Newly Minted Doctors Are Avoiding Abortion Ban States – KFF Health News

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Undergraduate medical students were less likely to apply for residency training this year in states that ban or restrict abortion, a new analysis shows. This was true not only for aspiring obstetrician-gynecologists and others who routinely treat pregnant patients, but across all specialties.

Meanwhile, another study found more than 4 million children were dropped from Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program after the federal government eliminated a COVID-related provision barring such enrollment. Is. The study estimated that about three-quarters of those children were still eligible and were excluded for procedural reasons.

This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of KFF Health News, Lauren Weber of The Washington Post, Joan Kennen of the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and Public Health and POLITICO Magazine, and Anna Edney of Bloomberg News.

Highlights from this week’s episode:

• More medical students are avoiding applying to residency programs in states with abortion restrictions. This could worsen access problems in areas that already do not have enough doctors and other health providers in their communities.
• New threats to abortion care in the United States include not only state laws penalizing the possession of abortion pills and abortion travel, but also online misinformation campaigns that dissuade people from supporting abortion ballot measures by telling them that Trying to discourage how their information may be used. ,
• The latest news has come out on the fate of Medicare, and it appears that a fairly strong economy has bought out the program’s trust fund for the next five years. Still, its overall health depends on a long-term solution — and the long-term solution depends on Congress.
• In Medicaid expansion news, Mississippi lawmakers’ latest effort to expand the program failed, and a report shows that two other non-expansion states — Texas and Florida — account for about 40% of those 4 million children. Who were removed from Medicaid and CHIP last year. By not expanding Medicaid, holdout states say no to billions of federal dollars that could be used to cover health care for low-income residents.
• Finally, the bankruptcy of hospital chain Steward Health Care tells an interesting story of what happens when private equity invests in health care.

Also this week, Rovner interviewed KFF Health News’s Kathryn Houghton, who reported and wrote the latest KFF Health News-NPR.monthly billThe feature is about a patient who went out of his insurance network for surgery and thought he had all his bases covered. It turned out that he had not done so. If you have any outrageous or incomprehensible medical bills you would like to share with us, You can do that here,

Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest health policy stories they think you should also read this week:

Julie Rovner: Nation’s “abortion pill underground“By Amy Littlefield.

Joan Kenyon: the new York Times’ “In medicine, the morally unimaginable all too easily seems normal.,” by Carl Elliot.

Anna Edney: ProPublica’sFacing uncontrolled syphilis outbreaks, Great Plains tribes asked for federal help. Even after months no one replied“By Anna Maria Barrie-Jester.

Lauren Weber: State’sNYU professors defending vaping didn’t disclose ties to Juul, documents showBy Nicholas Florko.

Also mentioned in this week’s podcast:

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