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Tests for the coronavirus are supposed to be free. And, usually, they are. But sometimes … things happen. Here’s how to keep those things from happening to you.

New York Times reporter Sarah Kliff has been asking readers to send in their COVID-testing bills. She’s now seen hundreds of them, and she ran down for us the most common ways things can go sideways, and how to avoid them.

First off, she said: “I don’t want people to think, ‘Holy crap,  I should just not get tested for coronavirus because it’s going to cost me a ton of money.’ You absolutely should. And the odds are that you will not get a surprise bill, and it will cost zero dollars.” Still, if only 2% of people end up with a surprise bill and a million people a day are … Read the rest

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[UPDATED at 2:30 p.m. ET]

DENVER — In March, Claire Tripeny was watching her dream job fall apart. She’d been working as an intensive care nurse at St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, Colorado, and loved it, despite the mediocre pay typical for the region. But when COVID-19 hit, that calculation changed.

She remembers her employers telling her and her colleagues to “suck it up” as they struggled to care for six patients each and patched their protective gear with tape until it fully fell apart. The $800 or so a week she took home no longer felt worth it.

“I was not sleeping and having the most anxiety in my life,” said Tripeny. “I’m like, ‘I’m gonna go where my skills are needed and I can be guaranteed that I have the protection I need.’”

In April, she packed her bags for a two-month contract in then-COVID hot spot New … Read the rest

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Back in March, just as anxiety over COVID-19 began spreading across the U.S., Erinn Baldeschwiler of La Conner, Washington, found herself facing her own private dread.

Just 48 and the mother of two teenagers, Baldeschwiler was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer after discovering a small lump on her chest, no bigger than a pea. Within weeks, it was the size of a golf ball, angry and red. Doctors gave her two years to live.

“It’s heartbreaking,” she said. “Frankly, I was terrified.”

But instead of retreating into her illness, Baldeschwiler is pouring energy into a new effort to help dying patients gain legal access to psilocybin — the mind-altering compound found in so-called magic mushrooms — to ease their psychic pain.

“I have personally struggled with depression, anxiety, anger,” Baldeschwiler said. “This therapy is designed to really dive in and release these negative fears and shadows.”

Dr. Sunil … Read the rest

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Brandon Hudgins works the main floor at Fleet Feet, a running-shoe store chain, for more than 30 hours a week. He chats with customers, measuring their feet and dashing in and out of the storage area to locate right-sized shoes. Sometimes, clients drag their masks down while speaking. Others refuse to wear masks at all.

So he worries about COVID-19. And with good reason. Across the U.S., COVID hospitalizations and deaths are hitting record-shattering new heights. The nation saw 198,633 new cases on Friday alone.

Unlike in the early days of the pandemic, though, many stores nationwide aren’t closing. And regular COVID-19 testing of those working remains patchy at best.

“I’ve asked, what if someone on staff gets symptoms? ‘You have to stay home,’” said Hudgins, 33, who works in High Point, North Carolina. But as an hourly employee, staying home means not getting paid. “It’s stressful, especially without … Read the rest

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For Christina Nester, the pandemic lull in Massachusetts lasted about three months through summer into early fall. In late June, St. Vincent Hospital had resumed elective surgeries, and the unit the 48-year-old nurse works on switched back from taking care of only COVID-19 patients to its pre-pandemic roster of patients recovering from gallbladder operations, mastectomies and other surgeries.

That is, until October, when patients with coronavirus infections began to reappear on the unit and, with them, the fear of many more to come. “It’s paralyzing, I’m not going to lie,” said Nester, who’s worked at the Worcester hospital for nearly two decades. “My little clan of nurses that I work with, we panicked when it started to uptick here.”

Adding to that stress is that nurses are caught betwixt caring for the bedside needs of their patients and implementing policies set by others, such as physician-ordered treatment plans and strict … Read the rest

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A mom of eight boys, Kim Gudgeon was at her wits’ end when she called her family doctor in suburban Chicago to schedule a sick visit for increasingly fussy, 1-year-old Bryce.

He had been up at night and was disrupting his brothers’ e-learning during the day. “He was just miserable,” Gudgeon said. “And the older kids were like, ‘Mom, I can’t hear my teacher.’ There’s only so much room in the house when you have a crying baby.”

She hoped the doctor might just phone in a prescription since Bryce had been seen a few days earlier for a well visit. The doctor had noted redness in one ear but opted to hold off on treatment.

To Gudgeon’s surprise, that’s not what happened. Instead, when she called, her son was referred to urgent care, a practice that has become common for the Edward Medical Group, which included her family doctor … Read the rest

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Como periodista de salud, médica y ex corresponsal que vivió el SARS en Beijing, recibo preguntas de amigos, colegas y personas que ni siquiera conozco sobre cómo vivir durante una pandemia. ¿Creo que es seguro planear una boda en persona el próximo junio? ¿Enviaría a mis hijos a la escuela con las precauciones adecuadas? ¿Cuándo confiaré en una vacuna?

A la última pregunta, siempre respondo: cuando vea a Anthony Fauci recibir una.

Como muchos estadounidenses, sigo la palabra del doctor Fauci, el principal experto en enfermedades infecciosas del país y miembro del grupo de trabajo de la Casa Blanca sobre el coronavirus.

Cuando le dijo a The Washington Post que no estaba limpiando los paquetes sino que los dejaba reposar durante un par de días, comencé a hacer lo mismo. En octubre, comentó que ya entraba las bolsas del mercado a su casa. Simplemente se lava las manos después … Read the rest

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With its choice of a new leader, the Florida Hospital Association has signaled that seeking legislative approval to expand Medicaid to nearly 850,000 uninsured adults won’t be among its top priorities.

In October, Mary Mayhew became the association’s CEO. Mayhew, who led the state’s Medicaid agency since 2019, has been a vocal critic of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion adopted by 38 other states. She has argued that expansion puts states in a difficult position because the federal government is unlikely to keep its financial commitment to pay its share of the costs.

Had Medicaid been expanded in Florida, hospitals there would have gained thousands of paying patients. But the institutions have done little in recent years to persuade the Republican-led legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis, also Republican, who oppose such a move.

Mayhew acknowledged in an interview with KHN that expanding Medicaid to cover more uninsured patients … Read the rest

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