The current threats to our health care are multi-fold. Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, has the potential to undermine the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and important health care consumer protections. His judicial record leads people to be concerned about a potential demise of the right to safe, legal abortion, and the ACA. He has...

The National Health Law Program (NHeLP) filed a lawsuit last week challenging the onerous work requirements approved for the Arkansas Medicaid program. They profiled the three Arkansas Medicaid enrollees the lawsuit was filed on behalf of, including Charles Gresham, who suffers from seizures, anxiety disorder and asthma. Mr. Gresham looks for work but has limited...

The Administration issued final rules on short-term junk insurance plans, extending the maximum length of coverage from three to 12 months. The final rule also allows insurers to extend or renew coverage for up to 36 months (which was not included in the proposed rule). New plans could be available as soon as October 2018,...

Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Washington recently reversed their blanket policy excluding breast augmentation as a treatment for gender dysphoria, the clinical diagnosis for transgender men and women. The Office of the Insurance Commissioner found that the policy discriminated against transgender women since chest reconstruction for transgender men and cisgender women following mastectomy would be...

Over 204,000 comments(!) were submitted on proposed changes to the Title X program at the end of July. NoHLA commented on the grave impacts that the proposed rules would have on program effectiveness and low-income populations and urged them not to be adopted. The Department of Health & Human Services also received comments from Washington...

A new federal grant of $284,135 will allow the Office of the Insurance Commissioner (OIC) to evaluate if health insurers in Washington offer comprehensive and affordable health coverage for mental health and substance use disorder treatments. Under the grant, the OIC will study health plan benefit design, insurers’ policies and procedures for coverage of these...

For the third year in a row, the KIDS COUNT Project finds Washington State in 5th place among states for children’s health care. Kudos to the Health Coalition for Children and Youth for their many years of advocacy and to children’s health care providers across the state. Only 3% of Washington children remain uninsured –...

The latest threat to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a huge reduction in funding for navigators in states using the federal marketplace. These are local people who help individuals and their families enroll in Medicaid and Exchange coverage. We didn’t call it huge for nothing – navigators have been cut 84% since 2016(!).Fortunately, Washington...

Many states are applying for five-year waivers to receive federal funds for inpatient treatment of adults age 21-64 in Institutions of Mental Disease (IMDs) with more than 16 beds. Washington State received federal approval of an amendment to their existing Medicaid waiver last week. The waiver amendment will allow the state to maintain and expand...

First Lady Trudi Inslee penned an op-ed in The Seattle Times about how Washington is strengthening our efforts to expand women’s health care. In a new initiative, the Department of Health is partnering with Upstream USA to provide sustainable tracking and technical assistance to approximately 300 public and private health centers over the next four...