Artificial intelligence products with lifelike voices are being marketed to schedule or cancel medical visits, refill prescriptions, and help triage patients. Soon, many patients might initiate contact with the health system by speaking not with a human but with AI.
Late last year, South Carolina Medicaid approved a class of medications known as GLP-1s to treat obesity, placing it among the few state programs covering these effective but expensive drugs. But access remains limited, even for patients covered by Medicaid, because of stringent prerequisites that must be satisfied before starting the drug.
One thing experts agree on: The damage from the funding cuts will be varied and immense.
Fresh studies expose a gap in the FDA’s assessments of foods: Widely used additives could damage the mix of bacteria in your gut, causing health problems.
More than 100 rural hospitals have stopped delivering babies since 2021, including a South Dakota hospital that serves small towns, farming communities, and a Native American reservation. Patients there now travel at least an hour to give birth.
Más de un centenar de hospitales rurales han dejado de atender partos desde 2021, según el Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. El cierre de los servicios de obstetricia se suele achacar a la falta de personal y la falta de presupuesto.
While Big Pharma seems ready to weather the tariff storm, independent pharmacists and makers of generic drugs — which account for 90% of U.S. prescriptions — see trouble ahead for patients.
More Californians are getting mental health or substance use disorder treatment online or over the phone than in person, according to a KFF Health News analysis of UCLA’s latest California Health Interview Survey. But the telehealth experience isn’t always positive.
Apache tribal members are already feeling psychological and spiritual harm as the Trump administration moves to fast-track a deal to turn their sacred land of Oak Flat, Arizona, into a copper mine.
Two stories from Washington, D.C., give listeners a sense of what changes the Trump administration has been making to health policy, with KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner and Arthur Allen.
