Venice day-trippers will face steep fines if they fail to pay an access fee under a pilot program

MILAN — Day-trippers to the fabled canal city of Venice who fail to pay 5 euros ($5.43) to enter the lagoon city’s historic center during a time-limited pilot program launching later this month will face fines starting at 10 times the entrance fee, officials said Thursday. Venice announced last year it would launch the long-discussed … Read more

South Korea’s Yoon vows not to back down in the face of doctors’ strike over medical school plan

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s president vowed Monday not to back down in the face of vehement protests by doctors seeking to derail his plan to drastically increase medical school admissions, as he called their walkouts “an illegal collective action” that poses “a grave threat to our society.” About 12,000 medical interns and residents … Read more

Biden is announcing a new rule to protect consumers who purchase short-term health insurance plans

President Joe Biden on Thursday announced new steps to protect consumers who buy short-term health insurance plans that critics say amount to junk. A new rule finalized by the Democratic president’s administration will limit these plans to just three months. And the plans can only be renewed for a maximum of four months, instead of … Read more

Mississippi Senate passes trimmed Medicaid expansion and sends bill back to the House

JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi lawmakers will try to negotiate on expanding Medicaid in one of the poorest states in the U.S. after the Senate voted Thursday for a vastly different plan than one proposed by the House. The upper chamber’s proposal would insure fewer people and bring less federal money to the state than the … Read more

Biden and Harris team up for health care event in North Carolina

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will promote their health care agenda on Tuesday in North Carolina, a battleground state that Democrats hope to flip in their favor after falling short to Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections. Fourteen years after President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act … Read more

California wants to pay doctors more money to see Medicaid patients

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — When Hunter Morgan bought an optometry practice in Southern California three years ago, one of the first things he did was start seeing patients who use Medicaid, the government-funded health insurance program for low-income people. The previous owners had not accepted patients on Medicaid, which covers roughly a third of California’s 39 … Read more

Republican majorities block efforts to expand Medicaid in Georgia and Kansas

ATLANTA — Plans to expand Medicaid coverage to over half a million more people in Georgia and Kansas were defeated by Republican-led committees in the states’ legislatures Thursday. There are currently only 10 states that don’t cover people with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty line, after North Carolina began offering Medicaid to … Read more

Pedal coast-to-coast without using a road? New program helps connect trails across the US

When Mike O’Neil opened his bicycle repair shop in Muncie, Indiana, the Cardinal Greenway trail just outside its window stretched only 2 miles south of the shop. Today, it extends 33 miles (53 kilometers) beyond that, but the ultimate vision is far grander. O’Neil hopes the trail born from eastern Indiana’s old railroad tracks will … Read more

State Medicaid offices target dead people’s homes to recoup their health care costs

WASHINGTON — As Salvatore LoGrande fought cancer and all the pain that came with it, his daughters promised to keep him in the white, pitched roof house he worked so hard to buy all those decades ago. So, Sandy LoGrande thought it was a mistake when, a year after her father’s death, Massachusetts billed her … Read more

A new kind of hospital is coming to rural America. To qualify, facilities must close their beds

As rural hospitals continue to struggle financially, a new type of hospital is slowly taking root, especially in the Southeast. Rural emergency hospitals receive more than $3 million in federal funding a year and higher Medicare reimbursements in exchange for closing all inpatient beds and providing 24/7 emergency care. While that makes it easier for … Read more