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Philadelphia mass shooting kills 1 person, injures 8 on 4th of July

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1 person killed, 8 injured in mass shooting in Philadelphia


1 person killed, 8 injured in mass shooting in Philadelphia

02:03

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — One person was killed and eight others were hurt after a shooting late on July 4, Philadelphia police said.

The shooting happened around 11:30 p.m. near 60th Street and Kingsessing Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia.

Police said an officer found a victim with gunshot wounds lying in the middle of the street and then other officers were called to the scene. Police found a total of nine victims, five of whom are adults and four who are teenagers.

“Our officers were in the area doing a routine patrol and observed someone laying on the ground,” Philadelphia Police Inspector Kpana Massaquoi said.

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Philadelphia police stationed at the corner of 60th Street and Kingsessing Avenue on July 4 after a shooting killed one person and wounded eight.

CBS News Philadelphia


The victim who was killed was an adult. Police said the teenage victims are between 16 and 17 years old.

Some victims were found at the scene, while others showed up at nearby hospitals.

Medics transported five victims to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and another was taken by private vehicle to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania’s Cedar Avenue location. Two teens were taken to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and another person arrived at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Delaware County.

Massaquoi said he believed the surviving victims were in stable condition.

Police didn’t mention a motive or suspects for the shooting but said large crowds were being broken up throughout the night.

“It is very alarming, and especially when we have officers in the area to try to prevent anything like this from happening, and it still happened,” Massaquoi said.

The mass shooting happened about one year after 5 people were killed less than a mile away, in the area of 54th Street and Chester Avenue. That was one of the deadliest mass shootings in Philadelphia history.

Kingsessing had just honored the victims of that shooting with a vigil on July 3.



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Best Fourth of July mattress deals to shop this weekend

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This Fourth of July weekend, take advantage of incredible deals on the best mattresses of 2024. The experts at CBS Essentials have uncovered Independence Day discounts from top retailers like Nolah SleepCasper SleepTuft & Needle and many more. This means you can upgrade to a newer and more comfortable mattress without breaking the bank — or tanking your summer vacation budget.

Below, you’ll find the best Fourth of July deals on twin, queen, king mattresses and more from some of the most popular brands around.


Shop the best Fourth of July mattress deals in 2024

Don’t lose sleep over an expensive mattress. Let us be your mattress advisors. Keep scrolling to shop the best Fourth of July mattress deals in 2024.

Nolah Sleep: 35% off all mattresses plus two free pillows

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Nolah Sleep


During Nolah Sleep’s Fourth of July sale, all mattresses are 35% off and come with two free pillows. 

The Nolah Original 10″ Mattress features breathable layers of resilient foam, including the brand’s zoned AirFoam, which provides targeted flexibility and firmness. This design is especially beneficial for side sleepers, as it supports and cushions curves and sensitive joints to promote correct spinal alignment. The Tencel cover helps wick away moisture, making it ideal for hot sleepers

All Nolah mattresses come with a 120-night trial, a lifetime warranty and free shipping. 

Shop Nolah Sleep’s Fourth of July sale


Casper Sleep: 30% off all mattresses and up to 20% off pillows and sheets

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Casper Sleep


Calling all Casper Sleep fans: the mattress and bedding brand is having a massive Fourth of July sale. The brand is currently offering 30% off all mattresses and up to 20% off pillows and sheets. This is the perfect opportunity to upgrade your bedding with Casper’s highly-rated products. Don’t miss out on these incredible savings.

Shop Casper Sleep’s Fourth of July sale


Tuft & Needle: Save 20% on all mattresses and 15% on select bedding and accessories

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Tuft & Needle


Shop Tuft & Needle’s July 4th sale and save 20% on all mattresses and 15% on select bedding and accessories. That means the brand’s highly-rated Legacy Original queen mattress is now only $716 (down from $895). This mattress, which boasts a 4.6-star rating, features cooling gel, heat-wicking graphite, and breathable Tuft & Needle Adaptive foam, providing a flexible sleep surface that responds and adjusts with you. It’s especially beneficial for back and stomach sleepers.

No need to worry about compatibility with your bed; this mattress is designed to work with traditional frames, box springs, platform frames, slatted frames, bunkie boards and adjustable frames.

Available in sizes from twin to California king.

Shop the Tuft and Needle Fourth of July Super Sale


Big Fig: $500 off all mattresses

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Big Fig


For a limited time, shoppers can take $500 off a Big Fig mattress. Big Fig (short for Bigger Figure) makes mattresses that can support up to 1,100 pounds. The mattresses are made with the brand’s ThermoGel Cooling Technology to help prevent night sweats and heavy-duty foam to prevent sagging. The brand offers a 20-year warranty and a 120-night sleep trial.

Shop Big Fig’s Fourth of July sale


Nectar Sleep: Up to 40% off mattresses

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Nectar


Nectar Sleep’s Fourth of July sale includes up to 40% off mattresses. That means the brand’s most popular mattress, the Nectar Sleep Premier, is deeply discounted right now. The mattress is made with Nectar’s dual-action cooling technology, which reacts to your body’s temp to help you sleep cool. The mattress can be ordered as a memory foam mattress or as a hybrid mattress for an added cost. 

The Nectar Sleep Premier mattress (queen), $949 (regularly $1,499)

Discover more of Nectar Sleep’s top-rated mattresses below. They’re all up to 40% off during the brand’s Fourth of July sale.

Nectar Sleep memory foam mattress (queen), $649 (regularly $1,099)

Nectar Sleep Premier copper mattress (queen), $1,249 (regularly $1,949)


Essentia: 25% off sitewide

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Essentia


Essentia is offering 25% off sitewide. That means you can get the Classic REM5 mattress at a discount! This particular mattress features cooling technology, which incorporates activated quartz into its patented organic latex foam formula. According to the brand, the sleep surface of the Classic REM5 mattress is proven to sleep up to five degrees cooler than other Essentia mattresses.  

Essentia Organic Mattress Classic REM5 organic mattress (queen), $3,155 (regularly $4,207)

Shop the full Essentia Fourth of July sale 




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Insurance wouldn’t pay for his vasectomy. Such birth control coverage may become more elusive.

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David Engler had been pretty sure he didn’t want children. Then a frustrating school day two years ago helped seal the deal for the now 43-year-old substitute teacher.

“It was wild. I had to call the office seven times to get kids pulled out,” he said. “The next day, I called Kaiser and said, ‘I’d like to know how much a vasectomy is.'”

A representative with Engler’s insurer, Kaiser Permanente, told him the procedure would be free because it was a form of birth control, he said. But after undergoing the vasectomy last winter, he received a bill for $1,080.

“I felt defeated, tricked and frustrated,” said Engler, who lives in Portland, Oregon.

Engler’s experience highlights how a labyrinthine patchwork of insurance coverage rules on reproductive health care creates confusion for patients. Oregon requires that vasectomies be covered for most people who work in the public sector. But the federal Affordable Care Act — which mandates that most health plans cover preventive health services, such as contraception, at no cost to the consumer — does not require vasectomies to be covered.

And that perplexity surrounding coverage may get more complicated.

An ongoing federal lawsuit aims to strike down the ACA‘s preventive care coverage requirements for private insurers. If the case knocks out the mandates, state-level laws — which vary widely across the country — would carry more weight, a change that would resume the “wild West” dynamic from before Obamacare, said Zachary Baron, a health policy researcher at Georgetown Law.

It would create an environment “in which insurers and employers pick and choose which services they want to cover or which services they want to charge for,” Baron said. “It would certainly threaten access to care for millions of Americans.” 

Studies have shown the requirements to cover preventive care have reduced consumers’ out-of-pocket costs and increased their use of short- and long-term birth control methods.

The job of defining which contraceptive services should be covered falls to the Health Resources and Services Administration, or HRSA. Two other groups — the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, or USPSTF, and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP — make recommendations on other kinds of care that the ACA requires insurers to cover.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, a group of individuals and Christian-owned businesses, argue the members of these three panels haven’t been properly appointed by Congress. They also say the recommendations for insurance plans to cover medication for HIV prevention violate their religious rights.

On June 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit issued what it called a “mixed bag” opinion in the case. It said one group — the USPSTF — had not been properly appointed, and therefore its recommendations made after the ACA was signed into law were unconstitutional. The plaintiffs had asked for a nationwide ruling, but the court said only the plaintiffs’ organizations could be exempted from its recommendations.

The court then sent the plaintiffs’ challenges to the recommendations made by HRSA and ACIP — including those on contraception — back to a lower court to consider. 

The case is likely headed to Reed O’Connor, a federal judge in Texas who has issued decisions undermining the ACA — including a ruling striking down the entire law that the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned.

“O’Connor is a judge notoriously hostile to the Affordable Care Act,” said Gretchen Borchelt, vice president of reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center. “He is someone who is willing to impose remedies where he takes access to care away from everybody in the country based on what’s happening in one situation.”

A win for the plaintiffs, she worried, could create confusion about what kind of contraception is covered and how much it costs, which would ultimately lead to more unintended pregnancies — all at a time when women have less access to abortions.

Nearly two dozen organizations — including the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association — have joined Borchelt’s group in filing briefs warning about the potential disruptions a ruling for the plaintiffs could cause.

Jay Carson, an attorney with the Buckeye Institute, a conservative think tank, said he’s happy with the court’s ruling. His group, along with the state of Texas, filed briefs in support of the plaintiffs.

“Unelected bureaucrats” shouldn’t have the power to decide what insurance plans should be required to cover, said Carson. “We’ve gotten so far afield of Congress actually making the laws and, instead, relying on Congress to just empower some agency to do the heavy lifting.”

What power agencies do have is likely to be curtailed in the wake of a June 28 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned a decades-old precedent dictating that courts should defer to federal agencies when it comes to regulatory or scientific decisions.

“Courts are going to be more able to scrutinize experts,” said Richard Hughes, a health care regulatory attorney with the firm Epstein, Becker, and Green. “It’s a vibe shift — we’re moving in the direction of the administrative state being curtailed.”

Eliminating federal coverage requirements for contraception would leave it up to states to determine what services health insurance plans would be required to provide.

Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., currently protect the right to contraception. But states can go only so far with those rules, said Baron, because a federal statute prevents them from regulating self-funded health plans, which cover about 65% of workers.

“It would leave significant gaps in coverage,” Baron said.

A group of Democratic-led states made such an argument in a court brief last year, arguing for the mandates to be upheld to discourage self-funded plans from declining to offer preventive services, as they often did before the ACA.

Even when states can regulate what health plans cover, people still fall through the cracks. “I see denials all the time in instances where the treatment clearly is covered,” said Megan Glor, a health insurance attorney in Oregon.

Patients can appeal their insurers’ decisions, but that’s not easy. And if a patient’s appeals fail, litigation is generally the only option — but that’s a long, complicated, costly process, Glor said. Likely, the best outcome for a patient is an insurer covering what should have been covered in the first place.

When Engler called Kaiser Permanente about his vasectomy charge, he said a representative told him the bill was sent by mistake. Still, he said, the insurer kept asking for money. Engler filed and lost multiple appeals and eventually settled the charge for $540.

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More men, like David Engler of Portland, Oregon, are opting for vasectomies since the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections. While the federal Affordable Care Act doesn’t require that insurers cover vasectomies, some state laws do.

Kristina Barker for KFF Health News


Engler’s vasectomy likely should have been free, Glor said. As a teacher, Engler is a public sector employee, which means his insurance would be subject to an Oregon law that mandates no-cost coverage for vasectomies.

Kaiser Permanente told KFF Health News that state law does not apply because of a federal rule for high-deductible health plans paired with health savings accounts. That rule requires patients to cover out-of-pocket costs until their deductible is met.

However, after KFF Health News contacted Kaiser Permanente about Engler’s situation, he said the company promised to issue a full refund for the $540 he had paid to settle his case.

“Although we administered the benefit correctly, an employee who spoke with Mr. Engler told him incorrectly that he would not have” to share the cost, said Debbie Karman, a Kaiser Permanente spokesperson.

Engler said he’s happy with the outcome, though he’s still unsure how Kaiser Permanente’s staff was confused about his insurance coverage.

He worries that others don’t have the means he had to advocate for himself.

“It’s scary,” he said. “So many people are limited in their resources or their understanding of how to fight — or even who to fight.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.



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