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Providers and health care advocates warn a proposed rule change in Montana would jeopardize immunity levels in child care centers and communities. Efforts to change vaccination exemption rules are underway in other states, too.
As Medicaid programs across the nation review enrollees' status in the wake of the pandemic, patients struggle to navigate the upheaval.
Safe storage maps show gun owners where to put their firearms for safekeeping if they experience a mental health crisis. The idea has support among some gun enthusiasts, but legal obstacles threaten wider adoption.
Homicides, suicides, and drug overdoses have driven rising rates of pregnancy-related death in the U.S. This fall, six states received federal funding for substance use treatment interventions to prevent at least some of those deaths.
As states review their Medicaid rolls after the expiration of a pandemic-era prohibition against kicking recipients off the government insurance program, experts say the lack of help available to rural Americans in navigating insurance options puts them at greater risk of losing health coverage than people in metropolitan areas.
Health department officials are asking legislators to change criminal commitment laws amid a bottleneck at the Montana State Hospital.
For rural Americans, who live in areas often short of mental health services and die by suicide at a far higher rate than urbanites, the federally mandated crisis phone line is one of the few options to connect with a crisis counselor.
Montana has earmarked $3.7 million to address widespread high levels of lead in school drinking water. But it likely isn’t enough to solve the problem.
The new Montana law contains a couple of significant differences from the measure voters rebuffed last fall.
Opponents of the wave of state legislation say the measures place health providers’ preferences over patients’ rights.
Medical and RV industry professionals say hospitals that offer RV parking are easing access to health care for some patients who drive long distances for treatment, like many rural residents.
Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s veto disappointed and bewildered those seeking to address low-income residents’ long wait for assisted living or in-home care.
The state now requires Medicaid to cover midwife services and has expanded the list of prescription drugs midwives can administer.
Nonprofit hospitals avoid paying taxes if they provide community benefits such as charity care. More states are examining that trade-off, scrutinizing the extent of hospitals’ spending on their communities.
Programs in the so-called troubled teen industry will be required to provide a 24-hour hotline and unmonitored video calls with family and be subject to more inspections under a new Montana law.
Many state legislatures have passed or are considering restrictions on gender-affirming care for trans minors. Yet much of the discussion is based on misconceptions about what that care entails.
As the number of refugees entering the U.S. grows, those arriving in Montana and other rural areas find limited dental care options.
A nationwide decline in foster home spots has led to dire situations in some rural areas, including northeastern Nevada, where a state social worker has been pleading with community leaders to help address a shortage that left officials housing children in casino hotels.
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.
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.
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