Why Medicaid Expansion Ballots May Hit a Dead End After a Fleeting Victory in South Dakota

Republican-led legislatures have repeatedly thwarted Medicaid expansion in a dozen conservative states, despite high numbers of uninsured residents. In recent years, supporters of expansion have found success with another strategy: letting voters decide. Since 2017, Medicaid expansion has passed in seven states where the issue was put on the ballot, adopting the Affordable Care Act … Read more

In Rural America, Deadly Costs of Opioids Outweigh the Dollars Tagged to Address Them

Tim Buck knows by heart how many people died from drug overdoses in his North Carolina county last year: 10. The year before it was 12 — an all-time high. Those losses reverberate deeply in rural Pamlico County, a tightknit community of 12,000 on the state’s eastern shore. Over the past decade, it’s had the … Read more

Racial Disparities in Lung Cancer Start With Research

During a routine visit to the Good Samaritan Clinic in Morganton, North Carolina, in 2018, Herbert Buff casually mentioned that he sometimes had trouble breathing. He was 55 years old and a decades-long smoker. So the doctor recommended that Buff schedule time on a 35-foot-long bus operated by the Levine Cancer Institute that would roll … Read more

An Unexplained Injury Discovered After Eye Surgery. What Should Happen Next?

When Jerry Bilinski, a 67-year-old retired social worker, scheduled cataract surgery with Carolina Eye Associates near his home in Fayetteville, North Carolina, he expected no drama, just a future with better vision. Cataract procedures are among the most common surgeries in the U.S. — nearly 4 million take place annually — and generally take about … Read more