The United States now has more than 14,000 cases of monkeypox – more than any other country in the world. The JYNNEOS vaccine was approved by the FDA in 2019, but our domestic supply is falling way short of demand. Last week, the FDA authorized a new dosing strategy, and that means what was a single dose may now be stretched to five. That's possible because of a different way of injecting the medication. Local health officials, though, say three or four doses per vial is more realistic.
One day not long ago, Terri Logan got some bright yellow envelopes in the mail. The letters said that her medical debt – from the premature birth of her daughter twelve years before– had been erased. It sounds like something out of a dream, but Logan’s debt was paid off by a very real non-profit called RIP Medical Debt. The organization, founded by two former debt collectors, buys up debt on secondary markets — where hospitals sell debt to collection companies. As NPR and KHN have reported, more than half of U.S. adults say they've gone into debt in the past five years because of medical or dental bills.
RIP CEO Allison Sesso says hospitals should do more to prevent patients from being saddled with debt in the first place. "We prefer the hospitals reduce the need for our work at the back end," she says. "I would say hospitals are open to feedback, but they also are a little bit blind to just how poorly some of their financial assistance approaches are working out." To date, RIP has paid off debts for 3.6 million people.
Mandatory vasectomies? Building clinics that would provide abortions on Native American reservations? In the two months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, social media platforms have filled with suggestions on how to prevent or manage unwanted pregnancies. But these ideas have set off alarm bells for experts, like a historian studying vasectomies, and a scholar of Indian law and public health law, who both spoke with NPR.
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