Senate Dems Want Expanded Contraception Insurance Coverage

This feature courtesy of MIRS, a Lansing-based news and information service.

This week, Sens. Mary Cavanagh (D-Redford Twp.) and Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor) introduced the “Freedom to Plan Act,” a bill package that would require both Medicaid and private insurers to provide coverage for oral hormonal and emergency contraception – with or without a prescription.

If passed, Michigan would join six other states to enact similar legislation requiring covered contraception.

The two Senate Democrats said they believe expanding coverage for contraception will break down financial barriers to over-the-counter (OTC) contraceptives, providing Michigan residents with the autonomy to make their own medical decisions.

“People should have access to every [Read More]

More than 2.6 million Michiganders were enrolled in Medicaid in May 2024 after the year-long redetermination, which means the state added more than 400,000 people since before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and dropped 500,000 people since the end.

No one had to reapply during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency orders and by May 2023, when the emergency orders ended, 3.1 million residents were enrolled in Medicaid. Redeterminations for the medical program restarted and after the year-long “unwind” there were more people enrolled than prior to the pandemic .

“This was the largest renewal process our state has ever conducted, with 1.8 million beneficiaries renewing their coverage during the past year. MDHHS employed numerous [Read More]

By CHRISTINE SPOLAR

PHILADELPHIA — Zarinah Lomax is an uncommon documentarian of our times. She has designed dresses from yellow crime-scene tape and styled jackets with hand-painted demands like “Don’t Shoot” in purple, black, and gold script. Every few months, she hauls dozens of portraits of Philadelphians — vibrant, bold, bigger-than-life faces — to pop-up galleries to raise an alarm about gun violence in her hometown and America.

In a storage unit, Lomax has a thousand canvasses, she estimates, mostly of young people who died from gunfire, and others of the mothers, sisters, friends, and mourners left to ask why.

“The purpose is not to make people cry,” said Lomax, a Philadelphia [Read More]

By SUSAN ADELMAN, MD
I just got off the phone after talking to a distant cousin and his wife, who recited a frustrating list of the medical and surgical problems that dominate their lives. They are my age, but neither can walk without a walker. My cousin is in a nursing home. I am active and traveling. Why? It is not clear.  Some of their conditions obviously are not preventable. Some, I am not sure. Of limited means, they are trying not to spend more than their insurance will cover. In today’s environment, that may mean rushed 15-minute appointments, which make it hard for their doctors to deal in a calm, [Read More]

 By JESSE ADAM MARKOS, ESQ.
Wachler & Associates, P.C.

Healthcare providers employed by a hospital or on staff at one, who believe that they will be terminated, may try to get ahead of that decision by resigning in lieu of termination.  At first glance, a resignation under such circumstances may appear to be an option that offers greater dignity and minimizes professional harm. However, in today’s highly regulated environment, there is often very little benefit to resigning. In fact, a resignation can, on its own, create significant problems for providers as it can trigger the filing of a report to the National Practitioner Data Bank or Michigan’s Department of Licensing and [Read More]

By KATHLEEN CAMPBELL WALKER
Dickinson Wright

A recent commentary offers a stark glimpse into future healthcare demands (Harris & Marshall, 2024). During the first two years of the pandemic, the U.S. economy saw a loss of 400,000 workers in residential care facilities and nursing. Presently, there remains a shortage of approximately 130,000 workers compared to pre-pandemic levels (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). With the last cohort of baby boomers turning 65 by 2030, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 73 million seniors will soon constitute about one-fifth of the population, outnumbering children (Vespa, Medina & Armstrong, 2020).

In 2017, immigrants made up 18.2% of healthcare workers and 23.5% of long-term care workers, [Read More]

By DUAA ELDEIB
This story was originally published by ProPublica
The U.S. has not prioritized stillbirth prevention, and American parents are losing babies even as other countries make larger strides to reduce deaths late in pregnancy.

The Senate on Tuesday passed legislation that, for the first time, expressly permits states to spend millions of federal dollars on stillbirth prevention.

The Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act, which passed the House in mid-May, now goes to President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign the measure into law.

ProPublica has spent the past two years reporting on the crisis around stillbirth, the death of an expected child at 20 weeks of pregnancy or [Read More]

Supremes’ Ruling Allows Medical Malpractice Suit To Continue

An Oakland County woman who sued her doctor for medical malpractice will get a second chance to advance her lawsuit.

In a 5-2 decision, the Michigan Supreme Court held the trial court improperly dismissed Lynda Danhoff’s lawsuit.

At issue was whether an expert is required to support their standard-of-care opinion with scientific literature.

“Consistently with precedent, we hold once again that scientific literature is not always required to support an expert’s standard-of-care opinion, but that scientific literature is one of the factors that a trial court should consider when determining whether the opinion is reliable,” the majority’s opinion from Justice Kyra Bolden reads.

” … Determining that [Read More]

By SAMANTHA YOUNG

The White House is calling on hospital executives, doctors, and other health care leaders to take bolder steps to prevent gun violence by gathering more data about gunshot injuries and routinely counseling patients about safe use of firearms.

Biden administration officials are hosting back-to-back events Thursday and Friday at the White House for about 160 health care officials, calling gun violence a “public health crisis” that requires them to act.

The strategy also reflects a stark political reality: Congress has been deadlocked on most gun-related legislation for years, with a deep divide between Republicans and Democrats. If Democratic President Joe Biden wants to get anything done quickly, he will need [Read More]

A Rep. Alabas A. Farhat (D-Dearborn) bill prohibiting pharmaceutical manufacturers from denying access to drugs based on participation in a drug pricing program for low-income patients received a first day of testimony in a House committee.

Farhat said the legislation would address skyrocketing prescription drug prices, but pharmaceutical industry stakeholders said they feel the bill, and the “340B” program as a whole, gives an unfair advantage to hospital and chain pharmacies that don’t pass the savings onto their patients.

The 340B Drug Pricing Program is a 32-year-old, federal program to get pharmaceutical manufacturers to discount some of their most expensive prescription drugs, Farhat said, and requires these manufacturers to sell outpatient drugs to [Read More]