The host

Julie Rovner KHN @jrovner

Julie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of KHN’s weekly health policy news podcast, “What the Health?” A noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the writer of the critically praised reference book “Health Care Politics and Policy A to Z,” now in its third edition.

Several states have begun the herculean task of redetermining how a lot of an estimated 85 million Americans currently receiving health coverage through the Medicaid program are still eligible. To receive federal covid-19 relief funds, states were required to maintain enrollees covered throughout the pandemic. As many as 15 million people could possibly be struck from this system’s rolls — a lot of whom are still eligible, or are eligible for other programs and should be steered to them.

Meanwhile, the trustees of the Medicare program report that its Hospital Insurance Trust Fund should remain solvent until 2031, three years longer than it projected last 12 months. That permits lawmakers to proceed to delay what are prone to be politically unpleasant decisions, although they may eventually need to cope with Medicare’s underlying financial woes (and people of Social Security).

Panelists

Among the many takeaways from this week’s episode:

• The Medicaid “unwinding” is prone to strip health coverage not only from hundreds of thousands of people who find themselves not eligible for this system, but additionally from hundreds of thousands of people that still are. States are imagined to take their time reevaluating eligibility, but some are rushing to disenroll people.
• One other complication in an already complicated task is that many Medicaid staff hired throughout the pandemic have never actually redetermined Medicaid eligibility for anyone, because states had been required to maintain individuals who qualified on this system.
• Grimly, a few of the extra years of solvency gained within the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund are a results of pandemic deaths within the 65-and-older population.
• The Department of Health and Human Services has issued payment rules for Medicare Advantage Plans for 2024. The agency ended up conceding at the very least somewhat to non-public plans that for years have been receiving greater than they need to have from the U.S. Treasury. The brand new rules will work to shrink those overpayments going forward, but not attempt to recoup those from years past.
• The situation with “first-dollar coverage” of preventive services by business health plans is becoming a bit clearer following last week’s decision in Texas that a part of the Inexpensive Care Act’s preventive services mandate is unconstitutional. Judge Reed O’Connor (who in 2018 ruled all the health law unconstitutional) issued a nationwide stay on coverage requirements from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, saying it’s a volunteer organization not subject to the oversight of the Health and Human Services secretary. The federal government is already appealing that ruling.
• But O’Connor’s decision just isn’t quite as sweeping as first thought. He banned required coverage only of the duty force’s recommendations made after March 23, 2010 — the day the ACA was signed into law. Earlier recommendations stand. O’Connor also didn’t strike preventive services advisable by the Health Resources and Services Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, since those agencies are overseen by an official appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
• In abortion news, the liberal candidate for a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin, Janet Protasiewicz, defeated her conservative opponent to modify the bulk on the court from 4-3 conservative to 4-3 liberal. That ideological shift is prone to preserve abortion rights within the state, and possibly stem the power of the GOP legislature to proceed to attract maps that favor Republicans.
• Meanwhile, states within the South are continuing to tug back on abortion access. The Florida legislature is moving rapidly on a bill that will ban the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, while in North Carolina, a single legislator’s switch from Democrat to Republican has given the latter a supermajority within the legislature large enough to override any veto of the Democratic governor, Roy Cooper.

Also this week, Rovner interviews Daniel Chang, who reported and wrote the most recent KHN-NPR “Bill of the Month” feature a few child who had a medical bill sent to collections before he began to learn to read. If you may have an outrageous or exorbitant medical bill you wish to share with us, you may try this here.

Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week that they think it’s best to read, too:

Julie Rovner: Latest York Magazine’s “The Shared Anti-Trans and Anti-Abortion Playbook,” by Irin Carmon.

Alice Miranda Ollstein: The Los Angeles Times’ “Horrifying Stories of Women Chased Down by the LAPD Abortion Squad Before Roe vs. Wade,” by Brittny Mejia.

Rachel Roubein: KHN’s “‘Hard to Get Sober Young’: Inside Considered one of the Country’s Few Recovery High Schools,” by Stephanie Daniel of KUNC.

Amy Goldstein: The Washington Post’s “After Many years Under a Virus’s Shadow, He Now Lives Freed from HIV,” by Mark Johnson.

Also mentioned on this week’s podcast:

Credits

Francis Ying Audio producer Emmarie Huetteman Editor