Maine hospitals are grappling with crippling costs, plummeting revenues and aging infrastructure, with many forced to cut services, delay critical investments and stretch resources beyond safe limits.
Washington hospitals are raising alarm that taxes and insurance payment caps proposed in the state Legislature could jeopardize their finances and undermine patient care.
Some Americans who rely on Medicaid to pay for their health care don’t realize their insurance is funded by that very program, which congressional Republicans are looking to shrink.
Heather Turner of Minot has spent the past year trying to get her son the medication he needs to survive. Despite recommendations from multiple medical specialists, their insurance company continues to deny coverage — decisions she says are increasingly being made not by doctors, but by algorithms.
We live in a complicated world and try to find ways to simplify it. During this past legislative session, key legislation that would have helped ease the burden of obtaining needed health care stalled and did not pass.
Health care professionals and advocates have sounded the alarm on the historically low Medicaid reimbursement for over a decade, but state lawmakers, on both sides of the political divide, have been unable to get a bill off the ground that would raise it for one reason or another.