News
Collaborating with KFF Health News with focus on Medicaid, Medicare, Rural & Public Health
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Criminally Ill: Systemic Failures Turn State Mental Hospitals Into Prisons
Posted on December 22, 2025
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Tyeesha Ferguson fears her 28-year-old son will kill or be killed. “That’s what I’m trying to avoid,” said Ferguson, who still calls Quincy Jackson III her baby. She remembers a boy who dressed himself in three-piece suits, donated his allowance, and graduated high school at 16 with an academic scholarship and plans to join the military or start a business.
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Medicaid Health Plans Step Up Outreach Efforts Ahead of GOP Changes
Posted on December 22, 2025
ORANGE, Calif. — Carmen Basu, bundled in a red jacket and woolly scarf, stood outside the headquarters of her local health plan one morning after picking up free groceries. She had brought her husband, teenage son, and 79-year-old mother-in-law to help.
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In the Vast Expanses of Indian Country, Broadband Gaps Create Health Gaps, Too
Posted on December 17, 2025
FORT HALL RESERVATION, Idaho — Standing atop Ferry Butte, Frances Goli scanned the more than half a million acres of Shoshone-Bannock tribal land below as she dug her hands into the pockets of a pink pullover.
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Disability Rights Lawyers Threatened With Budget Cuts, Reassignments
Posted on December 16, 2025
The Trump administration is trying to slash access to lawyers who defend the rights of Americans with disabilities, advocates say.
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One Big Beautiful Bill Act Complicates State Health Care Affordability Efforts
Posted on December 16, 2025
As Congress debates whether to extend the temporary federal subsidies that have helped millions of Americans buy health coverage, a crucial underlying reality is sometimes overlooked: Those subsidies are merely a band-aid covering the often unaffordable cost of health care.
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Sticker Shock: Obamacare Customers Confront Premium Spikes as Congress Dithers
Posted on December 15, 2025
We’ve been here before: congressional Democrats and Republicans sparring over the future of the Affordable Care Act. But this time there’s an extra complication. Though it’s the middle of open enrollment, lawmakers are still debating whether to extend the subsidies that have given consumers extra help paying their health insurance premiums in recent years.
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Rural Health Providers Could Be Collateral Damage From $100K Trump Visa Fee
Posted on December 09, 2025
Bekki Holzkamm has been trying to hire a lab technician at a hospital in rural North Dakota since late summer. Not one U.S. citizen has applied.
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A North Carolina Hospital Was Slated To Open in 2025. Mired in Bureaucracy, It’s Still a Dirt Field.
Posted on December 08, 2025
Madison County, tucked in the mountains of western North Carolina, has no hospital and just three ambulances serving its roughly 22,000 people. The ambulances frequently travel back and forth to Mission Hospital in Asheville, the largest and most central hospital in the region. Trips can take more than two hours, according to Mark Snelson, director of Madison Medics EMS, the local emergency medical service.
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RFK Jr. Wants To Delay the Hepatitis B Vaccine. Here’s What Parents Need To Know.
Posted on December 05, 2025
Working out of a tribal-owned hospital in Anchorage, Alaska, liver specialist Brian McMahon has spent decades treating the long shadow of hepatitis B. Before a vaccine became available in the 1980s, he saw the virus claim young lives in western Alaskan communities with stunning speed.
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Feds Promised ‘Radical Transparency’ but Withhold $50B Rural Fund Details
Posted on December 05, 2025
Medication-delivering drones. Telehealth at libraries. Church-hosted wellness events.
These are a few ideas proposed by states in their bids to win a portion of the new $50 billion federal Rural Health Transformation Program. Congress approved the five-year spending plan in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the same law that codified nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid spending reductions.