Health Care
U.S. House GOP takes aim at fake pills containing deadly fentanyl sold on social media
WASHINGTON — On a June 2020 morning, Amy Neville entered her son’s bedroom to wake him for an orthodontist appointment. Fourteen-year-old Alex didn’t wake up. He died of fentanyl poisoning after taking a counterfeit pill he bought from someone he met on Snapchat, Neville told GOP lawmakers Wednesday during a roundtable discussion of the role […]
How are Wisconsin women doing under the 1849 abortion ban?
The national Women’s March chose Wisconsin as the location for a massive abortion-rights rally on Sunday, the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, for good reason. Our state, where a draconian 1849 abortion ban rose from the grave after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe, is at the center of the battle for abortion rights. […]
Federal judge could decide as soon as February to yank abortion pill nationwide
WASHINGTON — A Texas judge could decide as soon as next month whether to force the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to pull its two-decade-old approval of the abortion pill, which accounts for more than half of pregnancy terminations in the United States. A nationwide injunction in the case, as requested by anti-abortion groups, would […]
What I learned from my mom
In January 1995 my mother, Elaine Benz, sent me a newspaper clipping of a letter she had written to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal. She was 70 at the time. I’m pretty sure it was the only one she ever wrote. It was a response to another letter writer who had opined that anyone […]
Wisconsin Supreme Court hears arguments in case over right to take ivermectin
The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case over a COVID-19 patient’s legal right to force a hospital to ignore its own protocols and provide a widely discredited and ineffective treatment. On Sept 19, 2021, Waukesha County resident John Zingsheim was admitted to Aurora Medical Center-Summit after being diagnosed with COVID-19 three […]
Rural seniors benefit from pandemic-driven remote fitness boom
MALMO, Minn. — Eight women, all 73 or older, paced the fellowship hall at Malmo Evangelical Free Church to a rendition of Daniel O’Donnell’s “Rivers of Babylon” as they warmed up for an hourlong fitness class. The women, who live near or on the eastern shore of Mille Lacs Lake, had a variety of reasons […]
After tuition, books, room and board, colleges’ rising health fees hit a nerve
You’ve compared tuition. Reviewed on-campus housing costs. Even digested student meal plan prices. But have you thought about how much your son’s or daughter’s dream school will charge for health coverage? You might be in for a shock. Hawley Montgomery-Downs was thrilled when daughter Bryn Tronco earned a scholarship that pays half the $63,000 annual […]
Squeezed by temp nurse costs, hospital systems create their own staffing agencies
Like many nurses these days, Alex Scala got a big pay hike when she switched jobs recently. Scala also received a welcome mix of assignments when she joined Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network. She signed on with a newly created team that works shifts in various units within the system’s 14 hospitals. After working as a […]
ER doctors call private equity staffing practices illegal, seek to ban them
A group of emergency physicians and consumer advocates in multiple states are pushing for stiffer enforcement of decades-old statutes that prohibit the ownership of medical practices by corporations not owned by licensed doctors. Thirty-three states plus the District of Columbia have rules on their books against the so-called corporate practice of medicine. But over the […]
Milwaukee hospital’s plan to close labor and delivery unit comes under fire
A hospital on Milwaukee’s South Side is scheduled to end its labor and delivery services Wednesday, laying off about 20 employees and requiring expectant parents who live in that part of the city to travel farther to give birth. With that action by Ascension St. Francis Hospital, “there will be no labor and delivery services […]
Wisconsin advocates urge Congress to pass maternal health policies
Wisconsin state Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) alongside other advocates urged Congress to pass maternal health care provisions in the year-end omnibus bill during a Friday press conference. The U.S. Senate approved a one week stopgap measure on Thursday, funding the government until Dec. 23. Advocates are using the additional negotiation time as a last chance […]
Report criticizes counties that continue to claw back Medicaid birth costs
Despite campaigns to end the practice, Wisconsin counties continue to take some unmarried parents to court to repay the cost of their children’s births covered by Medicaid, according to a new report published Wednesday. The report, produced by ABC for Health, states that altogether Wisconsin counties have won legal judgments declaring that unmarried parents owed […]