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For more than 20 years, children in Arkansas have been measured in school as part of a statewide effort to reduce childhood obesity. But the letters have had no impact on weight loss — and obesity rates have risen. Still, the practice of sending letters has spread to other states.
A federal program that helped pay for more than 23 million low-income households’ internet access runs out of money soon. The end of the subsidy launched earlier in the pandemic could have profound impacts on health care access.
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s Georgia Pathways to Coverage program has seen anemic enrollment while chalking up millions in start-up costs — largely in technology and consulting fees. Critics say the money’s being wasted on a costly and ineffective alternative to Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.
As money flows to abortion rights initiatives in states, some donors focus on where anger over the "Dobbs" ruling could propel voter turnout and spur Democratic victories up and down the ballot, including in key Senate races and the White House.
After the 1996 Dickey Amendment halted federal spending on research into firearms risks, a small group of academics pressed on, with little money or political support, to document the nation’s growing gun violence problem and start to understand what can be done to curb the public health crisis.
While many Republican state lawmakers remain firmly against Medicaid expansion, some key leaders in holdout states are showing a willingness to reconsider. Public opinion, financial incentives, and widening health care needs make resistance harder.
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.
Even in states where laws protect minors’ access to gender-affirming care, malpractice insurance premiums are keeping small and independent clinics from treating patients.
State legislatures and politicians are pressuring public health officials to keep quiet about covid vaccines.
As Medicaid programs across the nation review enrollees' status in the wake of the pandemic, patients struggle to navigate the upheaval.
Rural gun homicides have often been overshadowed by violence in cities. But they are taking their toll on small communities ill-equipped to deal with the challenges.
Studies suggest official numbers vastly underestimate heat-related injuries and illness on the job. To institute protections, the government must calculate their cost — and the cost of inaction.
Opponents of the wave of state legislation say the measures place health providers’ preferences over patients’ rights.
Although nearly 40% of Americans 60 and older are obese, Medicare doesn’t cover weight loss medications. Meanwhile, studies haven’t thoroughly examined new drugs’ impact on older adults.
A federal program meant to reduce maternal and infant mortality in rural areas isn’t reaching Black women who are most likely to die from pregnancy-related causes.
A quality-control crisis at an Indian pharmaceutical factory has left doctors and their patients with impossible choices as cheap, effective, generic cancer drugs go out of stock.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra is asking states to make more of an effort to keep eligible Medicaid recipients enrolled. He particularly fears children losing health insurance coverage.
The number of DOs is surging, and more than half of them practice in primary care, including in rural areas hit hard by doctor shortages.
In what’s known as the Medicaid “unwinding,” states are combing through rolls to decide who stays and who goes. But the overwhelming majority of people who have lost coverage so far were dropped because of technicalities, not because officials determined they are no longer eligible.
Montana, Alaska, Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming are among the latest states moving to provide health coverage for up to a year after pregnancy through the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people.
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