Tag Archives: health care

Gallup reports: A 57% majority of U.S. adults believe that the federal government should ensure all Americans have healthcare coverage. Yet nearly as many, 53%, prefer that the U.S. healthcare system be based on private insurance rather than run by the government. In 2000, Gallup began tracking the public’s views of whether it is the federal government’s responsibility to ensure …

The Associated Press reports: The Supreme Court is taking up two major Biden administration efforts to bump up the nation’s vaccination rate against COVID-19 at a time of spiking coronavirus cases because of the omicron variant. The justices on the conservative-oriented court are hearing arguments Friday about whether to allow the administration to enforce a vaccine-or-testing requirement that applies to …

CTV News reports: “Help.”  That word, in big black letters and surrounded by white space, called out from Ohio’s largest newspaper — a desperate plea from six Cleveland-area medical systems facing a crush of COVID-19 cases. “We need your help,” read the bottom of the ad. “We now have more COVID-19 patients in our hospitals than ever before. And the …

The Associated Press reports: Phoenix-based Banner Health is at its most overwhelmed since the pandemic began, leading the company’s officials to issue a warning Tuesday that its hospital system may have to eventually choose who can receive care. The company has 18 hospitals in Arizona. As of Tuesday, 10 of them were running above 100% of their ICU staffed bed …

The Hill reports: Minnesota hospital leaders are warning in a full-page newspaper ad that they are “overwhelmed” amid a COVID-19 surge and are urging the public to take action. “Our emergency departments are overfilled, and we have patients in every bed in our hospitals,” write the leaders of nine hospital systems in the state, including the Mayo Clinic and North …

The Wall Street Journal reports: Alphabet Inc.’s Google and national hospital chain HCA Healthcare Inc. have struck a deal to develop healthcare algorithms using patient records, the latest foray by a tech giant into the $3 trillion healthcare sector. Nashville, Tenn.,-based HCA, which operates across about 2,000 locations in 21 states, would consolidate and store with Google data from digital …

ABC News reports: As hospitalizations climb, the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency (EMS) directed ambulance crews not to transport patients with little chance of survival to hospitals and to conserve the use of oxygen. Before the pandemic, when healthcare workers and resources were more readily available, patients who were unlikely to recover could be transported by ambulance to …

Los Angeles’ ABC News affiliate reports: The ICU capacity in the 11-county Southern California region has dropped to 0% amid a dramatic surge in coronavirus cases, officials said Thursday. California hospitals are required to report the total number of all available staffed ICU beds each day. Regional ICU capacity is calculated by subtracting neonatal and pediatric intensive care beds from …

STAT News reports: President Trump on Thursday pledged to send $200 prescription drug coupons to 33 million Medicare beneficiaries “in the coming weeks,” a political ploy to curry favor with seniors who view drug prices as a priority. The administration is getting its authority to ship the coupons from a Medicare demonstration program, a White House spokesman told STAT in …

The Washington Post reports: It was a bold claim when President Trump said that he was about to produce an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system, at last doing away with the Affordable Care Act, which he has long promised to abolish. “We’re signing a health-care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health-care plan,” Trump pledged in a …

The Washington Post reports: The House Monday passed the first significant expansion of the Affordable Care Act since its birth a decade ago, providing Democrats a high-wattage platform to castigate President Trump for his efforts to overturn the landmark law during a pandemic and an election year. The 234-179 vote, almost entirely along party lines, was a hollow exercise in …

Axios reports: The Supreme Court’s historic ruling on LGBTQ nondiscrimination could sideline the Trump administration’s new policies on health care and adoption. The ruling’s ripple effects will be felt immediately, and could ultimately derail regulations the administration had finalized just days ago.  Federal civil rights law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, and the Supreme Court said Monday that …

Morning Consult reports: The sweeping health reform package championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would provide all Americans with health insurance through the government now has support from 55 percent of registered voters, per a March 27-29 survey of 1,997 respondents, taken as the United States became the global epicenter of the coronavirus. Thirty-five percent of voters continue to …

Patch New York reports: A field hospital is being built in Central Park’s East Meadow to expand Mount Sinai Hospital’s capacity as New York City hospitals are overwhelmed with patients coming in sick with coronavirus, city officials announced Sunday. The Central Park field hospital is the latest example of efforts to expand hospital capacity at Mount Sinai and at hospitals …

The Washington Post reports: Hospitals on the front lines of the pandemic are engaged in a heated private debate over a calculation few have encountered in their lifetimes — how to weigh the “save at all costs” approach to resuscitating a dying patient against the real danger of exposing doctors and nurses to the virus’s contagion. The conversations are driven …

The Moscow Times reports: The Moscow Times has found evidence, based on dozens of interviews, that Russia’s rich are setting up makeshift clinics in their own homes to ensure they can have better care than the masses if they get infected. And in what may have severe ramifications down the road for Russia’s battle against the coronavirus, they are buying …

The New York Times reports: Working at a breakneck pace, a team of hundreds of scientists has identified 50 drugs that may be effective treatments for people infected with the coronavirus. Many scientists are seeking drugs that attack the virus itself. But the Quantitative Biosciences Institute Coronavirus Research Group, based at the University of California, San Francisco, is testing an …

Gov. Andrew Cuomo writes for the New York Times: Dear Mr. President, The coronavirus pandemic is now upon us, and data from other countries shows us clearly where we are headed. Every country affected by this crisis has handled it on a national basis. The United States has not. State and local governments alone simply do not have the capacity …

The New York Times reports: The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a third major case on the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s health care law, granting petitions from Democratic state officials and the House of Representatives in a case with the potential to wipe out the entire law. The court did not say when it would hear …

The Associated Press reports: Life expectancy in the United States is up for the first time in four years. The increase is small — just a month — but marks at least a temporary halt to a downward trend. The rise is due to lower death rates for cancer and drug overdoses. “Let’s just hope it continues,” said Robert Anderson, …