Jeanne Pinder
“When Sam Bellamy tested positive for Covid on Dec. 16, he immediately called the city’s hotline for a free hotel room,” Mary Steffenhagen wrote over at City Limits. “He lives in Brooklyn with two roommates, one of whom was unable to get the booster due to health concerns, so he knew isolating at home would […]
Jeanne Pinder
“Billionaire investor Mark Cuban launched an online pharmacy Thursday that offers more than 100 generic drugs at an affordable price with a goal of being ‘radically transparent’ in its price negotiations with drug companies,” Lisa Kim writes over at Forbes. “The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Company (MCCPDC) is a registered pharmaceutical wholesaler and purchases […]
Jeanne Pinder
By JEANNE PINDER and VIRGINIA JEFFRIES When the Biden administration announced that it planned to send Covid at-home tests to anyone in the United States, it seemed clear that the ordering and delivery process would be a mess — like much of the rest of the official response. The surprising thing was that when the […]
Jeanne Pinder
How much does a transvaginal ultrasound cost? It depends. In this case, she was billed for two ultrasounds, one pelvic (non-obstetric) and one transvaginal, for a total of $1,092.38. The insurer completely disallowed the pelvic (non-obstetric) one, for $614.18, and charged her $421.29 for the transvaginal one, which applied to her deductible. The insurer wrote, […]
Jeanne Pinder
Looking back over the last year, our Covid work has taught us some really important and interesting things, culminating in our five months helping distribute vaccines an undervaccinated neighborhood in New York City. We started the year in a flurry of reporting on why people were having a hard time getting access to the new […]
Jeanne Pinder
You need to prove you got vaccinated — maybe at the border, maybe at the door of the bar, or at the airline gate or the sports arena. What to use? There’s always your paper vaccine record. And yet a number of electronic vaccine passes have sprung up, some more useful and reliable than others. […]
Jeanne Pinder
What’s it like to be the person who checks people’s vaccine credentials at a public venue in New York City? I was introduced to a man who does that at a major tourist venue. We chatted by phone. Here’s the conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, and posted here on the condition that we […]
Jeanne Pinder
By Jeanne Pinder and Virginia Jeffries At-home Covid tests are very hard to find. And the prices are spiraling up, despite promises by city, state and federal governments in the United States to make them available for free. New York Health + Hospitals, the New York public housing entity, is passing out free boxes of […]
Jeanne Pinder
The combination of the surge in the new Omicron Covid variant, people’s decisions to travel for the holidays and the shutdown of some public testing sites has driven a sudden overnight change in the Covid testing landscape. Many people who had settled on a testing place in their neighborhood have now found that place has […]
Jeanne Pinder
“America is awash in vaccines. After a winter and spring where it was very, very difficult to get an appointment, we now have plenty of doses to go around. Kids over 5 can get shots, and the FDA even greenlit boosters for older teenagers last week,” Tim Requarth writes over at Slate, in a piece […]
