Sky-High Drug Prices Driven by Pharma Profits, House Dems Charge

This story also ran on NBC News. This story can be republished for free (details). Enormous drug company profits are the primary driver of soaring prescription drug prices in America, according to a damning investigation that Democrats on the House Oversight Committee began releasing Wednesday.The first two reports in the investigation focus on Celgene and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Revlimid cancer treatment, which saw its price hiked 23 times since 2005, and Teva’s multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone, which went up in price 27 times since 2007.Those costs have little to do with research and development or industry efforts to help people afford medication, as drug companies often claim, according to the probe.“It’s true, many of these pharmaceutical...

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Salud sobre ruedas: casas rodantes ofrecen tratamiento contra la adicción en comunidades rurales remotas

SOBRE NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOLNoticias en español es una sección de Kaiser Health News que contiene traducciones de artículos de gran interés para la comunidad hispanohablante, y contenido original enfocado en la población hispana que vive en los Estados Unidos. Use Nuestro Contenido Este contenido puede usarse de manera gratuita (detalles). STERLING, Colorado – Tonja Jiménez no es la única persona que conduce una casa rodante por las carreteras rurales de Colorado. Pero a diferencia de los otros vehículos recreativos, el suyo, de 34 pies de largo, está equipado para ser una clínica de tratamiento de adicciones sobre ruedas.Jiménez acerca tratamientos que salvan vidas a la esquina noreste del estado, donde los pacientes con adicciones a...

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Clínicas post-Covid reciben a pacientes con síntomas persistentes después de recuperarse

SOBRE NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOLNoticias en español es una sección de Kaiser Health News que contiene traducciones de artículos de gran interés para la comunidad hispanohablante, y contenido original enfocado en la población hispana que vive en los Estados Unidos. Use Nuestro Contenido Este contenido puede usarse de manera gratuita (detalles). Clarence Troutman sobrevivió a una estadía de dos meses en el hospital con COVID-19, y volvió casa a principios de junio. Pero está lejos de superar la enfermedad: todavía tiene dificultad para respirar y sus manos se hinchan y ponen rígidas.“Antes de Covid, era un hombre relativamente sano de 59 años”, dijo el técnico de internet y cable de Denver, Colorado. “Si tuviera que decir dónde estoy ahora,...

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Post-COVID Clinics Get Jump-Start From Patients With Lingering Illness

This story also ran on CNN. This story can be republished for free (details). Clarence Troutman survived a two-month hospital stay with COVID-19, then went home in early June. But he’s far from over the disease, still suffering from limited endurance, shortness of breath and hands that can be stiff and swollen.“Before COVID, I was a 59-year-old, relatively healthy man,” said the broadband technician from Denver. “If I had to say where I’m at now, I’d say about 50% of where I was, but when I first went home, I was at 20%.”He credits much of his progress to the “motivation and education” gleaned from a new program for post-COVID patients at the University of Colorado, one of a small but growing number of clinics aimed at treating and studying...

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What We Know About the Airborne Spread of the Coronavirus

The federal government did a quick pivot on the threat of the coronavirus spreading through the air, changing a key piece of guidance over the weekend.On Sept. 18, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that tiny airborne particles, not just the bigger water droplets from a sneeze or cough, could infect others. It cited growing “evidence.”By Sept. 21, that warning was gone from its website, with a note saying it had been posted in error and the CDC was in the process of updating its recommendations.The move put the CDC in the middle of a debate over how the coronavirus infects people. Its guidelines could make the difference between restaurants, bars and other places where people gather fully reopening sooner or much later.And...

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The First Presidential Debate: A Night of Rapid-Fire Interruptions and Inaccuracies

Tuesday night, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden appeared for the first presidential debate, offering voters their first side-by-side comparison of the candidates.Little was said about what either candidate would do if elected; at one point, Biden’s attempts to explain his health care plan were drowned out by Trump’s persistent interruptions about Biden’s Democratic primary opponents.Instead, the presidential nominees traded a dizzying array of accusations and falsehoods. Our partners at PolitiFact unpacked a number of them for you in their wide-ranging debate night fact check. Don't Miss A Story Subscribe to KHN’s free Weekly Edition newsletter. Here are some health care highlights:Trump: “I’m getting [insulin]...

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‘No Mercy’ Explores the Fallout After a Small Town Loses Its Hospital

Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen. Each season, “Where It Hurts” takes you somewhere new —  to an overlooked part of the country to explore cracks in the American health system that leave people frustrated — and without the care they need. The story begins in Fort Scott, Kansas. Rural. Deeply Christian. And sicker than other parts of the state. When Mercy Hospital shut its doors, the town’s sense of identity wavered. Season One “No Mercy” is about the people who remain, surviving the best way they know how. Host and investigative journalist Sarah Jane Tribble spent more than a year revisiting southeastern Kansas, where she grew up, to document the sparking tensions, anger and fear many people felt as they struggled...

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‘You’re Going to Release Him When He Was Hurting Himself?’

When Joe Prude called Rochester, New York, police to report his brother missing, he was struggling to understand why Daniel Prude had been released from the hospital hours earlier. Joe Prude described his brother’s suicidal behavior.“He jumped 21 stairs down to my basement, headfirst,” Joe said in a video recorded by the responding officer’s body camera in the early hours of March 23. Joe’s wife, Valerie, described Daniel nearly jumping in front of a train on the tracks that run behind their house the previous day.“The train missed him by this much,” Joe said, holding his thumb and pointer finger a few inches apart.“When the doctor called me and told me that they released him, I’m saying, ‘How you going to sit here and tell me you’re going...

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Efforts to Keep COVID-19 out of Prisons Fuel Outbreaks in County Jails

When Joshua Martz tested positive for COVID-19 this summer in a Montana jail, guards moved him and nine other inmates with the disease into a pod so cramped that some slept on mattresses on the floor.Martz, 44, said he suffered through symptoms that included achy joints, a sore throat, fever and an unbearable headache. Jail officials largely avoided interacting with the COVID patients other than by handing out over-the-counter painkillers and cough syrup, he said. Inmates sanitized their hands with a spray bottle containing a blue liquid that Martz suspected was also used to mop the floors. A shivering inmate was denied a request for an extra blanket, so Martz gave him his own.“None of us expected to be treated like we were in a hospital,...

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