Kaiser Health News

The federal government is encouraging states to adopt policies that might boost the number of Medicaid enrollees who use long-acting, reversible contraceptives.

A federal task force expanded the list of recommended colorectal cancer screening tests. Here’s the lowdown on the tests and how they might be covered now and in the future by health insurance.

The nation in the next few years faces many important decisions about health care — most of which have little to do with the controversial federal health law.

Bronze plans provide the least generous coverage of the four tiers on insurance marketplaces, paying 60 percent of benefits, on average, compared with 70 percent for the more popular silver plans.

Despite the lack of formal teaching, teenage pregnancy rates have declined for more than two decades and are now at historic lows. Racial disparities remain, however, and few teens use highly effective long-acting contraceptives such as intrauterine devices or hormonal implants.

Administration officials moved Thursday to improve low Medicaid enrollment for emerging prisoners, urging states to start signups before release and expanding eligibility to thousands of former inmates in halfway houses near the end of their sentences.

In the battle against America’s surging opioid drug addiction, 49 states, the District of Columbia and even Guam have all implemented some kind of PMDP. Missouri is the only state that hasn’t.

For American Indians on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota, getting health care can take weeks. Indians who move to the city find that access can be difficult, too.

Although primary care doctors frequently see patients with depression, they typically do less to help those patients manage it than they do for patients with other chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma or congestive heart failure, a recent study found.

Nationwide, the number of pregnant women using heroin, prescription opioids or medications used to treat opioid addiction has increased more than five-fold and it’s expected to keep rising.