stay away from her daughter for a week after the shot....

A young mother in California’s Antelope Valley bathes her children and dresses them in neat clothes, making sure they look their very best — at medical appointments. “I brush their teeth before they see the dentist....

Anxiety is the most common psychological disorder affecting adults in the U.S. In older people, it’s associated with considerable distress as well as ill health, diminished quality of life, and elevated rates of...

Jimmy Carter took great pride in pointing out that the United States didn’t start any new wars during his term as president. But after he left office, he launched a war against “neglected” diseases — diseases...

Eli Lilly & Co.’s announcement that it is slashing prices for its major insulin products could make life easier for some diabetes patients while easing pressure on Big Pharma. It also casts light on the profiteering...

The federal covid-19 pandemic protections that have largely prohibited states from dropping anyone from Medicaid since 2020 helped millions of low-income Americans retain health insurance coverage — even if they no longer...

AMARILLO, Texas — On the vast Texas Panhandle, raked by wind and relentless sun, women might drive for hours to reach Haven Health, a clinic in Amarillo. One of more than 3,200 federal family-planning clinics nationwide, Haven...

In California, a Democrat and a Republican figured out how to pass the country’s toughest online privacy law protecting kids. If their experience is any indication, though, federal legislators can expect fierce pushback...

When Matthew Boyd was released from a Georgia state prison in December 2020, officials sent him home without medicines he uses to manage chronic heart and lung conditions and high blood pressure, he said. Less than a month...

Walgreens has announced it would not dispense the abortion pill mifepristone in 21 states where Republican attorneys general threatened legal action against the company, which is the nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain....

Dozens of advocates for patients and consumers, citing widespread harm caused by medical debt, are pushing the Biden administration to take more aggressive steps to protect Americans from medical bills and debt collectors. In...

Less than two years after opening a state-of-the-art $26 million hospital in Leadville, Colorado, St. Vincent Health nearly ran out of money. Hospital officials said in early December that without a cash infusion they would be...

Sam Chavarría said her doctor was clear about the birth defects her medication could cause if she became pregnant but agreed to keep her on it as long as she had an IUD. As she was waiting to get her contraceptive...