Past Articles by Sarah Varney
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Texas Medicaid Debate Complicated By Politics And Poverty In Texas, it may be politically unwise to cross the governor, but some politicians and advocates in the poor Rio Grande Valley are starting to speak out in support of expanding Medicaid. Gov. Rick Perry opposes all parts of Obamacare. |
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Texas Medicaid Debate Complicated By Politics And Poverty In Texas, it may be politically unwise to cross the governor, but some politicians and advocates in the poor Rio Grande Valley are starting to speak out in support of expanding Medicaid. Gov. Rick Perry opposes all parts of Obamacare. |
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Texas Medicaid Debate Complicated By Politics And Poverty In Texas, it may be politically unwise to cross the governor, but some politicians and advocates in the poor Rio Grande Valley are starting to speak out in support of expanding Medicaid. Gov. Rick Perry opposes all parts of Obamacare. |
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Texas Medicaid Debate Complicated By Politics And Poverty In Texas, it may be politically unwise to cross the governor, but some politicians and advocates in the poor Rio Grande Valley are starting to speak out in support of expanding Medicaid. Gov. Rick Perry opposes all parts of Obamacare. |
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Texas Medicaid Debate Complicated By Politics And Poverty In Texas, it may be politically unwise to cross the governor, but some politicians and advocates in the poor Rio Grande Valley are starting to speak out in support of expanding Medicaid. Gov. Rick Perry opposes all parts of Obamacare. |
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Latest Health Hurdle: Buying Insurance Without A Bank Account Most health plans accept a credit card for the first month's premium and then require customers to pay monthly with a check or an electronic transfer from a bank account. For people without a banking relationship, these transactions can be tricky. |
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Latest Health Hurdle: Buying Insurance Without A Bank Account Most health plans accept a credit card for the first month's premium and then require customers to pay monthly with a check or an electronic transfer from a bank account. For people without a banking relationship, these transactions can be tricky. |
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Arizona Seeks To Balance Patients And Profits With Home Care Can for-profit insurers save money while providing proper care for some of the sickest patients? For years, Arizona, a state that doesn't often champion government programs, has been enlisting private companies to manage the care for people eligible for both Medicare and Medicare. |
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Arizona Seeks To Balance Patients And Profits With Home Care Can for-profit insurers save money while providing proper care for some of the sickest patients? For years, Arizona, a state that doesn't often champion government programs, has been enlisting private companies to manage the care for people eligible for both Medicare and Medicare. |
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Obama's Plans For Guns Put Focus On Mental Health Of The Young The president's push to address gun violence and mental health centers largely on training teachers and others who work with children, teens and young adults to recognize illness as it's developing. |
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Obama's Plans For Guns Put Focus On Mental Health Of The Young The president's push to address gun violence and mental health centers largely on training teachers and others who work with children, teens and young adults to recognize illness as it's developing. |
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Obama's Gun Plan Welcomed By Mental Health Advocates While many of the proposals President Obama unveiled Wednesday focused on toughening gun laws, they also included efforts to address the nation's fragmented and porous mental health system. |
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For Families Of Medicare Recipients, Insurance Choices Are Tricky When a relative signs up for Medicare, it is often perplexing - and unnerving - for the rest of the family who may have grown used to cushy employer-sponsored coverage. |
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Health Law Gives Medicare Fraud Fighters New Weapons Criminals who defraud public health care programs to the tune of billions of dollars a year are now up against sophisticated computer systems designed to catch them. But the new efforts may yield far more leads than the current team of investigators and analysts can handle. |
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Why Isn't Kaiser Permanente Cheaper? Kaiser Permanente, the California-based managed care consortium, is touted as a model for saving money in the health care system. But they are not as inexpensive as they used to be. |
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Calif.'s Prescription-Drug Monitoring System Feels Pain From Budget Cuts Dozens of states electronically track the prescriptions for powerful narcotics like Vicodin and OxyContin to root out pill-shopping patients and unscrupulous doctors. But in California, a relentless budget crisis is threatening that system and causing deep concern among doctors and law enforcement. |
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In Conservative California, Confusion And Contempt For Health Law The uninsured have a particular stake in next week's Supreme Court hearings on the federal health law. Residents of a largely conservative region in California where 1 out of every 3 people lack coverage share their attitudes toward "Obamacare." |
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Medical Innovations Can Come At A Cost Sometimes medical technology expands where it's not necessarily needed. It may drive up the price hospitals charge insurance companies, who in turn raise premiums. |
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Forget The Robots: Venture Capitalists Change Their Health Care Investments As biotech investments and medical device development falters, hospitals are turning to other avenues to help cut costs: streamlining billing systems and investing in simpler medical products. |
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Why Millions Of Prescriptions Will No Longer Be Filled At Walgreens Starting this year, many Americans may be surprised to find that their local Walgreens or Duane Reade is no longer in their insurance network. That's because of a dispute between two health care giants. If the back of your insurance card says Express Scripts, you are affected. |
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County-Run Health Plans Seek To Expand In Calif. The so-called public option may have died when Congress passed its health overhaul law in 2009, but it is alive and healthy in California. There, many counties have government-run health plans that people can buy. Now the debate is over what will happen to these plans when the federal overhaul law kicks in in 2014. |
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French Lessons: Why Letting Kids Drink At Home Isn't Tres Bien Growing evidence suggests that kids who are allowed to drink in the home are at greater risk of developing alcohol-related problems. That's unwelcome news in France, a nation known for its love of wine that's now grappling with a binge-drinking problem among teens. |
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French Lessons: Why Letting Kids Drink At Home Isn't 'Tres Bien' Growing evidence suggests that kids who are allowed to drink in the home are at greater risk of developing alcohol-related problems. That's unwelcome news in France, a nation known for its love of wine that's now grappling with a binge-drinking problem among teens. |
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Fighting Childhood Obesity: It's A Family Affair A Northern California program offers a model for how parents can work with their kids to lose weight and keep it off. The approach is remarkably straight forward - and successful. |
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California Republicans Quietly Embrace Medicaid Expansion Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the No. 3 Republican in the House, has made it clear that he wants President Obama's health overhaul law repealed. But conservative lawmakers in his hometown of Bakersfield, Calif., and elsewhere in the state are expanding insurance coverage for low-income adults. |
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Calif. Medicaid Expansion: A Lifeline For Ex-Convicts At least half a million people are expected to get health care benefits in an expansion of California's Medicaid program, including many former prison inmates. Many ex-offenders will now be covered for care, including mental health and substance abuse - problems that, when left untreated, can lead them right back behind bars. |
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Sleep-Deprived New Parents Don't Have To Hit The (Sleeping Pill) Bottle Parents often think poor sleep is their cross to bear, but night after night, it can lead to a permanent sleep disorder, especially for mothers, sleep researchers say. One sleep researcher says there are a lot of alternatives to medication to solve the problem. |
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Egalite For Bebe? France's Free Child Clinics At Risk In France, public health clinics have offered free services for all parents and kids, including vaccinations and classes on healthy nutrition, since 1945. The system has been credited with getting French children off to a remarkably healthy start. Now it's being threatened by economic woes and immigration pressures. |
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L.A. Works To Get Mental Help For Young Offenders It used to be that troubled kids who ran afoul of the law just ended up in juvenile hall, where they found little help for their psychological problems. But slowly that attitude has been changing. In Los Angeles, the changes in efforts to identify and treat troubled youth are fitful and imperfect, but promising. |
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Hospitals Face New Pressure To Cut Infection Rates New laws and Medicare rules call on hospitals to report infections. Some, like Pacific Hospital in California, have already managed to bring rates way down. Pacific's efforts have caught the attention of competitors and potential customers. And they've become a source of pride for its employees. |
