A decade after scientists identified a link between certain implants and cancer, the agency ordered “black box” warnings and a new checklist of risks for patients to review.
How to Decide Which Covid Booster Shot to Get
Health officials approved mix-and-match Covid booster shots, but didn’t say whether it’s better to switch vaccines or stick with your original shot.
Here Comes Halloween
And with it, Halloween traditions.
What to Do This Weekend
‘Dune’ and ‘The French Dispatch’
Look Up Your Hospital: Is It Being Penalized By Medicare?
Under programs set up by the Affordable Care Act, the federal government cuts payments to hospitals that have high rates of readmissions and those with the highest numbers of infections and patient injuries. For the readmission penalties, Medicare cuts as much as 3 percent for each patient, although the average is generally much lower. The …
How Billing Turns a Routine Birth Into a High-Cost Emergency
Caitlin Wells Salerno knew that some mammals — like the golden-mantled ground squirrels she studies in the Rocky Mountains — invest an insane amount of resources in their young. That didn’t prepare her for the resources the conservation biologist would owe after the birth of her second son. Wells Salerno went into labor on the …
Medicare Plans’ ‘Free’ Dental, Vision, Hearing Benefits Come at a Cost
When Teresa Nolan Barensfeld turned 65 last year, she quickly decided on a private Medicare Advantage plan to cover her health expenses. Barensfeld, a freelance editor from Chatham, New York, liked that it covered her medications, while her local hospitals and her primary care doctor were in the plan’s network. It also had a modest …
Pharma Campaign Cash Delivered to Key Lawmakers With Surgical Precision
The Biden administration and Congress are embroiled in high-stakes haggling over what urgent priorities will make it into the ever-shrinking social spending bill. But for the pharmaceutical industry there is one agenda: Heading off Medicare drug price negotiation, which it considers an existential threat to its business model. The siren call to contain rising drug …
Pharma Cash to Congress
Every year, pharmaceutical companies contribute millions of dollars to U.S. senators and representatives as part of a multipronged effort to influence health care lawmaking and spending priorities. Use this tool to explore the sizable role drugmakers play in the campaign finance system, where many industries seek to influence Congress. Discover which lawmakers rake in the …
Tiny Love Stories: ‘At the Halloween Party, Anxious to Go Home’
Modern Love in miniature, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words.