Federally qualified health centers from California to Michigan are mired in a bureaucratic mess over how they should be paid under Medicaid for each dose of covid vaccine given. In California alone, clinics await reimbursement for at least 1 million shots, causing a “massive cash flow problem.”
At least 26 states have passed laws to permanently limit public health powers, a KHN investigation has found, weakening the country’s ability to fight not only the current resurgence of the pandemic but other health crises to come.
As covid case numbers rise nationwide, Georgia and some other states have restricted the case count data they share publicly.
Facing bankruptcy, Detroit largely dismantled its public health department in 2012, and the city essentially went two years without a government-run public health system. Five years later, this major American city offers a grim cautionary tale.
Black Americans’ vaccination rates still trail all other groups, while Hispanics show improvement. Native Americans show the strongest rates nationally.
Struggling to keep up with a covid-19 surge in Michigan, overwhelmed health departments relied on an unlikely new crew of contact tracers: school principals.
The covid outbreak in Michigan stands out on the U.S. contagion map, but odds are it will be repeated elsewhere. How vaccine hesitancy, relaxed restrictions and a coronavirus variant combined to create the worst outbreak in the country.
Hunger among kids is skyrocketing, even in America’s wealthiest counties. But given the nation’s highly uneven charitable food system, affluent communities have been far less ready for the unprecedented crisis than places accustomed to dealing with poverty and hardship.
The first confirmed U.S. case of SARS-CoV-2 being transmitted through an organ transplant has prompted calls for updated transplant protocols and additional testing of samples from deep within donor lungs.
An ad hoc, chaotic distribution system is leading to a bizarre mix of vaccine haves and have-nots.