Monday, April 22, 2024 – KFF Health News

Boston Globe: Massachusetts will pay thousands to leave nursing homes

It should become dramatically easier for nursing home residents to return to their communities after Massachusetts committed to spending $1 billion over the next eight years on new housing and community support for people wishing to leave long-term care facilities. The commitment was part of a settlement in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by the Massachusetts Senior Action Council and seven nursing home residents who wanted to return to their communities but could not find housing to stay. (Laughlin, 4/21)

Stateline.org: ‘Are nursing homes our only option?’ These centers provide older adults an alternative

George Raines, a white-haired man wearing a red track suit and matching University of Alabama ball cap, cracked jokes as physical therapist Brad Ellis guided him through a series of exercises designed to strengthen his legs. Reigns, who is 79, pretended to be in pain, but his smile belied his tone of mock agony. The people were in the therapy room at Ascension Living Alexion Pace in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where elderly clients spend days receiving medical care and other services. (Vollers, 4/19)

In other health news from across the US –

The Hill: Supreme Court to weigh in on whether cities can ticket homeless people

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Monday in a challenge to a law that lets cities fine homeless people, potentially fundamentally altering the lives of thousands of people without homes. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that cities could not ticket homeless people for camping in public when no alternative shelter was available, though municipalities supporting the lawsuit want that opinion overturned. (Robertson, 4/21)

Stateline.org: States want to make it harder for health insurers to deny care, but companies can avoid enforcement

For decades, Amina Tolin struggled with mysterious, debilitating pain that spread throughout her body. A few years ago, when a doctor finally diagnosed her with polyneuropathy, a chronic nerve condition, she began using a wheelchair. The doctor administered blood infusion therapy, which helped 40-year-old Tolin lead his life normally. That is, until about three months ago, when re-approval time came and Medicaid stopped paying for the therapy. (Chatlani, 4/19)

Fox News: Planned Parenthood refuses to hand over records of transgender procedures on children

Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, Missouri is appealing a judge’s ruling that required the clinic to turn over patient files that would reveal whether puberty blockers and transgender procedures were performed on children. The clinic filed an appeal Friday in the 22nd Judicial Court in St. Louis, arguing that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s civil investigative demand was “improperly issued” because it did not reference Planned Parenthood in the 54 requests. Was. (Joseph, 4/20)

San Francisco Chronicle: Woman dies at facility run by SF’s largest drug treatment provider

A woman died Thursday at a sober living facility run by HealthRight 360, San Francisco’s largest addiction treatment provider. The woman, who was being treated at the program, is the fifth person to die at the facility run by HealthRight 360 in the past 13 months. Four men at the nonprofit’s programs died of overdoses from March 2023 to February 2024. The woman’s cause of death was not immediately known Friday. (Anger, 4/19)

Stateline: Census changes will get more data on health of Middle Eastern, North African people in US

Before the successful, healthy birth of her son, recalls Germaine Awad – an Egyptian American who is a psychologist at the University of Michigan – physicians told her that her hormone levels were too high and that her pregnancy was in danger. “They don’t know us,” his mother reassured him. Iman Hamad, a Palestinian American public health graduate student at Wayne State University in Detroit, had to search online to find out which race or ethnicity box she should check on doctor’s office and school forms. (Hasnain, 4/19)

KFF Health News: Rural prisons turn to community health workers to help newly released people succeed

Garrett Clark estimates he’s spent about six years in the Sanpete County Jail, an unassuming concrete building perched on a dusty hill just outside the small, rural town where he grew up. He blames his addiction for this. He began using in middle school and became addicted to meth and heroin by adulthood. At various points, he has spent time with his mother, his father, his sister, and his younger brother. “That’s all I’ve ever known in my entire life,” Clark, 31, said in December. (Mongeau Hughes, 4/22)