Search

This post looks at a new contactless method of providing medication abortions and now this can be and has been used in response to the pandemic. The post also examines state policies that act as barriers to implementing these new protocols.

Every Friday, we’re recapping the latest on the coronavirus from our tracking, policy analysis, polling, and journalism. This week, total cases in the U.S. are still climbing, and from May 14 to May 20, 2020 increased by 159,400, bringing the cumulative total of cases past 1.5 million.

To help inform the ongoing debate, KFF conducted four focus groups in July and August 2021 with direct care workers and unpaid caregivers who provide HCBS, assisting seniors and people with disabilities with daily self-care and household activities. These focus groups are not necessarily generalizable to all caregivers, but can provide insight into their experiences to help inform current policy debates.

In this Axios column, Drew Altman unpacks President Biden’s recent executive order on promoting competition, exploring its significance for new efforts to control health costs by addressing consolidation in the health care industry.

This brief examines and summarizes what we know about COVID-19 and HIV including, what we know about COVID-19 risk, disease severity, vaccination, and federal response. It also explores how people with HIV are overly represented in many of the demographic groups hardest hit by the pandemic.

During the 46th week since the first coronavirus case appeared in the United States, there was an increase of over 1.25 million confirmed cases between Nov. 26 and December 3. Approximately 12,900 confirmed deaths in the past week brought the total in the United States to 276,300.

The Build Back Better (BBB) Act proposes reducing disproportionate share hospital (DSH) allotments by 12.5% starting in federal fiscal year (FFY) 2023 and places limits on Medicaid uncompensated care (UCC) pools for non-expansion states. This policy watch explains what these payments are, what changes have been tied to the ACA, and examines potential implications of changes included in the BBB.

Drew Altman, in The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, discusses how the conversation will soon shift back to health-care costs from health coverage, because they are rising more sharply again. And as the discussion turns back, he says that because there is no national agreement on a strategy to address increasing costs, current efforts in the public and private sector, however fragmented and uncoordinated, will need to step up their game.

The good news for those who care about health care is that the issue is rising again on the national agenda. If we have a big debate about health in the presidential campaign and if it is a factor at the polls in 2008, it will help create a mandate…

The October Health Tracking Poll finds, one week before the presidential election, the economy remains the primary concern on voters’ minds, but health policy issues remain in the mix. The new survey finds that roughly a third of likely voters name the Affordable Care Act (37%), Medicare (36%), and Medicaid…