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On May 1, the state will become the first to require people on the government health program to fulfill a work requirement or lose their coverage under a new rule that was a key part of congressional Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Republicans claim 4.8 million Americans on Medicaid who could work choose not to. The GOP’s work-requirement legislation could sweep up disabled people who say they’re unable to hold jobs.
Health experts and advocates for low-income people say federal rules implementing President Donald Trump’s new Medicaid work requirements upend months of work by state governments to prepare the computer systems that determine who’s eligible for benefits.
Medi-Cal, the nation’s largest Medicaid program, was in trouble even before the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Rapid expansion, spiraling costs, and billions in federal funding cuts will mean tough challenges for California’s next governor. On the campaign trail, the two men running for the job have offered few answers.
Despite widespread support in polls for legalizing aid in dying, the number of people who go through with the practice remains very small.
The Democratic candidate for governor says he would make Iowa the second state to drop private Medicaid management companies, which he calls “a disaster.”
The evidence is unequivocal: Vaccines do not cause autism. Yet adding autism to the list of conditions covered by a federal payout program, as health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seems inclined to do, could threaten its financial viability. Such a move also would suggest that the science is unsettled, that vaccines may be riskier than diseases, which is a fallacy.
The state is ramping up to implement the federal work requirements six months ahead of the deadline. But Montana is one of several states already struggling to pay for health services.
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California lawmakers gave public school teachers 14 weeks of paid leave in the state’s new budget, a long-sought benefit for the largely female workforce. Gov. Gavin Newsom previously opposed similar measures.
Dentists, hygienists, and researchers say a shortage of rural dental care professionals and worsening oral hygiene since the covid-19 pandemic mean more kids are ending up in the emergency room for tooth decay.
CNN pundit Scott Jennings said almost 5 million nondisabled Medicaid recipients "simply choose not to work" and "spend six hours a day socializing and watching television." But a recent analysis found only about 300,000 cited a lack of interest in working as the reason they were unemployed.
A KFF survey of state Medicaid officials offers insight into lingering uncertainty and differing plans for work requirement implementation as the Jan. 1 deadline approaches.
KFF Health News gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.
As health care costs skyrocket and federal lawmakers pull back help on insurance premiums, more middle-income families are facing tough choices on health care.
Research shows natural gas pipelines — and the public health risks they carry — are concentrated in low-income and minority areas where people suffer higher rates of poverty and physical disabilities and have fewer means to respond to crises.
People on Medicaid deemed “medically frail” won’t need to meet new federal requirements that enrollees work 80 hours a month or perform another approved activity. But state officials are grappling with how to interpret who qualifies under the vague federal definition, which could affect millions.
In recent weeks, Social Security has been plagued by problems related to technology, system errors, and even the marking of living people as dead.
Coverage for hundreds of thousands of Arkansas Medicaid enrollees next year is in question after the Trump administration refused to renew a key state waiver. The state might not be the last to have to adjust to an arcane rule change under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The Department of Justice alleges that several major health insurers paid brokerages “hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks” to get agents to steer consumers into their Medicare Advantage plans, allegations the insurers strongly dispute.
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