KFF Health News Weekly Edition: Feb. 9, 2024

Do We Simply Not Care About Old People?
By Judith Graham Illustration by Oona Zenda Recently, thousands of older Americans have been dying weekly of covid. But most Americans aren’t wearing masks in public, a move that could prevent infections. Many at-risk seniors aren’t getting antiviral therapies, and older adults in nursing homes aren’t getting vaccines. Why?

FDA’s Plan to Ban Hair Relaxer Chemical Called Too Little, Too Late
By Ronnie Cohen The FDA’s recent notice that it would move to ban formaldehyde in hair-straightening products comes more than a decade after researchers raised alarms about health risks. Scientists say a ban would still leave many dangerous chemicals in hair straighteners.

KFF Health News' 'What the Health?': To End School Shootings, Activists Consider a New Culprit: Parents
For the first time, a jury has convicted a parent of a school shooter of charges related to the child’s crime, finding a mother in Michigan guilty of involuntary manslaughter and possibly opening a new legal avenue for gun control advocates. Meanwhile, as the Supreme Court prepares to hear a case challenging the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, a medical publisher has retracted some of the journal studies that lower-court judges relied on in their decisions. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet, and Rachana Pradhan of KFF Health News join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week that they think you should read, too.

Cities Know That the Way Police Respond to Mental Crisis Calls Must Change. But How?
By Nicole Leonard, WHYY and Kate Wolffe, CapRadio and Simone Popperl Cities are experimenting with new ways to meet the rapidly increasing demand for behavioral health crisis intervention, at a time when incidents of police shooting and killing people in mental health crisis have become painfully familiar.

Halfway Through ‘Unwinding,’ Medicaid Enrollment Is Down About 10 Million
By Phil Galewitz While more Medicaid beneficiaries have been purged in the span of a year than ever before, enrollment is on track to settle at pre-pandemic levels.

Colorado Moves to Connect Agricultural Workers With Mental Health Resources
By Vignesh Ramachandran Advocates say two bills under consideration could help migrant communities but that more needs to be done.

Is Housing Health Care? State Medicaid Programs Increasingly Say ‘Yes’
By Angela Hart States are using their Medicaid programs to offer poor and sick people housing services, such as paying six months’ rent or helping hunt for apartments. The trend comes in response to a growing homelessness epidemic, but experts caution this may not be the best use of limited health care money.

Back From COP28, California Climate Leaders Talk Health Impacts of Warming
By Samantha Young Three leading California officials who represented the state at the United Nations climate talks late last year reflect on climate change’s growing threat to human health — and explain what the state is trying to do about it.

Congressman Off-Base in Ad Claiming Fauci Shipped Covid to Montana Before the Pandemic
By Katheryn Houghton Facts don’t support claims by a likely Republican Senate candidate that a federal research laboratory in Montana infected bats with a coronavirus from China before the covid-19 outbreak.

Journalists Catch Up on Top Issues Facing 2024 Voters, From Obamacare to Opioids
KFF Health News and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.

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