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The American Rescue Plan Act, passed by Congress in March, provides $130 billion to cities, counties and tribes — with few restrictions on how the money can be spent.
At issue is whether transplant patients who refuse the shots are not only putting themselves at greater risk for serious illness and death from covid-19, but also squandering scarce organs that could benefit others.
After experiencing multiple quarantines and school closures in less than two months, covid vaccine approvals for 5- to 11-year-olds can’t come soon enough for a KHN editor in Montana.
The covid pandemic has caused millions of people, particularly LGBTQ adults, to lose their jobs and enroll in Medicaid or insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Yet these plans often don’t fully cover the basics needed by many transgender Americans, such as injectable estrogen, a hormone therapy commonly used by trans women.
San Juan County, Colorado, is one of the most vaccinated counties in the U.S. Leaders across the country continue to expound on the vaccine as the path forward in the pandemic. But San Juan’s experience the past few weeks with its first covid hospitalizations shows that, even with an extremely vaccinated population, masks are still necessary.
The pandemic is devastating rural America, where lower vaccination rates are compounding the already limited medical care.
Sediment from massive blazes chokes rivers and reservoirs, contaminating water supplies. The problem is only getting worse as climate change intensifies wildfires and lengthens the fire season.
There are many ways to cleanse indoor air of dangerous smoke particles, which are particularly harmful to people with chronic respiratory and cardiac conditions. Some are expensive, but cheap alternatives exist.
Among the people still reluctant to get vaccinated — and pushing against mandates — are firefighters, many of whom also respond to medical calls as paramedics and EMTs and have witnessed the ravages of the pandemic firsthand.
Billings Clinic in Montana is past the tipping point as it looks for places to add intensive care unit beds and is on the cusp of rationing care to deal with the surge of sick covid patients in a state with significant anti-vaccination sentiment.
At least 26 states have passed laws to permanently limit public health powers, a KHN investigation has found, weakening the country’s ability to fight not only the current resurgence of the pandemic but other health crises to come.
A hospital in Bozeman, Montana, is considering whether to add inpatient psychiatric care after a concerted push from mental health advocates. But even if it adds beds, hospitals across Montana provide a cautionary tale: finding enough workers to staff such beds is its own challenge, and some behavioral health units routinely reach capacity.
Medical-legal partnerships in Montana, Colorado and elsewhere across the nation operate on the notion that fixing patients’ legal ills is a vital part of their health care.
Efforts by states and the private health plans that many states pay to cover low-income Americans has been scattershot and hampered by a lack of data.
Some counties are changing their covid quarantine policies in line with a law that bans discrimination based on a person’s vaccine status. But one county has decided to defy the rule.
College and grad students with chronic health conditions as common as asthma and diabetes may need to clear hurdles to make sure their health needs are covered by insurance if they go to school far from home.
Students in many places are starting the new school year with their masks off — even in one Colorado county that was one of the nation’s first delta variant hot spots.
Nursing home operators acknowledge that large numbers of staff members are not getting the shots but fear a federal vaccination mandate could drive away workers in a tight labor market.
While many businesses scaled back at the height of the pandemic, one Montana man used covid-19 to open his own mobile pharmacy. He’s now bringing covid shots to Montana’s vaccine deserts while filling his wallet. But he cannot fill all the vaccination gaps.
Amid a surge in covid-19 cases driven by the highly contagious delta variant, nearly 1,500 health systems across the nation are requiring their employees to get vaccinated. In Montana and Oregon, that’s not an option.
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