Kaiser Health News

California Hospitals Seek a Broad Bailout, but They Don’t All Need It

Published

12 months ago

May 25, 2023

by Samantha Young and Angela Hart
Thu, 25 May 2023 09:00:00 +0000

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — One of the country's richest hospitals, which caters to Hollywood elites, accepted nearly $28 million last year from an unusual source: a charity that siphons money from other California hospitals, many of which serve the state's poorest residents.

Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles secured the grant under California's recession-era financing scheme that allows wealthy hospitals to take valuable health care tax money from poorer ones. Hospitals across the state agreed in 2009 to the arrangement in order to tap billions more per year in taxpayer dollars to support the state's Medicaid program, called Medi-Cal.

Now, some of those hospitals serving a greater share of Medi-Cal patients are in dire financial need and face cutbacks and potential closures. But instead of asking for help for only those at greatest risk, California's powerful hospital industry is putting the squeeze on Gov. Gavin Newsom and fellow Democratic lawmakers for an unprecedented bailout. And they are doing it even as the state faces a nearly $32 billion budget deficit.

Hospitals argue that to avert a crisis, they need an emergency infusion of $1.5 billion. They also want a steady annual stream of new health care tax money despite already having their own dedicated tax intended to support struggling facilities that serve a large percentage of the state's low-income people, such as Madera Community Hospital in the Central Valley, which closed earlier this year.

Ads by the California Hospital Association paint a scary picture: “1 in 5 Hospitals are at risk of closure.” Yet another warns, “Health care that millions rely on is at risk.” Those claims are being repeated by state lawmakers as they debate financial rescue for hospitals.

But a KFF Health News analysis of state data revealed that despite increased labor costs and inflation, many California hospitals have been profitable in recent years. The industry earned roughly $131 billion last year in patient revenue, a key indicator of profitability — $7.3 billion more than the previous year. After factoring in rising costs, the industry still turned a profit of about $207 million last year. State figures show the industry reaped $9.2 billion in patient revenue in 2021, partly a reflection of big swings in the stock market.

Leading health care finance experts and former state officials are urging Newsom and lawmakers to resist the industry's fear tactics, saying that, even though hospitals are still reeling from the covid-19 pandemic, many have plush financial reserves.

“They are big fans of these giant bailouts, where the relatively rich hospitals benefit as well as the ones who really need it,” said Glenn Melnick, a health economist at the University of Southern California. “A big chunk of the hospitals, even if they're losing money, don't need taxpayer money to help them through this crisis.”

Melnick and others who have analyzed the financial state of California hospitals say a sliver of California's 368 general hospitals are in crisis and that relief should be given only to those that can show they are in immediate peril. Many hospitals in underserved and rural communities are struggling financially, in part because they have failed to attract enough patients with private insurance. And the cost of providing care to lower-income patients who rely on Medi-Cal hasn't kept pace with government reimbursement rates.

But low Medi-Cal rates aren't necessarily a predictor of financial disaster, according to a report released Thursday by the California Health Care Foundation. (KFF Health News publishes California Healthline, which is an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.)

Health economists found that hospitals “with the lowest margins were no more dependent on Medi-Cal or Medicare than the average California hospital.” And many cash-strapped hospitals may be sitting on enormous wealth, an indication they don't necessarily need more taxpayer money.

“Most of the facilities that have negative margins are a part of larger systems, which suggests that they have the underlying wealth of those systems to stabilize them,” said Kristof Stremikis, director of market analysis and insight for the foundation.

Carmela Coyle, the influential leader of the state hospital lobby, said California's hospitals are in the worst crisis they've faced in recent history, largely because the state reimburses providers just 74 cents on the dollar to care for Medi-Cal patients.

“You have these underserved communities in the Central Valley, where a hospital comes in, they're doing their best, and those underserved individuals are not reimbursed the same as everybody else,” Coyle told KFF Health News. “The real underlying issue here is government underfunding.”

But Coyle isn't disclosing the full picture. Experts agree that reimbursement rates in Medi-Cal — money provided to doctors, clinics, and hospitals for taking care of low-income patients — are too low to cover the actual cost of care. Yet the state and federal government give billions in bonus and incentive payments that can actually result in higher reimbursements and even profits.

After Madera Community Hospital cut off services and shuttered, Coyle warned that it was a “canary in the coal mine” for other hospitals unable to make ends meet because of its high proportion of low-income patients and reliance on government payments. But the hospital actually made nearly $15 million from Medi-Cal in 2021, KFF Health News has gleaned from state hospital financial records.

The overarching problem, according to emails obtained by KFF Health News, was an inability to demand higher payments from commercial health insurance companies, as well as attract their patients — 70% of whom sought care outside Madera County.

The hospital “does not have the ability to negotiate competitive rates on its own,” according to an email last June to the California attorney general's office from representatives of Trinity Health, a national Catholic health system, which backed off from acquiring the hospital.

The Madera hospital's CEO, Karen Paolinelli, and other hospital leaders made another last-ditch effort to keep its doors open: They asked for an advance payment of their hospital tax revenue — money distributed through health insurance plans and the state. The payment they sought was from the Hospital Quality Assurance Fee, which allows hospitals to tax themselves to draw in federal money for Medi-Cal. Adopted in California in 2009 and later approved by voters through a ballot initiative, the tax brought in $8.4 billion last year.

“We did ask before we closed to get paid some of the provider money owed to us,” Paolinelli said. “But we were not successful.”

She said the hospital needed $5 million to remain open and couldn't secure funding in time.

Under the hospital tax revenue, the money is spread across California hospitals, but the system is designed to protect the rich hospitals and essentially help them avoid industry taxes.

Hospitals with a greater share of low-income patients pay a higher tax than wealthier systems that don't serve as many poor people. However, they benefit handsomely, ultimately increasing how much they are paid to care for Medi-Cal patients. Then those hospitals give up a portion of their tax money to a charity that funnels it to better-performing hospitals in exchange for their political support for the hospital tax.

“The winner hospitals contribute money to a fund that is used to distribute money to the loser hospitals,” said Elaine Batchlor, CEO of MLK Community Health, which is asking for financial help because roughly 70% of its patients are on Medi-Cal. “No hospital loses by being a part of it. If you were going to lose money, you'd be against it.”

The transactions are routed through the California Health Foundation and Trust, the charity operated by the leadership of the California Hospital Association.

For example, Cedars-Sinai paid nearly $172 million in taxes in 2022, eclipsing the $151 million it got back in additional Medi-Cal dollars. To make up for the loss, it secured the nearly $28 million in grant revenue — earning nearly $6.9 million from the program, its commissioned tax audit shows.

Cedars-Sinai spokesperson Duke Helfand acknowledged the benefit from the taxing scheme but said the health system effectively subsidizes Medi-Cal enrollees and incurs losses of more than $180 million annually serving those low-income patients. “Over the years, our teams at Cedars-Sinai have effectively managed our financial resources, enabling us to provide exceptional patient care,” Helfand said.

By comparison, the faith-based Adventist Health, which serves more poor people and operates roughly two dozen hospitals in California, Oregon, and Hawaii, paid $148 million in taxes in 2022 and reaped $401 million in additional Medi-Cal dollars through the program, according to its independent tax audit. It then contributed $3 million of that money to the charity.

These sorts of financing arrangements are under federal scrutiny. Officials with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have blasted “hold harmless” deals that can result in wealthier hospitals receiving enough money back that they ultimately wind up paying little or no tax at all.

“A health care-related tax cannot have a hold harmless provision that guarantees to return all or a portion of the tax back to the taxpayer,” Daniel Tsai, deputy administrator and director for the federal Medicaid agency, wrote in February.

Dave Regan, president of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, which represents hospital workers, has long lambasted California's scheme as a ploy that lets wealthy hospitals siphon valuable health care dollars from smaller, rural hospitals that need more support for Medi-Cal patients.

“We believe the policies and practices of the hospital industry, in large part, contribute to the problems that Madera faced,” Regan said. “The hospital industry is richer than it's ever been — and it's being disingenuous, trying to get the public to fork over more money at a time when they have more money than they've ever had.”

California Hospital Association spokesperson David Simon defended the charity, saying it helps “hospitals provide health care services despite losses” from the tax.

Hospital leaders say exorbitant costs and inflation have created extreme financial woes. Last year, California's hospitals paid at least $10 billion more for labor, supplies, and other expenses than the year before, according to state hospital finance data. And overall, they saw substantially smaller investment gains, reporting nearly $119 million in non-operating revenue compared with $6 billion the year before — a big blow to their financial cushion to ensure patient care.

The industry points out 200 hospitals had negative operating margins last year, yet KFF Health News found that, even before the pandemic, about 160 hospitals reported losing money in their operating budgets. Experts say the finding underscores the reality that hospitals operate on slim margins.

And, credit ratings agencies have recently upgraded the bonds of a number of hospitals and health systems, including Sutter Health in Northern California and Loma Linda University Medical Center in San Bernardino County.

“We just upgraded Sutter like two weeks ago, so it would be very hard-pressed, for me, to look at California and say California is looking bad,” said Kevin Holloran, a senior director at Fitch Ratings.

Some Democratic lawmakers agree that not all hospitals need a bailout. Instead, they favor targeted relief such as a $150 million loan program that Newsom signed into law earlier this month to help struggling hospitals.

“I'm not a big fan of writing everybody a check,” said Democratic Assemblymember Jim Wood, chair of the Health Committee, who says hospitals ought to be more transparent about their finances before state taxpayers give them any more money. “If you're a hospital system that's doing well, I don't believe you should be getting any additional resources from the state.”

KFF Health News senior correspondent Bernard J. Wolfson contributed to this report.

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

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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By: Samantha Young and Angela Hart
Title: California Hospitals Seek a Broad Bailout, but They Don't All Need It
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/california-hospital-funding-bailouts-hospital-quality-assurance-fee-program/
Published Date: Thu, 25 May 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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Kaiser Health News

Stranded in the ER, Seniors Await Hospital Care and Suffer Avoidable Harm

Published

15 hours ago

May 6, 2024

Staff Editor

Judith Graham
Mon, 06 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Every day, the scene plays out in hospitals across America: Older men and women lie on gurneys in emergency room corridors moaning or suffering silently as harried medical staff attend to crises.

Even when physicians determine these patients need to be admitted to the hospital, they often wait for hours — sometimes more than a day — in the ER in pain and discomfort, not getting enough food or water, not moving around, not being helped to the bathroom, and not getting the kind of care doctors deem necessary.

“You walk through ER hallways, and they're lined from end to end with patients on stretchers in various states of distress calling out for help, including a number of older patients,” said Hashem Zikry, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA Health.

Physicians who staff emergency rooms say this problem, known as ER boarding, is as bad as it's ever been — even worse than during the first years of the covid-19 pandemic, when hospitals filled with desperately ill patients.

While boarding can happen to all ER patients, adults 65 and older, who account for nearly 20% of ER visits, are especially vulnerable during long waits for care. Also, seniors may encounter boarding more often than other patients. The best estimates I could find, published in 2019, before the covid-19 pandemic, suggest that 10% of patients were boarded in ERs before receiving hospital care. About 30% to 50% of these patients were older adults.

“It's a public health crisis,” said Aisha Terry, an associate professor of emergency medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and the president of the board of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which sponsored a summit on boarding in September.

What's going on? I spoke to almost a dozen doctors and researchers who described the chaotic situation in ERs. They told me staff shortages in hospitals, which affect the number of beds available, are contributing to the crisis. Also, they explained, hospital administrators are setting aside more beds for patients undergoing lucrative surgeries and other procedures, contributing to bottlenecks in ERs and leaving more patients in limbo.

Then, there's high demand for hospital services, fueled in part by the aging of the U.S. population, and backlogs in discharging patients because of growing problems securing home health care and nursing home care, according to Arjun Venkatesh, chair of emergency medicine at the Yale School of Medicine.

The impact of long ER waits on seniors who are frail, with multiple medical issues, is especially serious. Confined to stretchers, gurneys, or even hard chairs, often without dependable aid from nurses, they're at risk of losing strength, forgoing essential medications, and experiencing complications such as delirium, according to Saket Saxena, a co-director of the geriatric emergency department at the Cleveland Clinic.

When these patients finally secure a hospital bed, their stays are longer and medical complications more common. And new research finds that the risk of dying in the hospital is significantly higher for older adults when they stay in ERs overnight, as is the risk of adverse events such as falls, infections, bleeding, heart attacks, strokes, and bedsores.

Ellen Danto-Nocton, a geriatrician in Milwaukee, was deeply concerned when an 88-year-old relative with “strokelike symptoms” spent two days in the ER a few years ago. Delirious, immobile, and unable to sleep as alarms outside his bed rang nonstop, the older man spiraled downward before he was moved to a hospital room. “He really needed to be in a less chaotic environment,” Danto-Nocton said.

Several weeks ago, Zikry of UCLA Health helped care for a 70-year-old woman who'd fallen and broken her hip while attending a basketball game. “She was in a corner of our ER for about 16 hours in an immense amount of pain that was very difficult to treat adequately,” he said. ERs are designed to handle crises and stabilize patients, not to “take care of patients who we've already decided need to be admitted to the hospital,” he said.

How common is ER boarding and where is it most acute? No one knows, because hospitals aren't required to report data about boarding publicly. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services retired a measure of boarding in 2021. New national measures of emergency care capacity have been proposed but not yet approved.

“It's not just the extent of ED boarding that we need to understand. It's the extent of acute hospital capacity in our communities,” said Venkatesh of Yale, who helped draft the new measures.

In the meantime, some hospital systems are publicizing their plight by highlighting capacity constraints and the need for more hospital beds. Among them is Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, which announced in January that ER boarding had risen 32% from October 2022 to September 2023. At the end of that period, patients admitted to the hospital spent a median of 14 hours in the ER and 26% spent more than 24 hours.

Maura Kennedy, Mass General's chief of geriatric emergency medicine, described an 80-something woman with a respiratory infection who languished in the ER for more than 24 hours after physicians decided she needed inpatient hospital care.

“She wasn't mobilized, she had nothing to cognitively engage her, she hadn't eaten, and she became increasingly agitated, trying to get off the stretcher and arguing with staff,” Kennedy told me. “After a prolonged hospital stay, she left the hospital more disabled than she was when she came in.”

When I asked ER doctors what older adults could do about these problems, they said boarding is a health system issue that needs health system and policy changes. Still, they had several suggestions.

“Have another person there with you to advocate on your behalf,” said Jesse Pines, chief of clinical innovation at US Acute Care Solutions, the nation's largest physician-owned emergency medicine practice. And have that person speak up if they feel you're getting worse or if staffers are missing problems.

Alexander Janke, a clinical instructor of emergency medicine at the University of Michigan, advises people, “Be prepared to wait when you come to an ER” and “bring a medication list and your medications, if you can.”

To stay oriented and reduce the possibility of delirium, “make sure you have your hearing aids and eyeglasses with you,” said Michael Malone, medical director of senior services for Advocate Aurora Health, a 20-hospital system in Wisconsin and northern Illinois. “Whenever possible, try to get up and move around.”

Friends or family caregivers who accompany older adults to the ER should ask to be at their bedside, when possible, and “try to make sure they eat, drink, get to the bathroom, and take routine medications for underlying medical conditions,” Malone said.

Older adults or caregivers who are helping them should try to bring “things that would engage you cognitively: magazines, books … music, anything that you might focus on in a hallway where there isn't a TV to entertain you,” Kennedy said.

“Experienced patients often show up with eye masks and ear plugs” to help them rest in ERs with nonstop stimulation, said Zikry of UCLA. “Also, bring something to eat and drink in case you can't get to the cafeteria or it's a while before staffers bring these to you.”

We're eager to hear from readers about questions you'd like answered, problems you've been having with your care, and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit kffhealthnews.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips.

——————————
By: Judith Graham
Title: Stranded in the ER, Seniors Await Hospital Care and Suffer Avoidable Harm
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/emergency-room-boarding-older-adults-harm/
Published Date: Mon, 06 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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Kaiser Health News

Could Better Inhalers Help Patients, and the Planet?

Published

17 hours ago

May 6, 2024

Staff Editor

Martha Bebinger, WBUR
Mon, 06 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Miguel Divo, a lung specialist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, sits in an exam room across from Joel Rubinstein, who has asthma. Rubinstein, a retired psychiatrist, is about to get a checkup and hear a surprising pitch — for the planet, as well as his health.

Divo explains that boot-shaped inhalers, which represent nearly 90% of the U.S. market for asthma medication, save lives but also contribute to climate change. Each puff from an inhaler releases a hydrofluorocarbon gas that is 1,430 to 3,000 times as powerful as the most commonly known greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

“That absolutely never occurred to me,” said Rubinstein. “Especially, I mean, these are little, teeny things.”

So Divo has begun offering a more eco-friendly option to some patients with asthma and other lung diseases: a plastic, gray cylinder about the size and shape of a hockey puck that contains powdered medicine. Patients suck the powder into their lungs — no puff of gas required and no greenhouse gas emissions.

“You have the same medications, two different delivery systems,” Divo said.

Patients in the United States are prescribed roughly 144 million of what doctors call metered-dose inhalers each year, according to the most recently available data published in 2020. The cumulative amount of gas released is the equivalent of driving half a million gas-powered cars for a year. So, the benefits of moving to dry powder inhalers from gas inhalers could add up.

Hydrofluorocarbon gas contributes to climate change, which is creating more wildfire smoke, other types of air pollution, and longer allergy seasons. These conditions can make breathing more difficult — especially for people with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD — and increase the use of inhalers.

Divo is one of a small but growing number of U.S. physicians determined to reverse what they see as an unhealthy cycle.

“There is only one planet and one human race,” Divo said. “We are creating our own problems and we need to do something.”

So Divo is working with patients like Rubinstein who may be willing to switch to dry powder inhalers. Rubinstein said no to the idea at first because the powder inhaler would have been more expensive. Then his insurer increased the copay on the metered-dose inhaler so Rubinstein decided to try the dry powder.

“For me, price is a big thing,” said Rubinstein, who has tracked health care and pharmaceutical spending in his professional roles for years. Inhaling the medicine using more of his own lung power was an adjustment. “The powder is a very strange thing, to blow powder into your mouth and lungs.”

But for Rubinstein, the new inhaler works and his asthma is under control. A recent study found that some patients in the United Kingdom who use dry powder inhalers have better asthma control while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In Sweden, where the vast majority of patients use dry powder inhalers, rates of severe asthma are lower than in the United States.

Rubinstein is one of a small number of U.S. patients who have made the transition. Divo said that, for a variety of reasons, only about a quarter of his patients even consider switching. Dry powder inhalers are often more expensive than gas propellant inhalers. For some, dry powder isn't a good option because not all asthma or COPD sufferers can get their medications in this form. And dry powder inhalers aren't recommended for young children or elderly patients with diminished lung strength.

Also, some patients using dry powder inhalers worry that without the noise from the spray, they may not be receiving the proper dose. Other patients don't like the taste powder inhalers can leave in their mouths.

Divo said his priority is making sure patients have an inhaler they are comfortable using and that they can afford. But, when appropriate, he'll keep offering the dry powder option.

Advocacy groups for asthma and COPD patients support more conversations about the connection between inhalers and climate change.

“The climate crisis makes these individuals have a higher risk of exacerbation and worsening disease,” said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association. “We don't want medications to contribute to that.”

Rizzo said there is work being done to make metered-dose inhalers more climate-friendly. The United States and many other countries are phasing down the use of hydrofluorocarbons, which are also used in refrigerators and air conditioners. It's part of the global attempt to avoid the worst possible impacts of climate change. But inhaler manufacturers are largely exempt from those requirements and can continue to use the gases while they explore new options.

Some leading inhaler manufacturers have pledged to produce canisters with less potent greenhouse gases and to submit them for regulatory review by next year. It's not clear when these inhalers might be available in pharmacies. Separately, the FDA is spending about $6 million on a study about the challenges of developing inhalers with a smaller carbon footprint.

Rizzo and other lung specialists worry these changes will translate into higher prices. That's what happened in the early to mid-2000s when ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were phased out of inhalers. Manufacturers changed the gas in metered-dose inhalers and the cost to patients nearly doubled. Today, many of those re-engineered inhalers remain expensive.

William Feldman, a pulmonologist and health policy researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said these dramatic price increases occur because manufacturers register updated inhalers as new products, even though they deliver medications already on the market. The manufacturers are then awarded patents, which prevent the production of competing generic medications for decades. The Federal Trade Commission says it is cracking down on this practice.

After the CFC ban, “manufacturers earned billions of dollars from the inhalers,” Feldman said of the re-engineered inhalers.

When inhaler costs went up, physicians say, patients cut back on puffs and suffered more asthma attacks. Gregg Furie, medical director for climate and sustainability at Brigham and Women's Hospital, is worried that's about to happen again.

“While these new propellants are potentially a real positive development, there's also a significant risk that we're going to see patients and payers face significant cost hikes,” Furie said.

Some of the largest inhaler manufacturers, including GSK, are already under scrutiny for allegedly inflating prices in the United States. Sydney Dodson-Nease told NPR and KFF Health News that the company has a strong record for keeping medicines accessible to patients but that it's too early to comment on the price of the more environmentally sensitive inhalers the company is developing.

Developing affordable, effective, and climate-friendly inhalers will be important for hospitals as well as patients. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality recommends that hospitals looking to shrink their carbon footprint reduce inhaler emissions. Some hospital administrators see switching inhalers as low-hanging fruit on the list of climate-change improvements a hospital might make.

But Brian Chesebro, medical director of environmental stewardship at Providence, a hospital network in Oregon, said, “It's not as easy as swapping inhalers.”

Chesebro said that even among metered-dose inhalers, the climate impact varies. So pharmacists should suggest the inhalers with the fewest greenhouse gas emissions. Insurers should also adjust reimbursements to favor climate-friendly alternatives, he said, and regulators could consider emissions when reviewing hospital performance.

Samantha Green, a family physician in Toronto, said clinicians can make a big difference with inhaler emissions by starting with the question: Does the patient in front of me really need one?

Green, who works on a project to make inhalers more environmentally sustainable, said that research shows a third of adults diagnosed with asthma may not have the disease.

“So that's an easy place to start,” Green said. “Make sure the patient prescribed an inhaler is actually benefiting from it.”

Green said educating patients has a measurable effect. In her experience, patients are moved to learn that emissions from the approximately 200 puffs in one inhaler are equivalent to driving about 100 miles in a gas-powered car. Some researchers say switching to dry powder inhalers may be as beneficial for the climate as a patient adopting a vegetarian diet.

One of the hospitals in Green's health care network, St. Joseph's Health Centre, found that talking to patients about inhalers led to a significant decrease in the use of metered-dose devices. Over six months, the hospital went from 70% of patients using the puffers, to 30%.

Green said patients who switched to dry powder inhalers have largely stuck with them and appreciate using a device that is less likely to exacerbate environmental conditions that inflame asthma.

This article is from a partnership that includes WBUR, NPR, and KFF Health News.

——————————
By: Martha Bebinger, WBUR
Title: Could Better Inhalers Help Patients, and the Planet?
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/inhalers-environmentally-friendly-planet-dry-powder-climate-changer/
Published Date: Mon, 06 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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Kaiser Health News

Journalists Delve Into Climate Change, Medicaid ‘Unwinding,’ and the Gap in Mortality Rates

Published

3 days ago

May 4, 2024

Staff Editor

Sat, 04 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

KFF Health News senior correspondent Samantha Young discussed Medicaid and climate change on KCBS Radio's “On-Demand” podcast on April 29.

Click here to hear Young on KCBS
Read Young's “AC, Power Banks, Mini Fridges: Oregon Equips Medicaid Patients for Climate Change“

KFF Health News contributor Andy Miller discussed Medicaid unwinding on WUGA's “The Georgia Health Report” on April 26.

Click here to hear Miller on “The Georgia Health Report”
Read Phil Galewitz' “Millions Were Booted From Medicaid. The Insurers That Run It Gained Medicaid Revenue Anyway.“

KFF Health News Nevada correspondent Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez discussed mortality rates in rural America on The Daily Yonder's “The Yonder Report” on April 24.

——————————
Title: Journalists Delve Into Climate Change, Medicaid ‘Unwinding,' and the Gap in Mortality Rates
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/journalists-delve-into-climate-change-medicaid-unwinding-and-the-gap-in-mortality-rates/
Published Date: Sat, 04 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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