Author

Melissa Bailey

Melissa Bailey is a Boston-based correspondent on the KHN enterprise team, focusing on aging and dying. Her stories have appeared in The Washington Post, TIME, USA Today, PBS, the Chicago Tribune and other publications. She was a 2015 Nieman Journalism Fellow and holds a math degree from Yale. She joined KHN from Stat, where she was the national health care reporter.

Finance

Families Of Health Workers Killed By COVID-19 Fight For Denied Workers’ Compensation Benefits

Melissa Bailey Jul 13, 2020

Legal experts say that in some states COVID-19 falls into a long-standing category of diseases like a cold or the flu — conditions not covered by workers’ compensation — with no plans to change that. Other states force workers to prove…

Environment

How Climate Change Is Putting Doctors In The Hot Seat

Melissa Bailey Apr 20, 2020

Although there is scientific consensus on a mounting climate crisis, some people reject the idea that rising temperatures are linked to human activity. The controversy can make doctors hesitant to bring it up. BOSTON — A 4-year-old girl…

Business

‘Fear Of Falling’: How Hospitals Do Even More Harm By Keeping Patients In Bed; Face Financial…

Melissa Bailey Oct 17, 2019

Hospitals have become so overzealous in fall prevention that they are producing an “epidemic of immobility,” experts say. To ensure that patients will never fall, hospitalized patients who could benefit from activity are told not to get up…

Business

Genetic-Testing Scam Targets Seniors And Rips Off Medicare

Melissa Bailey Jul 31, 2019

Sherry Swan is one of many Californians who have filed complaints to the state’s Senior Medicare Patrol about potential fraud related to genetic tests. “It was just a scam from the minute he opened his mouth,” Swan says of a man who…