Kaiser Health News

As Transgender ‘Refugees’ Flock to New Mexico, Waitlists Grow

Published

7 months ago

November 6, 2023

Cecilia Nowell
Mon, 06 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — This summer, Sophia Machado packed her bags and left her home in Oregon to move to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where her sister lived and where, Machado had heard, residents were friendlier to their transgender neighbors and gender-affirming health care was easier to get.

Machado, 36, is transgender and has good health insurance through her job. Within weeks, she was able to get into a small primary care clinic, where her sister was already a patient and where the doctor was willing to refill her estrogen prescription and refer her to an endocrinologist.

She felt fortunate. “I know that a lot of the larger medical institutions here are pretty slammed,” she said.

Other patients seeking gender-affirming health care in New Mexico, where access is protected by law, haven't been as lucky.

After her primary care doctor retired in 2020, Anne Withrow, a 73-year-old trans woman who has lived in Albuquerque for over 50 years, sought care at Truman Health Services, a clinic specializing in transgender health care at the University of New Mexico. “They said, ‘We have a waiting list.' A year later they still had a waiting list. A year later, before I managed to go back, I got a call,” she said.

But instead of the clinic, the caller was a provider from a local community-based health center who had gotten her name and was able to see her. Meanwhile, the state's premier clinic for transgender health is still at capacity, as of October, and unable to accept new patients. Officials said they have stopped trying to maintain a waitlist and instead refer patients elsewhere.

Over the past two years, as nearly half of states passed legislation restricting gender-affirming health care, many transgender people began relocating to states that protect access. But not all those states have had the resources to serve everyone. Cities like San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., have large LGBTQ+ health centers, but the high cost of living keeps many people from settling there. Instead, many have chosen to move to New Mexico, which has prohibited restrictions on gender-affirming care, alongside states like Minnesota, Colorado, Vermont, and Washington.

But those new arrivals have found that trans-friendly laws don't necessarily equate to easy access. Instead, they find themselves added to ever-growing waitlists for care in a small state with a long-running physician shortage.

“With the influx of gender-refugees, wait times have increased to the point that my doctor and I have planned on bi-yearly exams,” Felix Wallace, a 30-year-old trans man, said in an email.

When T. Michael Trimm started working at the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico in late 2020, he said, the center fielded two or three calls a month from people thinking about moving to the state. “Since then, it has steadily increased to a pace of one or two a week,” he said. “We've had folks from as far away as Florida and Kentucky and West Virginia.” That's not to mention families in Texas “looking to commute here for care, which is a whole other can of worms, trying to access care that's legal here, but illegal where they live.”

In its 2023 legislative session, New Mexico passed several laws protecting LGBTQ+ rights, including one that prohibits public bodies from restricting gender-affirming care.

“I feel really excited and proud to be here in New Mexico, where it's such a strong stance and such a strong refuge state,” said Molly McClain, a family medicine physician and medical director of the Deseo clinic, which serves transgender youth at the University of New Mexico Hospital. “And I also don't think that that translates to having a lot more care available.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has designated part or all of 32 of New Mexico's 33 counties as health professional shortage areas. A 2022 report found the state had lost 30% of its physicians in the previous four years. The state is on track to have the second-largest physician shortage in the country by 2030, and it already has the oldest physician workforce. The majority of providers offering gender-affirming care are near Albuquerque and Santa Fe, but 60% of the state's population live in rural regions.

Even in Albuquerque, waitlists to see any doctor are long, which can be difficult for patients desperate for care. McClain noted that the rates of self-harm and suicidal ideation can be very high for transgender people who are not yet able to fully express their identity.

That said, Trimm adds that “trans folks can be very resilient.”

Some trans people have to wait many years to receive transition-related medical care, even “when they've known this all their lives,” he said. Although waiting for care can be painful, he hopes a waitlist is easier to endure “than the idea that you maybe could never get the care.”

New Mexico had already become a haven for patients seeking abortion care, which was criminalized in many surrounding states over the past two years. But McClain noted that providing gender-affirming care requires more long-term considerations, because patients will need to be seen regularly the rest of their lives. We're “working really hard to make sure that it is sustainable,” she said.

As part of that work, McClain and others at the University of New Mexico, in partnership with the Transgender Resource Center, have started a gender-affirming care workshop to train providers statewide. They especially want to reach those in rural areas. The program began in June and has had about 90 participants at each of its biweekly sessions. McClain estimates about half have been from rural areas.

“It's long been my mantra that this is part of primary care,” McClain said. As New Mexico has protected access to care, she's seen more primary care providers motivated to offer puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and other services to their trans patients. “The point really is to enable people to feel comfortable and confident providing gender care wherever they are.”

There are still significant logistical challenges to providing gender-affirming care in New Mexico, said Anjali Taneja, a family medicine physician and executive director of Casa de Salud, an Albuquerque primary care clinic serving uninsured and Medicaid patients.

“There are companies that are outright refusing to provide [malpractice] insurance coverage for clinics doing gender-affirming care,” she said. Casa de Salud has long offered gender-affirming care, but, Taneja said, it was only this year that the clinic found malpractice insurance that would allow it to treat trans youth.

Meanwhile, reproductive health organizations and providers are trying to open a clinic — one that will also offer gender-affirming care — in southern New Mexico, with $10 million from the state legislature. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains will be part of that effort, and, although the organization does not yet offer gender-affirming care in New Mexico, spokesperson Kayla Herring said, it plans to do so.

Machado said the vitriol and hatred directed at the trans community in recent years is frightening. But if anything good has come of it, it's the attention the uproar has brought to trans stories and health care “so that these conversations are happening, rather than it being something where you have to explain to your doctor,” she said. “I feel very lucky that I was able to come here because I feel way safer here than I did in other places.”

This article was supported by the Journalism and Women Symposium Health Journalism Fellowship, with the support of The Commonwealth Fund.

——————————
By: Cecilia Nowell
Title: As Transgender ‘Refugees' Flock to New Mexico, Waitlists Grow
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/transgender-trans-refugees-care-waitlists-new-mexico/
Published Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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Indiana Weighs Hospital Monopoly as Officials Elsewhere Scrutinize Similar Deals

Published

21 hours ago

June 14, 2024

Staff Editor

Samantha Liss
Fri, 14 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0000

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — Locals in this city of 58,000 are used to having to wait at railroad crossings for one of the dozens of daily cargo trains to pass through.

But a proposed merger between the two hospitals on either side of the city could exacerbate the problem in emergencies if the hospitals shut down some services, such as trauma care, at one site, which the proposal cites as a possibility. Tom High, fire chief of a nearby township, said some first responders would be forced to transport critical patients farther, risking longer delays, if they become what locals call “railroaded” by a passing train.

That's just one of the fears in this community as Indiana officials review whether to allow Union Hospital, licensed as a 341-bed facility, to purchase the county's only other acute care hospital, the 278-bed Terre Haute Regional Hospital. The proposed deal also raises concerns about reduced tax revenue, worsening care, and higher prices.

Within the next few months, the Indiana Department of Health must find “clear evidence” that the proposed merger would improve health outcomes, access, and the quality of care. Those benefits must “outweigh any potential disadvantages.”

As the nation's health care industry has become more concentrated amid a steady clip of mergers in recent decades, it's common for one large system to dominate a market. In this case, the deal would be Indiana's first merger under the COPA law, short for Certificate of Public Advantage, that the state enacted in 2021. Such laws allow deals that the Federal Trade Commission otherwise considers illegal because they reduce competition and often create monopolies. To mitigate the negative effects of a monopoly, the merged hospitals typically agree to conditions imposed by state regulators.

Union Hospital leaders said it's time to move “beyond competition” for the sake of the region, which has struggled to keep jobs and raise life expectancy rates. Hospital spokesperson Neil Garrison said the merger would ultimately improve care, increase access, and cut costs. Leaders of Regional Hospital, which is owned by for-profit chain HCA Healthcare, did not respond to questions about the proposal.

One unusual implication arises, though: If the merger is approved, the surrounding county would lose tax revenue from one of its larger businesses. Union Hospital, which as a nonprofit is exempt from paying taxes, would be acquiring tax-paying Terre Haute Regional, which paid roughly $508,000 in county taxes for 2023, said Vigo County Auditor Jim Bramble. That's the equivalent of the starting salaries of about nine sheriff's deputies, per the county's $83 million 2024 budget.

Garrison said the hospital system is aware of the tax implications for the county and is “exploring opportunities” to address it.

Meanwhile, Roland Kohr, formerly a pathologist at Regional and a county coroner, frets about erasing competition that forced the hospitals to add services or match the other. “The push to introduce new technologies, to recruit more physicians, that may not happen,” he said.

The FTC has urged states to avoid COPAs, pointing to research that found they “have resulted in significant price increases and contributed to declines in quality of care.” The fallout of similar mergers has triggered federal sanctions in North Carolina and pushback from locals and legislators in Tennessee.

“A merged hospital system that faces little remaining competition after the merger usually has little incentive to follow through with its promises because patients have no other choice,” wrote Chris Garmon, a University of Missouri-Kansas City economist who has studied COPA mergers, in a warning to Indiana health officials about the proposed merger.

Indiana already has among the highest hospital prices in the country, according to a study by the Rand Corp. research organization. The Indiana Legislature spent the past year trying to rein in prices. Gloria Sachdev, CEO of Indianapolis-based Employers' Forum of Indiana, which pushed for those pricing limits on behalf of frustrated business leaders, is worried a Union-Regional merger would undo those gains and raise prices further.

Indiana's COPA restricts how much the hospital could increase charges, Garrison said.

Elsewhere, the largest COPA-created hospital system in the country, Ballad Health, has reported that the time patients spend in its ERs in Virginia and Tennessee before being hospitalized has more than tripled, reaching nearly 11 hours, in the six years since that monopoly of 20 hospitals formed. Still, Tennessee has awarded Ballad top marks even when certain quality metrics, including its ER speed, fall below established benchmarks.

Ballad Health spokesperson Molly Luton said the system's performance has improved since those statistics were gathered.

Last fall, some Tennesseans unsuccessfully urged a county board to call on the state to better regulate the hospital system. This spring, state lawmakers refused to hear testimony from residents who drove five hours to Nashville to testify for a bill that sought to limit future COPA mergers in the state — which ultimately didn't make it to a full vote.

Problems have also occurred when a COPA — and its oversight — are removed, leaving the merged hospital system as an “unregulated monopoly.” After North Carolina repealed its COPA in 2015, a subsidiary of HCA Healthcare bought Mission Health, a COPA-created monopoly in Asheville, for $1.5 billion in 2019. The monopoly in Asheville remained but none of the COPA's conditions applied to the new owner.

Last year, government inspectors found “deficiencies” at Mission Health that contributed to four patient deaths and posed an “immediate jeopardy” to patients' health and safety, according to the 384-page federal inspection report. North Carolina Attorney General Joshua Stein sued HCA's subsidiary last year, alleging the ER was “significantly degraded,” and that the company failed to maintain certain critical services, including oncology care, a violation of a purchase agreement Stein's office negotiated with it because the company acquired a nonprofit.

HCA said it promptly addressed the issues and denied Stein's allegations in its legal response to the ongoing lawsuit, arguing it has expanded services since its purchase. HCA also argued that the agreement is silent about maintaining the quality of care.

Back in Indiana, Union Hospital laid the groundwork for its merger more than three years ago when its leaders provided the language for COPA legislation to then-state Sen. Jon Ford, a Republican in Terre Haute, believing he would be “the best champion for this proposal,” according to legislative testimony from Taylor Hollenbeck, an RJL Solutions consultant on the merger. Ford, listed on the legislature's site as the bill's co-author, did not respond to requests for comment.

Union CEO Steve Holman testified in the bill's hearings that the county's public health rankings — with an average life expectancy ranking 68th out of 92 counties in the state — should be a “call to action” to do something “big and bold.”

Terre Haute Mayor Brandon Sakbun agrees the merger could help what he called the county's “abysmal” public health statistics. Last year, he was elected the city's youngest mayor at age 27 on a promise to “turn Terre Haute around.” The region's workforce has steadily declined and local leaders have pinned their hopes on a new casino and a manufacturer of battery parts for electric vehicles to reverse this trend.

Sakbun's father is an OB-GYN at Union, but the mayor said that doesn't color his opinion and that he supports the hospital merger despite the loss of the tax base. He believes it will help recruit medical and other professionals to an area that has struggled to attract top talent.

“Do I believe that this is the one that bucks the research?” Sakbun said. “I truthfully do.”

KFF Health News correspondent Brett Kelman contributed to this article.

——————————
By: Samantha Liss
Title: Indiana Weighs Hospital Monopoly as Officials Elsewhere Scrutinize Similar Deals
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/indiana-copa-hospital-monopoly-scrutiny/
Published Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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Kaiser Health News

California Lawmakers Preserve Aid to Older, Disabled Immigrants

Published

23 hours ago

June 14, 2024

Staff Editor

Vanessa G. Sánchez
Fri, 14 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0000

California lawmakers on Thursday passed a 2024-25 budget that rejected Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposal to cut in-home supportive services for low-income older, blind, and disabled immigrants lacking legal residency. However, the Democratic governor has not said whether he'll use his line-item veto authority to help close the state's $45 billion deficit.

The legislature, controlled by Democrats, passed a $211 billion general fund spending plan for the fiscal year starting July 1 by drawing more from the state's rainy-day fund and reducing corporate tax deductions to prevent cuts to health and social services.

“Our legislative budget plan achieves those goals with targeted, carefully calibrated investments in safety-net programs that protect our most vulnerable,” said Assembly member Jesse Gabriel, chair of the Assembly's budget committee, following voting in Sacramento.

Newsom and lawmakers are expected to continue talks.

“What was approved today represents a two-house agreement between the Senate and the Assembly – not an agreement with the governor,” said state Department of Finance spokesperson H.D. Palmer. “We've made good progress, but there's still more work to do.”

Newsom had proposed eliminating the new in-home benefit for qualified immigrants to save nearly $95 million in the next fiscal year, with no plans to bring it back. Lawmakers not only rejected Newsom's cut to the in-home services program; they also refused the governor's proposal to slash $300 million a year from public health agencies. However, they accepted delaying food assistance to low-income older immigrants without legal residency.

The In-Home Supportive Services program helps low-income older, blind, and disabled individuals receive care in their homes, which helps keep them out of more costly nursing and residential facilities. The program works by paying $16 to $21 an hour to caregivers, many of them family members.

Advocates applauded lawmakers for rejecting the cut. They had urged the governor to adopt the legislature's budget, arguing the state could end up paying more in the long run as Medi-Cal recipients tap nursing services. The state has estimated the annual per-person cost of nursing homes is $124,189, compared with the roughly $28,000 average cost for people without legal residency in the in-home services program.

“These individuals would need to essentially go into costly hospital or nursing care,” said Ronald Coleman Baeza, managing policy director at the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network. “It's not only cruel for undocumented immigrants, but it doesn't make sense as a fiscal decision either.”

The governor has said he's trying to maintain fiscal discipline while preserving Medi-Cal benefits for immigrants. California was the first state to expand Medicaid eligibility to all qualified immigrants regardless of legal status, phasing it in over several years: children in 2016, adults ages 19-26 in 2020, people 50 and older in 2022, and all remaining adults this year.

“It's a core of I think who we are as a state, and we should be as a nation,” Newsom said in May.

As part of the Medi-Cal expansion, the state authorized nearly 3,000 older, blind, and disabled immigrants without legal residency to access paramedical services and daily care, including meal preparation, bathing, feeding, and transportation to medical appointments. Advocates estimate 17,000 immigrants qualify.

“Fixing California's deficit means making tough choices, so the Assembly came to these negotiations focused on preserving programs that matter most to Californians,” said Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Central Coast Democrat, in an earlier statement.

Lawmakers did agree to Newsom's proposal to delay around $165 a month in food assistance to low-income immigrants without legal residency ages 55 and older. Lawmakers had approved the benefit two years ago, but the governor proposed delaying it by two fiscal years to 2027.

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

——————————
By: Vanessa G. Sánchez
Title: California Lawmakers Preserve Aid to Older, Disabled Immigrants
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/california-lawmakers-aid-immigrants-in-home-services-budget-newsom/
Published Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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Kaiser Health News

KFF Health News’ ‘What the Health?’: SCOTUS Rejects Abortion Pill Challenge — For Now

Published

2 days ago

June 13, 2024

Staff Editor

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 18:50:00 +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.

A unanimous Supreme Court turned back a challenge to the FDA's approval and rules for the abortion pill mifepristone, finding that the anti-abortion doctor group that sued lacked standing to do so. But abortion foes have other ways they intend to curtail availability of the pill, which is commonly used in medication abortions, which now make up nearly two-thirds of abortions in the U.S.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is proposing regulations that would bar credit agencies from including medical debt on individual credit reports. And former President Donald Trump, signaling that drug prices remain a potent campaign issue, attempts to take credit for the $35-a-month cap on insulin for Medicare beneficiaries — which was backed and signed into law by Biden.

This week's panelists are Julie Rovner of KFF Health News, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Rachana Pradhan of KFF Health News, and Emmarie Huetteman of KFF Health News.

Panelists

Anna Edney
Bloomberg

@annaedney

Read Anna's stories.

Emmarie Huetteman
KFF Health News

@emmarieDC

Read Emmarie's stories.

Rachana Pradhan
KFF Health News

@rachanadpradhan

Read Rachana's stories.

Among the takeaways from this week's episode:

All nine Supreme Court justices on June 13 rejected a challenge to the abortion pill mifepristone, ruling the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue. But that may not be the last word: The decision leaves open the possibility that different plaintiffs — including three states already part of the case — could raise a similar challenge in the future, and that the court could then vote to block access to the pill.
As the presidential race heats up, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are angling for health care voters. The Biden administration this week proposed eliminating all medical debt from Americans' credit scores, which would expand on the previous, voluntary move by the major credit agencies to erase from credit reports medical bills under $500. Meanwhile, Trump continues to court vaccine skeptics and wrongly claimed credit for Medicare's $35 monthly cap on insulin — enacted under a law backed and signed by Biden.
Problems are compounding at the pharmacy counter. Pharmacists and drugmakers are reporting the highest numbers of drug shortages in more than 20 years. And independent pharmacists in particular say they are struggling to keep drugs on the shelves, pointing to a recent Biden administration policy change that reduces costs for seniors — but also cash flow for pharmacies.
And the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest branch of Protestantism, voted this week to restrict the use of in vitro fertilization. As evidenced by recent flip-flopping stances on abortion, Republican candidates are feeling pressed to satisfy a wide range of perspectives within even their own party.

Also this week, Rovner interviews KFF president and CEO Drew Altman about KFF's new “Health Policy 101” primer. You can learn more about it here.

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

Julie Rovner: HuffPost's “How America's Mental Health Crisis Became This Family's Worst Nightmare,” by Jonathan Cohn.

Anna Edney: Stat News' “Four Tops Singer's Lawsuit Says He Visited ER for Chest Pain, Ended Up in Straitjacket,” by Tara Bannow.

Rachana Pradhan: The New York Times' “Abortion Groups Say Tech Companies Suppress Posts and Accounts,” by Emily Schmall and Sapna Maheshwari.

Emmarie Huetteman: CBS News' “As FDA Urges Crackdown on Bird Flu in Raw Milk, Some States Say Their Hands Are Tied,” by Alexander Tin.

Also mentioned on this week's podcast:

Bloomberg News' “Dozens of CVS Generic Drug Recalls Expose Link to Tainted Factories,” by Anna Edney and Peter Robison.
KFF Health News' “Biden Plan To Save Medicare Patients Money on Drugs Risks Empty Shelves, Pharmacists Say,” by Susan Jaffe.
KFF Health News' “More States Legalize Sales of Unpasteurized Milk, Despite Public Health Warnings,” by Tony Leys.

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.

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Title: KFF Health News' ‘What the Health?': SCOTUS Rejects Abortion Pill Challenge — For Now
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/podcast/what-the-health-351-supreme-court-abortion-pill-mifepristone-june-13-2024/
Published Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2024 18:50:00 +0000

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