Dangerous Gut Bacteria Move Outside Hospitals, Infect Kids
Infections with the bacterium Clostridium difficile hit record numbers in recent years. Now there’s evidence the hard-to-treat infections are becoming a problem for children. The infections often strike the elderly, especially those who’ve been taking antibiotics that clear out competing bacteria in people’s intestines. People sickened by the bug have persistent diarrhea that can, in [...]
Health Insurance Cutbacks Squeeze The Insured
Amber Cooper and her husband were doing OK. They both had jobs. A healthy 5-year-old son, a house in Riverbank, Calif., and health insurance from her job in the accounting department of a small manufacturing company. But then one day everything changed. “We were in a conference room getting the information and I had heard [...]
Easier Colon Cancer Test Works Well, But Colonoscopy’s Still King
A big study of a colon cancer test called flexible sigmoidoscopy may provide a good example of how a cheaper, easier-on-the-patient and possibly better technology isn’t always the one American doctors choose to use. Over the past decade or so, sigmoidoscopy has been largely abandoned by the doctors in the U.S. in favor of colonoscopy [...]
Shoddy Drugs Threaten Malaria Treatment
A look at malaria drugs being used in places that are hotbeds for the mosquito-borne illness finds that many of them are substandard or even fake. And that’s a big problem. Combinations of well-made drugs, including those that contain arteminisin, are a cornerstone of malaria treatment. But when some of the drugs are of poor [...]
Trained Interpreters Can Help Prevent Medical Errors
When someone arrives at the hospital who doesn’t speak English very well, it’s common for workers at the hospital who are fluent in that language —doctors, nurses, even administrative staff — to step in and act as the patient’s interpreter. Though they may be well-meaning, not to mention more affordable than trained interpreters, relying on [...]
Katie Beckett Defied The Odds, Helped Other Disabled Kids Live Longer
A few years ago, I asked a 13-year-old girl who was receiving care for cystic fibrosis on a Medicaid program known as the “Katie Beckett waiver” if she knew who Katie Beckett was. “Probably some kind of doctor,” the girl said. It was a logical guess. But, Beckett was another child with a significant disability [...]
Catholic Groups Sue Obama Administration Over Birth Control Rule
So much for compromise. A total of 43 Catholic educational, charitable and other entities filed a dozen lawsuits in federal court around the nation Monday, charging that the Obama Administration’s rule requiring coverage of birth control in most health insurance plans violates their religious freedom. Among the plaintiffs in the suits are the University of [...]
Health Think Tank Crunches Health Prices For The Masses
It turns out we may not know nearly as much about all the money spent on health care in the U.S. as we thought we did. But there’s a new group that wants to, well, remedy that. The problem, Martin Gaynor, chairman of the Health Care Cost Institute, told Shots, is that “two-thirds of the [...]
Your Stories Of Being Sick Inside The U.S. Health Care System
To get a feeling for what being sick in America is really like, and to help us understand the findings of our poll with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, NPR did a call-out on Facebook. We asked people to share their experiences of the health care system, and [...]
Poll: What It’s Like To Be Sick In America
In the lull between the Supreme Court arguments over the federal health overhaul law and the decision expected in June, we thought we’d ask Americans who actually use the health system quite a bit how they view the quality of care and its cost. Most surveys don’t break it down this way. When the results [...]
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