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The Texas conservatives challenging Obamacare’s preventive care mandate have reached a tentative compromise with the Justice Department that preserves free coverage for a range of services — from syphilis tests to depression screenings. The agreement, which still needs approval from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, keeps coverage intact nationwide while the case proceeds. The Biden administration, in exchange, pledged not to enforce the mandate to cover HIV prevention drugs and other preventive care services against the employers and individual workers who sued claiming that doing so violated their religious beliefs. This means that even if the Affordable Care Act rules are upheld on appeal, the government can’t penalize the challengers for refusing to cover required services. (Ollstein, 6/12)

The deal they reached leaves the provision almost fully intact, requiring a vast majority of health plans to continue providing preventive care at no charge. The agreement includes an exemption for the small businesses and individuals challenging the provision; these entities will be allowed to use a plan that does not cover all preventive services if they can find a health insurer who offers it. (Kliff, 6/12)

Michigan Democrats are poised to codify the federal health care law into state law, a step that would lock coverage requirements and protections in place in case all or parts of the Affordable Care Act are struck down by courts, changed by Congress or weakened by a future president. (Eggert, 6/12)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Fraudsters Are Duping Homeless People Into Signing Up For ACA Plans They Can’t Afford

Mary Zhelyazkova was surprised when pharmacists at Florida’s largest safety net hospital said they could not fill her prescription. Zhelyazkova, 40, was living at a homeless shelter and needed Suboxone, a medication to manage the symptoms of opioid withdrawal. She said she had been getting Suboxone at the Jackson Memorial Hospital pharmacy for free through the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, which provides medical care at little or no cost to people with HIV. (Chang, 6/13)

The Health and Human Services Department announced new flexibilities for states to use during the Medicaid redeterminations process, as Secretary Xavier Becerra expressed concern at the number of enrollees removed from the program. (Turner, 6/12)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Biden Admin Implores States To Slow Medicaid Cuts After More Than 1M Enrollees Dropped

Too many Americans are losing Medicaid coverage because of red tape, and states should do more to make sure eligible people keep their health insurance, the Biden administration said Monday. More than a million Americans have lost coverage through the program for low-income and disabled Americans in the past several weeks, following the end of pandemic protections on April 1, according to the latest Medicaid renewal data from more than 20 states. (Recht, 6/13)

In some states, about half of those whose Medicaid renewal cases were decided in April or May have lost their coverage, according to data submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and obtained by The Associated Press. The primary cause is what CMS describes as “procedural reasons,” such as the failure to return forms. “I am deeply concerned with the number of people unnecessarily losing coverage, especially those who appear to have lost coverage for avoidable reasons that State Medicaid offices have the power to prevent or mitigate,” Health and Human Services Secretary Secretary Xavier Becerra wrote in a letter Monday to governors. (Lieb, 6/12)

More than 45,000 people in New Hampshire have lost Medicaid coverage since April 1, when federal health coverage protections tied to the pandemic ended. Those “continuous enrollment” rules — meant to avoid sudden losses of health insurance in the midst of a viral pandemic — prevented states from ending someone’s coverage because of missed paperwork, increases in income or other changes that would normally make them ineligible. (Cuno-Booth, 6/12)

Nearly 35,000 Marylanders of the 120,000 up for Medicaid renewal last month lost coverage June 1 as the state began the massive process of determining who is still eligible for the federal health insurance program after pandemic-era flexibilities expired with the public health emergency. (Roberts, 6/12)

Another 68,838 residents lost Medicaid coverage in May, in addition to the 72,802 who were kicked off the state and federally funded insurance program in April, the Arkansas Department of Human Services reported Thursday. (Golden, 6/12)

North Carolina is in the process of reviewing Medicaid eligibility for more than 2.9 million residents amid the unwinding of a federal mandate that prevented states from kicking people off the rolls during the COVID-19 pandemic. Known as the continuous coverage requirement, the mandate created by Congress in early 2020 protected Medicaid beneficiaries from losing coverage even if they no longer qualified for the program. (Baxley, 6/13)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: On The Brink Of Homelessness, San Diego Woman Wins The Medi-Cal Lottery

Annie Malloy started getting sick in 2020. Fits of uncontrolled vomiting would hit, causing debilitating nausea and severe dehydration that would send her to the emergency room. She couldn’t keep weight on, and the vomiting got so bad she was admitted to the hospital 26 times that year. Malloy, one of the 15.8 million low-income people enrolled in California’s Medicaid program, called Medi-Cal, racked up extraordinary health care costs while her doctors struggled to diagnose her illness. One hospitalization for a patient in a Medi-Cal managed-care program can cost nearly $18,000, on average. (Hart, 6/13)

Navajo law enforcement teams made contact with several hundred Native Americans from various tribes who are living on the streets in the metro Phoenix area, after the state cracked down on Medicaid fraud and suspended unlicensed sober living homes, Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch said Monday. Teams that included Navajo police officers reported making contact with more than 270 Native Americans, the majority of them Navajo, Branch said. (Snow, 6/13)

Margaret Gamble was supposed to receive a blood test in the mail in May. It’s a regularly scheduled test to check if her kidney — the second she’s received in a transplant — has been damaged in any way. Her kidney needs to be constantly monitored since it’s vulnerable to infections or, critically, rejection by her immune system. But Gamble’s test never came. Her doctor told her there’s been a billing issue with her Medicare insurance, and so now she’s waiting, not knowing how her kidney is doing and if she could be in danger of losing it. (Chen, 6/13)

The U.S. budget deficit swelled in May from a year earlier as revenue tumbled and Medicare spending surged, the Treasury Department said on Monday in its first monthly accounting of the government's finances since a deal was reached to suspend the debt limit and avoid a first-ever federal default. (6/12)

Efforts to recruit and retain clinicians caring for children and adolescents, particularly in schools and underserved areas, are getting a $15 million boost from the federal government. The need for the services is growing. Over the course of the pandemic, pediatric behavioral health in particular has been a major area of concern with delays in treatment due to a lack of qualified personnel and access to specialized care. (Devereaux, 6/12)

President Biden reported tooth pain on Sunday, prompting an X-ray examination and root canal treatment by a team from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, according to a letter from his physician that was distributed to the press. "The President tolerated the procedure well," the physician, Kevin O'Connor, wrote about the previously undisclosed treatment. "There were no complications." Biden, 80, experienced more pain on Monday, received local anesthesia and did not need to transfer his powers to Vice President Kamala Harris under the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the White House said. (Hunnicutt, 6/12)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate health panel, is vowing to not move forward with President Biden’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health — or any health nominee — until he receives the administration’s “comprehensive” plan on lowering drug prices. “I will oppose all nominations until we have a very clear strategy on the part of the government … as to how we’re going to lower the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs,” Sanders said in an interview with The Washington Post. (Diamond, 6/12)

Chris Viehbacher, chief executive of Cambridge-based Biogen, speaking Monday at the World Medical Innovation Forum in Boston, also called for broad insurance coverage of the treatment, Leqembi, and defended the $26,500 annual price of the drug set by Biogen and its Japanese partner Eisai. Viehbacher, interviewed in a fireside chat with CNN medical correspondent Meg Tirrell, said he “struggles with” pricing drugs, but believes industry critics don’t fully appreciate the expense and risk inherent in drug discovery — and the decades of failures in attempts to treat the memory-robbing disease. (Weisman, 6/12)

Safety net hospitals will soon learn how the government plans to reimburse them for nearly $10 billion resulting from underpayments from the federal drug discount program. The question is whether it will come at the expense of other hospitals. (Dreher, 6/13)

U.S. Food and Drug Administration staff on Monday said updated Covid boosters should target XBB omicron subvariants for the upcoming fall and winter vaccination campaign. The U.S. should use a monovalent vaccine targeting either XBB.1.5, XBB.1.16, or XBB.2.3, collectively the dominant strains nationwide, the staff said in a briefing document. (Constantino, 6/12)

The CDC also posted its latest variant proportion estimates, which show that the level of XBB.1.5 has declined from 54.4% to 39.9%. A group of other Omicron XBB subvariants continue to gain ground, including XBB.1.16, XBB.1.9.1, XBB.1.16.1, XBB.1.9.2, and XBB.2.3. (Schnirring, 6/9)

Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), will testify before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Tuesday to discuss the decisions her agency made during the pandemic. This will be the final appearance she will make in front of the GOP-led panel before she steps down as head of the CDC at the end of this month. She is the sole witness scheduled to speak before the committee on Tuesday. (Choi, 6/12)

On Monday, Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order lifting the COVID-19 vaccination requirements for health care workers in New Jersey, effective immediately. ... The health care settings include hospitals, long-term care facilities, psychiatric and specialty hospitals, long-term residential substance abuse disorder treatment facilities, family planning sites, and community-based pediatric and adult medical day care programs. (Kent, 6/12)

Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday he will not renew Texas’ long-running COVID-19 disaster declaration later this week after he signed a law that bans local mandates related to the pandemic. Abbott has kept the disaster declaration in place since the early days of the pandemic in 2020, despite some pushback in his own party. He has maintained that he needed the declaration to support his executive orders prohibiting local COVID restrictions, and he had promised to lift the declaration once lawmakers codified those orders. (Svitek, 6/12)

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Monday that a ballot measure at the center of an abortion fight in the state needed to be partially rewritten ahead of an August election, but also ruled against Democratic litigants on some of their key requests. Ohioans will be heading to the polls Aug. 8 to weigh in on a proposed constitutional amendment that would, if passed, require at least 60 percent of voters to pass any amendment to the state’s constitution — up from a simple majority. (Vakil, 6/12)

One of the next big battles in the abortion rights fight is set to take place in Ohio later this summer, when voters will consider a ballot measure that could make it harder for the state to enshrine protections for the medical procedure. Ohioans are set to vote Aug. 8 on a proposal that, if passed, would require at least 60 percent of voters to pass any amendment to the state’s constitution — up from the current threshold of 50 percent. (Vakil, 6/13)

Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit arguing LB574 is unconstitutional because it combined an abortion ban with a ban on gender-affirming care has been continued for another month. (Mastre, 6/12)

A former North Dakota abortion provider challenged one of the nation’s strictest abortion laws Monday, arguing the law “fragrantly violates” a court ruling supporting the right of patients in the state to obtain the procedure to preserve their life or health. The lawsuit initially filed last year by what was the conservative state’s sole abortion provider seeks to block a law recently approved by the Republican-led Legislature and signed by Gov. Doug Burgum. The law outlaws all abortions except in cases where women could face death or a “serious health risk” or pregnancies caused by rape and incest, but only in the first six weeks, when many women often don’t know they are pregnant. (Dura, 6/12)

About 150 physicians oppose watering down a bill on abortion rights and gender-affirming care that is at the heart of the Senate walkout and currently the subject of intense negotiations. Republicans have stalled the Senate by walking out since May 3, partly over House Bill 2002 on abortion, gender-affirming care and other reproductive rights. Democrats have said it is one of their priorities. OPB reported Monday, and the Capital Chronicle confirmed, that Democrats are considering softening language that would allow a child of any age to receive an abortion without parental consent. That provision is one that the physicians – “a group of pediatricians, obstetricians and family medicine doctors from across the state” – said should stay in the bill in a letter sent to all lawmakers at the beginning of the month. (Terry, 6/12)

A controversial Indiana law once championed by Mike Pence could end up protecting abortion access in the state if a lawsuit filed by the ACLU is successful. Last week, a superior court judge granted class action status to a suit seeking to strike down the state’s near-total ban on abortion on the grounds that it violates Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which then-Governor Pence signed into law in 2015. (Stuart, 6/12)

The number of patients seeking abortions from Planned Parenthood of Illinois increased dramatically since last June after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The amount of patients seeking both medication and procedure abortions rose 54% in the last year, Planned Parenthood reported on Monday. Patients needing financial and travel help also more than doubled in that period. (Washburn, 6/12)

Floridians Protecting Freedom has collected over 130,000 signatures since early May for their petition to place a constitutional amendment protecting abortion access on next year's ballot. Why it matters: If the effort is successful, it could have massive implications for reproductive health care in the South, where nearby states have bans that have forced abortion clinics to close. (Reyes, 6/13)

World champion sprinter and three-time Olympic medalist Tori Bowie was undergoing labor when she died last month at the age of 32, according to her autopsy. TMZ Sports and USA Today reviewed the medical examiner's report Monday and first reported the new information. (6/12)

Nearly 15% of children in the United States were recently treated for mental health disorders in 2021, according to new research from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The finding, released Tuesday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, suggests that mental health disorders – such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or anxiety – are common among school-age children. (Howard, 6/13)

A study from researchers at the University of Kansas shows Southern states may have carried the brunt of mental health troubles during the COVID-19 pandemic, with people in that region most consistently worried about finances throughout COVID-19 lockdowns and the emergence of new strains of the virus. The findings were published yesterday in PLOS One. (Soucheray, 6/9)

First responders and 911 call takers facing the stress and challenges of the job in Fairfax County, Virginia, will now have a new place to connect with mental health professionals. The Fairfax County Public Safety Wellness Center held its grand opening on Monday. “Firefighters, police officers see things that are not normal and we see things that are not normal at a rate much higher than the rest of the population … so I think to be able to have some place where, minimally, you can go and talk about your experiences to make sure you’re in the best place personally to serve this community is the absolute way forward,” said Fairfax County police Chief Kevin Davis. (Uliano, 6/13)

The only stabilization unit in the state’s crisis services system that’s solely for adolescents used to help about 2,000 kids each year. Now, because of a shortage of mental health workers, it can take only 1,000.The other half of the children and teens in mental health crises are sent elsewhere, or more likely, left to wait in emergency rooms at hospitals across Colorado. (Brown, 6/12)

A first-of-its-kind topical gel for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, called Eroxon, has been authorized for over-the-counter marketing in the United States, according to pharmaceutical company Futura Medical, which developed the product. (Howard, 6/12)

Boston-based Ironwood Pharmaceuticals’ blockbuster drug for gastrointestinal problems was cleared Monday to treat functional constipation in patients 6 to 17 years of age, making it the first approved medicine for the disorder in pediatric patients. Linzess, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2012 to treat irritable bowel syndrome with constipation in adults, generated more than $1 billion in US net sales in each of the last two full years, according to a company spokesman. (Saltzman, 6/12)

Telehealth company Ro has paused advertising of the obesity drug Wegovy as the drug suffers shortages, a reversal in aggressive promotional efforts by the provider that involved splashy ads in subway stations. (Chen, 6/12)

Health systems across the country are exploring blending artificial intelligence into their communication with patients, from billing to after-hours messages about medication or symptoms. But how best to actually talk to patients about the technology and its risks is still an open question. (Ravindranath, 6/13)

Health care’s labor shortage is adding new urgency to the need for new tech. Americans 65 and older, those most in need of health care services, are expected to outnumber children in the U.S. for the first time by 2030 — just as the health care sector is expected to have a shortfall of more than 200,000 physicians and nurses. (King, 6/12)

Over the past year, an average of 1,200 people were stuck in Massachusetts hospital beds each day because workers could not find a place to discharge them, a new report says, in the latest sign that hospitals continue to struggle with overcrowding even as the COVID pandemic has ebbed. The patients occupied approximately 15 percent of the state’s staffed medical and surgical hospital beds, according to data from March 2022 through February this year, creating backups in emergency rooms as other patients waited to be admitted. (Bartlett, 6/12)

A social media and digital ad campaign encouraging people to consider health care as a career path looks to make a dent in the acute worker shortage the industry faces. The ads that begin today promote positions in direct and indirect patient care, support roles and administrative jobs. The campaign comes at a time when the Michigan Health & Hospital Association estimates that hospitals statewide are trying to fill 27,000 open positions, including 8,000 nursing jobs. (Sanchez, 6/12)

The Center for Autism and Related Disorders, which operates 130 treatment centers in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy in Texas on Monday with a plan to sell itself back to its founder. ... Based in Henderson, Nevada, the company specializes in applied behavioral analysis therapy for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. (Knauth, 6/12)

The generic drug-maker Mallinckrodt says the company's board might not make a $200 million opioid settlement payment scheduled for later this week. In a June 5 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the financially troubled firm said it faces growing questions internally and from creditors about the payout, which is part of a $1.7 billion opioid deal reached as part of a bankruptcy deal last year. (Mann, 6/12)

Federal authorities in 2018 temporarily placed all substances related to fentanyl in a category reserved for the most dangerous controlled substances, an effort to stymie drug traffickers. Five years later, the number of overdose deaths linked to synthetic opioids is as high as ever, and critics say efforts to make the classification permanent will entrench harsh sentencing laws. With frustration mounting about the toll of fentanyl, the debate has sparked clashing political approaches. On Tuesday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) plans to introduce legislation extending the temporary measure for up to two years for existing fentanyl-related substances and for up to four years when new analogues emerge. (Ovalle and Roubein, 6/13)

The parents of Sgt. 1st Class Ronald Conley Jr. want to know how many days their son lay dead on his bathroom floor from fentanyl poisoning without the Army noticing. Kue Vue’s brother questions how the straight-laced sergeant turned to drugs. Spec. Ari McGuire’s parents wonder why he wasn’t immediately sent to treatment when he suffered withdrawal symptoms in a training exercise. None of the families expect they will get all the answers about how the men died from fentanyl, a lethal synthetic opioid that has hit the Army the hardest among military branches and caused a record number of fatal overdoses among soldiers in 2021, the last complete year of data available, according to new figures obtained by The Washington Post. (Kornfield, Rempfer and Rich, 6/12)

Overdose deaths have been consistently rising in Alaska for the past several years. Most of that is due to illegal fentanyl. ... Coleman Cutchins is a lead pharmacist for the state health department. He said the risk profile of counterfeit pills is alarming. He said it’s not safe to take a pill that wasn’t prescribed for you. “Honestly, we’re at the point where the risk of somebody handing you a tablet that looks like a medication [if] you don’t know where it came from, is a very similar risk to somebody handing you a syringe with a needle on it and saying, ‘Inject this,’” said Cutchins. 

Obesity may damage the brain’s ability to recognize the sensation of fullness and be satisfied after eating fats and sugars, a new study found. Further, those brain changes may last even after people considered medically obese lose a significant amount of weight — possibly explaining why many people often regain the pounds they lose. (LaMotte, 6/12)

The average American drinks 60 percent more hard liquor now than in the mid-1990s, an unheralded surge in spirit consumption that signals changing tastes in alcohol. Americans are drinking more wine, too: 50 percent more per person since 1995. Overall, the average American consumed 2.51 gallons of ethanol, the alcohol in wine, beer and spirits, in 2021, compared to 2.15 gallons in 1995, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. If 2.5 gallons in a year sounds low, consider that the figure covers only alcohol, not water and other ingredients in an alcoholic drink. (De Vise, 6/12)

Researchers say they may be able to explain how light drinking benefits the heart, and its main effect doesn’t stem from changes in the blood – as scientists once thought – but from its actions in the brain. But because alcohol also raises the risk of cancer at any amount, however, researchers say they aren’t advising people to imbibe. Instead, understanding this mechanism may point to healthier ways to tap into the same benefit, such as through exercise or meditation. (McPhillips and Goodman, 6/12)

In a study involving 16 men who have sex with men (MSM) infected with mpox, viral DNA remained detectable in skin lesions for 17 to 31 days after symptom onset. The findings were published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. All MSM included in the study had contracted mpox through sexual transmission, and their median age was 36. None were treated with antivirals throughout the course of the study. (Soucheray, 6/12)

Researchers in India say they used artificial intelligence (AI) to diagnose mpox using photos of skin lesions with an accuracy up to 99.5%. Their study, published last week in Medicine in Novel Technology and Devices, tested the ability of the trained deep-learning networks GoogLeNet, Places365-GoogLeNet, SqueezeNet, AlexNet, and ResNet-18 to diagnose mpox using photos of patients' skin lesions (mpox, chickenpox, and other viruses) and computer models designed to mimic human vision. Currently, mpox is diagnosed using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, but the study authors noted that the results are not always accurate because the virus remains in the blood only a short time. (Van Beusekom, 6/12)

National Hockey League “enforcers,” those players who engage in frequent fights on the ice, tend to die about 10 years earlier than their teammates, according to a study published in the journal JAMA Network Open. It describes enforcers as hockey players who “engage in fights to intimidate opponents and gain momentum for their team.” (Searing, 6/12)

A new airplane seat concept that allows wheelchair users to stay in their own chair throughout a flight was revealed this week by a subsidiary of US airline Delta, a move welcomed as a “huge step” by potential customers. (Street, 6/8)

Margaret Roesch, 67, and her wife, Pat McAulay, 68, wanted to have a supportive community around them as they grew older. So they helped to create a cohousing development for LGBTQ+ seniors and allies, making it easier to offer support to one another. “We said we don’t want to have to go back in the closet when we get older,” Roesch said from the front porch of her home in Durham, North Carolina. (Dhue and Epperson, 6/12)

Gov. Kevin Stitt has vetoed a medical marijuana regulation bill that would have added restrictions on who can get patient cards and how much THC can be in a single serving. The bill also included several other provisions meant to curtail illegal operations and, according to its author, move Oklahoma toward a true medical program. (Denwalt, 6/12)

The sea services have rolled out new policies for barracks and unaccompanied officer housing that allow incoming residents to refuse rooms considered uninhabitable based on standards set by the Navy and Marine Corps. Lt. Gen. Edward Banta, deputy commandant for Marine Corps installations and logistics, issued a service-wide message June 6 guaranteeing safe, functional, environmentally healthy barracks in good working order and giving Marines the right not only to refuse the housing but encouraging them to report issues without fear of retaliation or retribution. (Kime, 6/12)

A landmark climate change trial opened on Monday in Montana, where a group of young people are contending that the state’s embrace of fossil fuels is destroying pristine environments, upending cultural traditions and robbing young residents of a healthy future. The case, more than a decade in the making, is the first of a series of similar challenges pending in various states as part of an effort to increase pressure on policymakers to take more urgent action on emissions. (Baker, 6/12)

A moose acting aggressively in a Northwest Alaska community tested positive for rabies this month, marking the first rabid moose case detected in the state — and North America overall. The case has prompted Alaska officials to increase rabies surveillance across a large swath of the state. (Naiden, 6/12)

Dozens of teenagers streamed into the school health office complaining of headaches, light-headedness, watering eyes, sore throats, irritated noses and vomiting. At least 40 students and six staff members fell ill, and about 50 were dismissed early, as school officials scrambled to identify the source of the smell. It originated, they soon learned, from a nearby sewer project that used an increasingly popular, but problematic, method for rehabilitating old or damaged underground utility lines called cured-in-place pipe lining. (Le Coz, 6/11)

Kansas City police have failed for several years to meet national standards on answering 911 calls. It’s a problem that is just getting worse, according to data on 911 hold times and response times. It’s also a problem public officials have sounded alarms about before. (Cronkleton and Spoerre, 6/12)

The smoke from Canada’s wildfires that engulfed the East Coast last week has dissipated, but the threat remains. With wildfires happening more frequently and in unexpected areas because of climate change, Americans will increasingly need to think about the consequences of air pollutants on their health. (Leana S. Wen, 6/12)

Despite just experiencing a pandemic in which over one million Americans died, health care reform doesn’t seem to be a top political issue in the United States right now. That’s a mistake. (Aaron E. Carroll, 6/13)

This country faces a longstanding mental health crisis, exacerbated by the isolation, fears and uncertainties of the pandemic. This crisis affects all generations, but has been especially devastating for young people. In America today, 40% of parents report being either extremely or very worried that their child is struggling with anxiety or depression. And they are right to be worried. (Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., 6/13)

The 2018 MISSION Act was a huge win for the veteran community. The bipartisan effort improved accessibility by streamlining the congealed process that had existed before it through the CHOICE Act. Congress’ intent with MISSION was clear: Increase access to private doctors when the Veterans Health Administration couldn’t provide care in a reasonable time and/or distance. (Cole Lyle, 6/13)

Last year, my father, a Jamaican immigrant with Medicaid insurance, passed away from a heart attack. He was only 63 years old. As he received care, he expressed discomfort with the predominantly white teams handling his case. He believed that both clinicians and non-clinical staff discriminated against him because of his racial and ethnic identity, as well as his public insurance status. (Tiffany Cornwall, 6/13)

More than 2 million people in the United States live without indoor plumbing or usable drinking water. Although having to worry about the origin, purity, and safety of water is often considered a premodern problem or one that affects only low-income countries, events that culminated in a state of emergency for Jackson, Mississippi, in 2022 highlight the ongoing burden created by poor water infrastructure in many historically racialized communities. (Richard M. Mizelle, Jr., Ph.D., 6/10)