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KFF Health News senior correspondent Jordan Rau discussed the use of antipsychotic drugs in sedating dementia patients on Michigan Public’s Stateside on Oct. 6.
A cadre of elite techies, financiers, and high-level Trump administration officials have spent a year quietly charting an extraordinary and rapid campaign to persuade Americans to use apps and other artificial intelligence-powered tools to manage their healthcare and medical records.
As that campaign has unfolded, administration officials have granted tech companies an unusual opportunity to nudge the nation’s health department toward a loosely regulated future for AI health apps in which the government reimburses them for services as it does medical professionals.
CHATHAM COUNTY, N.C. — Despite being in one of the nation’s fastest-growing states, this rural county of roughly 85,000 people is still brimming with red foxes, coyotes, white-tailed deer, and wild turkeys.
But in recent months, Enbridge Gas North Carolina’s proposed plans for a natural gas pipeline have exposed how population growth, here and across the nation, is driving a divide between wealthy newcomers and longtime residents.
The KFF Health News Minute is available every Thursday via direct download or the RSS feed.
Oct. 8
Katheryn Houghton [CATH-er-in HOW-tun] reads the week’s news: Hundreds of thousands of immigrants with legal status have become ineligible for government health insurance. Plus, some states are considering universal coverage to ease consumer health costs.
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Oct. 1
As Americans grow increasingly frustrated with their healthcare system, a proposal that has long been kicked around on the Democratic periphery is showing up in debates and on political platforms: “Medicare for All.”
LOS ANGELES — Every Tuesday, Naman Shah sees tuberculosis patients at a small public clinic in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. Shah, a physician and epidemiologist at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, pores over images of battered lungs, listens to labored breathing, and checks medications.
It’s part of an initiative dating to the early 20th century to control infections so tuberculosis doesn’t spread. “We like doing things upstream,” Shah said, “meaning before they happen, not after the damage is done.”
After President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act more than a year ago, enrollment in the federal food assistance program dropped rapidly across the nation as states enforced new restrictions and prepared to take on more of the costs.
LANSING, Mich. — Christina Starks-Clay doesn’t know how “Medicare for All” would work exactly, but she’s willing to bet it’d be better than what she has now.
Standing in line for U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s town hall in the state’s capital in September, she whipped out her phone to pull up a screenshot. It was of the $1,000 cashier’s check she’d picked up at the bank that day to pay down a chunk of her son’s dental bills. An early childhood special education paraprofessional, she still owed $389, even with good dental insurance. Her own cleaning a few weeks before cost $600.
She...
On Sept. 30, I was one of the seven media witnesses who observed Tennessee fail to execute convicted murderer Christa Pike, the first woman to face the death penalty in the state in almost 200 years.
(Maria Fabrizio for WPLN and KFF Health News)
When Lori Baute first learned about precautionary full-body MRI scans, she dismissed the idea.
“ I heard Kim Kardashian got one, and some other wealthy people,” Baute said. But at 59, she was worried about her long-term health. She has a family history of cancer, and she’s a critical caregiver for her aging mom and her adult brother with special needs.
After a close friend was diagnosed with bladder cancer, Baute decided to make an appointment with a clinic that offers full-body scans near where she lives in Ocala, Florida. Her results came back a...
More than a year into President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, a poll finds that voters in rural parts of the country are divided on whether those immigration policies have benefited or harmed their communities.
In the Associated Press-KFF survey of more than 2,000 rural voters in August, about a third said the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement had been positive for their community and about a third said it had been negative. The remaining 3 in 10, roughly, said it had no impact.
Medications can snowball as we age. Pill organizers pile up. Prescriptions that are no longer necessary can mix with other drugs to create concerning side effects.
“Once you get to six or seven prescription medications, you get a nearly 100% chance of some sort of side effect or intolerance,” said physician K. Eric De Jonge, director of geriatrics at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
KFF Health News chief rural correspondent Sarah Jane Tribble discussed the findings of a KFF-Associated Press poll about rural support for the Make America Healthy Again movement on NPR’s Morning Edition on Sept. 30.
If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.”
KYLE, Texas — Kenney Blewett was diagnosed with lung disease more than a decade ago but started experiencing flare-ups this year that made him feel like he couldn’t breathe.
Blewett described those flare-ups as “the scariest thing in the world,” said his wife, Cindy, adding that while the episodes typically lasted no more than a few minutes, they had become more frequent.
Democratic congressional members and candidates are already planning to use any midterm election gains to expand health coverage, including boosting Affordable Care Act subsidies, reversing Medicaid cuts, and lowering the Medicare eligibility age.
If you have medical debt, there’s a good chance you
About half of rural voters identify with Make America Healthy Again, a sprawling political movement championed by the Trump administration, but most said President Donald Trump’s healthcare policies have not benefited their communities, according to a new poll from The Associated Press in partnership with KFF.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants with legal status are at risk of losing government health coverage starting Oct. 1, state data shows, signaling that the impact of Medicaid changes in President Donald Trump’s signature legislation from 2025 may be greater than anticipated.
Many lawfully present immigrants will be among the first people to lose Medicaid coverage under congressional Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is expected to cut spending by more than $900 billion through 2034 for the state-federal health program for people with low incomes or disabilities. The law will...
NEW RICHLAND, Minn. — Floodwater seeped through the nursing home’s front door just before sunrise.
Inside the New Richland Care Center, staff members rushed to move 36 residents out of the building on Sept. 19 while they still could. They pushed elderly residents in wheelchairs through 4-inch-deep water to buses waiting in the parking lot, said nursing home administrator Robert Johannsen.
Inches turned to feet as the last three residents were wheeled out on hospital beds, lifted “as high as they can go” to escape the rising water, Johannsen said. Firefighters and volunteers from a high school...
In December 2024, Marjorie Tingley’s adult sons received an urgent email from the dementia care unit at Vista Grande Villa, a Michigan senior living community. They were told that their 85-year-old mother was a major safety threat.
On at least 10 days in the previous month, Tingley had hit, kicked, or elbowed aides when they were trying to help her change her briefs, get dressed, bathe, or go to the bathroom, according to Vista Grande behavior logs. Vista Grande wanted permission to sedate her.
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