Medi-Cal serves more than one-third of the state’s population — offering a dizzying range of care to a diverse population. In the new “Faces of Medi-Cal” series, California Healthline will assess the program’s strengths and weaknesses through the lives and experiences of its enrollees.
Billing experts and lawmakers are playing catch-up as providers find ways to get around new surprise-billing laws, leaving patients like Danielle Laskey of Washington state with big bills for emergency care.
A new survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that teenagers, particularly girls, are reporting all-time high rates of violence and profound mental distress. Meanwhile, both sides in the abortion debate are anxiously waiting for a district court decision in Texas that could effectively revoke the FDA’s 22-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Sandhya Raman of CQ Roll Call, and Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico join KHN’s chief Washington correspondent, Julie Rovner, to discuss these issues and more.
A foster care program on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota is attracting attention from officials elsewhere as they search for ways to reduce trauma inflicted on Indigenous families, who’ve faced generations of high rates of family separation.
Lawmakers say they don’t plan to revise state regulations on the sale of edibles despite more kids 5 and under ingesting them.
The Vaccines for Children program, which buys more than half the pediatric vaccines in the U.S., may not cover the RSV shot for babies because it’s not technically a vaccine.
Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Healing and Ending Addiction Through Recovery and Treatment fund has spent $5.2 million since 2021. With a proposed increase, providers and lawmakers alike want to tap into the money.
A baby spent more than a month in a Chicago NICU. A big bill revealed she was treated by out-of-network doctors from the children’s hospital next door. Her parents were charged despite a state law protecting patients from such out-of-network billing — and sent to collections when they didn’t pay up.
More states are moving to specialized managed-care contracts solely to handle medical and behavioral services for foster kids. But child advocates, foster parents, and even state officials say these and other care arrangements are shortchanging foster kids’ health needs.
Coastal and politically progressive states have passed stronger paid sick and family leave policies, but many workers in rural America are left out, facing tough decisions when choosing between caring for themselves or sick family members or keeping their jobs.
