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New Hampshire will soon extend Medicaid coverage for new mothers to a full year, one of several provisions in the newly signed state budget that aim to improve maternal and child health. Currently, postpartum coverage in New Hampshire lasts only 60 days. Supporters of the new change say it will provide continued access to health care during a critical period after childbirth. (Cuno-Booth, 6/26)

North Carolina’s Medicaid program “transformed” in the summer of 2021, moving more than a million children, some of their parents and pregnant women off of the long-standing way of paying for every test, visit and hospital stay and moving them into managed care, where private insurance companies receive a set monthly fee for each patient and then set about keeping them healthy. But some groups of Medicaid beneficiaries remained in the traditional fee-for-service system: people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, people with substance use disorders and traumatic brain injuries, low-income seniors living in nursing homes and many people with severe mental health issues. (Baxley, 6/27)

Beginning July 1, Washington will be the first state to deduct money from workers’ paychecks to finance long-term care benefits for residents who can’t live independently due to illness, injury or aging-related conditions such as dementia. (Komenda, 6/27)

In juggling some 28,000 visits a year from patients who come from 57 counties, many parents of children with disabilities attest that Children's is virtually the only place in Wisconsin they can go. And demand is so high, that hundreds are just waiting for the next chance to get in: The waitlist to be seen by the clinics is 4,000 patients long, Children's Wisconsin officials say, in many cases for a year or longer. Like other doctors, many dentists decline to take Medicaid, because of low reimbursements. Other lack the ability to sedate or otherwise accommodate the needs of children who have disabilities. Some just don't have the right temperament. (Shastri, 6/26)

West Virginia is finalizing the leadership for a newly created foundation tasked with distributing the lion’s share of the more than $1 billion in opioid lawsuit-settlement money coming to the state with the nation’s highest overdose death rate. That means funding for opioid treatment and addiction services can soon begin going out to communities after years of litigation, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said Monday in his state Capitol office in Charleston. (Willingham, 6/26)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Localize This: Public Reporting Of Opioid Settlement Cash 

State and local governments will, over the next nearly two decades, receive billions of dollars from companies accused of sparking the opioid epidemic. �������ýҕ�l Health News is, in a yearlong series, investigating the use — and misuse — of this cash. Our stories provide a national perspective on issues ranging from the distribution formulas that determine how much money each locality receives to the lack of public reporting on how settlement dollars are spent. We’ve also compiled databases and sets of documents that we hope can help others investigate opioid settlement stories in their communities. (Pattani, 6/26)