Rural Americans are dying of covid at more than twice the rate of their urban counterparts — a divide that health experts say is likely to widen as access to medical care shrinks for a population that tends to be older, sicker, heavier, poorer and less vaccinated. While the initial […]
‘An Arm and a Leg’: Meet the Mississippi lawyer who helped start the fight for charity care
Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, famous for taking on Big Tobacco in the ’90s and winning, worked on a series of ill-fated national lawsuits against nonprofit hospitals. The goal? Get nonprofit — or "charity" — hospitals to actually provide charity care instead of price-gouging and dunning low-income patients. Scruggs didn't exactly score […]
Afrocentric health-promotion approach can help increase vaccination rates among Black people
To increase vaccination rates among Black people who are at high risk of COVID-19, employing an Afrocentric health-promotion approach that is centered on respecting patients' values and perspectives can help, argue authors in a commentary published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) "An Afrocentric approach, which acknowledges that health care […]
Is Rand Paul mixing up the vaccine message for Covid survivors?
Last week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) posted a Twitter thread asserting that people who have survived a Covid-19 infection were unlikely to be reinfected and have better immunity against variants than those who have been vaccinated against — but not infected by — SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid. The […]
Can a Subscription Model Fix Primary Care in the US?
In April, San Francisco-based primary care company One Medical revealed an eye-popping compensation package for its chief executive and chairman, Amir Dan Rubin. His $199 million payday, particularly noteworthy at a company that has yet to turn a profit, made Rubin the second-highest-paid CEO in the United States last year […]
Biden seeks $400 billion to buttress long-term care. A look at what’s at stake.
There's widespread agreement that it's important to help older adults and people with disabilities remain independent as long as possible. But are we prepared to do what's necessary, as a nation, to make this possible? That's the challenge President Joe Biden has put forward with his bold proposal to spend […]
Pandemic aid package includes relief from high premiums
As President Joe Biden's pandemic relief package steams through Congress, Democrats have hitched a ride for a top health care priority: strengthening the Affordable Care Act with some of the most significant changes to insurance affordability in more than a decade. The bill would spend $34 billion to help Americans […]
What are Neglected Diseases?
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates show that a billion people in 149 countries suffer from one or more neglected tropical diseases. These include dengue, trachoma, filariasis and leishmaniasis, and are caused by viruses, bacteria, parasites or helminthes. Image of patient suffering from leprosy. These are called neglected because they […]