KFF Health News Weekly Edition: Sept. 20, 2024

Rural NC County Is Set To Reopen Its Shuttered Hospital With Help From a New Federal Program
By Taylor Sisk One rural North Carolina county is on track to be among the first where a hospital reopens owing to a new federal hospital classification meant to help save small, struggling facilities.

Fighting Staff Shortages With Scholarships, California Bill Aims To Boost Mental Health Courts
By Molly Castle Work A new bill would create a scholarship program for students who agree to work with specialized courts in California to get patients into treatment, but some people argue the state shouldn’t restrict scholarship aid to a new, untested program given broader behavioral health workforce shortages.

KFF Health News' 'What the Health?': American Health Under Trump — Past, Present, and Future
Dreaming of a Trump victory, Republicans have a wish list of health policy changes — including loosening Affordable Care Act regulations to make cheaper coverage available and ending Medicare drug price negotiations. Meanwhile, after a publicly reported death stemming from a state abortion ban, Vice President Kamala Harris is emphasizing the consequences of Trump’s work to overturn Roe v. Wade. Tami Luhby of CNN, Shefali Luthra of The 19th, and Joanne Kenen of Politico and Johns Hopkins University join KFF Health News senior editor Emmarie Huetteman to discuss these stories and more.

Abortion Clinics — And Patients — Are on the Move, as State Laws Keep Shifting
By Bram Sable-Smith Illustration by Oona Zenda Clinics in states where most abortions are legal, such as Kansas and Illinois, are reporting an influx of inquiries from patients hundreds of miles away — and are expanding in response. Despite the Supreme Court’s overturning of federal protections in 2022, abortions are now at their highest numbers in a decade.

Cyberattacks Plague the Health Industry. Critics Call Feds’ Response Feeble and Fractured.
By Darius Tahir Health care weathered more ransomware attacks last year than any other sector, and that was before a debilitating February hack of payments manager Change Healthcare. Executives, lawyers, and policymakers are worried the federal government’s response is underpowered, underfunded, and too focused on hospital security.

California Medicaid Ballot Measure Is Popular, Well Funded — And Perilous, Opponents Warn
By Bernard J. Wolfson Proposition 35, which would use revenue from a tax on managed-care plans to raise the pay of health care providers who serve Medi-Cal patients, has united a broad swath of California’s health care, business, and political establishments. But a newly formed, smaller group of opponents says it will do more harm than good.

These Alabama Workers Were Swamped by Medical Debt. Then Their Employer Stepped In.
By Noam N. Levey A decades-old manufacturing company opened a clinic and made primary care and prescriptions free for employees and their families.

Arkansas’ Governor Says Medicaid Extension for New Moms Isn’t Needed
By Sarah Varney Federal law requires states to provide pregnancy-related Medicaid coverage through 60 days after delivery. Arkansas has not expanded what’s called postpartum Medicaid coverage, an option that gives poor women uninterrupted health insurance for a year after they give birth.

California May Regulate and Restrict Pharmaceutical Brokers
By Don Thompson California lawmakers are moving to rein in the pharmaceutical middlemen they say drive up costs and limit consumers’ choices. The bill sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom would require pharmacy benefit managers to be licensed in California and would ban some business practices. Newsom vetoed a previous effort three years ago.

Tennessee Tries To Rein In Ballad’s Hospital Monopoly After Years of Problems
By Brett Kelman Ballad Health, a 20-hospital system with the nation's largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly, serves patients in Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina.

Listen to the Latest ‘KFF Health News Minute’
“Health Minute” brings original health care and health policy reporting from the KFF Health News newsroom to the airwaves each week.

Watch: New Documentary Film Explores a Lynching and a Police Killing 78 Years Apart
By Cara Anthony The “Silence in Sikeston” documentary film explores how the nation’s first federally investigated lynching and a police killing 78 years apart haunt the same rural Missouri community. The film from KFF Health News and Retro Report explores the lasting impact of such trauma — and what it means to speak out about it.

Historic Numbers of Americans Live by Themselves as They Age
By Judith Graham Longer life spans, rising rates of divorce, widowhood, and childlessness, and smaller, far-flung families are fueling a “gray revolution” in older adults’ living arrangements. It can have profound health consequences.

Silence in Sikeston: Hush, Fix Your Face
By Cara Anthony In Episode 2 of the “Silence in Sikeston” podcast, host Cara Anthony speaks with Sikeston, Missouri, resident Larry McClellon, who grew up being told not to talk about the 1942 lynching of Cleo Wright. He is determined to break the cycle of silence in his community. Anthony also unearths a secret in her own family and grapples with the possible effects of intergenerational trauma.

Tossed Medicine, Delayed Housing: How Homeless Sweeps Are Thwarting Medicaid’s Goals
By Angela Hart As California cities crack down on homeless encampments in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling authorizing fines and arrests, front-line workers say such sweeps are undercutting billions in state and federal Medicaid spending meant to stabilize people’s health and get them off the streets.

Decades of National Suicide Prevention Policies Haven’t Slowed the Deaths
By Cheryl Platzman Weinstock Despite years of national strategies to address the suicide crisis in the U.S., rates continue to rise. A chorus of researchers and experts say the interventions will work — but that they’re simply not being adopted by state and local governments.

Journalists Explore Breast Cancer Rates and the Medical Response to Mass Shootings
KFF Health News and California Healthline journalists made the rounds on local and state media recently to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.