Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
West Virginia's Attorney General Patrick Morrisey on Tuesday proposed a five-point strategy to rein in opioids abuse in his hard-hit corner of Appalachia, from an "enforcement surge" of 150 state troopers to limiting certain fills of pain pills to just three days. The legislative package would shield prescribers who decline to prescribe opioids - so doctors don't put economic incentives over safe care - tighten up prescribing practices under the state Medicaid program and force doctors to crosscheck a prescribing database every time they write a script for opioids, instead of just once a year.
An opioid epidemic that has claimed the lives of hundreds of Minnesotans. A giant backlog of uninvestigated maltreatment complaints at senior care homes.
Now, the Trump administration, in which they both serve, has allowed the state to implement even more changes in the safety net program -- most notably by requiring some Medicaid recipients to work. The state, which has served as a Medicaid expansion model for Republicans, announced Friday that it will require certain Medicaid recipients to get jobs or participate in other community activities starting in 2019.
Efforts to rein in abuse of a drug discount program for hospitals that serve a high number of low-income patients could cost St. Charles Health System an estimated $3 million in revenue in 2018. The 340B program, created by Congress in 1992, requires pharmaceutical manufacturers to give deep discounts to safety-net hospitals and health clinics.
On Thursday night's episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert , Meghan McCain gave a very encouraging update about her dad, Sen. John McCain. "He had a sort of rough time at Christmas and he's made this crazy amazing recovery which I guess I shouldn't be surprised at," she said.
The state of Louisiana received a failing grade of "F" in several categories evaluating available help for smokers, according to a recent study by the American Lung Association. "While progress is being made in the category of Smokefree Air , the report shows that all statewide partners still have a long way to go in improving the physical and financial health of Louisiana smokers," said Mike Rogers, CEO of Smoking Cessation Trust Management Services.
Controversial "heat-not-burn" tobacco devices might only get limited marketing in the United States, based on recommendations issued Thursday by an influential government panel. Controversial "heat-not-burn" tobacco devices might only get limited marketing in the United States, based on recommendations issued Thursday by an influential government panel.
Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas mogul who built several of the best-known casinos on the Vegas strip, has been accused of forcing a woman to have sex during a 2005 meeting in his office. The woman went to the office to give Wynn a manicure : After she gave Mr. Wynn a manicure, she said, he pressured her to take her clothes off and told her to lie on the massage table he kept in his office suite, according to people she gave the account to.
Republicans in the Virginia Senate on Thursday tabled legislation that would have expanded Medicaid coverage to hundreds of thousands of lower-income residents of Virginia. Voting along party lines, the Senate Education and Health Committee indefinitely postponed action on the proposal.
In this Jan. 21, 2018, photo, lights shine inside the U.S. Capitol Building as night falls in Washington, and Congress continues to negotiate during the federal government shutdown. The deal that ended the government shutdown also further cut taxes, adding billions more to the national deficit.
It wasn't only Democratic-leaning counties in Oregon that voted to impose a tax on hospitals and health insurers to pay for Medicaid for low-income residents - several counties that voted for Donald Trump also helped propel the ballot measure to resounding "yes" vote. As president, Trump endorsed Republican bills to repeal the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid.
Right before Christmas last year, the Department of Justice announced an ominous settlement: United Therapeutics, a manufacturer of pulmonary arterial hypertension drugs, agreed to pay more than $200 million to settle allegations it violated the Anti-Kickback Statute . United Therapeutics' alleged kickback was supporting - and purportedly benefiting from - a Patient Assistance Program charitable foundation that helped patients pay expensive co-pays for United Therapeutics' drugs.
In an ironic twist, the Trump administration's embrace of work requirements for low-income people on Medicaid is prompting lawmakers in some conservative states to resurrect plans to expand health care for the poor. Trump's move has been widely criticized as threatening the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion.
Oregon approved taxes on hospitals, health insurers and managed care companies in an unusual special election Tuesday that asked voters - and not lawmakers - how to pay for Medicaid costs that now include coverage of hundreds of thousands of low-income residents added to the program's rolls under the Affordable Care Act. Measure 101 was passing handily in early returns Tuesday night.
The deal to break through the Senate stalemate over immigration and border security that shut down the government is a bare-bones accord. It provides temporary funding to keep the government operating for just under three weeks.
The Ohio Supreme Court is weighing arguments from an ex-death row inmate that the state's capital punishment law is unconstitutional because judges and not juries hand down death sentences. Convicted killer Maurice Mason says the U.S. Constitution requires juries to impose death sentences.
Hoeven: Sen. John Hoeven released the following statement after voting for a continuing resolution to keep the government operating and make sure the military gets paid. The legislation provides a long-term, six-year reauthorization of the Children's Health Insurance Program to ensure that states, including those running out of funding in January, can continue to provide children with health care.
The Supreme Court says Justice Sonia Sotomayor is "doing fine" after emergency medical personnel treated her at home for symptoms of low blood sugar. Sotomayor is diabetic.
There is basically one thing the GOP needs to do to avoid a government shutdown tonight when the temporary funding bill is set to expire: Offer a clean path to permanent legalization for Dreamers-individuals who have grown up as Americans even though they were brought to this country as minors illegally-and make them off-limits to this administration's deportation designs. The House just passed a stopgap funding bill that does nothing about Dreamers but extends CHIP, a health insurance program for children that Republicans have never liked, showing that the only principle that animates their party now is saving this land of immigrants from immigrants.