KHN

The CDC recommends that pregnant people be vaccinated against covid-19, based on new safety and effectiveness evidence on the covid vaccines.

Amid a surge in covid-19 cases driven by the highly contagious delta variant, nearly 1,500 health systems across the nation are requiring their employees to get vaccinated. In Montana and Oregon, that’s not an option.

Doctors tied to professional sports teams share in investment bonanza.

The Florida governor’s order said schools couldn’t mandate that students wear masks and that the state could deny funding to school districts that didn’t comply.

Facing bankruptcy, Detroit largely dismantled its public health department in 2012, and the city essentially went two years without a government-run public health system. Five years later, this major American city offers a grim cautionary tale.

As the nation confronts the delta variant, many consumers are again facing delays getting tested. The problem appears most acute in the South and Midwest, where new infections are growing the fastest.

Abigail Matos-Pagán, a critical care expert who has galvanized relief efforts after hurricanes and earthquakes, is on a mission to inoculate as many Puerto Rican residents as possible.

Aggressive sales tactics have allegedly led surgeons to use defective or wrong-size implants, screws or other products on patients, including former Olympian Mary Lou Retton.

A proposal breezing through the state legislature would make it illegal to obstruct someone from getting a covid-19 shot, or any other vaccine, but some free speech experts say it goes too far.

Covid is back with a vengeance, with some people clamoring for booster shots while others harden their resistance to getting vaccinated at all. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration is pushing hard on drugmaker Pfizer’s request to upgrade the emergency authorization for its vaccine and give it final approval. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Rachel Cohrs of Stat and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.

Pharmacy benefit managers have curtailed in-person audits of pharmacy claims during the pandemic, switching to virtual audits done by computer. That has markedly increased the number of claims they can review — and the chances for payment denials — squeezing pharmacies and bringing in more cash for the benefit companies.

The latest research shows that although deaths in nursing homes received enormous attention, far more older adults who perished from covid lived outside of institutions. People with dementia and other severe neurological conditions, chronic kidney disease and immune deficiencies were hit especially hard.

State health officials say the federal government will likely reject any work or community engagement requirements, which were key to Republican lawmakers agreeing to extend the program that insures 100,000 low-income Montana adults.

Providence, the country’s 10th-biggest hospital chain, says it’s too expensive to upgrade an older hospital, so it will join forces with giant Kaiser Permanente to build a new one.

Health insurers could do more to encourage vaccination, including letting the unvaccinated foot their bills.

The success in getting shots to older adults is likely due to states prioritizing that effort when the vaccines became available and motivation among the elderly after the virus killed so many in their age group.

The Medicare rule, designed by the Trump administration to take money away from drug industry brokers and provide refunds to patients, has not been implemented. But budget analysts say if it were, it would cost the government money. So senators are pushing the rule aside and claiming to save billions of dollars, which they want to use instead on new projects.

Community Health Systems, a large, for profit hospital chain, shrank from more than 200 to 84 facilities. It is continuing to sue patients for hospitals that now exist as little more than legal entities.

The Supreme Court, come autumn, will consider a Mississippi law that bans nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. That’s hardly the most restrictive abortion law passed in the South. How did anti-abortion views become concentrated in the South?

The pandemic forced new parents to find help with breastfeeding online. Now, some offerings are remaining virtual to help expand access to lactation support.