Kaiser Health News

Chloe Bell is a case manager at the National Abortion Federation. She spends her days helping people cover the cost of an abortion and, increasingly, the interstate travel many of them need to get the procedure.

“What price did they quote you?” Bell asked a woman from New Jersey who had called the organization’s hotline seeking money to pay for an abortion. Her appointment was the next day.

“They quoted me $500,” said the woman, who was five weeks pregnant when she spoke to Bell in November. She gave permission for a journalist to listen to the call on the condition that she not be named....

McALESTER, Okla. — It took little more than an hour for Deborah Hackler to dispense with the tall stack of debt collection lawsuits that McAlester Regional Medical Center recently brought to small-claims court in this Oklahoma farm community. Hackler, a lawyer who sues patients on behalf of the hospital, buzzed through 51 cases, all but a handful uncontested, as is often the case. She bantered with the judge as she secured nearly $40,000 in judgments, plus 10% in fees for herself, according to court records. It’s a payday the hospital and Hackler have shared frequently over the past three deca......

With around 20,000 people dying of covid in the United States since the start of October, and tens of thousands more abroad, the covid pandemic clearly isn’t over. However, the crisis response is, since the World Health Organization and the Biden administration ended their declared health emergencies last year. Let’s not confuse the terms “pandemic” and “emergency.” As Abraar Karan, an infectious disease physician and researcher at Stanford University, said, “The pandemic is over until you are scrunched in bed, feeling terrible.” Pandemics are defined by neither time nor severity, but rather b......

On the presidential campaign trail, former President Donald Trump is, once again, promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — a nebulous goal that became one of his administration’s splashiest policy failures. “We’re going to fight for much better health care than Obamacare. Obamacare is a catastrophe,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Iowa on Jan. 6. The perplexing revival of one of Trump’s most politically damaging crusades comes at a time when the Obama-era health law is even more popular and widely used than it was in 2017, when Trump and congressional Republicans proved unab......

A growing number of states are opening taxpayer-funded health insurance programs to immigrants, including those living in the U.S. without authorization, even as Republicans assail President Joe Biden over a dramatic increase in illegal crossings of the southern border. Eleven states and Washington, D.C., together provide full health insurance coverage to more than 1 million low-income immigrants regardless of their legal status, according to state data compiled by KFF Health News. Most aren’t authorized to live in the U.S., state officials say. Enrollment in these programs could nearly double......