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☆ Honeybees Invaded My House, and No One Would Help
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-30 | by ( Sarah Kliff | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Responding to fears of a “honeybee collapse,” 30 states have passed laws to protect the pollinators. But when they invaded my house, I learned that the honeybees didn’t need saving. I noticed the first bee one afternoon as my dog gleefully chased it around the house. When the pest settled on a window by the stairwell, I swatted it with a cookbook and cleaned up the mess. When I heard a loud droning coming from inside a wall next to my son’s bed, the ominous situation finally hit me: The house was infested.

☆ Paying Off People’s Medical Debt Has Little Impact on Their Lives, Study Finds
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-08 | by ( Sarah Kliff | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Medical Debt has grown from a tiny nonprofit group that received less than $3,000 in donations to a multimillion-dollar force in health care philanthropy. Medical Debt estimates that it has eliminated more than $11 billion of debt with the help of major donations from philanthropists and even city governments. But a study published by a group of economists on Monday calls into question the premise of the high-profile charity. After following 213,000 people who were in debt and randomly selecting some to work with the nonprofit group, the researchers found that debt relief did not improve the mental health or the credit scores of debtors, on average. And those whose bills had been paid were just as likely to forgo medical care as those whose bills were left unpaid.

Persons: Eric Adams Organizations: New York City’s Locations: R.I.P, New York

☆ Major Embryo Shipping Company Halts Business in Alabama
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-23 | by ( Sarah Kliff | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Cryoport, a major embryo shipping company, said on Friday that it was “pausing” its business in Alabama as it evaluated the state’s Supreme Court decision that declared frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization to be children. “Until the company has further clarity on the decision and what it means for Cryoport, clinics and intended parents, it is pausing all activity in Alabama until further notice,” read an email received by an Alabama fertility clinic and shared with The New York Times. The Alabama court’s ruling has already significantly limited fertility treatment for patients in that state. Three clinics have paused care as they evaluate what the ruling means for their patients and their own legal liability. It found that clinics could be held liable for wrongful death claims, bringing new gravity to accidents that are not uncommon in fertility treatment.

Persons: ”, Cryoport Organizations: The New York Times Locations: Alabama, Mobile

☆ Fertility Clinic Errors Collide With a Redefinition of ‘Personhood’
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-22 | by ( Azeen Ghorayshi | Sarah Kliff | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

To the fertility patients whose embryos were destroyed at an Alabama clinic, the circumstances must have been shocking. The bizarre incident was at the center of lawsuits filed by three families that eventually reached the Alabama Supreme Court. On Friday, a panel of judges ruled that the embryos destroyed at the clinic should be considered children under state law, a decision that sent shock waves through the fertility industry and raised urgent questions about how treatments could possibly proceed in the state. Yet the accident in the Alabama clinic echoes a pattern of serious errors that happen all too frequently during fertility treatment, a rapidly growing industry with little government oversight, experts say. From January 2009 through April 2019, patients brought more than 130 lawsuits over destroyed embryos, including cases where embryos were lost, mishandled or stored in freezer tanks that broke down.

Persons: ” Locations: Alabama

☆ Botched IVF Liquid Destroyed Embryos, Lawsuits Claim
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-15 | by ( Sarah Kliff | Azeen Ghorayshi | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

CooperSurgical, a major medical supply company, is facing a wave of lawsuits from patients who claim that one of its products destroyed embryos created with in vitro fertilization. Fertility clinics across the world used the product, a nutrient-rich liquid that helps fertilized eggs develop into embryos. This week federal regulators made public that the company had recalled three lots of the liquid, which was used by clinics in November and December. Collectively, the patients say they lost more than 100 embryos that had bathed in the defective product, known as culture media. The plaintiffs claim that the three batches of media were missing a key nutrient, magnesium, a defect that stopped their embryos from developing and rendered them unusable.

Locations: Virginia, United States

☆ Staggering Rise in Catheter Bills Suggests Medicare Scam
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-09 | by ( Sarah Kliff | Katie Thomas | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Linda Hennis was checking her Medicare statement in January when she noticed something strange: It said a company she had never heard of had been paid about $12,000 for sending her 2,000 urinary catheters. But she had never needed, or received, any catheters. The report used a federal database of Medicare claims that is available to researchers. Doctors, state insurance departments and health care groups around the country said the spike in claims for catheters that were never delivered suggested a far-reaching Medicare scam. “We think it’s outrageous,” said Clif Gaus, executive director of the group that conducted the analysis.

Persons: Linda Hennis, Hennis, “, Ms, ”, Clif Gaus Organizations: Boutique, National Association of, Care Locations: Chicago, Texas

☆ How a Lucrative Surgery Took Off Online and Disfigured Patients
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-30 | by ( Sarah Kliff | Katie Thomas | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“I was afraid it would burst,” said Ms. Hudson, 74, a retired airport baggage screener in Ocala, Fla. The painful protrusion was the result of a surgery gone wrong, according to medical records from two doctors she later saw. One of the doctors she saw later, a leading hernia expert at the Cleveland Clinic, doubted that Ms. Hudson had even needed the surgery. Ms. Hudson’s original tear, which was about two inches, could have been patched with stitches and mesh, the surgeon believed. And that figure is a fraction of the actual number, researchers said, because most hernia patients are too young to be covered by Medicare.

Persons: Peggy Hudson’s, ”, Hudson Organizations: Cleveland Clinic, Medicare Locations: Ocala, Fla

Nonprofit hospitals like Allina get massive tax breaks in exchange for providing care for the poorest, most vulnerable people in their communities. Allina Health owns 13 hospitals and more than 90 clinics in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Its nonprofit status enabled Allina to avoid roughly $266 million in state, local and federal taxes in 2020, according to the Lown Institute, a think tank that studies health care. But the federal rules are silent on how poor patients need to be to qualify for free care. “The industry needs to tell people they might be eligible for charity care,” Mr. Ellison said.

Persons: Allina, Ge Bai, Mr, Ellison, ” Organizations: The Times, Allina Health, Lown Institute, Internal Revenue Service, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Locations: Minnesota, Wisconsin

☆ Obamacare Mandate for Preventive Care Is Restored, for Now
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-12 | by ( Sarah Kliff | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Lawyers reached a deal on Monday to keep the Affordable Care Act’s mandate requiring health plans to cover preventive care at no cost to patients. A district court in Texas ruled in March that part of the requirement was unconstitutional. The decision took effect immediately, meaning insurers no longer had to cover certain types of preventive care, including a pill to prevent the spread of H.I.V. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily stayed the ruling last month, bringing the health law’s provision back into effect. The deal they reached leaves the provision almost fully in tact, requiring a vast majority of health plans to continue providing preventive care at no charge.

Persons: —, Biden Organizations: Fifth Circuit Locations: Texas

☆ Nonprofit Health System Pauses Policy of Cutting Off Care for Patients in Debt
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Sarah Kliff | Jessica Silver-Greenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Allina Health, a large nonprofit health system based in Minnesota, announced on Friday that it would stop withholding care from patients with outstanding medical debt as it “re-examines” its policy of cutting off services for those who have accrued at least $4,500 in outstanding bills. The health system will now temporarily halt this practice but will not restore care for indebted patients who have already lost access. Although Allina’s hospitals treated anyone in emergency rooms, other services were cut off for indebted patients, including children and those with chronic illnesses like diabetes and depression, The New York Times reported last week. Patients weren’t allowed back until they had paid off their debt entirely. Allina’s chief executive, Lisa Shannon, called the move a “thoughtful pause” while the company re-examined the policy.

Persons: “, weren’t, Lisa Shannon Organizations: New York Times Locations: Minnesota

☆ This Nonprofit Health System Cuts Off Patients With Medical Debt
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Sarah Kliff | Jessica Silver-Greenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Nonprofit hospitals like Allina get enormous tax breaks in exchange for providing care for the poorest people in their communities. Allina has an explicit policy for cutting off patients who owe money for services they received at the health system’s 90 clinics. A 12-page document reviewed by The Times instructs Allina’s staff on how to cancel appointments for patients with at least $4,500 of unpaid debt. The hospital system cuts off patients only if they have racked up at least $1,500 of unpaid debt three separate times. “Allina Health’s goal is, and will always be, to have zero patients go without services for financial reasons,” Ms. Bergerson said.

Persons: Allina, Allina’s, ”, Matt Hoffman, Conny Bergerson, “ Allina, Ms, Bergerson Organizations: New York Times, The Times Locations: Vadnais Heights, Minn

☆ Unwanted Epidurals, Untreated Pain: Black Women Tell Their Birth Stories
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( Claire Cain Miller | Sarah Kliff | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When the doctors and nurses gave her medications or took her blood, she said, they gave her minimal explanation. Her career in marketing didn’t make a difference in how doctors and nurses saw them, she said, nor did his doctoral degree. Earning more and being well educated generally doesn’t protect Black mothers during childbirth the same way it protects white mothers. A new study of a decade of births in California, published this year, found that the richest Black mothers and their babies were twice as likely to die from childbirth as the richest white mothers and their babies. In interviews with Black women who responded to a request from The New York Times to share their birth stories, they described having their pain dismissed, concerns ignored and plans disregarded while giving birth.

The richest Black mothers and their babies are twice as likely to die as the richest white mothers and their babies. Yet there is one group that doesn’t gain the same protection from being rich, the study finds: Black mothers and babies. The researchers found that maternal mortality rates were just as high among the highest-income Black women as among low-income white women. The richest Black women have infant mortality rates at about the same level as the poorest white women. Generally, rates for Hispanic mothers and Asian mothers track more closely with those of white mothers than Black mothers.

☆ NYU's emergency room gave special treatment to donors and VIPs including Chuck Schumer, report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Sarah Braner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The New York Times reports NYU Langone gave "VIPs" like donors and trustees preferential treatment. NYU Langone broadly denied the claims in a statement to Insider. Langone told the Times that he never asked for or was offered special treatment. Ambulance workers who brought these patients to NYU Langone were sometimes pressured to take them elsewhere, the report says. New York Senator Chuck Schumer once went into Room 20 with his wife, who was experiencing shortness of breath, the Times reported.

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