Opinion | AI Offers Hope for Those With Alzheimer’s Disease
According to the CDC, as of 2020, approximately 5.8 million people in the U.S. were living with Alzheimer’s disease. The prevalence of this disease is expected to continue to rise as the population ages. The number of people living with the disease is projected to grow three-fold, to 14 million, by 2060. While there is […]
You Might Want To Change How You’re Doing At-Home COVID Tests
By now, you’ve probably read a million articles and instructions on the proper way to swab with an at-home COVID-19 test. You typically need to put the soft end of the swab about half an inch into your nose, swirl it around each nostril for roughly 15 seconds, mix it with some liquid, and let […]
Doc Moms, Mind the Gap — $3M Earning Difference by Sex
During a 40-year career, the average female physician with children made $3 million less than the average male physician with children — nearly double the male-female earnings gap experienced by single physicians, according to a national study of 95,000 physicians. In a cross-sectional analysis of surveys conducted from 2005 to 2019, female physicians earned as […]
Millions of People Could Lose Medicaid Starting in April
Due to pandemic-related continuous enrollment provisions, Medicaid rosters surged to over 90 million enrollees. On April 1, for the first time in 3 years, states will begin unwinding those provisions and disenrolling individuals no longer eligible for the program. While a majority of states have taken numerous steps to prevent those still eligible for coverage […]
20M People Worldwide Received HIV Treatment Through U.S.-Led Program
Approximately 20 million people with HIV in 54 countries have received antiretroviral therapy (ART) through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) as of September 2022, the CDC reported. This represents an increase of 300-fold from the 66,550 reported in September 2004, according to Helen M. Chun, MD, of the Division for Global […]
Medicare Advantage Plans Fielded 35 Million Prior Auth Requests in 2021
Over 35 million prior authorization requests were submitted to Medicare Advantage insurers in 2021, according to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). Two million of these requests, or 6%, were fully or partly denied, according to Jeannie Fuglesten Biniek, PhD, associate director of the Program on Medicare Policy, and Nolan Sroczynski, MSPH, […]
Affordable Care Act Enrollment Just Hit A New Record High
More than 16 million Americans have signed up for insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, setting a new record, the Biden administration announced on Wednesday. The private plans at HealthCare.gov and state-run marketplaces like Covered California are designed for people who can’t get affordable coverage through an employer and whose incomes are too high […]
Opinion | Questioning Medical Traditions
The U.S. consumes about 46 million turkeys every Thanksgiving. Have you ever wondered why? When traditions take hold in society, we start to forget why they existed in the first place. For example, the tradition of eating turkey on Thanksgiving started with a writer named Sarah Josepha Hale, who published scenic depictions of American life […]
Should You Still Get The Flu Shot Even If You’ve Already Had The Flu?
In the United States, an estimated 9 to 41 million people are infected each year with influenza, commonly known as the flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, flu cases were low. Precautions like masking and social distancing were likely responsible for the decline in […]
Women Describe The ‘Extreme’ Physical Pain Of Endometriosis
An estimated 6.5 million people in the United States have endometriosis, a painful condition in which the uterine lining spreads and grows outside of the uterus. But that statistic likely vastly underestimates the prevalence of endometriosis because it’s notoriously difficult to diagnose. Many of the symptoms ― which range from painful, heavy periods and painful […]