Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Arizona Reveals Plan To Tackle Medicaid Fraud
AP: Arizona's Governor And Attorney General Announce Crackdown On Medicaid Fraud
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and other top state officials announced a crackdown Tuesday on Medicaid fraud, particularly honing in on illegitimate group homes. The Hobbs administration said many of those homes target tribal community members and have defrauded the state out of hundreds of millions of dollars. (5/17)
On transgender health care —
AP: Missouri Terminates Emergency Rule To Limit Trans Care For Minors, Some Adults
Missouri officials on Tuesday abruptly terminated an unusual emergency rule proposed by the Republican attorney general that would have placed limits on transgender care for minors and some adults. The move was announced without explanation on the Missouri Secretary of State’s website, which said: “This emergency rule terminated effective May 16, 2023.” (Stafford, 5/16)
AP: Louisiana House Passes Bill To Ban Gender-Affirming Care For Minors
Following suit with other Republican-controlled statehouses in the country, lawmakers in the Louisiana House passed a bill Tuesday that would ban gender-affirming medical care to minors, advancing the legislation to the Senate for further debate. The bill would prohibit doctors from performing “gender transition procedures” — such as hormone treatments, gender reassignment surgery or puberty-blocking drugs — on anyone under the age of 18 who is seeking treatment to “alter” their sex assigned at birth. The measure, which also establishes penalties for health professionals who provide such care, passed 71-24 mainly along party lines. (Cline, 5/16)
In other health news from across the U.S. —
The Baltimore Sun: Study: Baltimore Children Moved From High-Poverty To Low-Poverty Areas Saw Their Asthma Improve
Children with asthma whose families participated in a Baltimore program that helped move them from high-poverty neighborhoods to low-poverty ones saw their disease get significantly better, according to a study published Tuesday. The children experienced fewer asthma attacks after moving and struggled with symptoms on fewer days — improvements on par with medication used to treat the chronic condition, said Dr. Craig Pollack, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Hopkins School of Nursing and one of the study’s lead authors. (Roberts, 5/16)
The Star Tribune: Minnesota Lawmakers Finish Marijuana Legalization Bill; Final Votes Up Next
Minnesota is poised to legalize recreational marijuana as early as this week after legislative negotiators finalized the bill and readied it for last votes in the House and Senate. A conference committee tasked with merging the House and Senate marijuana bills into one finished its work on Tuesday. Among many changes, the committee set the tax rate for cannabis products at 10%, capped home possession of marijuana flower at 2 pounds and gave cities the option of limiting the number of cannabis retailers within their limits. (Faircloth and Johnson, 5/16)
Indianapolis Star: IN Lawmakers Pledged To Lower Health Care Costs. Results Are Mixed
After threatening to take steps to curb Indiana's health care costs, considered among the highest in the nation, state legislators ended the 2023 session with mixed results. House and Senate leaders promised in a 2021 letter to Indiana's largest hospitals and insurers that if they didn't come up with a plan to bring down prices to national averages, lawmakers would have "no choice but to pursue legislation to statutorily reduce prices." (Dwyer and Rudavsky, 5/16)
KFF Health News: State Lawmakers Eye Forced Treatment To Address Overlap In Homelessness And Mental Illness
Many of the unhoused people in Portland, Oregon, live in tents pitched on sidewalks or in aging campers parked in small convoys behind grocery stores. Mental illness can be part of the story of how a person ends up homeless — or part of the price of survival on the streets, where sleep and safety are scarce. Homeless people in Multnomah County, which includes Portland, die about 30 years earlier than the average American. These grim realities have ratcheted up the pressure on politicians to do something. (Dembosky, Templeton and Feibel, 5/17)
