Health | SF Chronicle

11/07/2016

Helping trans patients through telemedicine

A young doctor from Delaware with a transgender patient wanted to know how his medications for bipolar disorder would affect his hormone therapy. The physician, still in a residency program, contacted TransLine, an e-consultation service that operates out of San Francisco’s Lyon-Martin Health Servic...

11/01/2016

Open enrollment begins tomorrow, but the big push for Covered California enrollment will begin after this crazy elections cycle ends.

Amid a contentious presidential campaign and news of skyrocketing health-insurance rates in some states, signups are beginning for coverage in the marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act, including Covered California. [...] state officials say they’ve decided to lay low until after the Nov.…

10/31/2016

The hunt for a more affordable hearing aid:

When Cole needed to replace her current devices, she decided to research her options in hopes of avoiding another painfully expensive purchase. “It’s just a lot of money to be spending for hearing devices,” said Cole, 60, of Moraga, whose early hearing loss was probably due to a severe ear infection...

10/17/2016

California consumers, especially those who do not qualify for subsidies, are starting to the feel the pinch of 2017's higher health insurance premiums.

Covered California insurance hikes are starting to pinch Next year’s health insurance rates for individual policyholders are starting to hit mailboxes, and that’s proving to be painful for some California consumers. Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace created by the federal…

10/17/2016

Where the two presidential candidates stand on health issues:

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton actually agree that health care costs are too high, but the two presidential candidates diverge on pretty much everything else when it comes to health. Trump called Obamacare a “total disaster” and repeated his call to repeal President Obama’s signature health legisl...

10/17/2016

When doctors get bad reviews on Yelp: “It really is a bind,” Dr. Field said. “I wanted to respond (online), but I couldn’t. I emailed Yelp and said, ‘This is libel. How can it be allowed?’ and got no response.”

Psychologist Bob Field was puzzled, then anxious, when enrollments plummeted by a third at Quest Therapeutic Camps, his Danville and Oakland program for children with emotional and social issues. Ironically, San Francisco’s Yelp started when co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman was seeking a doctor to treat...

10/13/2016

Hey all you fine people who follow the San Francisco Chronicle's health page: did you get your 2017 health premium notification yet? Looking for folks who buy individual coverage either through Covered California or outside the state exchange. Email [email protected] ASAP or call 415-777-7880. Thank you!

10/05/2016

This pharmacy in San Jose is the only one in the state that relies entirely on unexpired, unused medications donated by health facilities. And it accepts no insurance or co-payments.

Marcario Ortiz of San Jose discovered he had no health insurance coverage last week when he tried to refill his cholesterol-lowering medication. The newly retired 66-year-old high school teacher, who’s been a Kaiser member for 36 years, suspects he was erroneously dropped when he moved to Kaiser’s M...

10/04/2016

This San Francisco company just won a U.S. Health and Human Services "design challenge" to create a medical bill that makes sense. Here's what they came up with:

The winners, each receiving a $5,000 cash prize from by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, were announced last week at the 10th annual Health 2.0 annual fall conference in Santa Clara. “Is there any other transaction we are engaged in our live where we actually receive the product or…

09/24/2016

Gov. Brown just signed a bunch of laws that offer health-care consumers protection against things like "surprise" medical bills:

California consumers will have the strongest protections in the nation against getting blindsided by unexpected out-of-network medical bills as part of legislation signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown. The surprise medical bill legislation is designed to prevent patients, many of whom checked in adva...

09/21/2016

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, want to cure the world. That's all, folks.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, on Wednesday announced an ambitious plan to spend $3 billion over the next 10 years to help cure or better treat disease. The new initiative, Chan Zuckerberg Science, is designed to help bring scientists and engineers together, build new...

09/15/2016

Health care organizations are taking over the world. Well, at least San Francisco.

San Francisco’s neighborhood retail corridors, famous for their cafes, boutiques and mom-and-pop corner stores, are increasingly filling up with a new class of tenant: health care providers. In the Ingleside neighborhood, Presidio Heights, Noe Valley and North Beach, medical services chains — some a...