Healthcare

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as the new secretary of Health and Human Services, is the nation’s de facto healthcare czar. He will have influence over numerous highly visible agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, among others. Given that healthcare is something that touches everyone’s life, his footprint of influence will be expansive. 

Health insurance has become necessary, with large and unpredictable health care costs always looming before each of us. Unfortunately, the majority of people have experienced problems when using their health insurance to pay for their medical care. Health insurance serves as the buffer between patients and the medical care system, using population pooling to mitigate the risk exposure on any one individual.

New findings from a team of renowned researchers calls for transparency and rigorous oversight of the U.S. Medicare Advantage (MA) program, the United States' largest healthcare capitation program.

Mpox is spreading across several African countries. The World Health Organization declared mpox a “public health emergency of international concern.” The Democratic Republic of Congo has been hardest hit, though Burundi has also seen a recent surge of cases. To date this year, 36,000 suspected cases have been reported, with more than one-half among children younger than 15 years old. In Burundi alone, two-thirds of the recent cases have been in those younger than 19.

Health plans can help rural and underserved areas by giving people more coverage options. They can improve telehealth services to make it easier to receive care from afar and increase reimbursement rates for rural health care providers. To improve access and outcomes in rural areas, insurers can also support mobile and rural health clinics and offer rural-focused health plans.

WEDNESDAY, July 24, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Black Americans are almost a third more likely to die from colon cancer than their white peers, and one key to closing that divide could be better cancer screening, a new report finds.

New machine learning model helps doctors analyze EEG charts, aiding the detection of seizures in unconscious patients

Will the threats associated with artificial intelligence be as bad as some fear? Or will AI be relatively benign? Could the answer be somewhere in between?

There is something different about the current moment in artificial intelligence. New capabilities are emerging rapidly due to advances in computing, algorithmic development, and access to vast amounts of data. The change feels real.