Several recent studies have suggested that air pollution may make coronavirus (COVID-19) infections more severe. These findings fit with previous research documenting how air pollution damages our bodies and makes us more vulnerable to infectious diseases. This new research should spur us to redouble our efforts to reduce air pollution.

Evidence from several countries suggests that exposure to air pollution increases the death rate from COVID-19. A Harvard study found that areas of the U.S. with higher levels of fine particulates had higher death rates from COVID-19. The study’s authors estimate that even moderately higher long-term levels of fine particulate…

An unfortunate but common feature of the U.S. health care system is surprise billing — an unexpected charge not covered by insurance even though the patient received care at a facility or from a doctor they believed to be within their insurance network. The coronavirus pandemic is creating more situations in which patients might receive care from an out-of-network provider, and state and federal policies, including some specifically aimed at COVID-19 patients, don’t adequately protect patients from receiving surprise bills. The nation should expand surprise billing protections to include all patients, now and after the coronavirus pandemic ends.

Surprise billing…

As someone who often works on health care issues, I’ve been watching the novel coronavirus crisis with an eye to what it means for our overall health care system. Obviously, the immediate flood of patients threatens to overwhelm health care workers and impairs their ability to provide the care we’re accustomed to. But the coronavirus will also have far-reaching impacts on the health care system’s structure, costs and insurance. Exactly what those changes are will not be known for a while — but I’ve been exploring likely scenarios. …

On Tuesday evening last week, my cell phone blared with an emergency alert. Here in Sonoma County, in northern Calif., the only time my phone has made that horrifying sound in the past was to warn me about evacuating ahead of a wildfire. This time, it was a “shelter-in-place” notice to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

Though the right response to wildfire often involves fleeing and the correct response to COVID-19 is to stay home, successful responses to public emergencies require a communal effort and rely on mutual trust that our individual commitments to do the hard…

When my husband and I decided to move from Baltimore to northern Calif. when our son was two years old, we weren’t thinking about air quality. My husband had a new job opportunity that would allow us to live closer to family, and so we settled in Sonoma County, on the northern edge of the San Francisco Bay Area. We see grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins frequently, and our son has thrived.

As I’ve worked on air quality issues in recent years, I’ve come to realize that perhaps one of the biggest benefits of our cross-country move is that we…

On May 19, 2015, a rupture in an onshore pipeline transporting oil from drilling platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel to onshore refineries spilled 120,000 gallons of crude oil near Refugio State Beach, west of Santa Barbara, California. The Santa Barbara Fire Department initially responded to a report of a petroleum smell, and the response grew to include 1,300 responders from local, county, state and federal agencies. The spill forced the closure of both El Capitan and Refugio state beaches — El Capitan State Beach for over one month and Refugio State Beach for almost two. Oil from the spill…

I recently spent 45 minutes calling my health care provider’s billing office, my insurer and the medical group that handles most bills for my insurer, trying to straighten out a billing problem caused when the insurer rejected an expense that should have been approved. Many phone calls later, I figured out that the provider had submitted the bill to the insurer instead of the medical group. Neither the insurer nor the medical group wanted to deal with this problem, though, so it fell to me to call the provider to tell them where to send the bill.

This is the…

We’re surrounded by advertising. Every day, we see billboards, TV ads, advertisements in magazines and corporate sponsors at all sorts of events. Much of the time we don’t notice these ads, much less think about how they shape our desires and encourage us to want things we otherwise wouldn’t want.

A recent ad stuck out, though, and made marketing’s effect on my desires apparent. One of the underwriters on an NPR station in my area is Hint Water, which has the tagline “mouthwatering water.” Why do I need water that is mouthwatering? When I’m thirsty, my body conveniently alerts me…