Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
North Carolina Republican Lawmakers Push Medicaid Expansion To 2023
AP: NC Legislators: Medicaid Expansion Efforts Pushed To 2023
North Carolina Republican legislative leaders said Wednesday that they’re shuttling the idea of Medicaid expansion to 2023, rather than attempting to negotiate a bill that could be voted on before the General Assembly’s current two-year edition ends in December. By wide bipartisan margins, the House and Senate approved competing bills months ago that were designed to cover hundreds of thousands of additional low-income adults through the government’s health insurance program that mostly serves the poor. Republicans within the two chambers have disagreed over whether additional health care access changes should be attached to expansion. (Robertson, 11/9)
More on Medicaid expansion efforts in the states —
KHN: South Dakota Voters Approved Medicaid Expansion, But Implementation May Not Be Easy
South Dakotans voted Tuesday to expand the state’s Medicaid program to cover thousands of additional low-income residents, becoming the seventh state to approve expansion via the ballot box. But as other conservative states have shown, voter approval doesn’t always mean politicians and administrators will rush to implement the change. (Zionts, 11/10)
KHN: Stopping The Churn: Why Some States Want To Guarantee Medicaid Coverage From Birth To Age 6
Before the covid-19 public health emergency began in 2020, millions of children churned on and off Medicaid each year — an indication that many were losing coverage because of administrative problems, rather than because their family’s income had increased and made them ineligible. Spurred by pandemic-era lessons, several states are rethinking their enrollment policies for the youngest Medicaid members. Oregon is leading the way after getting federal approval to implement a new continuous-enrollment policy. (Galewitz, 11/10)
In other health news from across the U.S. —
KUNC: Colorado, Idaho Opt Out Of National Survey That Tracks Teen Mental Health
Colorado and Idaho are joining a handful of other states in opting out of a long-running CDC survey that tracks teenagers' mental health. Experts fear the states' exclusion will compromise the country's ability to monitor concerning behaviors among high schoolers as the youth mental health crisis only deepens. (VandenEinde, 11/9)
AP: CDC To Conduct Health Study At Polluted Former Army Base
Federal health officials are conducting a new study to determine whether veterans once stationed at a now-shuttered California military base were exposed to dangerously high levels of cancer-causing toxins. The decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention comes nine months after an Associated Press investigation found that drinking water at Fort Ord contained toxic chemicals and that hundreds of veterans who lived at the central California coast base in the 1980s and 1990s later developed rare and terminal blood cancers. (Mendoza, Linderman and Dearen, 11/9)
San Francisco Chronicle: ACLU Weighs In Against New California Law To Punish Doctors Who Spread COVID Misinformation
“(R)ather than employ the existing tools at its disposal, the State has taken a blunt instrument to the entire profession,” ACLU attorneys said in a filing Monday in federal court in Los Angeles, where the doctors’ lawsuit is awaiting judicial review. (Egelko, 11/9)
KHN: Fentanyl In High School: A Texas Community Grapples With The Reach Of The Deadly Opioid
The hallways of Lehman High School looked like any other on a recent fall day. Its 2,100 students talked and laughed as they hurried to their next classes, moving past walls covered with flyers that advertised homecoming events, clubs, and football games. Next to those flyers, though, were posters with a grim message warning students that fentanyl is extremely deadly. Those posters weren’t there last school year. Right before this school year started, the Hays Consolidated Independent School District, which includes Lehman, announced that two students had died after taking fentanyl-laced pills. They were the first recorded student deaths tied to the synthetic opioid in this Central Texas school district, which has high school campuses in Kyle and Buda, a nearby town. Within the first month of school, two more fatalities were confirmed. (DeGuzman, 11/10)
KHN: Homelessness Among Older People Is On The Rise, Driven By Inflation And The Housing Crunch
On a recent rainy afternoon in this small town just outside Glacier National Park, Lisa Beaty and Kim Hilton were preparing to sell most of their belongings before moving out of their three-bedroom, two-bathroom rental home. Hilton, who was recovering from a broken leg, watched from his recliner as friends and family sorted through old hunting gear, jewelry, furniture, and clothes. “The only thing that’s not for sale is the house — everything else has to go,” Hilton, 68, said as he checked his blood sugar. (Bolton, 11/10)
