My @washingtonpost latest dives deep into tax records:

Four major nonprofits that rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic by capitalizing on the spread of medical misinformation collectively gained more than $118 million between 2020 and 2022 washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/02… The influx of pandemic cash sent executive compensation soaring, boosted public outreach, and seeded the ability to wage legislative and legal battles to weaken vaccine requirements and defend physicians accused of spreading misinformation.

Meet the trio of conservative legal blocs that has rolled back public health authority at the local, state and federal levels, recasting America's ability to fight infectious disease.

My latest @KHNews investigation w/ @annabarryjester @NPR

npr.org/sections/healt… Galvanized by what they've characterized as an overreach of COVID-related health orders, a loose coalition of religious liberty groups, conservative think tanks, and Republican state attorneys general has unleashed a wave of covid-related litigation.

As a community health worker, 46-year-old Christina Scott is a professional red-tape cutter, hand-holder, shoulder to cry on, and personal safety net, all wrapped into one.

And the money funding her job in Illinois is running out.

My latest @KHNews khn.org/news/article/c… Scott is one of the over 650 community health workers hired through local, community-based IL organizations through a $55 million grant from @CDCgov through federal pandemic relief.

The team has completed at least 45,000 assistance requests.

June is when the funding runs dry.

Step inside the Missouri war against public health with me, and learn how the ongoing stripping of public health powers is diminishing the nation's ability to fight the next pandemic.

A 🧵 for @KHNews @CNN

cnn.com/2022/02/08/hea… Let's start with Missouri state senator Mike Moon. He believes vaccinations should cease til more long-term effects are known, citing the research of known misinformation sources, America's Frontline Doctors and Dr. Robert Malone from Joe Rogan's podcast.

He's not vaccinated.

Workers out sick in droves.

Patients' conditions being exacerbated by Omicron.

Add the threat of in-hospital transmission.

There’s a reason hospitals are telling people to stay away from the ER - @jeremyfaust

W/ @philgalewitz @gahealthnews @KHNews
khn.org/news/article/i… Regardless of whether patients are admitted for or with covid, the patients still tax the hospital’s ability to operate, said Dr. Alex Garza, head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force.

He also warned exposure risk in the ER is high: “It’s physics and math."

🚨 Hospitals with high rates of covid patients who didn’t have the diagnosis when they were admitted have rarely been held accountable due to multiple gaps in government oversight, my & @By_CJewett investigation found.

A 🧵 for @KHNews @USATODAY

khn.org/news/article/a… .@CMSGov urged private accreditors — which almost 90% of hospitals pay for oversight — to do targeted infection-control inspections as covid began to sweep the country last March.

They said no.

usatoday.com/story/news/nat…

IMPACT: Five New York state and local government agencies agreed to fix covid-19 vaccine websites to make them accessible for blind users following a @TheJusticeDept investigation spurred by our @KHNews story

W/ the relentless @hannah_recht

Our update: khn.org/news/article/n…

https://twitter.com/LaurenWeberHP/status/1364940410221703176

As Bryan Bashin told me amid the vaccine race of the winter, he had appointments slip away twice in the same day while he battled inaccessible websites.

"It’s an awful bit of discrimination, one as stinging as anything I’ve experienced,” Bashin, who is blind, said.

Kyunghee Lee noticed her doctor's office had moved up a floor when she went to get her usual arthritis shots.

It was the same doctor, same shots, same time.

But it cost 10 times more.

Welcome to the "facility fee."

@KHNews @npratc #BilloftheMonth npr.org/sections/healt… The increasingly controversial charge — basically a room rental fee — comes without warning

“It’s the same physician office it was, operating in exactly the same way, doing exactly the same services — but the hospital chooses to attach a facility fee to it” @TrishRiley207 said

Missourians have driven hours to find vaccines in rural counties. Doses are still slowly being rolled out in a federal long-term care program. Black residents are getting left behind.

Here's what went wrong in Missouri's vaccine rollout.
#moleg @KHNews

khn.org/news/article/m… If Missouri were on par with the national rate of vaccinations, that would be roughly equivalent to more than 162,000 additional people vaccinated, or almost the entire population of the city of Springfield.

Instead, MO is in the bottom of states for its rocky rollout.

Dr. Deborah Birx has joined an air-cleaning company that built its business, in part, on technology that is now banned in California due to health hazards.

At stake? Some of the $193 billion in federal funding to schools.

From @By_CJewett and me:

khn.org/news/article/f… The company’s own studies show that, in its effort to create the “healthiest indoor environments in North America,” it leveraged something less impressive: the disinfecting power of ozone — a molecule considered hazardous and linked to the onset and worsening of asthma.

INVESTIGATION: Covid vaccination registration websites at the federal, state and local levels violate disability rights laws, hindering the ability of blind people to sign up for lifesaving vaccine.

Even @CDCgov 's embattled VAMS system is inaccessible.

khn.org/news/article/c… As @hannah_recht and I found:

🚨 In at least 7 states, blind residents were unable to register for the vaccine without help
🚨 94 covid info and vaccine pages from the states had accessibility issues @webaim found
🚨 Phone alternatives were not available or had too long of lines

🚨🚨🚨 Black Americans are receiving covid vaccinations at dramatically lower rates than white Americans, according to our new @KHNews data analysis on the rollout

“We are missing the boat on equity” @MarcusPlescia @ASTHO said

From @hannah_recht and me: nbcnews.com/health/health-… If the rollout were reaching people of all races equally, the shares of people vaccinated whose race is known should loosely align with the demographics of health care workers.

But in every state, Black Americans were significantly underrepresented among people vaccinated

🚨 Only 1/4 of the doses allocated to the CVS/Walgreens partnership to vaccinate nursing home residents have been administered.

Mississippi's state public health officer @TCBPubHealth says it's a "fiasco."

@RachelHBluth and me w/ @rachanadixit @KHNews cnn.com/2021/01/15/hea… Scheduling, paperwork, staffing -- all of it is slowing down the latest privatization of the federal #COVID19 response for the nation's most vulnerable.

“There should never be an excuse about people not getting vaccinated. There’s no excuse for delays," @wassdoc said.

1 in 8 Americans lives in a community that lost a local public health leader, our @AP @KHNews investigation found

Lawmakers in 24 states are crafting legislation to strip public health powers

This is U.S. pandemic public health #UnderfundedUnderThreat

apnews.com/article/pandem… 181 state and local public health leaders had resigned, retired or been fired since April.

It's the largest exodus of public health leaders in American history, @annabarryjester @hannah_recht @MRSmithAP and I found in our latest #UnderfundedUnderThreat investigation.

The U.S. has starved state and local public health departments of funding for decades, leaving the country ill-equipped for #COVID19, our @KHNews @AP investigation found.

This is America's public health system in a pandemic.

#UnderfundedUnderThreat

khn.org/news/us-public… Workers are paid so little, some qualify for Medicaid. They track the coronavirus on paper records shared via fax.

Working seven-day weeks for months on end, they fear pay freezes, public backlash and even losing their jobs amid a wave of budget cuts.

🚨🚨🚨 Last year, @barbfederostrov and I spent months investigating Jorge Perez's rural hospital empire, which accounted for HALF of the 2019 rural hospital bankruptcies.

@TheJusticeDept just charged him in a $1.4 BILLION fraudulent billing scheme.

khn.org/news/hospital-… How companies run by Perez and his associates were able to drive so many rural hospitals into the ground so quickly is a story about the fragility of health care in rural America and the types of money-making ventures that have flourished in America's fraught medical system

🚨🚨🚨 Amid the pandemic, at least 27 state and local public health leaders have resigned, retired or been fired across 13 states, due in part to a mix of backlash and stressful, nonstop working conditions.

W/ @annabarryjester @MRSmithAP @AP @KHNews

khn.org/news/public-he… Dr. Amy Acton, top health leader in Ohio, dealt with armed protesters at her house. She resigned yesterday. In California’s Orange County, the home address of health officer Dr. Nichole Quick, and her boyfriend’s name, were revealed in a public meeting. She resigned Monday.

NEW from me: I talked to rural hospital CEOs around the country, and the picture is dire.

Right when Americans most need them, droves of rural hospitals are weeks from closing their doors as the coronavirus prep saps their cash.

@NPR @KHNews

npr.org/sections/healt… Nearly half of America's rural hospitals operate in the red on a normal day, much less during a global pandemic. The waves of canceled surgeries, labs and physical therapy means they may not have enough cash to make payroll in the coming weeks.

Did you know your insurer can tell you something is covered, and then after you have surgery say they’re not going to pay for it?

And yes, it’s legal.

Welcome to American health care in 2020.

My latest @KHNews for @USATODAY : usatoday.com/story/news/hea… This practice, which has left patients with thousands of dollars of bills, is called “retrospective denial.”

Essentially, insurers will give prior authorizations, a type of preapproval growing in number, for surgeries, medicines or tests.

We need to talk about @AmbJohnBolton and Ebola.

In case you forgot, we're currently amidst the second-largest Ebola outbreak of all time. Over 2,000 dead so far. No sign of it stopping anytime soon.

The National Security Council had a head of global health security in 2018... Until Bolton's NSC eliminated that office THE DAY AFTER the current Ebola outbreak was announced.

That followed the departure of White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert -- another champion of investment in global health security -- THE DAY AFTER Bolton joined the WH.

This is the story of how a Miami entrepreneur and his business associates amassed a rural hospital empire -- and drove it into the ground, devastating towns across the country. Communities lost more than life-saving medical care and hundreds of good jobs. khn.org/news/rural-hos… Jorge A. Perez said he was out to save rural hospitals. It was his “secret sauce,” Perez would smilingly tell people in their no-stoplight towns. The money-making ventures he proposed sounded complicated, sure, but he said they would bring in enough cash to save their hospital.