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Native Hawaiians will have to comply with the new work requirements in President Donald Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act, despite facing significant obstacles to employment and healthcare.
A federal disclosure rule is offering new insight on the effect of healthcare monopolies on pricing, following a wave of U.S. mergers.
ýҕl Health News journalists made the rounds on national or local media recently to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
ýҕl Health News is working to collect and post approved plans as more states respond to emails and public records requests for their documents.
A year after the Environmental Protection Agency stripped grant money from dozens of communities nationwide during Trump’s DEI crackdown, a small Georgia city is struggling to address environmental health concerns.
Prisoners with severe medical conditions can be granted compassionate release, but without a long-term care facility willing to accept them, many continue to wait in prison as their conditions worsen.
A ballot measure to eliminate Missouri’s income tax would give the state legislature broad authority to levy new sales taxes to replace the lost revenue. Critics say that could mean adding a sales tax on medical services or prescription medicines. Those types of taxes are unusual, but not unheard of, in the U.S.
California’s laws still leave extradition decisions related to reproductive rights and gender-affirming care to its governor. But as states with abortion bans target California physicians who prescribe abortion pills across state lines, Democrats want to lock in protections for doctors, no matter who the next governor is.
The FDA has approved the sunscreen chemical bemotrizinol, a UV light filter that has been available in Europe, Asia, and Australia for more than 20 years. Health advocates and skin care industry groups alike are hopeful it can restore faith in sunscreen.
Some states bar professional midwives from attending home births if they don’t have a nursing license. Their advocates say laws to allow midwife licensing would make home birth safer and more accessible, plus help address a maternity care shortage.
Scientists are cheering California Gov. Gavin Newsom as he builds a public health bulwark against health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine stance and President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization. Still, federal cuts have sapped morale and left local health departments less prepared for outbreaks.
At least eight states are considering legislation to curtail wage garnishment over unpaid medical bills, as health care costs rise and more people become underinsured.
Every state will receive at least $100 million annually from the federal Rural Health Transformation fund, but some scored millions more based on how the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services judged the “quality” of their plans and willingness to pass policies embracing "Make America Healthy Again" initiatives.
Even as President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers say the One Big Beautiful Bill Act targets waste, fraud, and abuse, Medicaid health plans are hosting events across the U.S. to prevent low-income families from losing health insurance and food benefits next year.
Proposals from states that have shared their applications to a new $50 billion rural health program include using drones to deliver medication, installing refrigerators to expand access to healthy produce, and bringing telehealth to libraries, day cares, and senior centers.
Local governments have received hundreds of millions of dollars from the opioid settlements to support addiction treatment, recovery, and prevention efforts. Their spending decisions in 2024 were sometimes surprising and even controversial. Our new database offers more than 10,500 examples.
Amid concerns that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is undermining trust in vaccines and public health science, some states are seeking new sources of scientific consensus and changing how they regulate insurance companies, prescribers, and pharmacists. Colorado has been at the front of this wave.
The decisions by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices matter, because insurers and federal programs rely on them, but they are not binding. States can follow the recommendations, or not.
A lack of faith in the soundness of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new direction has led states to explore enacting their own vaccine policies. A patchwork of divergent recommendations and requirements could result.
Buoyed by a Montana court ruling upholding state residents’ right to a “clean and healthful environment,” nearly two dozen people ages 7 to 24 hope to block the Trump administration’s executive orders on energy.
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