Western Massachusetts, a patchwork of rural communities and low-income cities, is a difficult place to find a primary care doctor if you don’t already have one. Frustrated patients often turn to online forums, asking for leads or advice on how to find a practice that is accepting new patients. One name repeatedly crops up in…
Eight-year-old Jonah woke up one May morning with a swollen face and a toothache. He refused the pain medication that his mom, Geneva Reynolds, tried to give him. He didn’t sleep or eat and cried constantly. Within a few days, Reynolds became so desperate that she and her husband had to physically restrain Jonah, dumping…
KFF Health News senior correspondent Renuka Rayasam discussed excited delirium on Vox Media Podcast Network’s Criminal on March 6. Click here to hear Rayasam on Criminal. Read Rayasam’s “As More States Target Disavowed ‘Excited Delirium’ Diagnosis, Police Groups Push Back.” On CBS News’ CBS Mornings on March 5, Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for…
MINNEAPOLIS. — Gabi tiene grandes ojos color café, trenzas y una afección genética que hace que sus huesos sean frágiles. Se fracturan con facilidad, lo que le provoca a la niña de 2 años tanto dolor que su madre dejó su trabajo limpiando oficinas para quedarse en casa y cargarla por el apartamento de una…
OTTUMWA, Iowa — Leisa and Kent Walker recently received a disturbing notice: The private company managing their son’s Medicaid coverage intends to cut nearly 40% of what it spends for caregivers who help him live at home instead of in a nursing home. Sam Walker, 35, has severe autism and other disabilities. He is deaf…
In the final days of 2025, governors around the country trumpeted the hundreds of millions of federal dollars they won from a new, $50 billion rural health fund. But plans to spend those nine-digit awards aren’t all warmly received. At least one group of Republican state lawmakers appears to have scuttled an initiative preapproved by…
It was a snowy afternoon in Bozeman, a city of nearly 60,000 nestled among the mountains of southern Montana. Temperatures hovered in the mid-30s. The city’s mobile crisis team had just gotten a call about a man walking around outside without shoes. The man’s family told the team he was having a mental health crisis…
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — At around 2 a.m., 7-year-old twin brothers arrived at Mission Hospital in Asheville. Both had a fever, a cough, a rash, pink eye, and cold symptoms. The boys sat in one waiting room and then another. Two hours and 20 minutes passed before the two were isolated, according to Centers for Medicare…
Lawmakers in at least eight states this year are aiming to reel in wage garnishment for unpaid medical bills. The legislation introduced in Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and Washington builds on efforts made in other states in past years. This latest push for patient protections comes as the Trump administration has backed…
More than 10,000 people have enrolled in Nevada’s new public option health plans, which debuted last fall with the expectation that they would bring lower prices to the health insurance market. Those preliminary numbers from the open enrollment period that ended in January are less than a third of what state officials had projected. Nevada…
