On HCA Healthcare’s second-quarter investor call, an analyst asked the for-profit chain’s chief financial officer an intriguing question: What’s the profitability of COVID-19 patients? Posed to most other health systems, such a query would have sounded absurd. But the Nashville-based hospital giant had just posted $1.1 billion in profit, up 38% from the prior-year period, even as elective procedures were largely shut down. Finance chief Bill Rutherford responded that coronavirus tends to prompt longer lengths of stay and higher acuity than typical hospitalized patients. “It’s too early to convert that to profitability,” he said. “Our focus is making sure we’ve got all the resources we need to care for those patients.”

Massive clouds of smoke from the Pacific Northwest wildfires lingered over the region Sunday, posing serious health risks for millions of people and complicating firefighting efforts even as crews reported progress in slowing some of the blazes.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused a sharp increase in unemployment across the country. The unemployment rate peaked at 14.7% in April and remained above 10% until very recently. In the United States, health insurance and employment often go hand-in-hand

The Trump administration will not move forward with a proposed Medicaid rule that states, hospitals, insurers, patient advocates and members of both political parties warned could lead to massive cuts to the federal health care program for the poor.

The unlikely portrait of Medicaid in the time of coronavirus looks like Jonathan Chapin, living with his wife and 11-year-old daughter in a gated community in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

The patients walk into Dr. Melissa Marshall’s community clinics in Northern California with the telltale symptoms. They’re having trouble breathing. It may even hurt to inhale. They’ve got a cough, and the sore throat is definitely there.