A Spotlight on Vasectomy | KFF

While the Affordable Care Act requires most private health plans to provide coverage with no cost-sharing for a range of recommended preventive services, including female contraceptives and female sterilization, because male condoms and vasectomy procedures are considered to be services for men, they are not required to be covered under the law.  Vasectomies, considered permanent…

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Kindergarten Routine Vaccination Rates Continue to Decline

Routine vaccination rates for kindergarten children continue to decline in the U.S., while exemptions from school vaccination requirements, particularly non-medical exemptions, have increased. These trends began during the COVID-19 pandemic and have continued over time (Figure 1). Recent trends appear to be related to increasing vaccine hesitancy, fueled in part by vaccine misinformation. The past few years…

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Global COVID-19 Tracker | KFF

Cases and Deaths SOURCES As of March 7, 2023, all data on COVID-19 cases and deaths are drawn from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard. Prior to March 7, 2023, this tracker relied on data provided by the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Coronavirus Resource Center’s COVID-19 Map, which ends on March 10, 2023….

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Do Large Language Models Dream of AI Agents?

During sleep, the human brain sorts through different memories, consolidating important ones while discarding those that don’t matter. What if AI could do the same? Bilt, a company that offers local shopping and restaurant deals to renters, recently deployed several million agents with the hopes of doing just that. Bilt uses technology from a startup…

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Airtell Router Scans, and Mislabeled usernames

Looking at new usernames collected by our Cowrie honeypots, you will first of all notice a number of HTTP headers. It is very common for attackers to scan for web servers on ports that are covered by our Telnet honeypots. The result is that HTTP request headers end up in our username and password database. …

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Artificial superfood for bees boosts colony reproduction

Bees often struggle to get the nutrients they need from flowers Ran Zisovitch/Shutterstock An artificial “superfood” that provides essential nutrients for bees results in colonies producing much more larvae, suggesting it could help tackle the global decline in honeybees. Bees need to eat pollen from a range of flowers to get the nutrients they need,…

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Prior Authorization Process Policies in Medicaid Managed Care: Findings from a Survey of State Medicaid Programs

Medicaid managed care organizations (MCOs) deliver care to three-quarters of all Medicaid enrollees nationally. MCOs often require patients to obtain approval of certain health care services or medications before the care is provided—an insurance practice commonly referred to as “prior authorization”. This allows the MCO to evaluate whether care is covered, medically necessary, and being delivered…

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