Month: December 2020

Terry Beth Hadler was so eager to get a lifesaving COVID-19 vaccination that the 69-year-old piano teacher stood in line overnight in a parking lot with hundreds of other senior citizens. She wouldn’t do it again. Hadler said that she waited 14 hours and that a brawl nearly erupted before dawn on Tuesday when people

Still from Ford’s “Finish Strong” spot. Ford In a new ad campaign using actor Bryan Cranston, Ford Motor is urging Americans to adhere to Covid-19 protocols to save lives in the next period of the pandemic.  The campaign, part of an initiative the company has dubbed #FinishStrong, includes a new commercial from filmmaker Peter Berg

At Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens, N.Y., Dr. Alan Roth oversees care delivery operations for one of the most diverse patient populations in the country, serving people from 130 countries speaking more than 160 languages. During the 30 years Roth has worked at Jamaica Hospital, Queens County has doubled in size from a population

Gov. Jared Polis and officials announced Denver and a number of other Colorado counties will be moved to Level Red on a newly revamped version of the state”u2019s color-coded COVID-19 dial at Boettcher Mansion in Denver, Colorado on Tuesday. November 17, 2020. Hyoung Chang | Denver Post | Getty Images WASHINGTON ’ Colorado health officials said

California’s top health official said hospitals in hard-hit Los Angeles County are turning to “crisis care” and bracing for the coronavirus surge to worsen in the new year, as he extended strict stay-home orders Tuesday in areas where intensive care units have few beds. Dr. Mark Ghaly said that Southern California and the agricultural San

Dr. Carlos del Rio warned “The News with Shepard Smith” that the effort to vaccinate Americans needs to “change dramatically,” as the United States missed its vaccination goals two weeks after Americans started receiving shots.  “If we’re going to get to have every single American who needs a vaccine and wants the vaccine, vaccinated by

As expected, a federal appeals court on Tuesday shot down the hospital industry’s attempt to block new rules on price transparency from taking effect at the end of this week. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed a District Court judge’s decision to grant the U.S. Department of Health &

Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn Center for the Study of Existential Risk LONDON ’ Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn has identified what he believes are the three biggest threats to humanity’s existence this century. While the climate emergency and the coronavirus pandemic are seen as issues that require urgent global solutions, Tallinn told CNBC that artificial intelligence,

As pharmacists from CVS and Walgreens have entered long-term care facilities to vaccine staff and residents against COVID-19, they have been resoundingly been met with cheers, leaders say. “As CVS wheeled the cart in, everyone started cheering,” Vassar Byrd, CEO of Rose Villa Senior Living, a life plan community in Portland, Oregon, said Monday during

New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks at a news conference on September 08, 2020 in New York City. Spencer Platt | Getty Images The New York Attorney General is investigating whether a health-care clinic in the state fraudulently obtained Covid vaccine doses and distributed them to the public, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday. Cuomo

President Donald Trump has signed a $900 billion pandemic relief package that will deliver long-sought cash to businesses and individuals. It also averts a government shutdown. The massive bill includes $1.4 trillion to fund government agencies through September and contains other end-of-session priorities such as money for cash-starved transit systems and an increase in food

Two men paint graffiti of frontline workers on a wall during the coronavirus pandemic in Mumbai, India. Imtiyaz Shaikh | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images SINGAPORE ’ The Covid-19 pandemic has sent the global economy into one of its worst recessions ever, and it isn’t yet clear when a full recovery will be in place.

As someone who initially struggled to accept his own bipolar disorder diagnosis years ago and now works to help others, Sean Driscoll knows how hard it can be for someone to recognize they are suffering. With the pandemic aggravating mental health concerns, the peer support specialist at the University of Maryland Medical Center’s Department of

A person holds a vial of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at the University Of Louisville Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., on Monday, Dec. 14, 2020. Scotty Perry | Bloomberg | Getty Images U.S. states are anxiously awaiting billions in federal aid to fund their vaccine distribution plans, currently held up in Washington and under veto

Alysa Gummow didn’t know what to think in October when the letters from law firms arrived in the mail. She had filed for bankruptcy in 2019 to restructure nearly $50,000 in debt ’ mostly from an earlier hip surgery. But that was resolved. Why was she getting these letters now? The 37-year-old learned that Froedtert

Snow falls as people wearing face masks walk through the Asakusa district on March 29, 2020 in Tokyo, Japan. Tomohiro Ohsumi | Getty Images SINGAPORE ’ As 2020 draws to a close, many investors consider Asia as the region with one of the best economic prospects next year thanks to its relatively better control of

The COVID-19 pandemic has helped revive the autopsy. When the virus first arrived in U.S. hospitals, doctors could only guess what was causing its strange constellation of symptoms: What could explain why patients were losing their sense of smell and taste, developing skin rashes, struggling to breathe and reporting memory loss on top of flu-like

A visitor tries a plant-based meat substitute product at the Restaurant & Bar and Gourmet Asia expo at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition centre in Hong Kong on November 11, 2020. Peter Parks | AFP | Getty Images SINGAPORE ’ Demand for meat alternatives has grown and will continue to rise, but the industry

CommonSpirit Health’s CHI Franciscan and Virginia Mason Health System took a key step toward finalizing their planned merger this week. The health systems have signed a definitive agreement, a legal document the specifies how the transaction would be structured and how debt would be allocated. Washington state’s Attorney General, who previously sued CHI Franciscan over

A view of signage leading to one of the testing centers at Heathrow Airport on December 22, 2020 in London, England. Joseph Okpako | Getty Images News | Getty Images The United States will begin requiring people flying in from the U.K. to test negative for Covid-19 no more than 72 hours before departure, the

As hospitals leverage their market power to increase prices, they use their financial gains to attract more privately insured patients and divert Medicaid beneficiaries, exacerbating health inequities, according to new research. Well-capitalized hospitals tend to invest in staff, facility upgrades and acquisitions that draw more lucrative privately insured patients and further augment their leverage. This

Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images President Donald Trump‘s opposition to a $900 billion coronavirus aid package overwhelmingly passed by U.S. lawmakers late Monday jeopardizes the first significant climate change legislation to win congressional approval in about a decade. Trump has threatened to veto the stimulus bill, which includes $600 direct checks for individuals and $35 billion

Over the last eight months, providers have gained experience dealing with a limited ban on surprise billing. Those insights may prove useful if a broader ban remains as part of Congress’ and President Donald Trump’s passage of year-end budget and COVID-19 relief package, which currently includes a permanent ban on surprise billing starting in 2022.

Dr. Stephen Parodi, director of Kaiser Permanente’s nationwide Covid response, warned that new coronavirus case surges are imminent unless Americans change their behavior during a Tuesday evening interview on “The News with Shepard Smith.”  “If we don’t make the choice now to change the future, then what I’m worried about is we’re going to see

An Aetna affiliate on Thursday alerted the federal government that a data breach compromised hundreds of thousands of members’ health data. The data breach stemmed from a hacking incident at EyeMed, a company that Aetna contracts with to provide services for members of in its vision benefit plans, a spokesperson from CVS Health, which owns