The 2025 reconciliation law, once called the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed by President Trump on July 4, 2025, conditions Medicaid eligibility for adults in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion group and enrollees in partial expansion waiver programs (Georgia and Wisconsin) on meeting work requirements starting January 1, 2027. Currently, 41 states (including DC) have expanded their Medicaid programs under the ACA to nearly all adults with income up to 138% FPL ($21,597 for an individual in 2025).

Read more

Medicaid is a major source of financing for mental health and substance use disorder care. It covers nearly one-third of all adults with mental illness and nearly one-quarter of adults with substance use disorders (SUD), including many people with more intensive behavioral health needs. This includes adults with serious mental illness (SMI) and nearly half of all adults with opioid use disorder (OUD). Because Medicaid covers a large share of people with behavioral health conditions and finances a substantial share of treatment services and medications, it plays a central role in access to behavioral health care. 

Read more

About this Episode

Episode 3, AI Series: When minutes matter for a patient’s care, what is AI’s role in clinical practice? Elad Walach, co-founder and CEO of Aidoc — a company with a comprehensive AI health care platform that analyzes real-time images and flags time-sensitive findings — shares his perspective on AI’s transformative power in dodging diagnostic error, improving access to care, and ensuring care quality in busy clinical settings.

Read more

ST. CLOUD, Minn. — Cori Roberts was living in a rented basement four years ago when she was diagnosed with early-stage cervical cancer.

Read more

GLP-1s, a class of drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and other conditions, have exploded in popularity in recent years due to their demonstrated effectiveness, but are often not covered by insurance, particularly for the treatment of obesity. According to KFF polling,  about half (56%) of GLP-1 users say these drugs were difficult to afford, including one in four who say they were “very difficult” to afford. The Trump administration is pursuing various approaches to lowering the cost and expanding coverage of these medications. These approaches include striking “most-favored nation” deals with GLP-1 manufacturers Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, providing access to discounted prices for GLP-1s through TrumpRx, and proposing to implement a new demonstration program called the BALANCE (Better Approaches to Lifestyle and Nutrition for Comprehensive hEalth) Model to expand Medicare and Medicaid coverage of GLPs for obesity, which is currently subject to statutory limitations (prohibited in Medicare, permissible but not required in Medicaid). In addition, the GLP-1 drug semaglutide (branded as Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus) was selected for Medicare drug price negotiation in 2025, with a negotiated price set to take effect in 2027.

Read more

Starting in July, Medicare beneficiaries may be able to get a GLP-1 prescription for weight loss for $50 a month. It’s a notable shift for Medicare, which has long been barred from covering weight loss treatments.

Read more

The White House’s newly released strategy for tackling the nation’s drug and addiction crisis calls for a number of ambitious public health approaches that some experts say are laudable but will be hampered by the administration’s own actions.

Read more

Read more

Introduction

Read more

Episode 2, AI Series: The data is good enough, the technology is getting better, the computing is becoming more available, and the use cases are getting clearer—but is AI truly a revolutionary technological advancement yet for health care? With a 30-year perspective on what digital technology has done and failed to do in health care, Dr. John Halamka, President of the Mayo Clinic Platform, joins Chip in discussing whether AI is actually disruptive or another wave of incremental change.

Read more