Tag Archives: immigration

Reporter discusses search for ‘vent farm’ patient’s identity

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About Cheryl Clark

Cheryl Clark (@CherClarHealth) is AHCJ's core topic leader for patient safety, a MedPage Today contributor and inewsource.org investigative journalist. For most of 27 years, she covered medicine and science for the San Diego Union-Tribune. After taking a buyout in 2008, she became senior quality editor for HealthLeaders Media.

Joanne Faryon

Joanne Faryon

It’s not a good idea to try to do anything else while listening to Joanne Faryon’s podcast about “Sixty-Six Garage,” a man who went unidentified in a San Diego “vent farm,” aka skilled nursing facility, for 15 years. Her gripping oral recount of how she quit her job in 2015 and spent her own money and resources to find out who he was and how he ended up this way, attached to ventilators and unable to speak or move, is chilling.

The story of “Garage” represents also another angle on the story of immigration, and how the vehicle accident just north of the California/Mexico border resulted, possibly, because he was being chased by a border agent’s helicopter. Continue reading →

Separated migrant children face infectious disease and other health threats

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About Bara Vaida

Bara Vaida (@barav) is AHCJ's core topic leader on infectious diseases. An independent journalist, she has written extensively about health policy and infectious diseases. Her work has appeared in outlets that include the National Journal, Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg News, McClatchy News Service, MSNBC, NPR, Politico and The Washington Post.

Photo: Hi Tricia! via Flickr

The thousands of children separated from their undocumented parents at the border have been exposed to prolonged stress that can cause long-lasting injury to the developing brain, say many prominent professional medical associations. The policy of taking children from their parents while they await deportation hearings – reversed on Wednesday – may have increased their chances of getting infectious diseases, too.

Dr. Marc Siegel wrote in USA Today that “thousands of children now being housed in makeshift detention centers have been reported to suffer from large outbreaks of scabies, a highly contagious, itchy rash spread by tiny insects known as mites.” There also have been reports of outbreaks of lice, measles, flu, drug-resistant tuberculosis, dengue fever and Zika, Siegel added. Continue reading →

Trump’s executive orders have effects on health IT

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About Rebecca Vesely

Rebecca Vesely is AHCJ's topic leader on health information technology and a freelance writer. She has written about health, science and medicine for AFP, the Bay Area News Group, Modern Healthcare, Wired, Scientific American online and many other news outlets.

Donald J. Trump

Donald J. Trump

Health IT is getting tangled up in several of President Trump’s executive orders, and with more expected to touch the industry, tech companies and health IT divisions of health care providers will likely face continued uncertainty over staffing and regulations.

The immigration ban

Tech giants including Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have been among the most vocal critics of Trump’s controversial (and possibly unlawful) immigration ban. Continue reading →

Covering health care quandaries in an anti-immigrant campaign year

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About Joanne Kenen

Joanne Kenen, (@JoanneKenen) the health editor at Politico, has been AHCJ’s topic leader on health reform and curated related material at healthjournalism.org. Follow her on Facebook.

Photo: Living-Learning Programs via Flickr

Photo: Living-Learning Programs via Flickr

Here’s a story worth looking at in the states, particularly in the midst of a pretty heated campaign season: health care for those living in the United States without legal permission.

The Affordable Care Act, as you may remember, did not cover people living in the country illegally (though some conservatives insist otherwise). In fact, they can’t even buy a plan in the ACA exchanges with their own money – with no subsidy. (They can purchase insurance outside the ACA with their own money, and some who are employed do get covered through jobs, although there is some disagreement over how many.) Continue reading →

About 115,000 could lose insurance coverage based on residency issues

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About Joanne Kenen

Joanne Kenen, (@JoanneKenen) the health editor at Politico, has been AHCJ’s topic leader on health reform and curated related material at healthjournalism.org. Follow her on Facebook.

Image via USCIS.gov

Image via USCIS.gov

We wrote earlier this month about the Sept. 5 deadline for people who had signed up for ACA coverage through the federal exchange but still had some inconsistencies in the record about their citizenship or legal residency. Here’s an update:

As of early September, the Department of Health and Human Services said 310,000 people still had status questions (down from close to a million “data-matching” cases in late May). Most did get the information in and the questions resolved. But about a third did not, and that means about 115,000 people will lose coverage at the end of this month. Continue reading →

Thousands face Friday deadline to document citizenship, immigration status for federal marketplace

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About Joanne Kenen

Joanne Kenen, (@JoanneKenen) the health editor at Politico, has been AHCJ’s topic leader on health reform and curated related material at healthjournalism.org. Follow her on Facebook.

Image via USCIS.gov

Image via USCIS.gov

Friday is the deadline for some 350,000 people who have yet to document their citizenship/legal residency for their health insurance through the federal exchange to get the information submitted and verified or face losing insurance at the end of this month.

It would be a good time to check with health, enrollment and immigrant advocacy groups in your community to see what kind of obstacles they are facing (technical, language barriers, poor communication, confusion) and what steps they are taking to meet the deadline. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says it has been trying to reach the affected people by email, mail and telephone. Immigration advocacy groups say that the outreach has left a lot to be desired and people are having trouble getting problems sorted out. Continue reading →