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The Montana health department says the Board of Public Assistance is redundant and a bureaucratic hurdle that helps few people. Current and former board representatives say the rare cases in which the panel helps people are important.
State Medicaid and Affordable Care Act programs have long struggled to connect with lower-income Americans to help them access care. Now some are trying an alternative approach: meeting them at the laundromat.
Gloria Sachdev, a pharmacist by training, has spent years taking on the health care establishment in Indiana, working to pull down high hospital prices and make information public to patients. Now, in a newly created position in the governor’s Cabinet, she’s no longer fighting from the outside.
State legislatures nationwide, including several in the South, are spending millions to improve rural health outcomes and access. For years, though, most Southern states have refused billions of federal dollars to provide public health insurance to more low-income adults. That isn’t likely to change with Trump back in office.
KFF Health News journalists made the rounds on national and local media recently to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
The Affordable Care Act requires most insurance plans to cover preventive care, including many forms of contraception, without cost to patients — but not if they’re “grandfathered” plans, which predate the law.
Telehealth startups including Ro and Nurx are spending millions to promote themselves as easy dispensers of medicines. Some companies offer care for birth control, sexual dysfunction, and more complex conditions, including behavioral health disorders and obesity.
A sweeping Trump administration order threw the nation’s health system into disarray Tuesday, as states and the health industry tried to make sense of what looked like a freeze on federal Medicaid funding.
The Lown Institute, a health care think tank, holds a contest every year for the most outrageous stories of greed in health care.
Health leaders say a tool to boost medical coverage for Native Americans, a population that has long faced worse health outcomes than the rest of the nation, has been underused by many states and tribes since it was written into the Affordable Care Act more than a decade ago.
Enhanced federal subsidies and more state aid for out-of-pocket costs have made health insurance purchased through California’s marketplace more affordable. It's unclear if the incoming Republican Congress will extend the enhanced subsidies beyond 2025.
California has a few major changes coming to its health policy landscape in 2025. New laws that took effect Jan. 1 ban medical debt from credit reports, allow public health inspections of private immigration detention centers, and ban toxic chemicals in makeup.
KFF Health News journalists made the rounds on national and local media recently to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
Health is unlikely to be a top priority for the new GOP-led 119th Congress and President-elect Donald Trump. But it’s likely to play a key supporting role, with an abortion bill already scheduled for debate in the Senate. Meanwhile, it’s unclear when and how the new Congress will deal with the bipartisan bills jettisoned from the previous Congress’ year-end omnibus measure — including a major deal to rein in the power of pharmacy benefit managers. In this “catch up on all the news you missed” episode, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Shefali Luthra of The 19th, and Lauren Weber of The Washington Post join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more.
Legislative leaders say the decision whether to renew Montana’s Medicaid expansion program this year will loom over behavioral health spending and hospital regulation, among other topics.
The move, which comes less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office, represents a challenge to the new administration.
A medical resident who listens to “An Arm and a Leg” is pushing for change with the American Medical Association and at the hospital where he works.
As Gov. Gavin Newsom enters the second half of his final term, health care stands out as his most ambitious but glaringly incomplete initiative for California residents. The issue will likely shape his national profile for better or worse. And now, Donald Trump brings a new wrinkle.
Advocates say it is discrimination and are arguing for “insurance fairness” on the grounds that people who have joints surgically replaced typically don’t face the same kinds of coverage challenges.
In the seventh year of KFF Health News’ “Bill of the Month” series, patients shared their most perplexing, vexing, and downright expensive medical bills, and reporters analyzed $800,000 in charges — including more than $370,000 owed by 12 patients and their families.
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