With the threat of mandated staffing ratios looming over some long-term care facilities, the Biden administration on Tuesday said it will bump up Medicare payments to skilled nursing providers next year.
Why it matters: Nursing homes are dealing with acute staffing shortages and operating with financial losses, and concerns about how CMS finalizes staffing regulations this spring have the industry on edge.
Black women in areas that have more access to maternal health care are at "disproportionately" higher risk of dying during or after childbirth than white women who live in underserved areas, according to a new study in The Lancet.
The big picture: While women of color are known to be at greater risk, the study is the first to apply a geographic lens in this way, per the study's co-author.
The overdose crisis is prompting more hospitals to initiate opioid addiction treatment in emergency rooms — a change welcomed by many behavioral health experts.
Yes, but: It's resurfacing tension among providers over who's really responsible for addressing the underlying problem of opioid misuse.
Milwaukee Judge Janet Protasiewicz on Tuesday was elected to Wisconsin's supreme court, giving the key swing state's highest court a liberal majority that could potentially expand abortion rights there, AP reports.
The big picture: The seven-member Wisconsin Supreme Court has had a conservative majority since 2008. It's poised to decide in the next few years the constitutionality of a 19th century abortion ban that was cited to restrict access to the procedure in the state since the fall of Roe v. Wade.
America's rates of loneliness, which surged during the pandemic, are starting to fall back down.
Catch up quick: 17% of surveyed Americans experienced loneliness "a lot of the day yesterday," per a new Gallup report. That's down from a high of 25% amid COVID lockdowns.
Why it matters: Loneliness is not just a feeling. It has real consequences for your health and can shorten your life.
And pandemic-induced loneliness hit Americans from all walks of life, including older adults who had to isolate themselves to protect their health, kids who stayed home from school, and young professionals who moved back home to live with their parents.
Encouraging stat: One of the steepest drops in rates of loneliness occurred among adults 65 and older, many of whom had to spend months — or years — in isolation during the height of COVID.
Reality check: While loneliness is trending down overall, it's still high among certain groups, including young adults (24%) and lower-income adults (27%).
There's overlap between young and lower-income adults, and they're more likely to be single and childless than their older, richer counterparts, which are two factors that contribute to loneliness, Gallup notes.
The bottom line: As more and more Americans return to normalcy post-pandemic, the loneliness crisis is also showing signs of abating.
This article originally appeared in Axios Finish Line, our nightly newsletter on life, leadership and wellness. Sign up here.
The decision by the Federal Trade Commission to block DNA sequencing giant Illumina's $7.1 billion purchase of Grail puts the focus on how much power one company should wield in the burgeoning cancer detection market.
Driving the news: The FTC on Monday rejected the deal, saying the combination of Grail — which makes liquid biopsy test — with Illumina, the only provider of sequencing for multi-cancer early detection (MCED) tests will "stifle competition and innovation in the U.S. market."
Inflation and higher health spending helped drive monthly premiums for Affordable Care Act coverage up an average of 3.4% between 2022 and 2023, reversing a trend of recent declines, according to a new report from the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Why it matters: Some of the increase was also attributed to uncertainty over whether Congress would extend or make permanent premium subsidies, which complicated insurers' decision making. Extending subsidies would incentivize healthy people who choose to buy coverage previously deemed unaffordable.
Hospitals routinely charge less to patients who pay in cash and seek to recoup the difference from commercially insured patients in markets where they can exert leverage, according to a new Johns Hopkins study published in Health Affairs.
Why it matters: The analysis for 70 services — drawn from data reported by 2,379 hospitals as of September 2022 — provides another window into the opaque world of hospital pricing and could be a data point for employers in their negotiations with insurers or directly with providers.
Nonprofit hospitals that paid their board members offered less charity care than facilities that didn't, per a new Health Affairsanalysis.
Why it matters: Nonprofit hospitals are required to offer charity care in exchange for their tax-exempt status. But the sector has come under scrutiny for its pricing practices and for saving more in tax exemptions than it provides in uncompensated care.
