Doris Hutchinson wanted to use money from the sale of her late mother’s house to help her grandchildren go to college.

Then she learned the University of Virginia Health System was taking $38,000 of the proceeds because a 13-year-old medical bill owed by her deceased brother had somehow turned into a lien on the property.

“It was a mess,” she said. “There are bills I could pay with that money. I could pay off my car, for one thing.”

Property liens are the hidden icebergs of patient medical debt, legal experts say, lying unseen, often for decades, before they surface to claim hard-won family savings or inheritance proceeds.

An ongoing examination by KHN into hospital billing and collections in Virginia shows just how widespread and destructive they can be. KHN reported a year ago that UVA Health had sued patients 36,000 times over six years for more than $100 million, … Read the rest

California Healthline correspondent Angela Hart discussed how the coronavirus pandemic has derailed California’s efforts to deal with homelessness on KPBS “Midday Edition” on Oct. 8.

• Click here to hear Hart on KPBS
• Read “Hard Lives Made Harder by COVID: Homeless Endure a ‘Slow-Moving Train Wreck,’” by California Healthline senior correspondent Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Hart.

KHN Midwest correspondent Lauren Weber discussed the difference between D.O.s and M.D.s with Newsy’s “Morning Rush” on Tuesday.

• Click here to watch Weber on Newsy
• Read Weber’s “Stigma Against D.O.s Had Been Dissipating Until Trump’s Doctor Took the Spotlight”

KHN correspondent Anna Almendrala discussed how L.A. County’s enforcement of workplace coronavirus protocols has cut COVID-19 deaths with KPCC’s “Take Two” on Tuesday.

• Click here to hear Almendrala on KPCC
• Read Almendrala’s “COVID Crackdowns at Work Have Saved Black and Latino Lives, LA Officials Say”

KHN senior correspondent Sarah Jane … Read the rest

In March, Sue Williams-Ward took a new job, with a $1-an-hour raise.

The employer, a home health care agency called Together We Can, was paying a premium — $13 an hour — after it started losing aides when COVID-19 safety concerns mounted.

Williams-Ward, a 68-year-old Indianapolis native, was a devoted caregiver who bathed, dressed and fed clients as if they were family. She was known to entertain clients with some of her own 26 grandchildren, even inviting her clients along on charitable deliveries of Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas hams.

Without her, the city’s most vulnerable would have been “lost, alone or mistreated,” said her husband, Royal Davis.

Despite her husband’s fears for her health, Williams-Ward reported to work on March 16 at an apartment with three elderly women. One was blind, one was wheelchair-bound, and the third had a severe mental illness. None had been diagnosed with COVID-19 but, Williams-Ward … Read the rest

Al menos la mitad de los votantes prefiere el enfoque de la atención médica del ex vicepresidente Joe Biden al del presidente Donald Trump, lo que sugiere que la preocupación por reducir los costos y manejar la pandemia podría influir en el resultado de esta elección, según revela una nueva encuesta.

Los hallazgos, de la encuesta mensual de KFF, indican que los votantes no confían en las garantías del presidente de que protegerá a las personas con condiciones preexistentes de las compañías de seguros si la Corte Suprema anulara la Ley de Cuidado de Salud a Bajo Precio (ACA).

Un mes antes de que el tribunal escuche los argumentos de los fiscales generales republicanos y la administración Trump a favor de revocar la ley, la encuesta muestra que el 79% del público no quiere que el Supremo cancele las protecciones de cobertura para los estadounidenses con afecciones preexistentes. La … Read the rest

On Monday, President Donald Trump claimed that the World Health Organization (WHO) “admitted” he was correct that using lockdowns to control the spread of COVID-19 was more damaging than the illness.

In a post on Twitter, Trump wrote: “The World Health Organization just admitted that I was right. Lockdowns are killing countries all over the world. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. Open up your states, Democrat governors. Open up New York. A long battle, but they finally did the right thing!”

He reiterated his statement later that night during a campaign rally, saying, “But the World Health Organization, did you see what happened? They just came out a little while ago, and they admitted that Donald Trump was right. The lockdowns are doing tremendous damage to these Democrat-run states, where they’re locked out, sealed up. Suicide rates, drug rates, alcoholism, deaths by so many … Read the rest

Lone Tree, Colorado.- Darcy Velásquez, de 42 años, y su madre, Roberta Truax, caminaban recientemente por el centro comercial Park Meadows, 15 millas al sur del centro de Denver, buscando regalos de Navidad para los dos hijos de Velásquez, cuando vieron una tienda con un exhibición de máscaras faciales adornadas con diamantes de fantasía.

Brillantes ideales para una nena de 9 años.

La tienda se llama COVID-19 Essentials. Y bien puede ser la primera cadena minorista del país dedicada exclusivamente a una enfermedad infecciosa.

Con el cierre de muchas tiendas en los Estados Unidos durante la pandemia de coronavirus, especialmente dentro de los centros comerciales, los propietarios de esta cadena han sacado provecho del espacio vacío, así como de la creciente aceptación de que usar máscaras es una realidad que puede durar hasta 2021, o más.

Las máscaras faciales han evolucionado de ser un producto utilitario, cualquier cosa podía servir … Read the rest

Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen.

Emergency care gets complicated after a hospital closes. On a cold February evening, when Robert Findley fell and hit his head on a patch of ice, his wife, Linda, called 911. The delays that came next exposed the frayed patchwork that sometimes stands in for rural health care.

After Mercy Hospital Fort Scott shut down, many locals had big opinions about what kind of health care the town needed.

“Words of experience is, you don’t know when that tragedy is going to happen,” Linda Findley said.

Fort Scott’s free-standing ER and the new community health center aren’t enough, she said.

“I mean, my gosh, you need to feel like you’re safe and could be taken care of where you’re at,” she said.

Click here to read the episode transcript.

“Where It Hurts” is a podcast collaboration between KHN and … Read the rest

As the return of college students to campuses has fueled as many as 3,000 COVID-19 cases a day, keeping track of them is a logistical nightmare for local health departments and colleges.

Some students are putting down their home addresses instead of their college ones on their COVID testing forms — slowing the transfer of case data and hampering contact tracing across state and county lines.

The address issue has real consequences, as any delay in getting the case to the appropriate authorities allows the coronavirus to continue to spread unchecked. Making matters worse, college-age people already tend to be hard to trace because they are unlikely to answer a phone call from an unknown number.

“With that virus, you really need to be able to identify that case and their contacts in 72 hours,” said Indiana University’s assistant director for public health, Graham McKeen.

And if the students … Read the rest