Latest California Healthline Stories
12,000 Square Miles Without Obstetrics? It’s a Possibility in West Texas
Big Bend Regional Medical Center, the only hospital in a sparsely populated region of West Texas, announced that because of a nursing shortage its labor and delivery unit must close for days at a time and patients must go instead to a hospital an hour away.
Watch: Cyclist Hits Olympic-Size Medical Bills After Crash
KHN Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Rosenthal appears on “CBS This Morning” to discuss the latest installment of the KHN-NPR Bill of the Month investigative series.
Olympic Dream Dashed After Bike Crash and Nightmare Medical Bill Over $200K
A bicyclist from California competed in a Pennsylvania race that could have landed him in this month’s Tokyo Olympics. Instead, a crash on the velodrome track landed him in two hospitals where his out-of-state, out-of-network surgeries garnered huge bills.
Bye-Bye to Health Insurance ‘Birthday Rule’? Kansas Lawmaker Floats Fix
U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas) introduced a bill to do away with a health insurance rule that dictates which parent’s plan becomes a new baby’s primary insurer. This could save some parents from unexpected, sometimes massive medical bills. Davids took up the issue after a KHN/NPR Bill of the Month story on one family’s unexpected $207,455 NICU bill.
Readers and Tweeters Connect the Dots on Topics From Vaccine Development to Long Covid
Kaiser Health News gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.
After 18 Months, Sutter Antitrust Settlement Finally Poised for Formal Approval
A year and a half after Sutter Health agreed to a tentative settlement in a closely watched antitrust case, the San Francisco judge presiding over the case indicated she would sign off on the terms, pending agreement on another contentious issue: attorney fees.
KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Delta Changes the Covid Conversation
With covid cases on the upswing again around the country, partisan division remains over how to address the pandemic. Meanwhile, the Biden administration proposes bigger penalties for hospitals that fail to make their prices public as required. Stephanie Armour of The Wall Street Journal, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico and Tami Luhby of CNN join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest their favorite stories of the week they think you should read, too.
Hospital ‘Trauma Centers’ Charge Enormous Fees to Treat Minor Injuries and Send People Home
Only severely injured patients are supposed to be billed for “trauma team alert” fees that can exceed $50,000.
How ERs Fail Patients With Addiction: One Patient’s Tragic Death
Two intractable failings of the U.S. health care system — addiction treatment and medical costs — come to a head in the ER, where patients desperate for addiction treatment arrive, only to find the facility may not be equipped to deal with substance use or, if they are, treatment is prohibitively expensive.
Journalists Tackle Delta Variant, Hospital Prices and Public Health Spending
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.