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Latest California Healthline Stories

Analysis: Who Profits From Steep Medical Bills? The People Tasked With Fixing Them.

Surprise bills are just the latest weapons in a decades-long war among health care industry players over who gets to keep the fortunes generated each year from patient illness: $3.6 trillion in 2018. The practice is an outrage, yet no one in the health care sector wants to unilaterally make the type of big concessions that would change things.

Five Years Later, HIV-Hit Town Rebounds. But The Nation Is Slow To Heed Lessons.

In February 2015, an unprecedented HIV outbreak fueled by intravenous drug use hit the small city of Austin, Indiana. Under pressure, then-Gov. Mike Pence reluctantly allowed a syringe exchange. Five years later, HIV is undetectable in most of the outbreak patients. Still, the lessons haven’t been learned nationwide. Fewer than a third of the 220 counties deemed by the federal government as vulnerable to similar outbreaks have active syringe-exchange programs.

Ink Rx? Welcome To The Camouflaged World Of Paramedical Tattoos

Doctors specialize in the science of healing, but tattoo artist Eric Catalano specializes in the art of it. The single father of three does up to eight reconstructive medical tattoos for free each “Wellness Wednesday” in his small Illinois shop, drawing in nails on finger amputees, mocking up belly buttons after tummy tucks and fleshing out lips on a woman mauled by a dog.

School Districts Grapple With Quarantines, Face Masks And Fear

In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, school districts, especially those with large Chinese student populations, are in uncharted territory as they apply new federal travel rules to their students. Some also are weighing requests from parents that are more about fear than science, such as whether to allow students with no travel history to stay home from school.

Facts Vs. Fears: Five Things To Help Weigh Your Coronavirus Risk

As the numbers of coronavirus fatalities and infections rise, the threat posed by the outbreak in China can seem frightening. But public health officials say the risk in the United States is low. Experts discuss some important issues that can help U.S. residents understand how the epidemic is unfolding.