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Tag: Health Care

  • Police say no active shooter incident at Austin, Texas, hospital after responding to a report of ‘shots fired’ | CNN

    Police say no active shooter incident at Austin, Texas, hospital after responding to a report of ‘shots fired’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Authorities in Austin, Texas, said Friday that there was no active shooter at a local hospital after police responded to a call of “shots fired.”

    “Officers have secured the scene and it is safe,” Austin police said on Twitter Friday afternoon. “This was not an active shooter incident. No injuries reported, roadways are expected to open soon.”

    There was no indication that shots were fired, Austin police said, adding there is no criminal investigation.

    Earlier, the police department had said it was responding to a “shots fired” call at Seton Hospital, adding the facility was placed on lockdown as a precautionary measure.

    Police Sgt. Brian Preusse later explained someone reacting to a loud noise inside the hospital emergency room was what led to the shots fired call and prompted the lockdown and facility search.

    “The hospital is back open again and secure,” Preusse said Friday evening.

    No patients were located, treated or transported from the scene, the Austin-Travis County EMS said on Twitter. The agency said earlier in the day that among the resources that were deployed to the hospital were five ambulances and had urged residents to “avoid the area.”

    It later said it was scaling down the units on scene, before announcing all EMS resources were demobilized.

    “Today was a best-case scenario,” EMS Capt. Christa Stedman said about the incident. “This is the best possible outcome we could have had.”

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  • 1 in 5 of Americans don’t know about new omicron-targeting COVID boosters, survey finds

    1 in 5 of Americans don’t know about new omicron-targeting COVID boosters, survey finds

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    About half of the American public has heard little or nothing about the new COVID-19 bivalent booster, a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation has found. The new booster targets the omicron variants that have become dominant around the world.

    One in five of those surveyed said they had heard “nothing at all” about the new boosters. Some 17% said they had heard “a lot” about the boosters, while 33% said they had heard “some” about the new shots. About a third said they’d already gotten the new booster or intended to do so as soon as possible.

    “Intention is somewhat higher among older adults, one of the groups most at risk for serious complications of a coronavirus infection,” the authors wrote. “Almost half (45%) of adults ages 65 and older say they have gotten the bivalent booster or intend to get it ‘as soon as possible.’”


    Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

    The news will likely disappoint health experts who cheered the regulatory authorization of the new boosters in August. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency-use authorization to boosters developed by Moderna
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    and by Pfizer
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    and German partner BioNTech
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    for use in people aged 12 and older who have had an initial series of a COVID vaccine, including those who have already had one or more booster doses.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that all adults get one of the bivalent boosters at least two months after completing a primary series of shots. So far, some 7.6 million people in the U.S. have received it, according to the CDC.

    From the CDC: Stay Up to Date with COVID-19 Vaccines Including Boosters

    Once again, the country’s partisan divide is evident, with 6 in 10 Democrats saying they’ve already had the shot or will get it soon, compared with 1 in 8 Republicans.

    “Notably, 20% of Republicans say they will ‘definitely not’ get the new COVID-19 booster dose, while a further 38% of Republicans are unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated and therefore not eligible for the new updated COVID-19 booster dose,” the survey authors said.

    Also read: A common virus is putting more children in the hospital than in recent years

    In the U.S., known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where data are not being collected.

    The daily average for new cases stood at 47,569 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 26% from two weeks ago and now at the lowest level since late April. Cases are rising in 14 states and are sharply higher in several. Montana leads the count with a 75% rise in the last two weeks, followed by Washington with a 48% rise. Cases are up by double digits in Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and New Jersey.

    The daily average for hospitalizations was down 13% to 28,639, while the daily average for deaths was down 11% to 407.

    The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual COVID shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to COVID could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

    Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

    Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

    • The U.K. is the only G-7 country whose economy is smaller now than before the pandemic, the Guardian reported, citing data released Friday by the Office for National Statistics. The ONS released figures showing that rather than the economy being 0.6% larger than it was in February 2020, a combination of a deeper recession during the pandemic and a weak recovery had left it 0.2% smaller. All the other major economies in the G-7, including France and Italy, recovered strongly enough to be larger than they were in February 2020.

    • Taiwan is the latest country to end mandatory COVID quarantines for people arriving from overseas, the Associated Press reported. Officials said that beginning Oct. 13, the previous weeklong quarantine requirement would be replaced with a seven-day self-monitoring period. A rapid antigen test will still be required upon arrival, but people showing no symptoms will be allowed to take public transportation. 

    • Germany’s health ministry is warning of a rise of COVID cases heading into the fall and is urging older people in particular to get a second booster shot, the AP reported separately. Other European countries such as France, Denmark and the Netherlands are also recording an increase in cases, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach told reporters in Berlin. “We are clearly at the start of a winter wave,” he said.

    COVID-19 lockdowns, corruption crackdowns and more have put China’s economy on a potential crash course with the U.S. and the rest of the world, the Wall Street Journal’s Dion Rabouin explains. Illustration: David Fang

    • The first Chinese mRNA-based COVID vaccine has received government approval — in Indonesia, the New York Times reported. The shot, developed by Walvax Biotechnology
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    Suzhou Abogen Biosciences and the Chinese military, was cleared this week by Indonesia for emergency use. Countries all over the world, including Indonesia, have embraced mRNA vaccines, and they are considered among the most effective vaccines that the world has to offer. But more than two years into the pandemic, they are not yet available in China, which has relied on an increasingly draconian “zero-COVID” approach to keep cases and deaths from the virus low.

    • Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a supporter of Russia’s war on Ukraine, has tested positive for COVID-19, the church’s press service said on Friday, Reuters reported. The church said Kirill, 75, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had canceled all his planned trips and events and had “severe symptoms” requiring bed rest and isolation. It said his condition was “satisfactory.”

    Here’s what the numbers say:

    The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 617.3 million on Friday, while the death toll rose above 6.54 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

    The U.S. leads the world with 96.3 million cases and 1,059,291 fatalities.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.

     

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  • Tampa Bay’s largest children’s hospital survives Hurricane Ian

    Tampa Bay’s largest children’s hospital survives Hurricane Ian

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    Tampa Bay’s largest children’s hospital survives Hurricane Ian – CBS News


    Watch CBS News



    Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, was able to withstand Hurricane Ian. About 1,000 people rode out the storm at the hospital. Dr. Joseph Perno, vice president of medical affairs for the hospital, joined CBS News to discuss the storm.

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  • Uganda is racing to contain a deadly Ebola outbreak

    Uganda is racing to contain a deadly Ebola outbreak

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    UGANDA-HEALTH-VIRUS
    A member of the Ugandan medical staff of the Ebola Treatment Unit stands inside the ward in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) at Mubende Regional Referral Hospital in Uganda on September 24, 2022.

    BADRU KATUMBA/AFP/Getty


    Johannesburg, South Africa — Two weeks ago, a 24-year-old man in Uganda felt ill. He went to a private clinic several times between September 11 and 13 with a high fever, convulsions, blood in his vomit, pain and swelling everywhere, and bleeding in his eyes. 

    He returned several times with the same symptoms, to report they were not improving. Local health officials finally referred him to the Regional Referral Hospital on September 15 and isolated him as a suspected case of viral hemorrhagic fever. Blood samples were taken that day, and eight days after he first went to the local Madudu clinic, he died. That same day, a lab confirmed he had the Sudan ebolavirus.

    Health authorities sent a team to the village to investigate and found what World Health Organization officials have described as “a number” of community deaths attributed to an unknown illness. 

    Locals described a strange illness, with sudden deaths. According to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, officials confirmed that some of those mysterious deaths were in people who had contact with the 24-year-old man. The deaths are now also classified as probable Sudan ebolavirus cases.

    As of Wednesday, authorities still were not sure whether the 24-year-old man was the first person infected, or if the “index case” was one of the other people who died in the area.  

    “I see it getting worse before it gets better,” Dr. Christopher Mabula, who runs operations for the French charity Doctors Without Borders in East Africa, told CBS News on Wednesday.

    UGANDA-HEALTH-VIRUS
    Members of the Doctors Without Borders NGO set up an Ebola treatment isolation unit at the Mubende Regional Referral Hospital in Uganda, September 24, 2022.

    BADRU KATUMBA/AFP/Getty


    He said the 24-year-old man had visited three different health facilities servicing three different bordering districts before he died, vastly increasing his possible human contacts. The man’s village is also located near an active gold mine, and such sites typically draw a large number of workers from other regions, even from outside the country, with high turnover.

    “Symptoms can take between two and 21 days to develop, and with Uganda’s excellent road infrastructure, newly infected people could travel in any direction for some time before becoming symptomatic,” noted the doctor.

    Mabula said that would make tracing all known contacts significantly more difficult than it has been during previous Ebola outbreaks in neighboring Congo, where poor infrastructure makes it easier to contain cases. 

    Ugandan Ministry of Health Officials said Tuesday that a total of 36 cases, including 18 confirmed and 18 more listed as probable, had been reported. There were 23 deaths within that number, five among confirmed cases and 18 among probable ones. Officials have confirmed to CBS News separately that five people are confirmed to have died of Ebola during the current outbreak in Uganda. They say there are 19 other confirmed cases.

    Uganda’s Medical Association said six of the confirmed cases were health care workers who have fallen critically ill after catching the virus while working with the known or probable cases. The head of the association said doctors and nurses were very concerned and at high risk of infection due to a lack of personal protective equipment.   

    Rosemary Byabashaija, the Mubende Resident District Commissioner who doubles as the head of the district’s Ebola taskforce, said authorities had tightened security at the hospital after rumors circulated that some patients suspected of having Ebola wanted to leave the isolation facility. 

    Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, Uganda’s Minister of Health, said in a tweet on Wednesday morning that there were no confirmed cases of the virus in the capital Kampala, and she appealed for the public “to remain calm and vigilant.” 

    The WHO, Africa CDC and various NGOs have scrambled teams to the area to support Uganda’s Health Service. 

    President Yoweri Museveni addressed the nation Wednesday evening, ruling out lockdowns and other restrictions to movement as the country battles the outbreak. He sought to reassure his nation, stressing that the disease does not spread as easily as COVID-19, and can be controlled by avoiding contact, maintaining personal hygiene and seeking medical treatment as soon as symptoms are detected.  

    Sudan ebolavirus disease was first reported in Southern Sudan in June 1976. Seven outbreaks have been reported since: four in Uganda and three in neighboring Sudan. The deadliest outbreak in Uganda so far was in 2000, when more than 200 people died.   

    The virus is introduced into human populations through direct contact with infected animals. It spreads through bodily fluids including saliva and blood. Fruit bats, primates, forest antelope and porcupines have all been suspected carriers.

    The virus incubates in humans for between two and 21 days and can only be spread once the carrier develops symptoms.

    There are no licensed vaccines or therapies for the treatment or prevention of Sudan ebolavirus disease. According to the WHO, the ERVEBO vaccine, which has been used in recent responses to outbreaks of other Ebola strains, will not provide cross-protection for the Sudan virus.

    There are six candidate vaccines against Sudan ebolavirus in different stages of development, but none are near the final phases of broad clinical trials. The WHO has said its research teams are in contact with all of the vaccine developers, in what the organization calls a “collaborative effort” to see if any are suitable for further evaluation during the current outbreak.   

    Health officials tell CBS News that the WHO, Africa CDC and other agencies are “talking” about the possibility of running some trials on people who have been admitted to hospitals in the country. 

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  • ‘No matter the law, no matter the stigma, no matter the cost.’ This European network helps people access abortions | CNN

    ‘No matter the law, no matter the stigma, no matter the cost.’ This European network helps people access abortions | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This story is part of As Equals, CNN’s ongoing series on gender inequality. For information about how the series is funded and more, check out our FAQs.


    Amsterdam, the Netherlands
    CNN
     — 

    It’s early evening in an affluent neighborhood in the Dutch city of Haarlem and bed and breakfast owners Arnoud and Marika are waiting for their next guest to arrive. They’ve prepared their single room for her, a brightly colored space with massive windows overlooking a leafy drive.

    The traveller is a woman from France. She’s only staying one night, but her hosts want her to feel at home because she’s not here on vacation. She’s come to have a second-trimester abortion.

    The Netherlands is one of just a few countries in Europe where access to abortion is possible past 12 weeks of pregnancy, and Arnoud and Marika’s guest is one of around 3,000 people from abroad who have accessed one annually in recent years.

    Here, abortions for non-Dutch residents can be carried out until 22 weeks, according to Dutch abortion providers, and nationals can access terminations up to 24 weeks.

    In the United Kingdom (with the exception of Northern Ireland), it’s possible for anyone to get an abortion until 24 weeks, and for a very limited set of circumstances afterwards, however Brexit has made it increasingly more difficult for people to travel there. And in Spain, abortions past 14 weeks of pregnancy are only legal under extremely limited circumstances, although abortion rights groups say the law is often interpreted loosely.

    The restrictions mean that, for many in their second trimester, the Netherlands is their last chance to access a safe abortion. By opening up their home, Arnoud and Marika have become part of a grassroots network of people helping to facilitate that access.

    “This is a house without taboos,” Arnoud told CNN. Arnoud and Marika are pseudonyms that CNN agreed to use over concerns that the couple’s B&B – which is also where they live – will be targeted by anti-abortion protesters.

    Now in their 70s, the retired pair have made it their mission to be a welcoming point of entry for the people they host, many of whom they receive bleary eyed from a long day or more of travel, punctuated by weeks of anxiety and stress leading up to the journey.

    “They are so relieved, they have made this terrible journey, and they come in and they’re crying,” Marika said. “I love to be a light for them.”

    Arnoud and Marika look through messages written by their guests in their B&B in Haarlem. Photo: Kara Fox/CNN

    Arnoud and Marika’s guest book. “Thanks for the kind words that cheered me up,” a message from a Polish guest in September reads. Photo: Kara Fox/CNN

    Since they opened their B&B seven years ago, Arnoud and Marika say they have hosted around 350 people seeking abortion care from across Europe. They explain that some came alone, others were joined by partners or friends, while some brought their family.

    At first, the majority of their guests came from France and Germany, where abortion is available until 14 and 12 weeks of pregnancy, respectively. (France extended that time limit from 12 to 14 weeks earlier this year.) They say they have also hosted a number of women from other European countries including Belgium and Luxembourg, and Romania. One woman traveled from as far as the Caribbean island of Martinique, they said.

    But in recent years data shows the demographics have changed, with an influx of people now traveling to the Netherlands from Poland, after the country’s highest court further tightened its abortion laws – which were already among the strictest in Europe.

    The numbers coming to the Netherlands from Poland have swelled further as Ukrainians displaced there due to the war find they need to seek safe abortion access beyond Polish borders.

    In October 2020, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal banned virtually all abortions, allowing them only in circumstances where the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest, or if the pregnant person’s life was at risk. The law came into effect the following January. Prior to this, abortions were also allowed in the case of fetal abnormalities – which accounted for approximately 97% of all known legal terminations carried out in Poland in 2019, according to data from the Polish Ministry of Health.

    The change in the law has left many people in Poland without legal access to safe terminations in their own country, and has created an even more hostile environment for abortion rights activists and those seeking abortions.

    When asked about the worsening climate for those seeking or providing abortions in Poland, a statement provided to CNN by the Polish government simply reiterated the law, saying: “In the event of a situation that threatens the life or health of a pregnant woman (e.g. suspected infection of the uterine cavity, hemorrhage, etc.) …it is lawful to terminate a pregnancy immediately.”

    “The decision whether there are circumstances in which the pregnancy threatens the life or health of the pregnant woman is and can only be made by a doctor in a specific case,” the statement added.

    But abortion rights activists say the law has created a chilling effect on healthcare providers, with some doctors appearing more fearful of potential repercussions that include prosecution than doing everything they can to save a pregnant person’s life. Three pregnant women have died in Polish hospitals after being denied an abortion since the court decision, according to Abortion Support Network, a UK-based organization that helps people in Poland obtain abortion care as part of the Abortion Without Borders (AWB) network.

    AWB was formed in response to the Polish government’s long standing proposals to ban abortion in 2019.

    The grassroots feminist network is made up of six organizations from Poland, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. They say the Polish state is failing women and have made it their mission to ensure safe access to abortion for any reason a person chooses to have one – including whether the pregnancy is wanted or not.

    “We don’t want to make you feel like you have to explain yourself, and that you have to earn your abortion with a sob story,” said Polish abortion rights activist Kasia Roszak.

    Kasia Roszak of Abortion Network Amsterdam says the work that she does is

    Roszak, who now lives in Amsterdam where she works with Abortion Network Amsterdam (part of AWB), says she knows exactly how it feels to not have agency over her reproductive rights, which is one of the reasons she works to ensure access for anyone globally who needs it.

    “We believe that abortions are part of life. It can be an empowering, positive experience. And if it’s not, if it’s something hard for you, then we’re going to give you space and validation of your feelings,” Roszak said. “I feel like it’s my responsibility to be able to share with people that there are options.”

    From December 2020 to December 2021, AWB says they helped 32,000 people from Poland access abortions across Europe – an almost six-fold increase from the previous year.

    In 2021, the network says they facilitated travel for 1,186 people in Poland – more than quadruple the number of people they supported with travel in 2020. More than half of those people travelled to the Netherlands, making up 52% of the total they helped to visit the country for abortions that year, according to AWB.

    Official 2021 data from the Dutch government shows 651 people from Poland had abortions in the Netherlands, more than double the number of people in 2020.

    “Effectively, we took over all [of Poland’s] fetal anomaly cases,” said Roszak. Numbers previously hovered around 1,000 cases a year in Poland, according to government data.

    The network gets connected with people who need their help through a process like this: A person with an unwanted pregnancy will first call a hotline in Poland, where they have two options, depending on how far along they are: take pills or travel for a procedure.

    If they are less than 12 weeks pregnant, they are sent the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol – approved by the World Health Organization – to take in the privacy of their own home. This is the case for the majority of the people who reach out to them, according to AWB data.

    Mariprist, a safe and effective abortion medication that contains mifepristone and misoprostol, seen at the Women Help Women offices in Amsterdam.

    However, for people whose pregnancies have already passed the 12-week mark, they will likely need to travel to a clinic abroad. This is also the case for those living in other European countries where laws prohibit abortions after the first trimester. For these people, the network taps into its web of volunteers and activists who will work around the clock to arrange appointments at clinics, translate documentation and provide financial assistance to help meet the cost of the procedure and related travel.

    Second trimester abortions may be available in the Netherlands but they are expensive for non-Dutch residents, costing up to 1,100 euros (roughly $1,100) for the surgical procedure which typically takes no longer than 20 minutes. Counselling, preparation for the procedure and recovery however require the better part of a day.

    Depending on each individual circumstance, assistance arrives in many ways and AWB may cover all or part of the costs, which can include flights, accommodation, and handling appointments with the treatment center directly.

    Money is raised mostly from private donations, according to activists within the AWB network, but some of the organizations within it are supported by big donors. Without financial assistance, abortion travel is especially prohibitive for working-class people, migrants and others living in poverty.

    Kinga Jelińska, Executive Director of the Amsterdam-based group Women Help Women – which is also part of AWB – told CNN: “We return abortion back to common people, no matter the law, no matter the stigma, no matter the cost.”

    Kinga Jelińska, Executive Director of Women Help Women, says the network is essentially running a

    Second-trimester abortions constitute a relatively small proportion of the total number of officially recorded abortions in high-income countries. The vast majority are carried out in the first trimester.

    Those seeking second-trimester abortions do so for a number of reasons, including not having previously realized they were pregnant; a change in personal circumstances such as financial difficulties or the breakdown of a relationship; unexpected medical problems in themselves or the fetus, and trauma surrounding rape and sexual abuse cases, which can also be a reason that one might not recognize the pregnancy until it is too late to access an abortion in their country.

    “People sometimes think that it’s a matter of fundamental principles and beliefs. [But]we see day after day, people coming to us and saying… ‘I used to be against abortion, but my situation is different,’ Jelińska explained.”The decision whether to continue the pregnancy or not, is highly contextual.”

    At the Bloemenhove clinic in Haarlem, one of two clinics in the country that offer abortions past 18 weeks, the parking lot looks “like the United Nations,” Roszak quipped, referencing the fact that car registration plates can be seen from all over Europe.

    The clinic, a bright and modern space with a peaceful garden area, treats approximately 15 people a day, 4 days a week, according to its director, Femke van Straaten. But the influx of Polish patients has, van Straaten said, led to a shift in the way that her team works.

    Prior to the Polish court ruling, more than half of the patients at Bloemenhove were Dutch and most came to terminate unwanted pregnancies, van Straaten explained. As such, staff were able to recommend in-country aftercare, including counseling resources.

    Now, with more patients coming to the clinic from Poland with wanted pregnancies (many of whom came for terminations due to fetal abnormalities), they have “different needs for care,” said van Straaten.

    One of the ways the clinic responded was to establish a memorial at a local cemetery for women to find some closure for their unviable pregnancies.

    “They couldn’t take their child back home, and they had no place for their grievance,” said van Straaten, who helped organize the memorial last year at the suggestion of the Polish abortion rights network. She added that memorial services are also available for people carrying viable fetuses who chose to terminate their pregnancies.

    As part of this aftercare, patients can opt for a cremation and are permitted to take the ashes home. For those who can’t wait for cremation, the cemetery offers to scatter the ashes on the site, where a steel tree has been erected and babies’ names are engraved onto a rainbow of leaves that hang on its branches.

    The “Little Stars Meadow,” a memorial space for people to grieve and find closure at the Haarlem cemetery. Photo: Kara Fox/CNN

    Engraved “leaves” on the memorial tree. Van Straaten says her team decided to use the word “stillborns” for the terminated pregnancies – the closest word in English that they could find – to help people who wanted their babies acknowledge their loss and move forward.. Photo: Kara Fox/CNN

    Dr. Elles Garcia, an abortion care provider at Bloemenhove since 2016, works to assuage concerns that some people – particularly those from Poland – have about returning home after their termination.

    “They often ask me the question: ‘What do I tell my gynaecologist? Can I tell them that I had a miscarriage?’ They’re so afraid of getting back to their doctor in their own country and to tell them the truth – they can’t,” she said from one of the clinic’s consultation rooms.

    Garcia said that while she assures patients that medically, their doctors back at home won’t be able to know whether they had a miscarriage or an abortion, she still encourages them to be honest about what they went through, not only for themselves, but in hopes it might start to break down societal taboos.

    “I tell them to say that you were here for an abortion, because here it’s legal – you can tell them the truth,” she said, before acknowledging, “but then they get afraid and anxious.”

    To help people prepare to return to a society where abortion is both restricted and taboo, the AWB Polish helpline has also expanded its remit to provide aftercare, including psychological counseling for those in need.

    Dr. Elles Garcia of the Bloemenhove clinic says she always advises patients from countries where abortion is taboo to talk with each other to reduce the stigma around the subject.

    Back at their B&B, Arnoud and Marika are reflecting on the past several years of providing hospitality to people at a difficult time in their lives.

    Only around a third of their guests stay for two nights, they say, the majority return to their countries of origin straight from the clinic. And so the relationships are fleeting, but the septuagenarians know their impact can be profound. They see their job as being to listen and reassure.

    “People come from the room and ask: ‘Can we talk to each other?’ said Arnoud, explaining that guests often gather around their dining room table or sit in their garden for a chat if they stay the second night.

    The couple say that while they were never planning on becoming a hub for abortion travel when they first decided to open their business, they can’t imagine their B&B in any other way.

    But unlike most business owners, they say they relish the day when their business might go bust.

    “When the law changes in France, like we have in Holland, when the law changes in Poland, like we have here, it will be better – I will sing a song,” Arnoud said.

    He looks to Marika and adds: “Our business is not important. It’s more important that women can decide for themselves … that’s the most important.”

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  • ‘It Just Seems Like My Patients Are Sicker’

    ‘It Just Seems Like My Patients Are Sicker’

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    The most haunting memory of the pandemic for Laura, a doctor who practices internal medicine in New York, is a patient who never got COVID at all. A middle-aged man diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer in 2019, he underwent surgery and a round of successful chemotherapy and was due for regular checkups to make sure the tumor wasn’t growing. Then the pandemic hit, and he decided that going to the hospital wasn’t worth the risk of getting COVID. So he put it off … and put it off. “The next time I saw him, in early 2022, he required hospice care,” Laura told me. He died shortly after. With proper care, Laura said, “he could have stayed alive indefinitely.” (The Atlantic agreed to withhold Laura’s last name, because she isn’t authorized to speak publicly about her patients.)

    Early in the pandemic, when much of the country was in lockdown, forgoing nonemergency health care as Laura’s patient did seemed like the right thing to do. But the health-care delays didn’t just end when America began to reopen in the summer of 2020. Patients were putting off health care through the end of the first pandemic year, when vaccines weren’t yet widely available. And they were still doing so well into 2021, at which point much of the country seemed to be moving on from COVID.

    By this point, the coronavirus has killed more than 1 million Americans and debilitated many more. One estimate shows that life expectancy in the U.S. fell 2.41 years from 2019 to 2021. But the delays in health care over the past two and a half years have allowed ailments to unduly worsen, wearing down people with non-COVID medical problems too. “It just seems like my patients are sicker,” Laura said. Compared with before the pandemic, she is seeing more people further along with AIDS, more people with irreversible heart failure, and more people with end-stage kidney failure. Mental-health issues are more severe, and her patients struggling with addiction have been more likely to relapse.

    Even as Americans are treating the pandemic like an afterthought, a disturbing possibility remains: COVID aside, is the country simply going to be in worse health than before the pandemic? According to health-care workers, administrations, and researchers I talked with from across the country, patients are still dealing with a suite of problems from delaying care during the pandemic, problems that in some cases they will be facing for the rest of their lives. The scope of this damage isn’t yet clear—and likely won’t come into focus for several years—but there are troubling signs of a looming chronic health crisis the country has yet to reckon with. At some point, the emergency phase of COVID will end, but the physical toll of the pandemic may linger in the bodies of Americans for decades to come.

    During those bleak pre-vaccine dark ages, going to the doctor could feel like a disaster in waiting. Many of the country’s hospitals were overwhelmed with COVID patients, and outpatient clinics had closed. As a result, in every week through July 2020, roughly 45 percent of American adults said that over the preceding month, they either put off medical care or didn’t get it at all because of the pandemic. Once they did come in, they were sicker—a trend observed for all sorts of ailments, including childhood diabetes, appendicitis, and cancer. A recent study analyzed the 8.4 million non-COVID Medicare hospitalizations from April 2020 to September 2021 and found not only that hospital admissions plummeted, but also that those admitted to hospitals were up to 20 percent more likely to die—an astonishing effect that lasted through the length of the study.

    Partly, that result came about because only those who were sicker made it to the hospital, James Goodwin, one of the study’s authors and a professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston, told me. It was also partly because overwhelmed hospitals were giving worse care. But Goodwin estimates that “more than half the cause was people delaying medical care early in their illness and therefore being more likely to die. Instead of coming in with a urinary tract infection, they’re already getting septic. I mean, people were having heart attacks and not showing up at the hospital.”

    Read: America is sliding into the long pandemic defeat

    For some conditions, skipping a checkup or two may not matter all that much in the long run. But for other conditions, every doctor’s visit can count. Take the tens of millions of Americans with vascular issues in their feet and legs due to diabetes or peripheral artery disease. Their problems might lead to, say, ulcers on the foot that can be treated with regular medical care, but delays of even a few months can increase the risk of amputation. When patients came in later in 2020, it was sometimes too late to save the limb. An Ohio trauma center found that the odds of undergoing a diabetes-related amputation in 2020 were almost 11 times higher once the pandemic hit versus earlier in the year.

    Although only a small percentage of Americans lost a limb, the lack of care early in the pandemic helped fuel a dangerous spike in substance-abuse disorders. In a matter of weeks or months, people’s support systems collapsed, and for some, years of work overcoming an addiction unraveled. “My patients took a huge step back, probably more than many of us realize,” Aarti Patel, a physician assistant at a Lower Manhattan community hospital, told me. One of her patients, a man in his late 50s who was five years sober, started drinking again during the pandemic and eventually landed in the hospital for withdrawal. Patients like this man, she said, “would have really difficult, long hospital stays, because they were at really high risk of DTs, alcohol seizures. Some of them even had to go to the ICU because [the withdrawal] was so severe.”

    Later in the year, when doctors’ offices were up and running, “a lot of patients expressed that they didn’t want to go back for care right away,” says Kim Muellers, a graduate student at Pace University who is studying the effects of COVID on medical care in New York City, North Carolina, and Florida. Indeed, through the spring of 2021, the top reason Medicare recipients failed to seek care was they didn’t want to be at a medical facility. Other people were avoiding the doctor because they’d lost their job and health insurance and couldn’t afford the bills.

    The problem, doctors told me, is that all of those missed appointments start to add up. Patients with high blood pressure or blood sugar, for example, may now be less likely to have their conditions under control—which after enough time can lead to all sorts of other ailments. Losing a limb can pose challenges for patients that will last for the rest of their lives. Relapses can put people at a higher risk for lifelong medical complications. Cancer screenings plummeted, and even a few weeks without treatment can increase the chance of dying from the disease. In other words, even short-term delays can cause long-term havoc.

    Read: How long can the coronavirus keep reinfecting us?

    To make matters worse, the health-care delays fueling a sicker America may not be totally over yet, either. After so many backups, some health-care systems, hobbled by workforce shortages, are scrambling to address the pent-up demand for care that patients can simply no longer put off, according to administrators and doctors from several major health systems, including Cleveland Clinic, the Veterans Health Administration, and Mayo Clinic. Disruptions in the global supply chain are forcing doctors to ration basic supplies, adding to backlogs. Amy Oxentenko, a gastroenterologist at Mayo Clinic in Arizona who helps oversee clinical practice across the entire Mayo system, says that “all of these things are just adding up to a continued delay, and I think we’ll see impacts for years to come.”

    It’s still early, and not everything that providers told me is necessarily showing up in the data. Oddly enough, the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey found that most Americans were able to see a doctor at least once during the first year of the pandemic. And the same survey has not revealed any uptick in most health conditions, including asthma episodes, high blood pressure, and chronic pain—which might be expected if America were getting sicker.

    It’s even conceivable that the disturbing observations of clinicians are a statistical illusion. If for whatever reason only sicker people are now being seen by—or able to access—a doctor, then it can be true both that providers are seeing more seriously ill patients in medical facilities and that the total number of seriously ill people in the community is staying the same. The scope of the damage just isn’t yet clear: Maybe a smaller number of people will be worse off because of delayed cancer care or substance-abuse relapses, or maybe far more people—more than tens of million of Americans—will be dealing with exacerbated issues for the rest of their lives.

    None of this accounts for what COVID itself is doing to Americans, of course. The health-care system is only beginning to grapple with the ways in which a past bout with COVID is a long-term risk for overall health, or the extent to which long COVID can complicate other conditions. The pandemic may feel “over” for lots of Americans, but many who made it through the gantlet of the past two-plus years may end up living sicker, and dying sooner.

    This disturbing prospect is not only poised to further devastate communities; it’s also bad news for health-care workers already exhausted by COVID. Laura, the Manhattan internist who treated the colon-cancer patient, told me it’s disheartening to see so many people showing up at irreversible points in their disease. “As doctors,” she said, “our overall batting average is going down.” Aarti Patel, the physician assistant, put it in blunter terms: “Burnout is probably too simple a term. We’re in severe moral distress.”

    Nothing about this grim fate was inevitable. Laura told me that “going to the doctor mid-pandemic may have posed a small risk in terms of COVID, but not going was risky in terms of letting disease go unchecked. And in retrospect it seems that many people didn’t quite get that.” But there didn’t have to be such a stark trade-off between fighting a pandemic and maintaining health care for other medical conditions.

    Some hospitals—at least the better-resourced ones—figured out how to avoid the worst kind of delays. Mayo Clinic, for example, is one of a number of systems with a sophisticated triage algorithm that prioritizes patients needing acute care. In the spring of 2021, Cleveland Clinic launched a massive outreach blitz to schedule some 86,000 appointments, according to Lisa Yerian, the chief improvement officer. And the Veterans Health Administration provided iPads to thousands of veterans who lacked other means of accessing the internet in the spring of 2020, ensuring a more seamless transition to virtual care, Joe Francis, who directs health-care analytics, told me. Thanks in part to these efforts, Francis said, high-risk patients at the VHA were being seen at pre-pandemic levels a mere six months into the pandemic.

    These health-care systems also suggest a path forward. America may still be able to stave off the worst of the collateral damage by reaching the patients who have fallen through the cracks—and already the data suggest that these patients tend to be disproportionately Black, Hispanic, and low-income. Tragically, it’s too late for some Americans: People who died of cancer can’t come back to life; amputated limbs can’t regrow. Others still have plenty of time. Hypertension that’s currently uncontrolled can be tamped down before causing an early heart attack; drinking that’s gotten out of hand can be corralled before it leads to liver failure in a decade; undetected tumors can be spotted in time for treatment. An uptick in premature death and disability, summed over millions of Americans, could strain the health-care system for years. But it’s still possible to prevent an acute public-health crisis from seeding an even bigger chronic one.

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    Tim Requarth

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  • Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Foundation Receives Its Largest Donation

    Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Foundation Receives Its Largest Donation

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    Entrepreneur and philanthropist Amr Awadallah and his wife Shirin Hassan donated $2 million to support the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the new Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Centre in Cairo

    Press Release
    –


    updated: Jun 7, 2022


    SAN FRANCISCO, June 7, 2022 (Newswire.com)
    –
    The Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Foundation Board announced that it had received a game-changing $2 million donation to support its new Heart Centre’s 16-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The groundbreaking NICU will be named for Amr Awadallah, the noted Silicon Valley technologist and entrepreneur who founded ZIR AI Inc. and Cloudera Inc., and his wife Shirin Hassan. The NICU will be one of three intensive care units located in the new Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Centre in Cairo (MYGHCC), which is scheduled to open in 2023. The other two ICUs — one for pediatric patients and one for adults — remain available for naming opportunities.

    Asked about his decision to lend such generous support to the mission of Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub, Awadallah cited his recent visit to the Magdi Yacoub Aswan Heart Centre. “I had long been amazed by Dr. Yacoub’s work but, on my tour of the Aswan Heart Centre, I was stunned by the modernity of the hospital and its facilities. Just as important, Shirin and I were struck by the genuinely collegiate and collaborative atmosphere among the medical professionals and staff there. Their operational conduct, communications, and relationships were exactly what I would hope to find in the most reputable facilities in the world, and illustrative of the kind of medical institutions that Egypt so desperately needs and deserves.”

    Awadallah said he admires the three core pillars of Professor Dr. Yacoub’s vision for the Aswan Heart Centre and the new Global Heart Centre: (1) Expanding access to world-class heart healthcare services and treatment among underserved populations, (2) training healthcare professionals and scientists from across Egypt, Africa and beyond, who will return to their own hospitals to train other medical professionals in turn, and (3) becoming a Center for Innovation in heart-related medical research, especially for young children.

    “This extraordinary vision that Dr. Yacoub launched in Egypt is remarkable,” said Awadallah. “We are so proud to support this mission, and we feel the new Global Heart Centre will make a real and lasting difference, not just to the residents of Cairo but to the future of healthcare in the Middle East.”

    Dr. Yacoub welcomed the pledge, saying, “We are beyond grateful for this kind of transformative support. The impact of Amr and Shirin’s generosity cannot be underestimated. Because of their generosity, the NICU at MYGHCC will be able to serve more than 1,350 newborn babies every year. On behalf of our whole team, we are deeply and lastingly appreciative — and look forward to putting their generous donation to good work.”

    About Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Foundation

    The Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Foundation, a U.S.-based charity, was founded by Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub. The MYGHF is committed to changing the health outcomes of the most vulnerable in Egypt and the broader Middle East and Africa, particularly children, by providing comprehensive, advanced cardiac care available to all people in need, free of charge. The Aswan Heart Centre and the under-construction Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Centre-Cairo are facilities operated and funded with the support of MYGHF. It has achieved regional and international recognition as a Centre of Excellence for the treatment and research of cardiovascular diseases. The Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Foundation operates fully on donations.

    Press Contact:  
    Reda Athanasios 
    director@myglobalheart.org 
    415 495 1064

    Source: Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Foundation

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  • Retire to Portugal? Hot springs in January, no traffic, and universal health care — the best retirement escape you’ve never heard of

    Retire to Portugal? Hot springs in January, no traffic, and universal health care — the best retirement escape you’ve never heard of

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    Money manager Matt Patsky stood at the window of his hotel on the Portuguese island of São Miguel in March last year, looking out over the Atlantic, and thought: I’m not sure we can retire here after all.

    He told his husband, “I don’t know [if] we could live here. It looks like the people are crazy. There are people going in the water, swimming in the ocean. How crazy do you have to be to go swimming in the Atlantic in March?”

    Patsky, 56, mentioned this to a local real-estate agent later that day. The man didn’t understand the issue. The water, he said, was probably no cooler than 65 degrees.

    How these Americans save money in retirement: They live in Spain

    As Boston-based Patsky adds: In New England you’re lucky if the water gets that warm in August.

    It’s “one of the great selling points of the Azores,” he says. “It is rarely below 60. It is rarely above 80. And the water temperature tends to be steady between 65 and 75 degrees.”

    Patsky says he and his husband, a retired businessman who’s 66, are “80%” sure they are going to live outside the United States when they retire. They are tired especially of the politics and the racial tensions.

    The No. 1 thing that attracted them to the Azores — which lie barely more than twice as far from Boston as from Lisbon — wasn’t the weather. It was the emigration.

    Portugal, they discovered, offers the all-round fastest, cheapest, easiest way to get a so-called golden visa, putting the recipient on a fast track to permanent residence and citizenship.

    You have to have means, but this is not purely for Rockefellers. If you want to get Portuguese residency, and a passport, you need to buy a home in the country and generally to put at least some money into fixing it up, and spend at least seven days a year in the country for the next five years.

    After six months, you get a residency card. After five years, a passport.

    The threshold prices vary, depending on the type of home you buy and where you buy it, but they start at €280,000 (about $310,000).

    As part of the deal, says Patsky, you have to buy the home with cash. You can’t take out a Portuguese mortgage. But you can always raise the cash by remortgaging a U.S. home. The money thresholds are lower than in many other countries. And the seven-day requirement lets Patsky continue his job in Boston, as the CEO of socially responsible investing company Trillium, during the five years.

    A small but growing number of Americans are choosing to retire abroad — some because it’s cheaper; some because they have family or roots overseas; and some because of lifestyle, culture or ambience. The number of retired U.S. workers receiving Social Security checks overseas has risen by a third in 10 years, and that doesn’t count all the “retirement refugees” who get their benefits deposited in a bank account in the U.S.

    Europe is by far the most popular destination by continent, with about a quarter of a million U.S. retirees, based on Social Security direct deposits. That includes nearly 13,000 in Portugal.

    “Portugal has been so welcoming to the LGBT community, that you are seeing a huge number of LGBT couples looking at Portugal,” reports Patsky. On their trips to the Azores, Patsky says he and his husband have been bumping into other LGBT couples from the U.S. looking at golden visas as well.

    On a recent trip they overheard four American women at the next table in a restaurant. It was “two lesbian couples from Philadelphia, looking at the ‘golden visa’ and looking at property in the Azores. We ended up sitting with them with my iPad open looking at property.”

    You can see the islands’ attraction. There are regular flights from various North American and European cities, Patsky says. “It’s a 4½-hour flight from Boston, and, because of our large Azorean population [in New England], there are actually daily flights,” he says.

    Pretty much everyone on the island speaks some English, which is taught in schools as a compulsory second language.

    “It’s like living in a Portuguese fishing village,” Patsky says of Ponta Delgada, the main city on São Miguel. “It has a lot of the same feel as Provincetown [on Cape Cod], in terms of being a fishing village. It’s quaint.” The population is about 70,000. “It’s a good size, and it’s got a very vibrant economy.”

    Thanks to some spectacular cliffs, São Miguel — one of the nine islands that the Azores comprise — has hosted the Red Bull World Cliff Diving World Series on several occasions, including last year.

    Patsky and his husband love the island’s natural beauty. “January, we were swimming, we were at the hot springs. Incredible. This really is nice weather year round. There is no traffic. There is no rush hour.” The longest distance you could drive on the island, from one point to another, would take you an hour, he says.

    And unlike in Boston, he adds with a laugh, you don’t see snow.

    Both members of the couple are equally eager to retire abroad, Patsky says, in no small part to flee America’s rising racial tensions and poisonous politics. Last year Patsky’s husband, originally from the Philippines, was run over at a pedestrian crossing in Boston, Patsky recalls, and was left lying on the pavement with multiple fractures. When a policeman arrived at the scene, he asked the prone 65-year-old for his Social Security number to determine whether he was in the U.S. illegally, Patsky says.

    “My husband and I want to make sure that our retirement is spent in a country that respects the dignity of every person,” Patsky says, “and that treats access to health care as a human right.” Portugal has a public health service, modeled after Britain’s National Health Service, which is available to all residents.

    The couple had started talking about an “exit plan” right after the 2016 presidential election. Their research led them to Portugal, and then to the Azores.

    They are hardly alone in looking at the Azores. This is starting to turn into a well-trodden exit route. “There are hotel chains that are selling villas at exactly the price point you need to get the golden visa,” Patsky says. They’ll even rent the villa out for you to tourists, to generate income, and say they’ll buy it back after the five years are up.

    Patsky says the couple won’t be moving for at least five years. Patsky’s remaining at the helm of Trillium following its takeover by Australia’s Perpetual Ltd.
    PPT,
    -1.13%    .
    He says one of the key appeals of Portugal’s visa program is that he can carry on working full time in the U.S. while at the same time completing the steps needed to get his Portuguese passport.

    Naturally, there are forms to fill out. You’ll need the usual financial and employment records. You’ll also need an FBI report to prove you have a clean rap sheet. (Pro tip from Patsky: Don’t get your fingerprints done at the police station on card. Get them done electronically at the post office and apply online. It will save you weeks.)

    As for that major retirement headache, health care, you will need to prove you have health insurance in your home country every year during the initial five years, Patsky says. Medicare counts.

    And when you finally retire to the country full time? After your five-year period you’ll have a Portuguese passport. And that means an EU passport. And so you can move anywhere in the EU, including those places with the most lavish, generous public health insurance.

    “You can pick wherever you want to retire because it’s the EU,” Patsky says.

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  • OneShare Health Reaches a Milestone: $114M in Administered Sharing

    OneShare Health Reaches a Milestone: $114M in Administered Sharing

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    Health Care Sharing Ministry celebrates sharing medical costs among its Members in record-breaking amount

    Press Release
    –


    updated: Aug 19, 2021


    IRVING, Texas, August 19, 2021 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Irving-based OneShare Health announced today it has reached a milestone by surpassing $114 million in administered sharing for Members of its Health Care Sharing Ministry. Administered sharing includes medical costs and expenses shared by Members who join the OneShare community for affordable access to health care.

    Shared through monthly Member Contributions, this milestone is an indicator that the Health Care Sharing Community – a unique alternative to traditional health care insurance – is gaining steam in the marketplace.

    “We’re proud that our Members are being served in this way and that joining OneShare Health represents real medical cost savings for them and their families,” said Jeff Gary, CEO at OneShare Health. With a focus on giving back to each other and the world at large, OneShare Health and its Members form a Community that centers around God and his teachings. It is one of the many differences in this brand of cost-sharing – and one of many reasons for OneShare Health‘s growth.

    “As a unique health care solution, OneShare is proving that our model of a Biblical Sharing Community works in more ways than one,” Gary said.

    Meeting this achievement means many OneShare Members were able to enjoy reduced costs on their medical expenses when they needed it most. It demonstrates how the Ministry’s purpose is being realized each and every day for Community Members who choose this path to accessible, affordable health care. In addition to the Ministry’s recent acceptance into the prestigious Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries (AHCSM), OneShare Health is positioned to continue to grow exponentially and bring much-needed health care solutions to more members in the coming months as a faith-based Health Care Sharing Ministry.

    For press inquiries, contact:

    Mary Claire Hill

    501-519-1772

    mhill@mhpteamsi.com

    Source: OneShare Health

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  • Here’s what you can do if you lose Medicaid coverage | CNN Politics

    Here’s what you can do if you lose Medicaid coverage | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Though millions of Americans are expected to be kicked off of Medicaid in coming months, they don’t all have to be left uninsured.

    But it could take some work to regain health coverage.

    “For a lot of people, this can be a very disruptive period of time,” said Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. “There is a significant time and paperwork burden being placed on families – a lot of them very low income, a lot of them medically vulnerable.”

    States are now free to terminate the Medicaid coverage of residents they deem ineligible. States had been barred from involuntarily removing anyone for the past three years as part of an early congressional Covid-19 pandemic relief package, causing enrollment in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to balloon to more than 92 million people.

    Of the roughly 15 million people who could lose Medicaid coverage over the next 14 months, about 8.2 million would no longer qualify, according to a Department of Health and Human Services analysis released in August.

    Some 2.7 million of these folks would qualify for enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act policies that could bring their monthly premiums to as low as $0.

    Another 5 million are expected to secure other coverage, mainly through employers.

    Some 6.8 million people, however, will be disenrolled even though they remain eligible for Medicaid.

    Check out Obamacare policies: Folks who lose their Medicaid coverage can shop for health insurance plans on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

    Those whose annual incomes remain below 150% of the federal poverty level – $20,385 for a single person and $41,625 for a family of four in 2023 – can obtain enhanced federal assistance to lower their premiums to as little as $0 a month. That beefed-up subsidy is in place through 2025.

    Many people with higher incomes can find subsidized policies for $10 or less.

    State Medicaid agencies are tasked with easing residents’ transfer from Medicaid to the Obamacare marketplaces, but the smoothness of the process will vary greatly by state. Once someone is determined to no longer qualify for Medicaid, the agency must assess his or her eligibility for Affordable Care Act coverage and transfer the resident’s information to the exchange.

    Some states that run their own Obamacare exchanges are taking extra steps to ensure their residents remain covered. Rhode Island, for instance, is automatically enrolling certain people in marketplace coverage. It’s also paying the first two months of premiums for some residents who actively select policies.

    Those who lose Medicaid coverage and live in the 33 states covered by the federal marketplace, healthcare.gov, can apply for Affordable Care Act policies through a special enrollment period that runs through July 2024. State-based exchanges have their own deadlines, with some mirroring the federal exchange and others providing much shorter windows.

    Navigators and insurance brokers can help consumers select plans.

    Historically, very few people who lose Medicaid coverage wind up in Obamacare plans. About 4% of adults who were terminated from Medicaid enrolled in exchange policies in 2018, according to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission.

    The coverage differs too. Those that switch to the marketplace may have to find other doctors that are in their insurers’ networks and may face out-of-pocket costs.

    Consider job-based coverage: A number of people who are terminated from Medicaid may already be covered by their employers, particularly those who started new jobs during the pandemic. Others have the option of obtaining coverage through work, though it will almost certainly be more expensive than Medicaid since it will likely entail premiums, deductibles and copays.

    Workers may find they can afford coverage for themselves but not for their families. If the premiums for family policies cost more than 9.12% of household income, spouses and children may be able to get subsidized coverage on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

    Employees should contact their human resources departments to sign up. Typically, they’ll have to enroll within 60 days of losing Medicaid, but those who are terminated from the program between now and July 10 will have until early September to sign up.

    See if you or your children remain eligible for Medicaid: Millions of Americans who still qualify for Medicaid may lose coverage for procedural reasons. For example, they may have moved so they don’t receive the redetermination notices. Or they may not return the necessary paperwork to prove their eligibility.

    So it’s crucial that folks update their contact information with their state agencies and reply to the letters they receive about renewing their Medicaid eligibility.

    “When you get that packet in the mail, respond to it promptly,” Corlette said.

    Those who are dropped have 90 days to submit their renewal paperwork to their state agency, which is required to reinstate them if they are found eligible. Beyond that time period, people may reapply. In most states, your coverage can be made retroactive for up to three months if you were eligible and received Medicaid-covered services.

    Parents who no longer qualify and are terminated should check if their children remain eligible. As many as 6.7 million kids are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage, according to Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families.

    Nearly three-quarters of the children projected to be dropped will remain eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but will lose coverage mainly because of administrative issues. Black and Latino children and families are more likely to be erroneously terminated, according to the center.

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  • Google earned $10 million by allowing misleading anti-abortion ads from ‘fake clinics,’ report says | CNN Business

    Google earned $10 million by allowing misleading anti-abortion ads from ‘fake clinics,’ report says | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Google has earned more than $10 million over the past two years by allowing misleading advertisements for “fake” abortion clinics that aim to stop women from having the procedure, according to an estimate from a report released Thursday from the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate.

    The estimated amount is microscopic compared to the more than $200 billion Google generates from ad sales annually. But the report’s data hints at the broad reach pro-life groups can have by placing these advertisements in Google results for common phrases searched for by abortion seekers.

    Using Semrush, an analytics tool, researchers at the CCDH identified “188 fake clinic websites” that placed ads on Google between March, 2021 and February of this year. CCDH estimates that ads for fake clinics were clicked on by users 13 million times during this period.

    Some searching for “abortion clinics near me” on Google instead found results directing them toward so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” that may try to talk abortion-seekers out of treatment and offer medically unproven abortion pill reversal techniques, according to the report.

    Other Google searches populated by crisis clinic ads included “abortion pill,” “abortion clinic” and “planned parenthood,” the report said, with clinics in states where abortion is legal spending two times as much as those in states with bans.

    In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, Google faced calls from Congressional Democrats to do more to prevent searches for abortion clinics from returning results for misleading ads – as well as calls from Republican lawmakers to do the opposite. The dueling pressure from lawmakers highlighted how central Google can be for women searching for information on the procedure.

    In a statement Thursday, Google said its approach to abortion ads follows local laws and that any advertiser targeting certain keywords or phrases related to abortions must complete a certification to confirm if it does or does not provide abortion services.

    “We require any organization that wants to advertise to people seeking information about abortion services to be certified and clearly disclose whether they do or do not offer abortions,” a Google spokesperson told CNN. “We do not allow ads promoting abortion reversal treatments and we also prohibit advertisers from misleading people about the services they offer.”

    “We remove or block ads that violate these policies,” the company added.

    Google said it does not allow for abortion reversal pill advertisements because the treatment isn’t approved by the FDA. In response to Thursday’s CCDH report, the company told CNN it took “enforcement action” on content violating this policy.

    Google has continued to face scrutiny in recent months for the steps it takes to protect abortion seekers’ location data.

    Nearly a dozen Senate Democrats wrote to Google in May with questions about how it deletes users’ location history when they have visited sensitive locations such as abortion clinics. The letter came after tests performed by The Washington Post and other privacy advocates appeared to show that Google was not quickly or consistently deleting users’ recorded visits to fertility centers of Planned Parenthood clinics.

    Google previously declined to comment on the lawmakers’ letter. Instead, it referred CNN to a company blog post that includes abortion clinics on a list of sensitive locations, but did not explain what it means when it claims the data will be deleted “soon after” a visit.

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  • FDA requires medical devices be secured against cyberattacks | CNN Business

    FDA requires medical devices be secured against cyberattacks | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The Food and Drug Administration will now require medical devices meet specific cybersecurity guidelines after years of concerns that a growing number of internet-connected products used by hospitals and healthcare providers could be hit by hacks and ransomware attacks.

    Under FDA guidance issued this week, all new medical device applicants must now submit a plan on how to “monitor, identify, and address” cybersecurity issues, as well as create a process that provides “reasonable assurance” that the device in question is protected. Applicants will also need to make security updates and patches available on a regular schedule and in critical situations, and provide the FDA with “a software bill of materials,” including any open-source or other software their devices use.

    The new security requirements came into effect as part of the sweeping $1.7 trillion federal omnibus spending bill signed by President Joe Biden in December. As part of the new law, the FDA must also update its medical device cybersecurity guidance at least every two years.

    A 2022 report released by the FBI cited research finding 53% of digital medical devices and other internet-connected products in hospitals had known critical vulnerabilities. The report listed a number of medical devices that are susceptible to cyber attacks, including insulin pumps, intracardiac defibrillators, mobile cardiac telemetry and pacemakers.

    “Malign actors who compromise these devices can direct them to give inaccurate readings, administer drug overdoses, or otherwise endanger patient health,” according to the FBI report.

    In 2021, a group of researchers investigating software used in medical devices and machinery used in other industries found over a dozen vulnerabilities that, if exploited by a hacker, could cause critical equipment such as patient monitors to crash.

    The FDA has faced criticisms over the years for not doing enough.

    A 2018 report from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General said the FDA was not adequately protecting devices from getting hacked.

    “FDA had plans and processes for addressing certain medical device problems in the postmarket phase, but its plans and processes were deficient for addressing medical device cybersecurity compromises,” the report said.

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  • New York State Legislature passes bill to protect doctors who prescribe abortion pills for out-of-state patients | CNN Politics

    New York State Legislature passes bill to protect doctors who prescribe abortion pills for out-of-state patients | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A bill that would legally protect doctors who prescribe and send abortion pills to patients in states where abortion services are outlawed or restricted is now headed to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk after the state legislature passed the legislation on Tuesday.

    The bill ensures that doctors, medical providers and facilitators in the state will be able to provide telehealth services to patients out of state, according to a news release from the New York State Assembly.

    The new legislation also protects New York health providers from out-of-state litigation, meaning the state will not cooperate with cases prosecuting doctors in New York who provide telehealth abortion or reproductive services to people in other states.

    “This bill expands protections for telehealth providers by providing them the same protections afforded to doctors in other states with strong reproductive healthcare shield laws,” according to the news release.

    The bill also ensures that New York medical providers, complying with their practice, who offer telehealth services are not subject to professional discipline, “solely for providing reproductive health services to patients residing in states where such services are illegal.”

    CNN has reached out to the governor’s office to see if she will sign the legislation.

    CNN previously reported Hochul has indicated support for a shield law protecting medical providers of out of state abortion and reproductive services.

    Assemblymember Karines Reyes, a registered nurse who sponsored the bill, said she was “proud to sponsor this critical piece of legislation to fully protect abortion providers using telemedicine.”

    According to the state assembly’s news release, the bill recognizes the common use of medication abortion drugs, stating that 54% of abortions across the country are now medication abortions.

    Speaker of the New York State Assembly Carl Heastie said, “It is our moral obligation to help women across the country with their bodily autonomy by protecting New York doctors from litigation efforts from anti-choice extremists. Telehealth is the future of healthcare, and this bill is simply the next step in making sure our doctors are protected.”

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  • Justice Department challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors | CNN Politics

    Justice Department challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a complaint challenging a recently enacted Tennessee bill that prohibits gender-affirming care for minors, saying it “denies necessary medical care to youth based solely on who they are.”

    DOJ argues in its complaint that the legislation violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by discriminating on the basis of both sex and transgender status and asks the court to issue an immediate order to block the law from taking effect on July 1.

    “SB 1 makes it unlawful to provide or offer to provide certain types of medical care for transgender minors with diagnosed gender dysphoria. SB 1’s blanket ban prohibits potential treatment options that have been recommended by major medical associations for consideration in limited circumstances in accordance with established and comprehensive guidelines and standards of care,” a news release from the department states. “By denying only transgender youth access to these forms of medically necessary care while allowing non-transgender minors access to the same or similar procedures, SB 1 discriminates against transgender youth.”

    In a statement to CNN, Gov. Bill Lee said, “Tennessee is committed to protecting children from permanent, life-altering decisions. This is federal overreach at its worst, and we will work with Attorney General Skrmetti to push back in court and stand up for children.”

    Senate Bill 0001, signed into law by the Republican governor last month, prohibits health care providers “from performing on a minor or administering to a minor a medical procedure if the performance or administration of the procedure is for the purpose of enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”

    The legislation specifies that minors who receive care cannot be held liable but lawsuits could be brought against their parents “if the parent of the minor consented to the conduct that constituted the violation on behalf of the minor.” It also grants the attorney general the authority to fine health care professionals who provide the care with a civil penalty of $25,000 per violation.

    Gender-affirming care that began prior to July 1 is not considered a violation “provided that the treating physician must make a written certification that ending the medical procedure would be harmful to the minor,” though access to such care must conclude by March 31, 2024. The legislation expresses concern over long-term outcomes and questions whether minors are capable of making such consequential decisions.

    Major medical associations agree that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria, which, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align.

    Though the care is highly individualized, some children may decide to use reversible puberty suppression therapy. This part of the process may also include hormone therapy that can lead to gender-affirming physical change. Surgical interventions, however, are not typically done on children and many health care providers do not offer them to minors.

    US Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Henry Leventis said in a statement that SB 1 violates the constitutional rights of the state’s “most vulnerable victims.”

    “Left unchallenged, it would prohibit transgender children from receiving health care that their medical providers and their parents have determined to be medically necessary. In doing so, the law seeks to substitute the judgment of trained medical professionals and parents with that of elected officials and codifies discrimination against children who already face far too many obstacles,” Leventis said.

    Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the news release that “no person should be denied access to necessary medical care just because of their transgender status.”

    “The right to consider your health and medically-approved treatment options with your family and doctors is a right that everyone should have, including transgender children, who are especially vulnerable to serious risks of depression, anxiety and suicide,” Clarke said.

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  • Social Security will not be able to pay full benefits in 2034 if Congress doesn’t act | CNN Politics

    Social Security will not be able to pay full benefits in 2034 if Congress doesn’t act | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Americans’ Social Security checks will get a lot smaller in 2034 if lawmakers don’t act to address the pending shortfall, according to an annual report released Friday by the Social Security trustees.

    That’s because the combined Social Security trust funds – which help support payouts for the elderly, survivors and disabled – are projected to run dry that year. At that time, the funds’ reserves will be depleted, and the program’s continuing income will only cover 80% of benefits owed.

    The estimate is one year earlier than the trustees projected last year. About 66 million Americans received Social Security benefits in 2022.

    Medicare, meanwhile, is in a more critical financial condition. Its hospital insurance trust fund, known as Medicare Part A, will only be able to pay scheduled benefits in full until 2031, according to its trustees’ annual report, which was also released Friday.

    At that time, Medicare, which covered 65 million senior citizens and people with disabilities in 2022, will only be able to cover 89% of total scheduled benefits. Last year, Medicare’s trustees projected that the hospital trust fund’s reserves would be depleted in 2028.

    Immensely popular but long troubled, Social Security and Medicare are on shaky financial ground in large part because of the aging of the American population. Fewer workers are paying into the program and supporting the ballooning number of beneficiaries, who are also living longer. Also, health care is becoming increasingly expensive.

    Social Security has two trust funds – one for retirees and survivors and another for Americans with disabilities.

    Looking at them separately, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund is projected to run dry in 2033, at which time Social Security could pay only 77% of benefits, primarily using income from payroll taxes. The date is one year earlier than estimated last year.

    The Disability Insurance Trust Fund is expected to be able to pay full benefits through at least 2097, the last year of the trustees’ projection period.

    Merging the two trust funds would require Congress to act, but the combined projection is often used to show the overall status of the entitlement.

    Social Security’s projected long-term health worsened over the past year because the trustees revised downward their expectations for the economy and labor productivity, taking into account updated data on inflation and economic output.

    However, the long-term projection for Medicare’s hospital trust fund’s finances improved, mainly due to lowered estimates for health care spending after the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Also, the program is projected to take in more income because the trustees estimate the number of covered workers and average wages will be higher.

    Regardless, the bottom line remains that Medicare is not bringing in enough money to pay the costs it is expected to incur, said Cori Uccello, senior health fellow at the American Academy of Actuaries.

    “It’s still not a time to become complacent,” she said. Insolvency “is still less than a decade away.”

    The trustees’ reports are the latest warnings to Congress that they will have to deal with the massive entitlement programs’ fiscal problems at some point soon. But addressing their issues is politically challenging. Elected officials are hesitant to suggest any changes that could lead to benefit cuts, even though that could reduce their options in the future.

    “With each year that lawmakers do not act, the public has less time to prepare for the changes,” the trustees warned in a fact sheet.

    The programs’ shortfalls are back in the spotlight this year as President Joe Biden and House Republicans battle over how to address the nation’s debt ceiling drama and mounting budget deficits. GOP lawmakers want to cut spending in exchange for resolving the borrowing limit, while the White House has said it will not negotiate.

    In a memorable moment in his State of the Union address in February, Biden garnered public acknowledgment from congressional Republicans about keeping Social Security and Medicare out of the debt discussions.

    But “not touching” Social Security means a hefty cut in benefits within a decade or so.

    “Change is inevitable because without changes to current law, both Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance would go insolvent, subjecting program participants to sudden and severe payment cuts,” said Charles Blahous, senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and former Social Security and Medicare trustee. “The outstanding question is whether change will be tolerably gradual, or instead highly damaging because it is too long delayed.”

    Though Biden has repeatedly vowed to protect Social Security, his latest budget proposal did not include a plan to stabilize its finances.

    However, his proposal did call for extending Medicare’s solvency by 25 years or more by raising taxes on those earning more than $400,000 a year and by allowing the program to negotiate prices for even more drugs.

    Spending on the entitlement programs is also projected to soar and exert increased pressure on the federal budget in coming years.

    Mandatory spending – driven by Social Security and Medicare – and interest costs are expected to outpace the growth of revenue and the economy, according to a Congressional Budget Office outlook released in mid-February.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Texas sends ban on gender-affirming care for minors to governor’s desk | CNN Politics

    Texas sends ban on gender-affirming care for minors to governor’s desk | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Texas legislature Wednesday night voted to ban gender-affirming care for most minors, sending a bill to the governor’s desk that, if enacted, would put critical health care out of reach for transgender youth in America’s second-most-populous state.

    Senate Bill 14 would block a minor’s access to gender reassignment surgeries, puberty blocking medication and hormone therapies, and providing this care to trans youth would lead to the revocation of a health care provider’s license.

    The legislation was held up for days by protests and procedural delays by Democrats in the House. House Republicans approved an amendment that makes minor exceptions for children who had begun receiving non-surgical gender-affirming care before June 1, 2023, and underwent 12 or more sessions of mental health counseling or psychotherapy six months prior to beginning prescription drug care.

    Children to whom those exceptions apply can continue their care but must “wean” off from the treatment with the help of their doctor. The Senate vote to agree to that change was the last step required for final passage.

    “Here in Texas, we will protect our kids! Thank you to everyone who supported and helped pass my bill. I look forward to @GovAbbott’s signature soon,” bill sponsor state Sen. Donna Campbell tweeted after the Senate’s vote.

    If signed by Abbott, the ban will take effect September 1.

    Gender-affirming care spans a range of evidence-based treatments and approaches that benefit transgender and nonbinary people. The types of care vary by the age and goals of the recipient, and are considered the standard of care by many mainstream medical associations.

    Though the care is highly individualized, some children and parents may decide to use reversible puberty suppression therapy. This part of the process may also include hormone therapy that can lead to gender-affirming physical change. Surgical interventions, however, are not typically done on children and many health care providers do not offer them to minors.

    Some Republicans have expressed concern over long-term outcomes of the treatments. But major medical associations say that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria – a psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align, according to the American Psychiatric Association.

    If Abbott signs the bill, it would make Texas the fifteenth state to restrict access to gender-affirming care for trans youth this year. Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill banning the care in his state Wednesday and Oklahoma placed their own care ban on the books at the beginning of May. Around 125 bills that target LGBTQ rights, especially health care for transgender patients, have been introduced nationwide this legislative session, according to data compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union.

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  • Biden administration moves ahead with Medicare drug price negotiations amid industry lawsuits | CNN Politics

    Biden administration moves ahead with Medicare drug price negotiations amid industry lawsuits | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Undeterred by a growing number of lawsuits, the Biden administration on Friday released revised guidance for Medicare’s new drug price negotiation program.

    The latest guidance outlines how the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will negotiate with drugmakers to reach agreement on a maximum fair price for a selected medicine, the agency said. It was informed by public input on the initial guidance the agency released in March, which explained how it will select the drugs and how the negotiations will be conducted.

    The program, which was authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act that congressional Democrats passed last year, has prompted a fierce backlash from the pharmaceutical industry. Two drug manufacturers and two industry groups have filed lawsuits, arguing the measure is unconstitutional.

    But the administration is not backing down from implementing its historic new power. It intends to keep its timeline of announcing the first 10 drugs that will be selected for negotiation by September 1. CMS and the drugmakers will negotiate during 2023 and 2024. The prices will be effective starting in 2026.

    “The Biden-Harris Administration isn’t letting anything get in our way of delivering lower drug costs for Americans,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Pharmaceutical companies have made record profits for decades. Now they’re lining up to block this Administration’s work to negotiate for better drug prices for our families. We won’t be deterred.”

    The initial set of drugs will be chosen from the top 50 Part D drugs that are eligible for negotiation that have the highest total expenditures in Medicare. CMS will consider multiple factors when developing its initial offer, including the drugs’ clinical benefits, the price of alternatives, research and development costs and patent protection, among others.

    If drugmakers don’t comply with the process, they will have to pay an excise tax of up to 95% of the medications’ US sales or pull all their drugs from the Medicare and Medicaid markets. The pharmaceutical industry contends that the true penalty can be as high as 1,900% of sales.

    CMS said it received more than 7,500 comments on its initial guidance from patient groups, drug companies, pharmacies and others.

    The changes it is making are aimed at improving transparency while keeping confidentiality in mind, as well as fostering “an effective negotiation process,” the agency said.

    They include revising the confidentiality process to state that CMS will release information about the negotiations when it publishes the explanations of the prices. Also, drug companies may publicly discuss the negotiations – the prior secrecy requirement had been a point of contention among manufacturers that was mentioned in the lawsuits. And they won’t be required to destroy data relating to the negotiations.

    In addition, CMS will hold patient-focused listening sessions to provide drug companies and the public more opportunities to engage with the agency. The sessions – which will give patients, caregivers and others the chance to share input on how a medication addresses unmet needs, how it impacts specific populations and what therapeutic alternatives exist – will be held in the fall for the first round of drugs.

    Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, and the US Chamber of Commerce have all recently filed lawsuits in federal courts across the US. They each argue the program is unconstitutional in various ways.

    The challengers also say that the negotiation provision will harm innovation and patients’ access to new drugs.

    Among the arguments are that the program violates the Fifth Amendment’s “takings” clause because it allows Medicare to obtain manufacturers’ patented drugs, which are private property, without paying fair market value under the threat of serious penalties.

    Plus, the negotiations process violates the First Amendment, the challengers say, because it coerces manufacturers into saying that they agree to the price that the government has dictated and that it’s fair.

    Another argument is that the process violates the Eighth Amendment by levying an excessive fine if drugmakers refuse to negotiate and continue selling their products to the Medicare market.

    Merck expects its diabetes drug Januvia to be among the drugs named in September and its blockbuster cancer treatment Keytruda and diabetes drug Janumet to be subject to negotiation in the future. Bristol Myers Squibb believes its blood thinning medication, Eliquis, will be subject to negotiations this year, and its cancer medication, Opdivo, will be selected in a subsequent round.

    The changes in the revised guidance did not allay the complaints of the pharmaceutical industry. PhRMA said that transparency remains “severely limited,” patients’ views are not being taken into account and Medicare beneficiaries could have less access to drugs.

    “The very few substantive changes to the final guidance demonstrate CMS saw this as a box checking exercise, not an opportunity to mitigate the negative impacts this price setting policy will have on patients or the broader health care sector,” PhRMA said in a statement.

    “The approach CMS took in this final guidance confirms what we claimed in our lawsuit – Congress’ unconstitutional shortcuts taken in the law have given the administration far too much flexibility to set prices at their whim without any oversight or accountability to anyone,” the group continued.

    The Biden administration will “vigorously defend” the drug price negotiation program, said CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure.

    “We feel the law is on our side,” she said in a call with reporters Friday.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • These 5 states will be the first to kick residents off Medicaid starting in April | CNN Politics

    These 5 states will be the first to kick residents off Medicaid starting in April | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Millions of Americans are at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage in coming months, but residents in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, New Hampshire and South Dakota will be the first to bear the brunt of the terminations.

    States have been barred by Congress from winnowing their Medicaid rolls since the Covid-19 pandemic began. That prohibition ends on Saturday, and some states are moving much more swiftly than others to kick off those deemed ineligible for the public health insurance program for low-income Americans.

    That worries advocates, who say speed will result in eligible residents being incorrectly terminated. Also, it could hamper shifting those who no longer qualify to other types of coverage.

    “This is the fable of the tortoise and the hare,” said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. “Taking time is absolutely going to result in a better outcome for eligible children and families to remain covered. So speed is a big concern.”

    The five states will start cutting off coverage in April, followed by 14 more states in May and 20 additional states plus the District of Columbia in June. All states must complete their redeterminations over the next 14 months.

    Around 15 million people could be dropped from Medicaid, according to various estimates, though several million folks could find coverage elsewhere. Others may still be eligible but could be terminated for procedural reasons, such as not completing renewal forms. Those at risk include at least 6.7 million children, according to a Georgetown analysis.

    Medicaid enrollment has ballooned since March 2020, when lawmakers passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which prevented states from involuntarily removing anyone from coverage. In exchange, Congress boosted states’ federal Medicaid match rates by 6.2 percentage points.

    The provision was initially tied to the national public health emergency, but lawmakers changed that as part of the federal spending bill that passed in December. In addition to being able to start conducting terminations in April, states will receive an enhanced federal match through the rest of this year, though it will phase down over time.

    More than 92 million Americans were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program in December, up 31% since February 2020, according to the most recent data available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

    Reviewing the eligibility of all those enrollees will be a monumental task for state Medicaid agencies, many of which are also contending with slim staffing. To gear up, they are hiring new employees, temporary workers or contractors or bringing back retirees, according to a recent survey conducted by Georgetown and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

    Most states can automatically renew coverage for at least some of their enrollees using other data, such as state wage information. But agencies must get in touch with others in their Medicaid programs, which proved challenging even prior to the pandemic. Most states are using multiple methods to update enrollees’ contact information, including working with insurers that provide Medicaid coverage to residents.

    If notices sent by mail are returned, states must make good faith attempts to contact enrollees through at least two other methods before cutting them off. And states have to adhere to additional requirements to continue to qualify for the enhanced match. If they don’t, CMS also could suspend their terminations, require they take corrective action or impose monetary penalties.

    Of the roughly 15 million people who could lose Medicaid coverage, about 8.2 million will no longer qualify, according to a Department of Health and Human Services analysis released in August. Some 2.7 million of these folks would qualify for enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act policies that could bring their monthly premiums to as low as $0.

    Some 6.8 million people, however, will be disenrolled even though they remain eligible.

    Though the federal government has given states more than a year to conduct the eligibility reviews and terminations, some plan to move much more quickly.

    Idaho, which has been monitoring enrollees’ eligibility throughout the pandemic, plans to complete its reevaluations by September, which it touts as one of the fastest timelines in the country.

    Of the nearly 450,000 Idahoans in the program, about 150,000 of them either don’t qualify or haven’t been in touch with the state in the past three years. The state began sending notices in February to those who face termination. People have 60 days to respond before they are removed.

    Those that are not eligible have 60 days from their termination date to enroll in Idaho’s state-based Obamacare exchange, Your Health Idaho. The exchange receives information nightly from the state Medicaid agency about residents who no longer qualify for public coverage but may be eligible for federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act policies.

    The exchange is reaching out to those folks weekly while they still have Medicaid and then every 15 days during the two-month special enrollment period via various methods, including mail, email and text messages, said Pat Kelly, Your Health Idaho’s executive director.

    The exchange works with 900 agents, brokers and enrollment counselors who can help folks sign up for policies. And it plans to start an advertising campaign this month highlighting the hefty subsidies.

    “We have to really help Idahoans know and understand that low-cost options are available, and most importantly, that it’s comprehensive health insurance that they can get for $0 a month,” Kelly said.

    Still, advocates in Idaho are concerned that the state’s push to unwind quickly will result in eligible residents losing coverage.

    Many people are not aware that they once again need to prove that they qualify, and the state agency is understaffed and underfunded, said Hillarie Hagen, health policy associate at Idaho Voices for Children. Renewal letters may not make it to enrollees, and those who need help may not be able to get through to customer service.

    “We are very concerned about families, and particularly children, losing health coverage without their knowledge – that they will find out when they show up to the doctor,” Hagen said.

    Aware that many people don’t know they’ll have to renew their eligibility, Arizona’s Medicaid agency last summer sent text messages and letters and made robocalls to enrollees, asking them to update their contact information. It is also working with community partners, health care providers, pharmacies and insurers. And it’s ramping up another text campaign since the prior one was so successful, said Heidi Capriotti, public information officer for the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.

    While the state can automatically redetermine the eligibility of about 75% of its Medicaid participants, it still has to connect with about 670,000 residents who could lose coverage because they are no longer eligible or they haven’t responded to the agency’s requests. The state plans to take 12 months to assess whether its enrollees still qualify.

    South Dakota will start terminating Medicaid enrollees in April, though some low-income adults may become eligible again in July, when the state’s Medicaid expansion program begins.

    Voters approved the broadening of Medicaid to low-income adults at the ballot box in November, over the objections of the Republican governor and legislature.

    Nearly 152,000 residents were enrolled in Medicaid in January, an increase of more than 30% from March 2020, according to the state’s Department of Social Services. But more than 22,000 people appear to be ineligible currently.

    The agency said in an FAQ that it will prioritize reviewing folks who are most likely to be ineligible because they no longer meet a coverage group or their income has increased, among other reasons.

    Those who are not eligible will be disenrolled with 10-days’ notice. If they appear eligible for expansion in July, they’ll receive a notice about it when they are terminated and sent a reminder in June. The agency is encouraging any enrollees who are determined to be ineligible to reapply after Medicaid expansion takes effect.

    But that three-month gap can wreak havoc on low-income residents’ health, said Jen Dreiske, deputy director of South Dakota Voices for Peace, which is working with the state’s immigrants and refugees to inform them of the unwinding. These folks may have to go without their heart medication or their cancer treatment. They may also be afraid to go to the doctor because of the cost.

    “Why can’t we just wait until July 1?” Dreiske said. “Our concern is that people are going to get sick or die because they’re not going to be able to access the health care that they so desperately need.”

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  • Fertility app fined $200,000 for leaking customer’s health data | CNN Business

    Fertility app fined $200,000 for leaking customer’s health data | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The company behind a popular fertility app has agreed to pay $200,000 in federal and state fines after authorities alleged that it had shared users’ personal health information for years without their consent, including to Google and to two companies based in China.

    The app, known as Premom, will also be banned from sharing personal health information for advertising purposes and must ensure that the data it shared without users’ consent is deleted from third-party systems, according to the Federal Trade Commission, along with the attorneys general of Connecticut, the District of Columbia and Oregon.

    Wednesday’s proposed settlement targeting Premom highlights how regulators have stepped up their scrutiny of fertility trackers and health information in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision last year striking down federal protections for abortion.

    The sharing of personal data allegedly affected Premom’s hundreds of thousands of users from at least 2018 until 2020, and violated a federal regulation known as the Health Breach Notification Rule, according to an FTC complaint against Easy Healthcare, Premom’s parent company.

    Premom didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    As part of the alleged violation, Premom collected and shared personally identifiable health information with Google and with a third-party marketing firm in violation of Premom’s own privacy policy, which had promised to share only “non-identifiable data” with others, according to the complaint.

    In addition, Premom allegedly shared location information and device identifiers — such as WiFi network names and hardware IDs — with two China-based data analytics companies, known as Jiguang and Umeng, according to the complaint. That information, the FTC alleged, “could be used to identify Premom’s users and disclose to third parties that these users were utilizing a fertility app,” according to an FTC complaint filed against Easy Healthcare, Premom’s parent company.

    Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, a wave of anti-abortion legislation has raised the prospect that fertility apps, search engines and other technology platforms could be forced to hand over user data in potential prosecutions of abortion-seekers.

    “Now more than ever, with reproductive rights under attack across the country, it is essential that the privacy of healthcare decisions is vigorously protected,” said DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb in a statement. “My office will continue to make sure companies protect consumers’ personal information to protect against unlawful encroachment on access to effective reproductive healthcare.”

    Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s consumer protection bureau, said the agency “will not tolerate health privacy abuses.”

    “Premom broke its promises and compromised consumers’ privacy,” Levine said in a statement. “We will vigorously enforce the Health Breach Notification Rule to defend consumer’s health data from exploitation.”

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  • Top 10 “What’s Up, Y’all?” Videos of 2020

    Top 10 “What’s Up, Y’all?” Videos of 2020

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    2020 has been a difficult, heartbreaking, and tumultuous year in so many ways. The toll COVID is taking on our communities, especially the most disenfranchised among us (disproportionately poor and working-class people of color), remains heartbreakingly gut-wrenching. Governments across the globe have violated the rights of their people repeatedly, from the ongoing police murders of Black and brown people in the US to the rise of authoritarianism in Hungary, rising state-sponsored anti-Muslim violence in India, increasing evidence of oppression against Uighur Muslims rounded up and sent to forced labor camps in China, and police brutality and murder of youth protesters in Nigeria.

    At the same time, 2020 has been a year of great (un)learning, resistance, and revolution. Just as we have seen the lethal forces of hate, apathy, lies, and violence used against the most marginalized among us, we have also seen Black, brown, undocumented, disabled, queer, trans, poor, working-class, and many other folks rise up and fight back to advocate for our lives and futures. This year has challenged us in so many ways, and yet, through showing us the cracks and failures of capitalism, white supremacy, a for-profit US health care system, criminal “justice”, and other cruel and outdated systems, 2020 has also shown us the power of the collective and the necessity of our dreams and activism.

    More Radical Reads: 6 Ways White Folks Can Support Black Lives Matter, Even If You Can’t Leave Your House

    As our founder Sonya Renee Taylor teaches us, it’s a powerful practice to live in the both/and — to embrace the at times uncomfortable and even painful liminal spaces we find ourselves in as we rupture old patterns, selves, and lives to co-create our future. Sonya shared back at the beginning of the COVID crisis:

    “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate, and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”

    Throughout 2020, Sonya has been reaching out with lessons of radical self-love, not only through her written work and appearances via dozens of podcasts, round tables, panels, keynote speeches, and news programs, but also through her “What’s Up, Y’all?” videos posted to her Instagram and YouTube channels. She has provided us with wisdom for all seasons of this year. In November, as those of us in the US (and many of us around the world) were waiting with baited breath for the outcome of the presidential election, Sonya reminded us:

    “Liberation is not a thing we will be delivered unto. It will be the act of daily creation — and it will be the act of daily creation in the midst of great chaos. Because it has always been the act of creation in the midst of great chaos.”

    More Radical Reads: Try A Little Tenderness: 3 Ways Being Tender Is A Political Act

    As we look back on 2020, gather the wisdom we’ve gained from it, and prepare to meet 2021, here is a countdown of Sonya’s top ten most popular “What’s Up, Y’all?” videos from the year. We share them here as an invitation for continued learning, reflection, inner inventory-taking, and outward action-taking as we dream a liberatory 2021 into existence.

    10. “The Willful Confusion of Whiteness”

    9. “Whiteness Is A Death Cult White Folks NEED To Get Out Of”

    8. “What’s the Conversation for Non-Black POC and Mixed-Race Folks?”

    7. “If Black Trans Lives Don’t Matter Then No One’s Will”

    6. “Get Your Damn Toddler and Other Anti-Racist Work”

    5. “When Capital Is More Valuable Than Black Bodies, Capital Must Be Disrupted”

    4. “Labeling the Pickle Jar: Are You Ready To Be Rid of Whiteness?”

    3. “Don’t Ask What You CAN Do To Help Unless You’re Down To Do This!!!”

    2. “While You Were Sleeping… And Now That You’re Awake”

    1. “Why Talking To Your White Family About Black People Is the Wrong Approach”

    May the lessons contained in each of these videos spark further discussion and carry us into the new year as brain, heart, and soul fuel and inspiration. There is no going back, but tomorrow can be better when we work together to create it.

    [feature image: photo of Sonya Renee Taylor against a white background. She is visible from the torso up and is wearing a vibrant red, blue, and leopard print chiffon dress that flows like the dreamy gown of a goddess. She is wearing a gold statement necklace and earrings. Her eyes are closed in bliss as she smiles. She appears to be in mid-twirl.]

    TBINAA is an independent, queer, Black woman run digital media and education organization promoting radical self love as the foundation for a more just, equitable and compassionate world. If you believe in our mission, please contribute to this necessary work at PRESSPATRON.com/TBINAA 

    We can’t do this work without you!

    As a thank you gift, supporters who contribute $10+ (monthly) will receive a copy of our ebook, Shed Every Lie: Black and Brown Femmes on Healing As Liberation. Supporters contributing $20+ (monthly) will receive a copy of founder Sonya Renee Taylor’s book, The Body is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love delivered to your home. 

    Need some help growing into your own self love? Sign up for our 10 Tools for Radical Self Love Intensive!

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    Shannon Weber

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