Medicaid ‘Unwinding’ Decried as Biased Against Disabled People

People with disabilities say they are abruptly losing their Medicaid home health benefits and are being advised incorrectly when they call state offices for more information. “Every day the anxiety builds,” one beneficiary told KFF Health News.

First Responders, Veterans Hail Benefits of Psychedelic Drugs as California Debates Legalization

California lawmakers have modified a psychedelic drug bill that was vetoed last year, narrowing it to allow only supervised use of psilocybin mushrooms, ecstasy, and other hallucinogens rather than decriminalize more broadly. The current bill would establish new state agencies to regulate the program.

Democrats Seek To Make GOP Pay for Threats to Reproductive Rights

Democrats running for office are using abortion rollbacks to galvanize voters, with abortion rights ballot initiatives amplifying their lines of attack. In Missouri, the leading Democratic candidate for the Senate also blames Republican Sen. Josh Hawley for threatening access to IVF.

Biden Team’s Tightrope: Reining In Rogue Obamacare Agents Without Slowing Enrollment

Federal regulators face a growing challenge — how to prevent rogue health insurance agents from switching unknowing consumers’ Obamacare coverage without making the enrollment process so cumbersome that enrollment declines.

Unsheltered People Are Losing Medicaid in Redetermination Mix-Ups

Some of the nearly 130,000 Montanans who have lost Medicaid coverage as the state reevaluates eligibility are homeless. That’s in part because Montana kicked more than 80,000 people off the program for technical reasons rather than income ineligibility. For unhoused people who were disenrolled, getting back on Medicaid can be extraordinarily difficult.

Paris Hilton Backs California Bill Requiring Sunshine on ‘Troubled Teen Industry’

Celebrity hotel heiress Paris Hilton is expanding her campaign for more public reporting on residential therapeutic centers’ use of restraints and seclusion rooms in disciplining teens, setting her sights on legislation in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

KFF Health News' 'What the Health?': Arizona Turns Back the Clock on Abortion Access

A week after the Florida Supreme Court said the state could enforce an abortion ban passed in 2023, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that state could enforce a near-total ban passed in 1864 — over a half-century before Arizona became a state. The move further scrambled the abortion issue for Republicans and posed an immediate quandary for former President Donald Trump, who has been seeking an elusive middle ground in the polarized debate. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Rachel Cohrs Zhang of Stat, and Rachel Roubein of The Washington Post join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews KFF Health News’ Molly Castle Work, who reported and wrote the latest KFF Health News-NPR “Bill of the Month” feature, about an air-ambulance ride for an infant with RSV that his insurer deemed not medically necessary.

City-Country Mortality Gap Widens Amid Persistent Holes in Rural Health Care Access

People in their prime working years living in rural America are 43% more likely to die of natural causes, like diseases, than their urban counterparts, a disparity that grew rapidly in recent decades, according to a new federal report.

End of Internet Subsidies for Low-Income Households Threatens Telehealth Access

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.