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A 2024 survey found that nearly half of the participants experienced discrimination when accessing healthcare services. Consequently, one in three individuals chose to forgo necessary care. (Zurek, 7/20)

A recent audit of state Medicaid records revealed how pharmacy benefit managers are using complicated and sophisticated approaches for handling prescription drug claims that ultimately overcharge taxpayers, a finding that underscores controversy surrounding these crucial middlemen in the pharmaceutical supply chain. (Silverman, 7/20)

Democrats see an opening in rural states for the first time in decades. In Iowa, it’s about water. (Philpott and Elkadi, 7/19)

�������ýҕ�l Health News and Mississippi Today: Pregnant Woman’s Roadside Death Triggers Push To Reopen Mississippi Delta Hospital 

Harmony Ball-Stribling’s path to pregnancy had been turbulent, from an endometriosis diagnosis to an arduous in vitro fertilization process and sky-high blood pressure. But as her due date approached in the summer of 2021, her health improved and those storm clouds seemed to scatter. “It was just too perfect,” said her mother, Shenelle Ball-Green, of those calm, hot weeks. Then, early on July 5, four days shy of her scheduled cesarean section, Ball-Stribling began experiencing complications from preeclampsia, a potentially life-threatening blood pressure disorder. Speeding up to 110 mph, her husband drove her to the nearest hospital 25 miles away from their home in Belzoni, a Mississippi Delta town of about 1,900 people. (Dilworth, 7/20)

A Massachusetts mother charged in the killing of her children goes on trial on Monday. The small coastal town of Duxbury is preparing to relive a case focused on postpartum mental health. (Russell, 7/20)

Anti-abortion groups are turning up their activism after a prohibition on Medicaid funding going to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood was left out of Republicans’ reconciliation 3.0 framework. (Brooks, 7/18)