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The Trump administration has been signaling for months that it plans to  implement conservative reforms to core federal welfare programs, including by allowing states to have work requirements for Medicaid. So it was no surprise on Thursday when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued guidance for “state efforts to test incentives that make participation in work or other community engagement a requirement for continued Medicaid eligibility.”

So far, it’s unclear how widely adopted work requirements will be and how exactly states will implement them under CMS’s new guidance. On Friday, Kentucky was the first state to have its 1115 waiver creating work requirements approved by CMS. On Thursday, Verma noted that nine other states had already submitted waivers asking the federal government to approve incentives or requirements for some Medicaid beneficiaries. In addition to allowing strict job mandates, CMS will also allow requirements for “other community-engagement activities,” including volunteering, job training, and caregiving. (These rules only apply to specific adults; CMS carves out people with disabilities, the elderly, children, and pregnant women.)

Yet if states want work requirements to increase the health and self-sufficiency of Medicaid beneficiaries—their stated goal—most available data suggest they’ll fall short. As the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in 2017, most people on Medicaid who can work do work. Around 60 percent of adult enrollees have a job, and for the most part those who don’t report impediments in their ability to work. Even those who are not officially disabled often attest to having debilitating conditions—like severe back problems—that make full-time jobs difficult or impossible. Others may be in school, work as primary caretakers for loved ones, or may have retired.

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Washington (CNN)Ohio Gov. John Kasich says he won't "sit silent" and watch the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion get "ripped out" as Republicans work to repeal the law.

Kasich said 700,000 Ohio residents now receive care who did not before Obamacare became law, including "a third of whom have mental illness and need to be treated or drug treatment, which is a problem throughout the country."

The new head of the federal agency that oversees health benefits for nearly 150 million Americans and $1 trillion in federal spending said in one of her first interviews that her top priorities will be broadening insurance coverage and ensuring health equity.

"We've seen through the pandemic what happens when people don't have health insurance and how important it is," said Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, who was confirmed by the Senate to lead the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services on May 25 and sworn in on May 27.

That approach is an abrupt switch from the Trump administration, which pushed the agency to do what it could to help repeal the Affordable Care Act and scale back the Medicaid program, the federal-state program for people with low incomes.

It is hard to qualify for Medicaid as an adult in Missouri.

That was all set to change on July 1 because of a constitutional amendment voters approved last summer that made Missouri the 38th state to expand Medicaid coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

As it crafts the budget for the next fiscal year, the state legislature has moved to strip funding for Medicaid expansion.

When it comes to health policy, President Donald Trump made it his mission to undo many measures his predecessor put in place.

In their four years in office, the Trump administration made sweeping changes that affected the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, abortion and transgender rights, in many cases reversing the efforts of the Obama administration.

Biden's health officials will likely be active, as well, but it will take time for all their actions to take effect.

opposition to welfare programs has grown among white Americans since 2008, even when controlling for political views&nbsp;and socioeconomic status.

White Americans are more likely to favor welfare cuts when they believe that their status is threatened and that minorities are the main beneficiaries of safety net programs, the study says.

T hat also hurts white Americans who make up the largest share of Medicaid and food-stamp recipients.

“In an ideal situation, we would repeal and replace Obamacare simultaneously, but we need to make sure that we have at least a detailed framework that tells the American people what direction we’re headed,”

vote gives Senate and House committees until Jan. 27 to write legislation that would repeal major provisions of the health care law.

convinced Mr. Trump to leap into the fray. Not only did he try to steel Republican spines, but he threatened Democrats who might stand in his way, saying he would campaign against them,

the federal courts are the guardians of our Constitution. That is certainly true, but it not the whole story. In fact, the most important function of the federal courts is to legitimate state building by the political branches.

What is "state building?" Throughout our country's history, government has taken on many new functions. The early 19th century American state actually didn't do very much more than national defense and customs collection. The executive branch was tiny. Over the years, the federal government took on more and more obligations, offering new protections and new services for its citizens. After the Civil War, Congress passed a series of civil rights laws, it created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroads, it passed an income tax, and early in the twentieth century it created a central bank. State building really took off after the New Deal, which established the modern administrative and regulatory state and added a host of labor and consumer protection regulations, investments in infrastructure, and Social Security. The National Security State was born after World War II, and the 1960s brought new civil rights laws and new social welfare programs through the Great Society. At the turn of the 21st century, the federal government expanded its national security infrastructure even further, implementing vast new surveillance programs and strategies for dealing with terrorism

Whenever the federal government expands its capabilities, it changes the nature of the social compact. Sometimes the changes are small, but sometimes, as in the New Deal or the civil rights era, the changes are big. And when the changes are big, courts are called on to legitimate the changes and ensure that they are consistent with our ancient Constitution.

The business model is simple: Treat many patients as quickly as possible. Urgent care is a low-margin, high-volume proposition. At PhysicianOne here, most people are in and out in about 30 minutes. The national average charge runs about $155 per patient visit. Do 30 or 35 exams a day, and the money starts to add up.

Urgent care clinics also have a crucial business advantage over traditional hospital emergency rooms in that they can cherry-pick patients. Most of these centers do not accept Medicaid and turn away the uninsured unless they pay upfront.

While convenience is one factor, so is cost. The average charge to treat acute bronchitis at an urgent care center in 2012 was $122, compared with $814 at an emergency room, according to data on the website of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, which operates in Maryland, Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia. The price of treating a middle-ear infection was $100 versus nearly $500 in an E.R. Such cost differences matter not only to commercial insurers, but also to consumers with high-deductible health plans.

On March 30, when Mr. Lee issued an executive order shutting down nonessential businesses, he stopped short of requiring Tennesseans to stay home. “It is deeply important that we protect personal liberties,” he said, ignoring tens of thousands of health professionals who argued that nothing less than a stay-at-home order would save this state from disaster. And not just this state.

Out of fear of what Tennessee’s delays might mean for their own populations, Fort Campbell, a U.S. Army base that straddles the Tennessee-Kentucky border, restricted travel to Nashville.

Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky, urged his citizens not to enter Tennessee: “We have taken very aggressive steps to try to stop or limit the spread of the coronavirus to try to protect our people,” Mr. Beshear said. “But our neighbors from the south, in many instances, are not. If you ultimately go down over that border and go to a restaurant or something that’s not open in Kentucky, what you do is you bring the coronavirus back here.”

The landmark Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade has protected a person’s right to a safe and legal abortion since 1973. But many people, especially low-income women and women of color, still face heightened barriers to access the medical procedure due to the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal health insurance programs like Medicaid from covering abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.&nbsp;

The Hyde Amendment —&nbsp;named after former Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde, a vocally anti-abortion Republican —&nbsp;was passed in 1976 and has been renewed every year since. Congress has the opportunity to repeal the Hyde Amendment during the federal appropriations process each spring.

Research shows that 1 in 4 low-income women seeking an abortion are forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term when lawmakers restrict abortion coverage under Medicaid.&nbsp;Studies also show&nbsp;that a woman denied an abortion is more likely to fall into poverty than a woman who is able to get one.

President Biden signed two executive actions Thursday that are designed to expand access to reproductive health care and health insurance through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid.

"There's nothing new that we're doing here other than restoring the Affordable Care Act and restoring Medicaid to the way it was before [Donald] Trump became president. Because by fiat, he changed — made [it] more inaccessible, more expensive and more difficult for people to qualify for either of those two plans," Biden said in a brief Oval Office signing ceremony.

"This is going back to what the situation was prior to Trump's executive order."

When medical staff prepped Shawn Thierry for an emergency C-section, she knew something was very wrong. After an epidural, excruciating pain ran through her legs. Soon, she could barely breathe.

The US has the highest maternal death rate among similarly developed countries and is the only industrialized nation where such deaths are rising. But according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Texas the maternal mortality rate is above the US average, at 18.5 deaths per 100,000 live births.

They did not advance in 2019, or in the current legislative session which ends this weekend. Focused on restricting abortion rights, the male- and Republican-dominated state legislature has dragged its feet on maternal mortality.

In many other developed countries, a basic colonoscopy costs just a few hundred dollars and certainly well under $1,000. That chasm in price helps explain why the United States is far and away the world leader in medical spending, even though numerous studies have concluded that Americans do not get better care.

Whether directly from their wallets or through insurance policies, Americans pay more for almost every interaction with the medical system. They are typically prescribed more expensive procedures and tests than people in other countries, no matter if those nations operate a private or national health system. A list of drug, scan and procedure prices compiled by the International Federation of Health Plans, a global network of health insurers, found that the United States came out the most costly in all 21 categories — and often by a huge margin.

“The U.S. just pays providers of health care much more for everything,” said Tom Sackville, chief executive of the health plans federation and a former British health minister.

"Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly," the court said. "Requiring the vaccination of 84 million Americans, selected simply because they work for employers with more than 100 employees, certainly falls in the latter category."

The high court, though, gave the green-light to a requirement that health care workers in facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding must be vaccinated, siding 5-4 with the Biden administration.

The decisions come less than a week after the justices&nbsp;heard oral arguments on the emergency requests regarding the vaccine-or-test rule and vaccine requirement for health care workers.

Lindsey is one of almost 3 million children in the U.S. who have been diagnosed with a serious emotional or behavioral health condition. When the pandemic forced schools and doctors' offices closed last spring, it also cut children off from the trained teachers and therapists who understand their needs.

As a result, many, like Lindsey, spiraled into emergency rooms and even police custody. Federal data show a nationwide surge of kids in mental health crisis during the pandemic — a surge that's further taxing an already overstretched safety net.

Roughly 6% of U.S. children, ages 6 through 17, are living with serious emotional or behavioral difficulties, including children with autism, severe anxiety, depression and trauma-related mental health conditions.