Some Senate Democrats want to cap the amount beneficiaries in traditional Medicare have to pay toward care, but the move is expected to draw GOP opposition for potentially adding billions to Medicare costs.
A program in rural eastern Kentucky is receiving opioid settlement funding to address substance use disorders, housing, hunger, and other challenges.
Massachusetts passed laws and joined lawsuits to protect access to gender-affirming care for minors. But faced with the Trump administration’s threats, some hospitals voluntarily stopped care. Families are outraged.
Medicare is testing the use of artificial intelligence to preapprove several healthcare services. Federal health officials say prior authorization can help reduce fraud and contain costs. But doctors and patients describe the trial as “horrendous” and full of red tape so far.
“Government has to intervene, because healthcare is run like an unregulated utility,” Indiana’s GOP governor says of the state’s effort to regulate hospital prices.
Senate Democrats hope to highlight health costs by forcing a vote on the Trump administration’s changes to the Affordable Care Act before the midterm elections. Meanwhile, Alabama is the latest state to try to cut off access to medication abortion via telehealth. Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times, and Lauren Weber of The Washington Post join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more. Also, Rovner interviews Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute and Liz Fowler of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to discuss the employer health insurance tax exclusion.
Congressional Democrats are seeking to overturn a Trump administration rule they say will hamper Obamacare coverage. Whether they win or lose any floor vote, they’ll likely use it in campaign messaging ahead of the midterms.
Four years after the Volunteer State enacted the nation’s first law allowing drugstores to sell ivermectin without patient-specific prescriptions, dozens of pharmacies dispense the drug in highly concentrated pills — many with the help of one anti-vaccine physician.
Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, framed the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program as “bold, creative plans” led by states. But as states have started to roll out their plans, federal officials control where and how the money is spent.
The Trump administration has pursued an extensive pro-tobacco agenda as the president and his political movement have been buoyed by a flood of tobacco industry money, federal records show.
