Health Industry

Latest California Healthline Stories

Funyuns and Flu Shots? Gas Station Company Ventures Into Urgent Care

A Tulsa-based gas station chain is using its knowledge of how to serve customers and locate shops in easy-to-find spots to enter the urgent care industry, which has doubled in size over the past decade. Experts question how the explosion of convenient clinics will affect care costs and wait times.

North Carolina Hospitals Have Sued Thousands of Their Patients, a New Report Finds

An analysis of court records by the state treasurer and Duke researchers finds Atrium Health, originally a public hospital system, accounted for almost a third of the legal actions against North Carolina patients over roughly five years.

Feds Say Hospitals That Redistribute Medicaid Money Violate Law

Federal officials are trying to clamp down on private arrangements among some hospitals to pay themselves back for the Medicaid taxes they’ve paid. State health officials and the influential hospital industry argue that regulators have no jurisdiction over the agreements.

Proposed Rule Would Make Hospital Prices Even More Transparent

A Biden administration proposal would help standardize the data on prices that hospitals provide to patients, increase its usefulness to consumers, and boost enforcement. Previous rules gave hospitals too many loopholes.

Your Exorbitant Medical Bill, Brought to You by the Latest Hospital Merger

After decades of unchecked mergers, health care is the land of giants, with huge medical systems monopolizing care in many cities, states, and even whole regions of the country. This decreases patient choice, impedes innovation, erodes quality of care, and raises prices. And federal regulators have been slow to act.

KFF Health News' 'What the Health?': On Abortion Rights, Ohio Is the New Kansas

Nearly a year to the day after Kansas voters surprised the nation by defeating an anti-abortion ballot question, Ohio voters defeated a similar, if cagier, effort to limit access in that state. This week, they rejected an effort to raise the threshold for approval of future ballot measures from a simple majority, which would have made it harder to protect abortion access with yet another ballot question come November. Meanwhile, the number of Americans without health insurance has dropped to an all-time low, though few noticed. Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico, Rachel Roubein of The Washington Post, and Emmarie Huetteman of KFF Health News join KFF Health News’ chief Washington correspondent, Julie Rovner, to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Kate McEvoy, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, about how the “Medicaid unwinding” is going, as millions have their eligibility for coverage rechecked.