Kaiser Health News

The Biden Administration Vowed to Be a Leading Voice on Opioid Settlements But Has Gone Quiet

Published

1 year ago

April 21, 2023

by Aneri Pattani
Fri, 21 Apr 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Early in President Joe Biden's tenure, his administration promised to play a key role in ensuring opioid settlement funds went toward tackling the nation's addiction crisis.

During the 2020 campaign, Biden had laid out a plan to appoint an “opioid crisis accountability coordinator” to support states in their lawsuits against companies accused of sparking the overdose epidemic. The following year, the White House convened a meeting about the soon-to-be finalized settlements, noted that the money could support drug policy priorities, and helped create a model law that states could adopt in anticipation of receiving funds.

But today, as billions of dollars actually start to flow and state and local leaders make crucial decisions on how to spend the more than $50 billion windfall to tackle this entrenched public health crisis, the federal government has gone mostly quiet.

No federal employee holds the title of opioid crisis accountability coordinator. The Office of National Drug Control Policy has not released public statements about the settlements in over a year. And the settlement funds are mentioned just twice in a 150-page national strategy to reduce drug trafficking and overdose deaths.

The federal government is not legally obligated to engage in the discussion. After all, states filed the lawsuits against companies that made, sold, or distributed opioid painkillers, including Johnson & Johnson, McKesson, and Walmart.

But there is an expectation that the federal government, including the nation's leading agencies on mental health and addiction, should play a role. Public policy and health experts say a vacuum of federal leadership could lead to serious wasted opportunities and missteps in the use of the billions that will be paid out over nearly two decades — in what could be an unfortunate reprise of the multibillion-dollar 1998 settlement with tobacco companies.

“States get wide eyes when they get these huge pots of money,” said Bill Pierce, who served as spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services in the early 2000s. He was there when states began receiving cash from the tobacco settlement. Soon enough, money “starts to seep out to other areas that could be completely unrelated,” he said.

Back then, tobacco companies agreed to pay states billions annually for as long as they continued selling cigarettes. But there were no restrictions on the money's use and much of it went to plugging state budget gaps, filling potholes, and even subsidizing tobacco farmers. Today, less than 3% of the annual payouts support anti-smoking programs.

Protecting the Opioid Cash

The opioid settlements have a built-in protection to address this concern. At least 85% of the money states receive must be spent on opioid-related expenses. But interpretations of qualifying expenses vary widely — often based on state politics. And oversight so far has been weak. The companies paying out the money are responsible for holding states to that threshold, but they're unlikely to monitor closely, legal experts say.

Public vigilance could help, but most states have promised little to no public reporting, making it difficult to track their use of funds. KFF Health News is following how state and local governments use — or misuse — the cash through this year.

Some people hope the federal government can fill this gap in oversight.

“There are opportunities to incentivize” and support state and local governments “in the right direction,” said Michele Gilbert, a senior policy analyst with the think tank Bipartisan Policy Center. The Biden administration can issue official guidance, promote the findings of national research, or leverage the power of its purse strings. But so far, “there hasn't been a lot of federal government action on the settlement.”

The Office of National Drug Control Policy told KFF Health News it regularly discusses the use of settlement dollars with governors, mayors, and other elected officials to ensure the money bolsters federal efforts already underway. Beating the opioid epidemic by disrupting drug trafficking and expanding access to treatment is one of the four pillars of Biden's “unity agenda.”

“We know that expanding access to treatment for substance use disorder, lifesaving interventions like naloxone, and recovery support services will reduce the harms of addiction and the overdose epidemic,” said Rahul Gupta, director of national drug control policy.

That's why the administration helped create a model law, as “a blueprint for states and communities on evidence-based ways to use opioid settlement funds,” he said. It's been adopted, at least in part, by 11 state legislatures and is being considered by two others.

Lessons in Lax Oversight

But history suggests optional federal guidance may not be enough to ensure the money is used for its intended purpose.

Matthew Myers, president of the nonprofit Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said it was a mistake for the federal government to take a back seat on the tobacco master settlement more than two decades ago.

Those lawsuits aimed, in part, to recover health care costs for smoking-related illnesses. Medicaid, a public insurance program for people with low incomes or disabilities, was a leading payer. Since Medicaid is jointly funded by the U.S. and state governments, federal authorities had a right to some of the settlement money.

States lobbied Congress to forgo that claim. Myers and other advocates asked legislators to do so only if they required states to spend at least 25% of the funds on anti-smoking efforts.

But Congress waived its right to the money unconditionally.

“It was a significant missed opportunity,” Myers said, “because it meant the federal government ended up having no say whatsoever in how the dollars were used.”

When it comes to the opioid settlements, it's not clear if the federal government will try to claim repayment for Medicaid expenses linked to opioid addiction, which was estimated at $23 billion in 2019. Bruce Alexander, spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, declined to answer specific questions and simply wrote, “CMS is currently reviewing the issue.”

The agency has tried to recoup costs in at least one case.

In 2019, CMS sent a letter to Oklahoma asking for part of the state's $270 million settlement with Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin. According to Phil Bacharach, spokesperson for the Oklahoma attorney general's office, the state eventually reached an agreement to keep all its Purdue settlement but later pay $390,000 to the federal agency from a separate settlement with opioid manufacturer Endo.

Some states, like Arkansas and Oregon, have planned for similar possibilities in their public documents about the opioid settlements. But as of mid-March, neither state had received federal requests for their share.

A Carrot-and-Stick Approach

Health policy experts suggest the Biden administration could use the possibility of claiming those funds as leverage: In return for allowing states to keep the cash, it could require all of it be spent on addressing the opioid crisis or be used only for treatments backed by research.

Alternatively, it could attach conditions to the more than $6 billion in federal grants that is funneled to states each year to address addiction.

“The federal government is spending a lot of money on opioids,” said Pierce, the former HHS spokesperson. “If they want, they could try and tie that money to requirements that settlement money be spent on opioids.”

In the 1970s, the Nixon administration used a similar tactic, with federal transportation funding as the carrot. Given the energy crisis at the time, the administration wanted states to reduce oil consumption by imposing a maximum speed limit of 55 mph. But it couldn't mandate states to do so. Instead, Nixon signed a law saying states could receive federal highway funding only if they lowered speed limits. In the end, all states complied.

Myers, of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, put it this way: “States will only listen to the federal government if there's a financial reason to do so.”

The federal government also can suggest the settlements be used to augment, not duplicate, existing federal funding, said Gilbert, of the Bipartisan Policy Center.

For instance, the money could support grassroots organizations that don't have the time or ability to apply for federal grants, she said. Or it could go to groups that provide sterile syringes and other supplies to people using drugs, which can't be purchased with taxpayer dollars.

The federal government can emphasize the more flexible options for spending the settlement money compared with federal funds, Gilbert said.

The Biden administration has been the first to embrace grassroots programs and has called for sustainable funding for “harm reduction services” in its national overdose prevention strategy. But it has stopped short of explicitly recommending settlement funds for this purpose.

Such initiatives are designed to minimize the risks of using drugs but are politically fraught, with critics saying they encourage illegal activity and supporters saying they save lives. Local opposition often takes the form of “not-in-my-backyard” or questions about why certain neighborhoods bear the brunt of addiction and homelessness concerns.

In such turf disputes, the lack of federal leadership is acutely felt, say some advocates.

For example, in New York, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul rejected a recommendation to use opioid settlement funds to support two overdose prevention centers — places where people can use illicit drugs under supervision. She cited “various state and federal laws” that make such sites illegal. A similar conversation is taking place in San Francisco, with the mayor citing a lack of federal legal clarity on the issue.

Federal authorities haven't acted to shut down any sites so far but haven't publicly supported them either. The Office of National Drug Control Policy declined to comment, given ongoing litigation in a related case in Philadelphia.

Some people question whether the Biden administration's weighing in would have much impact, given the deep political divisions in some states where local officials are eager to flout federal guidance. Earlier this year, Republican leaders in Tennessee rejected millions of dollars in federal funding for HIV prevention to push back on federal support for transgender and abortion rights.

But Regina LaBelle, who was acting director of national drug control policy during Biden's early years and now works for Georgetown University's O'Neill Institute, said the federal government has managed to guide state policy on controversial topics before.

In 2015, shortly after intravenous drug use sparked a major HIV outbreak in Scott County, Indiana, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study showing other counties were similarly vulnerable. Kentucky, identified as a hot spot, went on to implement policies that dramatically increased the number of syringe service programs, which are known to reduce HIV transmission.

Today, the Biden administration could provide data to similarly inform local decisions, LaBelle said. A national dashboard launched late last year to show nonfatal overdoses is a start. And there is time to build on that, since the opioid settlements will be stretched out over many years, she added.

“We have an opportunity to see what's the appropriate role of the federal government,” LaBelle said. “It's not too late.”

By: Aneri Pattani
Title: The Biden Administration Vowed to Be a Leading Voice on Opioid Settlements But Has Gone Quiet
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/biden-administration-opioid-settlements-federal-government/
Published Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Post Views: 386

Related Topics:Featured federalgovernment Health Kaiser Health News News opioidcrisis

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Millions Were Booted From Medicaid. The Insurers That Run It Gained Medicaid Revenue Anyway.

Published

3 days ago

April 26, 2024

Staff Editor

Phil Galewitz, KFF Health News
Fri, 26 Apr 2024 13:55:00 +0000

Private Medicaid health plans lost millions of members in the past year as pandemic protections that prohibited states from dropping anyone from the government program expired.

But despite Medicaid's unwinding, as it's known, at least two of the five largest publicly traded companies selling plans have continued to increase revenue from the program, according to their latest earnings reports.

“It's a very interesting paradox,” said Andy Schneider, a research professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, of plans' Medicaid revenue increasing despite enrollment drops.

Medicaid, the state-federal health program for low-income and disabled people, is administered by states. But most people enrolled in the program get their health care through insurers contracted by states, including UnitedHealthcare, Centene, and Molina.

The companies persuaded states to pay them more money per Medicaid enrollee under the assumption that younger and healthier people were dropping out — presumably for Obamacare coverage or employer-based health insurance, or because they didn't see the need to get coverage — leaving behind an older and sicker population to cover, their executives have told investors.

Several of the companies reported that states have made midyear and retrospective changes in their payments to plans to account for the worsening health status of members.

In an earnings call with analysts on April 25, Molina Healthcare CEO Joe Zubretsky said 19 states increased their payment rates this year to adjust for sicker Medicaid enrollees. “States have been very responsive,” Zubretsky said. “We couldn't be more pleased with the way our state customers have responded to having rates be commensurate with normal cost trends and trends that have been influenced by the acuity shift.”

Health plans have faced much uncertainty during the Medicaid unwinding, as states began reassessing enrollees' eligibility and dropping those deemed no longer qualified or who lost coverage because of procedural errors. Before the unwinding, plans said they expected the overall risk profile of their members to go up because those remaining in the program would be sicker.

UnitedHealthcare, Centene, and Molina had Medicaid revenue increases ranging from 3% to 18% in 2023, according to KFF. The two other large Medicaid insurers, Elevance and CVS Health, do not break out Medicaid-specific revenue.

The Medicaid enrollment of the five companies collectively declined by about 10% from the end of March 2023 through the end of December 2023, from 44.2 million people to 39.9 million, KFF data shows.

In the first quarter of 2024, UnitedHealth's Medicaid revenue rose to $20.5 billion, up from $18.8 billion in the same quarter of 2023.

Molina on April 24 reported nearly $7.5 billion in Medicaid revenue in the first quarter of 2024, up from $6.3 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

On April 26, Centene reported that its Medicaid enrollment fell 18.5% to 13.3 million in the first quarter of 2024 compared with the same period a year ago. The company's Medicaid revenue dipped 3% to $22.2 billion.

Unlike UnitedHealthcare, whose Medicaid enrollment fell to 7.7 million in March 2024 from 8.4 million a year prior, Molina's Medicaid enrollment rose in the first quarter of 2024 to 5.1 million from 4.8 million in March 2023. Molina's enrollment jump last year was partly a result of its having bought a Medicaid plan in Wisconsin and gained a new Medicaid contract in Iowa, the company said in its earnings news release.

Molina added 1 million members because states were prohibited from terminating Medicaid coverage during the pandemic. The company has lost 550,000 of those people during the unwinding and expects to lose an additional 50,000 by June.

About 90% of Molina Medicaid members have gone through the redetermination process, Zubretsky said.

The corporate giants also offset the enrollment losses by getting more Medicaid money from states, which they use to pass on higher payments to certain facilities or providers, Schneider said. By holding the money temporarily, the companies can count these “directed payments” as revenue.

Medicaid health plans were big winners during the pandemic after the federal government prohibited states from dropping people from the program, leading to a surge in enrollment to about 93 million Americans.

States made efforts to limit health plans' profits by clawing back some payments above certain thresholds, said Elizabeth Hinton, an associate director at KFF.

But once the prohibition on dropping Medicaid enrollees was lifted last spring, the plans faced uncertainty. It was unclear how many people would lose coverage or when it would happen. Since the unwinding began, more than 20 million people have been dropped from the rolls.

Medicaid enrollees' health care costs were lower during the pandemic, and some states decided to exclude pandemic-era cost data as they considered how to set payment rates for 2024. That provided yet another win for the Medicaid health plans.

Most states are expected to complete their Medicaid unwinding processes this year.

——————————
By: Phil Galewitz, KFF Health News
Title: Millions Were Booted From Medicaid. The Insurers That Run It Gained Medicaid Revenue Anyway.
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/medicaid-unwinding-insurer-revenue/
Published Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2024 13:55:00 +0000

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Kaiser Health News

California Is Investing $500M in Therapy Apps for Youth. Advocates Fear It Won’t Pay Off.

Published

3 days ago

April 26, 2024

Staff Editor

Molly Castle Work
Fri, 26 Apr 2024 09:00:00 +0000

With little pomp, California launched two apps at the start of the year offering free behavioral health services to youths to help them cope with everything from living with anxiety to body acceptance.

Through their phones, young people and some caregivers can meet BrightLife Kids and Soluna coaches, some who specialize in peer support or substance use disorders, for roughly 30-minute virtual counseling sessions that are best suited to those with more mild needs, typically those without a clinical diagnosis. The apps also feature self-directed activities, such as white noise sessions, guided breathing, and videos of ocean waves to help users relax.

“We believe they're going to have not just great impact, but wide impact across California, especially in places where maybe it's not so easy to find an in-person behavioral health visit or the kind of coaching and supports that parents and young people need,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom's health secretary, Mark Ghaly, during the Jan. 16 announcement.

The apps represent one of the Democratic governor's major forays into health technology and come with four-year contracts valued at $498 million. California is believed to be the first state to offer a mental health app with free coaching to all young residents, according to the Department of Health Care Services, which operates the program.

However, the rollout has been slow. So slow that one of the companies has missed a deadline to make its app available on Android phones. Only about 15,000 of the state's 12.6 million children and young adults have signed up for the apps, and school counselors say they've never heard of them.

Advocates for youth question the wisdom of investing taxpayer dollars in two private companies. Social workers are concerned the companies' coaches won't properly identify youths who need referrals for clinical care. And the spending is drawing lawmaker scrutiny amid a state deficit pegged at as much as $73 billion.

An App for That

Newsom's administration says the apps fill a need for young Californians and their families to access professional telehealth for free, in multiple languages, and outside of standard 9-to-5 hours. It's part of Newsom's sweeping $4.7 billion master plan for kids' mental health, which was introduced in 2022 to increase access to mental health and substance use support services. In addition to launching virtual tools such as the teletherapy apps, the initiative is working to expand workforce capacity, especially in underserved areas.

“The reality is that we are rarely 6 feet away from our devices,” said Sohil Sud, director of Newsom's Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative. “The question is how we can leverage technology as a resource for all California youth and families, not in place of, but in addition to, other behavioral health services that are being developed and expanded.”

The virtual platforms come amid rising depression and suicide rates among youth and a shortage of mental health providers. Nearly half of California youths from the ages of 12 to 17 report having recently struggled with mental health issues, with nearly a third experiencing serious psychological distress, according to a 2021 study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. These rates are even higher for multiracial youths and those from low-income families.

But those supporting youth mental health at the local level question whether the apps will move the needle on climbing depression and suicide rates.

“It's fair to applaud the state of California for aggressively seeking new tools,” said Alex Briscoe of California Children's Trust, a statewide initiative that, along with more than 100 local partners, works to improve the social and emotional health of children. “We just don't see it as fundamental. And we don't believe the youth mental health crisis will be solved by technology projects built by a professional class who don't share the lived experience of marginalized communities.”

The apps, BrightLife Kids and Soluna, are operated by two companies: Brightline, a 5-year-old venture capital-backed startup; and Kooth, a London-based publicly traded company that has experience in the U.K. and has also signed on some schools in Kentucky and Pennsylvania and a health plan in Illinois. In the first five months of Kooth's Pennsylvania pilot, 6% of students who had access to the app signed up.

Brightline and Kooth represent a growing number of health tech firms seeking to profit in this space. They beat out dozens of other bidders including international consulting companies and other youth telehealth platforms that had already snapped up contracts in California.

Although the service is intended to be free with no insurance requirement, Brightline's app, BrightLife Kids, is folded into and only accessible through the company's main app, which asks for insurance information and directs users to paid licensed counseling options alongside the free coaching. After KFF Health News questioned why the free coaching was advertised below paid options, Brightline reordered the page so that, even if a child has high-acuity needs, free coaching shows up first.

The apps take an expansive view of behavioral health, making the tools available to all California youth under age 26 as well as caregivers of babies, toddlers, and children 12 and under. When KFF Health News asked to speak with an app user, Brightline connected a reporter with a mother whose 3-year-old daughter was learning to sleep on her own.

‘It's Like Crickets'

Despite being months into the launch and having millions in marketing funds, the companies don't have a definitive rollout timeline. Brightline said it hopes to have deployed teams across the state to present the tools in person by midyear. Kooth said developing a strategy to hit every school would be “the main focus for this calendar year.”

“It's a big state — 58 counties,” Bob McCullough of Kooth said. “It'll take us a while to get to all of them.”

Brightline's contract states that the company was required to launch downloadable apps for iOS and Android phones by January, but so far BrightLife Kids is available only on Apple phones. Brightline said it's aiming to launch the Android version over the summer.

“Nobody's really done anything like this at this magnitude, I think, in the U.S. before,” said Naomi Allen, a co-founder and the CEO of Brightline. “We're very much in the early innings. We're already learning a lot.”

The contracts, obtained by KFF Health News through a records request, show the companies operating the two apps could earn as much as $498 million through the contract term, which ends in June 2027, months after Newsom is set to leave office. And the state is spending hundreds of millions more on Newsom's virtual behavioral health strategy. The state said it aims to make the apps available long-term, depending on usage.

The state said 15,000 people signed up in the first three months. When KFF Health News asked how many of those users actively engaged with the app, it declined to say, noting that data would be released this summer.

KFF Health News reached out to nearly a dozen California mental health professionals and youths. None of them were aware of the apps.

“I'm not hearing anything,” said Loretta Whitson, executive director of the California Association of School Counselors. “It's like crickets.”

Whitson said she doesn't think the apps are on “anyone's” radar in schools, and she doesn't know of any schools that are actively advertising them. Brightline will be presenting its tool to the counselor association in May, but Whitson said the company didn't reach out to plan the meeting; she did.

Concern Over Referrals

Whitson isn't comfortable promoting the apps just yet. Although both companies said they have a clinical team on staff to assist, Whitson said she's concerned that the coaches, who aren't all licensed therapists, won't have the training to detect when users need more help and refer them to clinical care.

This sentiment was echoed by other school-based social workers, who also noted the apps' duplicative nature — in some counties, like Los Angeles, youths can access free virtual counseling sessions through Hazel Health, a for-profit company. Nonprofits, too, have entered this space. For example, Teen Line, a peer-to-peer hotline operated by Southern California-based Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, is free nationwide.

While the state is also funneling money to the schools as part of Newsom's master plan, students and school-based mental health professionals voiced confusion at the large app investment when, in many school districts, few in-person counseling roles exist, and in some cases are dwindling.

Kelly Merchant, a student at College of the Desert in Palm Desert, noted that it can be hard to access in-person therapy at her school. She believes the community college, which has about 15,000 students, has only one full-time counselor and one part-time bilingual counselor. She and several students interviewed by KFF Health News said they appreciated having engaging content on their phone and the ability to speak to a coach, but all said they'd prefer in-person therapy.

“There are a lot of people who are seeking therapy, and people close to me that I know. But their insurances are taking forever, and they're on the waitlist,” Merchant said. “And, like, you're seeing all these people struggle.”

Fiscal conservatives question whether the money could be spent more effectively, like to bolster county efforts and existing youth behavioral health programs.

Republican state Sen. Roger Niello, vice chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, noted that California is forecasted to face deficits for the next three years, and taxpayer watchdogs worry the apps might cost even more in the long run.

“What starts as a small financial commitment can become uncontrollable expenses down the road,” said Susan Shelley of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

——————————
By: Molly Castle Work
Title: California Is Investing $500M in Therapy Apps for Youth. Advocates Fear It Won't Pay Off.
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/california-youth-teletherapy-apps-rollout-slow/
Published Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Post Views: 41

Kaiser Health News

KFF Health News’ ‘What the Health?’: Abortion — Again — At the Supreme Court

Published

3 days ago

April 25, 2024

Staff Editor

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 20:30:00 +0000

The Host

Julie Rovner
KFF Health News

@jrovner

Read Julie's stories.

Julie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of KFF Health News' weekly health policy news podcast, “What the Health?” A noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the author of the critically praised reference book “Health Care Politics and Policy A to Z,” now in its third edition.

Some justices suggested the Supreme Court had said its piece on abortion law when it overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. This term, however, the court has agreed to review another abortion case. At issue is whether a federal law requiring emergency care in hospitals overrides Idaho's near-total abortion ban. A decision is expected by summer.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid finalized the first-ever minimum staffing requirements for nursing homes participating in the programs. But the industry argues that there are not enough workers to hire to meet the standards.

This week's panelists are Julie Rovner of KFF Health News, Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins University's nursing and public health schools and Politico Magazine, Tami Luhby of CNN, and Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico.

Panelists

Joanne Kenen
Johns Hopkins University and Politico

@JoanneKenen

Read Joanne's articles.

Tami Luhby
CNN

@Luhby

Read Tami's stories.

Alice Miranda Ollstein
Politico

@AliceOllstein

Read Alice's stories.

Among the takeaways from this week's episode:

This week's Supreme Court hearing on emergency abortion care in Idaho was the first challenge to a state's abortion ban since the overturn of the constitutional right to an abortion. Unlike previous abortion cases, this one focused on the everyday impacts of bans on abortion care — cases in which pregnant patients experienced medical emergencies.
Establishment medical groups and doctors themselves are getting more vocal and active as states set laws on abortion access. In a departure from earlier political moments, some major medical groups are campaigning on state ballot measures.
Medicaid officials this week finalized new rules intended to more closely regulate managed-care plans that enroll Medicaid patients. The rules are intended to ensure, among other things, that patients have prompt access to needed primary care doctors and specialists.
Also this week, the Federal Trade Commission voted to ban most “noncompete” clauses in employment contracts. Such language has become common in health care and prevents not just doctors but other health workers from changing jobs — often forcing those workers to move or commute to leave a position. Business interests are already suing to block the new rules, claiming they would be too expensive and risk the loss of proprietary information to competitors.
The fallout from the cyberattack of Change Healthcare continues, as yet another group is demanding ransom from UnitedHealth Group, Change's owner. UnitedHealth said in a statement this week that the records of “a substantial portion of America” may be involved in the breach.

Plus for “extra credit” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week that they think you should read, too:

Julie Rovner: NBC News' “Women Are Less Likely To Die When Treated by Female Doctors, Study Suggests,” by Liz Szabo.

Alice Miranda Ollstein: States Newsroom's “Loss of Federal Protection in Idaho Spurs Pregnant Patients To Plan for Emergency Air Transport,” by Kelcie Moseley-Morris.

Tami Luhby: The Associated Press' “Mississippi Lawmakers Haggle Over Possible Medicaid Expansion as Their Legislative Session Nears End,” by Emily Wagster Pettus.

Joanne Kenen: States Newsroom's “Missouri Prison Agency To Pay $60K for Sunshine Law Violations Over Inmate Death Records,” by Rudi Keller.

Also mentioned on this week's podcast:

American Economic Review's “Is There Too Little Antitrust Enforcement in the U.S. Hospital Sector?” by Zarek Brot-Goldberg, Zack Cooper, Stuart Craig, and Lev Klarnet.
KFF Health News' “Medical Providers Still Grappling With UnitedHealth Cyberattack: ‘More Devastating Than Covid,” by Samantha Liss.

Credits

Francis Ying
Audio producer

Emmarie Huetteman
Editor

To hear all our podcasts, click here.

And subscribe to KFF Health News' “What the Health?” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

——————————
Title: KFF Health News' ‘What the Health?': Abortion — Again — At the Supreme Court
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/podcast/what-the-health-344-abortion-supreme-court-april-25-2024/
Published Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2024 20:30:00 +0000

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