Green River Star -

At the height of the pandemic, many Americans are experiencing firsthand the flaws in the Affordable Care Act and the health insurance it guaranteed. They are also facing the possibility that even the protection it does afford may be stripped away. T...

The headlines have been grim. Seventeen bodies piled up in the morgue at a New Jersey nursing home. Fifty-five residents dead in Brooklyn, N.Y. In one week, 104 residents dead in a facility in western Pennsylvania and 102 dead at a home in San...

As insurance companies push doctors to save money by switching their patients to generic drugs, complaints about those generics appear to be on the upswing. That’s the observation of journalist Katherine Eban, who has written a book, “Bottle of...

If you’re buying health insurance on your own this year, the marketplace is more complicated – and dangerous – than ever. Dangerous? How can that be? This is health insurance we’re talking about, not some sketchy Internet site. But the...

Is the U.S. ready for a discussion about paying for caregiving, an increasingly vexing and costly problem for a growing number of Americans? The answer may be “yes.” It has become obvious that long-term care insurance is not the answer to paying...

The Senate Special Committee on Aging has just released one of the most damning reports on the nation’s nursing homes that I’ve seen in a long time. The short document should be required reading for any family thinking of moving a relative to a...

Recently Peggy, an Indiana woman and reader of this column, sent me a lengthy email about her 94-year-old mother who is rapidly spending down her minimal savings to pay for prescription drugs. Peggy didn’t hold out much hope that prices would come...

Medicare has just announced it is penalizing more than 700 of the nation’s hospitals because they have higher rates of patient safety mishaps, which the government and patient advocacy groups have been trying for years to prevent. What are those...

David Mitchell is a man with a mission. He is determined to stitch together a movement that will finally smash the power of the pharmaceutical industry and bring pocketbook relief to millions of Americans who need expensive drugs. Mitchell, a...

The other day came a lengthy report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announcing worrisome findings for anyone with a Medicare Advantage plan and anyone thinking about buying one in the future. The findings are also relevant t...

The Food and Drug Administration just announced it would once again try to regulate tobacco products. This time the target of the agency’s regulatory hand is what it believes is the growing menace of flavored e-cigarettes and other tobacco...

Karen R., a 70-year-old Medicare beneficiary living in a mid-size town in Indiana, contacted me recently about her Part D drug coverage. She and her husband both have traditional Medicare, a Medigap policy, and what’s called a stand-alone plan for...

Headlines About Medical Studies May Be More Enthusiastic Than Accurate “Lowering Your Blood Pressure Could Stave Off Dementia,” heralded the headline from Bloomberg, which was not alone in delivering the “good” news. Time advised, “There...

Two years ago in this space I told the story of a Mississippi woman, Katherine Green, who got caught in the unsavory business practices of the air ambulance industry that has trapped many more Americans since then. Green, a college history...

This fall the House of Representatives is likely to take up legislation passed by the Senate that gives terminally ill patients the right to try unproven, experimental drugs that are not yet on the market. Thirty-seven states have already passed...

What should you expect now that the drive to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act appears dead – at least for the moment?  Given how legislation gets made in Washington, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some elements of the repeal and...

One thing I haven’t heard much in this latest healthcare debate is that the U.S. has the best health system in the world. That’s different from the last two times around. When the nation debated the Clinton health plan in 1994 and the Affordable...

Recently I heard from a woman in rural Nebraska who told me about her 76-year old father, who in late April had a lemon-size cancerous mass removed from his brain. The man chose to have his chemotherapy and radiation treatments at a hospital close...

Older Americans may be in for a rough ride if the changes Washington politicians are considering come to pass. Because good, explanatory journalism is in short supply and TV shouting matches don’t tell you much, I decided to use this space to discu...

Federal funding for meals on wheels is on the chopping block. The Trump administration budget blueprint released in March calls for the elimination of two federal block grants:  That’s money the federal government gives the states for social...

Turning healthcare consumers into educated shoppers has long been a goal of employers who foot the bill for most care, politicians and some consumer organizations that believe that someday shopping for care should be as easy as comparing brands of...

Over the past few months, these columns have raised plenty of questions about Medicare, present and future, and I’ve received many responses to those questions from readers. Today’s column addresses some of readers’ concerns about Medicare, a...

When you fill a prescription at your local pharmacy, you assume the medicine you receive is safe and won’t interact badly with other drugs you’re taking. That’s not an unreasonable assumption, considering that pharmacists enjoy a positive...

What’s going to happen to Medicare? That’s not an insignificant question given the political shift in Washington. Now, with Republicans controlling the presidency and both houses of Congress, some ideas they’ve been pushing for years have a...

Anyone facing a hospital stay for themselves or a family member should look at new data the government released right before Christmas showing that it penalized 769 of the nation’s hospitals for having high rates of patient injuries. The monetary...