Health Care
More states line up to serve free school meals to all kids
During his long career as a high school teacher, New York state Sen. John Mannion often reached into his own pocket to cover the cost of lunches for kids who didn’t have the funds. “I watched kids get to the end of the line and not have enough money on their cards,” the Democrat said […]
Wave of transgender health care bans has roots in past debates
In the past two years, 19 states have banned or restricted gender-affirming care for minors, and another 12 states are considering it — a tidal wave of policy change that has emboldened many Republicans on the far right while terrifying transgender youth and their families. Gender-affirming care for transgender patients can cover pediatrics, psychiatry and […]
Top State Stories 4/12
US: After Texas ruling, Democratic states move to stockpile abortion pills nytimes.com A federal judge’s decision to invalidate the F.D.A.’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone could affect availability even in states where abortion is legal. States led by Democrats have been scrambling to adjust to a possible future without it. Among the efforts, Massachusetts Democratic Gov. […]
Too Many Bodies, Too Few Forensic Pathologists
This story was corrected on Feb. 18. 2022, to clarify that the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is not currently experiencing delays in processing cases and that it was the outgoing governor, Democrat Ralph Northam, who made a budget proposal to the Virginia General Assembly. Faced with an overflow of bodies during the […]
Competing Hospitals Cooperate to Meet the Crisis
Read Stateline coverage of the latest state action on coronavirus. For hospitals, among the nation’s biggest and most competitive businesses, giving up lucrative surgeries to make way for a competitor’s overflow of patients does not come naturally. But as COVID-19 threatens to overwhelm the American health care system, U.S. hospitals are cooperating in unprecedented ways. […]
Number of Older Prisoners Grows Rapidly, Threatening to Drive Up Prison Health Costs
© Getty Images Aging inmates eat lunch in the dining hall at Devens federal prison in Massachusetts on April 21, 2015. Matt McKillop, an officer at The Pew Charitable Trusts, researches and analyzes the fiscal health of states. Frances McGaffey, a research associate at The Pew Charitable Trusts, researches and analyzes the fiscal health of states and […]
New Data Show Slowdown in State and Local Government Health Spending
iStock Maria Schiff, a director at The Pew Charitable Trusts, researches and analyzes state health care spending. Matt McKillop, an officer at The Pew Charitable Trusts, researches and analyzes the fiscal health of states. For the first time in several years, state and local government health care spending grew relatively slowly in 2013—increasing by 3.2 […]
Nurse Practitioners Step In Where Doctors Are Scarce
(AP) BUCKINGHAM COUNTY, Virginia – Most people in this rural logging area have only one choice when they need medical care: the Central Virginia Community Health Center. On most days, at least 200 people show up at the center seeking treatment for maladies ranging from sore throats to depression to cavities. The health center typically […]
S.C. State Workers Challenge Health Insurance Hike
This year, the South Carolina legislature budgeted to give state workers, university employees and teachers their first raise in four years in exchange for increasing what they contribute to their retirement plans. The budget also included an appropriation to cover health insurance premium increases, so those costs wouldn’t further erode the salary increase. After signing […]
Massachusetts Tackles Health Costs
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (AP) Like the federal Affordable Care Act, the 2006 Massachusetts health law it was patterned after was aimed primarily at providing health coverage for the uninsured. There’s no question it did that. Fewer than 2 percent of adults and 1 percent of children remain uninsured in the state. But like the […]
Safety Net Hospitals Imperiled by High Court Ruling
Safety net hospitals, which serve the vast majority of the nation’s uninsured people, were meant to be major beneficiaries of the federal health care law. With 30 million mostly low-income people newly covered starting in 2014 either by Medicaid or federally subsidized private insurance, the hospitals’ bottom lines seemed certain to improve. But now that […]
Dire Warnings in Alabama Budget Vote
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley (AP) Hospitals and nursing homes shutting their doors. Doctors fleeing the state. Prisons closing and thousands of inmates walking free. That is the doomsday scenario being sketched by officials at the highest levels of Alabama government. Whether it will come to pass, they say, could depend on what the voters decide […]