Tag Archives: Health Care
American Health Care is Broken, Especially in Texas. What Can We Do About It?
Physician Marty Makary’s new book shows how sky-high medical bills can ruin patients’ lives—but puts the burden on individuals to demand change.
Add yet another first place health care ranking no one wants for Texas: We have the highest hospital bills in the country. A new study has found that Texas pr...Read More
Warning Signs
Rural East Texas has some of the highest suicide rates in the state. But the safety net for people who need help is being stretched thin, and some Texans are falling through.
Rural East Texas has some of the highest suicide rates in the state. But the safety net for people who need help is being stretched thin, and some Texans are fa...Read More
‘Breakthrough’ Chronicles Nobel Prize Winner Jim Allison’s Long Fight for Science
Forty years after the immunologist testified at the Texas Legislature in favor of teaching evolution, state leaders are still debating its inclusion in school curriculums.
Nobel Prize winner Jim Allison is used to being considered something of a troublemaker. When he was a kid growing up in small-town Alice, Texas, he battled with...Read More
‘How Can You Do This to People?’: After Rural Hospitals Close in Milam County, Residents Scramble to Find Care
Little River Healthcare shuttered two Milam County hospitals after falling on hard financial times. Now residents are struggling to find care.
Shan Wilson’s surgery will have to wait. The 64-year-old retired Marine was scheduled to have his prostate removed in early January at the only hospital in Ro...Read More
Struggling Rural Hospitals Say They’re Being Preyed Upon by Blue Cross Blue Shield
Hospital administrators throughout Texas say the insurance company is using “strong-arm” tactics to push unfavorable contracts.
It’s hard to keep a hospital running in Iraan, a dusty community of 1,229 people in the middle of the West Texas oil patch. In the 2017 fiscal year, Iraan Gen...Read More
Tinkering with the Human Heart in ‘Ticker’
Set in Houston, Mimi Swartz’s new book delivers an engrossing human drama populated with off-kilter geniuses.
Early in Mimi Swartz’s fascinating Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart, a surgeon with no good options left cuts out a sheep’s heart and...Read More
A Timely, Enraging Documentary Humanizes the Rape Kit Backlog Crisis
Texas lawmakers have turned to crowdfunding to test rape kits, absent adequate state funding.
In 1996, just days after her 17th birthday, Helena was abducted at knifepoint from a self-service car wash near her home in Los Angeles, held for 10 hours and r...Read More
Medicare for Y’all: Meet the Socialist Metalhead Stumping for Single-Payer
Timothy Faust is touring the country promoting health care reform with a mix of impassioned f-bombs and unrepentant eggheadedness.
Timothy Faust, a 29-year-old socialist metalhead, isn’t your typical health care policy wonk. Sporting shoulder-length hair, a bandana and a Lone Star flag ta...Read More
Report: If Rural Texans Want Decent Health Care, They Should Mosey to New Hampshire
With high rates of fatal heart disease and stroke, limited access to care and sky-high uninsured rates, Texas gets a “D-” in a new “report card” comparing rural health care between states.
Texas and other Southern states are home to small-town doctor shortages, skyrocketing rates of preventable disease among rural residents and some of the highest...Read More
