My Life Scoop

It took covid-19 to give millions of Americans the option of telling their doctor about their aches and pains by phone.

But now that more doctors and patients are returning to in-person appointments, policymakers across the country are divided over how much taxpayer money to keep spending on phone appointments. Although they were a lifeline for Medicaid and Medicare patients who don’t have the technology for video visits, critics say they don’t provide the same level of patient care and aren’t worth the same price.

In California, the Democratic-controlled legislature wants the state’s Medicaid program for low-income people — called Medi-Cal — to keep paying for phone calls at the same rate as for video and in-person visits, a policy that began during the pandemic. But Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget plan directs Medi-Cal to reduce the rate.

Medi-Cal paid for a whopping 2.4 million phone appointments from March 1, … Read the rest

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Promise: “Double the number of drive-through testing sites, invest in next-generation testing, including at home tests and instant tests, so we can scale up our testing capacity by orders of magnitude.”

Before vaccinations were widely available, covid-19 tests were considered one of the few tools to help control the spread of the coronavirus.

That’s why then-candidate Joe Biden promised during the 2020 presidential campaign to boost the United States’ testing capacity as one way he would “beat covid-19.”

Specifically, Biden’s campaign website promised that, if elected, he would “double the number of drive-through testing sites” and “invest in next-generation testing, including at-home tests and instant tests, so we can scale up our testing capacity by orders of magnitude.”

KHN has teamed up with our partners at PolitiFact to analyze Biden’s promises during the 2020 presidential campaign. Now that Biden has been president almost five months, we checked how he has … Read the rest

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Labor Department officials on Thursday announced a temporary emergency standard to protect health care workers, saying they face “grave danger” in the workplace from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The new standard would require employers to remove workers who have covid-19 from the workplace, notify workers of covid exposure at work and strengthen requirements for employers to report worker deaths or hospitalizations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

“These are the workers who continue to go into work day in and day out to take care of us, to save our lives,” said Jim Frederick, acting assistant secretary of Labor for occupational safety and health. “And we must make sure we do everything in our power to return the favor to protect them.”

The new rules are set to take effect immediately after publication in the Federal Register and are expected to affect about 10.3 million health care workers nationwide.… Read the rest

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Victoria Cooper pensaba que su consumo de alcohol en la universidad era como los de los demás. Shots en las fiestas, cervezas mientras jugaba al bowling. Tomaba más que otros y las resacas le hacían perder clases, pero así y todo pensaba que no tenía ningún problema.

“Según la imagen que tenía del alcoholismo —viejos embriagándose en un estacionamiento— yo pensaba que estaba bien”, dijo Cooper, que ahora está sobria y vive en Chapel Hill, Carolina del Norte.

Esa imagen de quiénes son los que sufren de alcoholismo, transmitida por la cultura pop, era engañosa hace más de una década, cuando Cooper estaba en la universidad. Y es aún menos representativa hoy en día.

Desde hace casi un siglo, las mujeres han ido cerrando la brecha de género en el consumo de alcohol, las borracheras y los trastornos que acarrea. Lo que antes era una proporción de 3 a 1, … Read the rest

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