Federal officials are hailing the introduction of services such as transportation to medical appointments, home-delivered meals and installation of wheelchair ramps as a way to keep beneficiaries healthy and avoid costly hospitalizations. But not many plans are offering the services in 2019.
A ballot initiative to fund Medicaid expansion with a tobacco tax failed in Montana on Tuesday. The expansion will expire in the state in June 2019, unless the legislature finds another way to fund it.
Following the vote, nearly 500,000 uninsured adults in five states are poised to gain Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, say advocates. But many conservatives remain opposed to the expansion.
Even though they are taking control of the House, Democrats will be unlikely to advance many initiatives on health that don’t meet Republican approval since the GOP controls the Senate and the White House. But they can block any efforts to weaken the Affordable Care Act or change Medicaid or Medicare.
Voters in Oregon and Washington will decide whether to strip cities of the ability to tax sugary drinks.
As politicians across the country toss about such health care catchphrases, sometimes interchangeably, many voters say they’re “just confused.”
In this episode of KHN’s “What the Health?” Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News and Joanne Kenen of Politico discuss the start of open enrollment for individual health insurance plans for 2019 and preview what next week’s midterm elections might mean for health policy. Plus, Barbara Feder Ostrov of KHN and California Healthline talks to Julie about the latest NPR-KHN “Bill of the Month” feature.
In this episode of KHN’s “What the Health?” Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Kimberly Leonard of the Washington Examiner and Alice Ollstein of Politico discuss a flurry of proposals from the Trump administration on prices Medicare pays for drugs and the Affordable Care Act.
The drop in the number of people enrolled in the federal-state program for low-income residents is the first since 2007.
The state-federal health insurance program is more popular than ever. Now, states that want to expand eligibility are devising new strategies to pay for it — creating, in many red states, a significant political challenge.
