Two big political blocs have different ideas when it comes to health.
For five decades, Idaho has been putting mental health patients into prisons, despite receiving 14 notices that it needs a secure mental health unit that is not a prison.
A group of state lawmakers, advocates and parents are working to change a Medicaid rule that limits psychiatric hospital stays to 15 days a month, but the change would need $7.2 million annually and federal approval.
The state has dropped more than 130,000 of its 500,000 Medicaid beneficiaries since April and about 30 percent of those disenrolled were left uninsured, which could be a bad sign for the rest of the nation.
Traumatic injury is the top killer of children and adults under the age of 45, claiming a life approximately every three-and-a-half minutes. Five states in the West have no Level I trauma centers; three other states have just one or two.
Data shows that about 285,000 women live in contraceptive deserts across the state, areas where contraceptive services don’t meet the needs of the public. The state also has one of the highest rates of pregnancies that are unwanted or wanted later.
When Arkansas expanded Medicaid in 2014, it used expansion dollars to buy private insurance for uninsured residents, making thousands more eligible for coverage. Georgia is considering a similar idea as a way to roll back hospital regulations.
Since the end of the pandemic-era continuous Medicaid renewals, 1.4 million Texans have been dropped from the federal health insurance program and 58 percent of them have been children.
Long-term nursing home care could easily cost more than $100,000 a year without Medicaid and 90 percent of people have said it would be impossible or very difficult to pay that much.
The question is whether this is a one-year blip or part of a more concerning shift, but it reflects hard truths about the state of our infant and maternal health care.
Lack of human connection is bad for your health. Responding to an advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General that a loneliness epidemic is affecting half of all Americans, San Antonio has been pushing out resources to help build bonds between community members.
Future in Context
From inhaler watches to redesigned crutches: How a unique summer program in Birmingham is pushing boundaries in STEM education.
One effective way is to work with providers, payers and other stakeholders to set statewide cost growth targets. The approach is having an impact.
Since federal protections keeping the medical insurance intact during the pandemic ended in April, approximately 3 in 4 patients have lost coverage due to “procedural reasons.” At least one-third of those patients are children.
Five bills headed to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s desk for signature will ensure major health and civil rights protections inside the Affordable Care Act if they are ever stripped or repealed at the federal level.
Thirty-three states have laws that allow schools or school employees to carry, store or administer naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal medication. But some states and school districts struggle with the stigma that comes with it.
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