Hospital units dedicated to treating the nation’s sickest kids are disappearing nationwide. In the past year alone, hospitals have closed pediatric intensive care units for critically ill kids in Montana, Oregon, and Missouri. Overnight hospital wings for kids have also shuttered in Illinois and California. Depending on the hospital, pediatric units — which are separate from neonatal…
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New federal rules likely will force three dozen states to reduce their annual Medicaid payments to doctors and hospitals by a total of more than $50 billion — potentially shrinking the number of providers willing to see Medicaid patients, according to a new analysis. The analysis in the peer-reviewed Health Affairs estimates that the 17 states with the highest provider reimbursement rates…
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When Cai Qiong Liu applied for a visa to come to the U.S., she told officials she was in search of a better life. As soon as she arrived in 2005, Liu’s friend got her a job as a home health aide, which she kept for 18 years. For half of those years, Liu worked four to five consecutive 24-hour shifts a week, providing demanding live-in care for a patient who had suffered a stroke: helping her…
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Republican Sen. Roger Marshall (Kansas) sued hundreds of his patients for outstanding debts and had dozens of them arrested over the course of his decades-long career as an obstetrician-gynecologist, new reporting reveals. Court records show that Marshall, who is running for reelection this fall, sued over 700 of his patients for debts, according to The New York Times. His practice…
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Google co-founder Sergey Brin, one of the richest men in the world, has spent more than $100 million backing a group seeking to stop a popular California ballot initiative that would impose a one-time tax on the wealth of the state’s billionaires. New filings reported by The Los Angeles Times detail Brin’s role in funding Building a Better California, which is pushing two ballot measures that…
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A critical deadline passed Wednesday in the federal fight to preserve transgender people’s access to health care. States and providers have sixty days to respond accordingly. On August 11, the Trump Administration released a final rule that is set to ban Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) from covering most kinds of gender-affirming care for trans young people…
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