ElderPlus, a day-care program for adults in Baltimore, is part of the Program for All-Inclusive Care for Elderly (PACE), which provides comprehensive medical and social services to frail, low-income seniors with serious health problems. (Renato Perez/Kaiser Health News)
Related Story: Innovative Day-Care Program Seeks To Keep Frail, Low-Income Seniors In Their Homes
Topics: Politics, Health Reform
As emotions run high over the new health law, older voters’ concerns about Medicare cuts could be a deciding factor in Florida’s 2nd Congressional District. Reporter Marilyn Werber Serafini travelled to north Florida to talk with seniors and discovered some angry voters, including one woman who changed political parties because she doesn’t like the Democrats’ health law.
Related Content:
-- Main Story: Some Hill Races Could Hinge On Seniors' Anger Over Medicare
-- Republican’s Controversial Proposal To Mend Medicare
Topics: Insurance, Medicaid, Uninsured
Many homeless people are uninsured and ineligible for Medicaid. But that will change beginning in 2014, when Medicaid greatly expands under the new health law. Kevin Lindamood, vice president for external affairs at Health Care for the Homeless in Baltimore, is hopeful that additional Medicaid funding will allow the center to provide more care and help expand its efforts to find housing and jobs for clients.
Related Story: New Law Offers Hope For Homeless Health Care
Topics: Delivery of Care
Dr. Dennis M. Dimitri, a family physician, runs an unusual office. Few appointments are accepted in advance - patients call in the morning and are assigned a time slot later that day and they don’t have to spend hours in a waiting room. Dimitri made the change to "open access" appointments four years ago because he wanted a way to accommodate patients without squeezing their schedules – or his own.
Related Article: Tired Of Waiting For the Doctor? Try One That Gives Same-Day Appointments
Topics: Medicaid, States, Uninsured
New Orleans has one of the most aggressive and successful efforts in the nation to reach children who are eligible for government health insurance programs — Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The Walkers/Talkers program sends workers into the poorest neighborhoods to knock on doors in search of uninsured children and then helps sign them up. Since its inception, the program has enrolled more than 7,000 kids.
Topics: Aging
Caring for a sick or disabled elderly relative exacts a toll -- physical, emotional, financial -- on any family member, but being a spousal caregiver brings particular challenges. Today's longer life spans, in which once-fatal conditions such as heart disease have become manageable, mean that the "sickness" part of "in sickness and in health" can last for many years. Eighty-eight year old Bob Treanor, of Maryland, took care of his wife Ruth for more than 5 years.
Related Article: Spouses Face Hurdles When Caring For Themselves, Ill Loved Ones
Topics: Delivery of Care, Health Costs
At the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, students get hands-on lessons about the impact of treatment costs on patients by volunteering Saturdays at the East Harlem Health Outreach Program, a student-run free clinic for uninsured residents of a low-income neighborhood nearby.
Related Articles: Teaching Doctors The Price Of Care | Using High Tech To Lower Health Costs
Topics: Health Costs, Insurance
Cancer patient Jere Carpentier would prefer taking a pill to having intravenous chemotherapy in a doctor’s office. But she – and other people like her – are being denied access to newer oral chemotherapy drugs or are required to shoulder hefty out-of-pocket costs. The problem? The IV treatments are covered under a patient’s medical plan but the pills are paid for by a patient's drug plan, which tends to be far less generous. (Producer: Renato Perez)
Related Article: A Bitter Pill To Swallow
Topics: Medicaid, Delivery of Care
Former physical education teacher Andrew Jones, who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, spent five years in nursing homes in Georgia and Connecticut. The 56-year-old was able to move out of the nursing home system in 2009 with the help of a federally-funded state program, known as "Money Follows the Person." He gets help to live in his own place, and the state saves money on nursing home costs. (Producer: Renato Perez)
Read Related Story: Despite Federal Help, States Struggle To Move People Out Of Nursing Homes
Topics: Insurance, Health Costs
A Virginia family got permission for out-of-network care for their son's heart defect but still ended up drowning in debt.
Read full story
Topics: Delivery of Care, Health Disparities
Family nurse practitioner Beverly May, of the Kentucky Mountain Health Alliance, treats many patients with chronic diseases. She says the typical patient hasn't had any care for years, and that every week, people walk in who have no idea they have serious health problems.
Read Related Article
Related Videos: Gerry Roll | Annie Fox | Cathy Nance
Gerry Roll helped organize Hazard-Perry County Community Ministries, which - despite its name - has no religious mission. She says people don't understand the problems in southeastern Kentucky: "You can get whatever you need as far as traditional medical care goes. Yet we have the highest levels of chronic disease in the nation. So when I hear people talking about access to health care being a problem, I am livid."
Related Videos: Beverly May | Annie Fox | Cathy Nance
Health care has to be looked at in context, according to Annie Fox and Teana Burns of "Harlan Countians for a Healthy Community" in Kentucky. Fox says: "We still have issues in rural America with sanitation, potable water, electricity. Until you deal with those things, you're always going to have health care issues."
Related Videos: Gerry Roll | Beverly May | Cathy Nance
Six years ago, Cathy Nance had to have open heart surgery. Later, she had kidney cancer. Because of poor health and inability to work, she became homeless, until she was helped by Harlan Countians for a Healthy Community, in Kentucky. "I worked all my life. If anyone had told me that later on I would be in the shape I was in, I wouldn't have believed it," she confesses. "So it can happen before you know it."
Related Videos: Gerry Roll | Beverly May | Annie Fox
Topics: Medicare, Health Costs
Seventy-six year old Frank Morrow is not only having his knee replaced at Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He's also helping to test a Medicare payment system. Under the "bundled" approach, Medicare makes a single reimbursement for all the hospital and doctor care for heart and joint procedures, rather than making separate payments to the facility and physicians.
It's a win-win-win proposition: The hospital gets guaranteed customers, Medicare saves 4.4% on procedures and Frank Morrow gets $271 as an incentive for going to a hospital that participates in the program.
Producer: Renato Perez
Related Article
Topics: Uninsured, Health Reform
Fernando Arriola, 58, had full health coverage for years at his former job, but since starting his own contracting business, there are no affordable coverage options for him and his wife. Part of our special series produced in partnership with NPR: Are You Covered? A Look at Americans and Health Insurance.
Read Related Story | How Health Overhaul Would Affect The Uninsured
Topics: Medicare
Seventy-one year old Audrey Bernfield is one of the 45 million people on Medicare, the government health insurance program for the disabled and those over 65. Like most beneficiaries, she is very satisfied with her coverage.
Medicare Makes Patients Happy, But Can It Last? | Medicare Coverage Explained
Topics: Insurance, Health Reform
Mitch Stabbe and Marjorie Goldman treasure their "Cadillac" plan health insurance, even though it costs more than $20,000 in premiums per year. Their son, Bryan, has Crohn's disease, which means very expensive treatments.
Read Related Story | 'Cadillac' Insurance Plans Explained
Deb and Rusty Lovell are not the kind of people you would expect to have "gold-plated" health insurance. Deb works at a community college and earns a little over $30,000 a year. But the health benefits she gets from the New Hampshire government has made a huge difference in their lives.
Journalist and author T.R. Reid traveled the world in search of a better health care system -- and help for his sore shoulder. He talks about his journey in a new book -- The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care -- with KHN's Laurie McGinley.
Podcast (mp3) or Read Transcript
KHN's Eric Pianin talks with author and former New York Times congressional correspondent Adam Clymer about the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and his legacy of federal health care legislation and reform.
Podcast (mp3) or Read the Transcript
Jackie Judd talks with KHN's Jordan Rau about the advertising blizzard surrounding the health care debate. Tens of millions of dollars have already been spent supporting and attacking efforts by President Barack Obama and Congress to overhaul the nation's medical system, with the ads running in the capital and the districts of key lawmakers.
Read Transcript
Topics: Health Disparities, Delivery of Care, Health Reform, Insurance
As the economy has worsened, community health centers - which provide free and reduced-cost care to millions of Americans - have felt the pinch . Facilities, such as the Walker-Jones Health Center in Washington D.C., will have even more patients if Congress passes a health overhaul that expands coverage.
Topics: Health Reform
Donna Smith is a cancer survivor whose personal experience with insurance has driven her to become a full-time advocate for a single-payer health system, which would replace private insurers with a single, tax-funded government program.
Read Rick Schmitt's story: True Believers: Selling a Single-Payer System, Despite a Lack of Buyers
Video Produced by Renato Perez
Topics: Insurance, Health Costs, Delivery of Care
When people in Floyd County, Va., visit Dr. Susan Osborne, they can pay for their medicals exam with vegetables, lessons, carpentry services as well as cash. Bartering is a way of life in the rural area, Dr. Osborne says: "It just gives people another avenue to have health care."
Produced by Liz Langton