Medicaid

A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court decision blocking states' requirements that people must work in order to receive Medicaid.

Residents of Kentucky and Arkansas brought the action against Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, contending that Azar "acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner when he approved Medicaid demonstration requests for Kentucky and Arkansas."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed, writing in an opinion posted Friday that the secretary's authorization was indeed unlawful.

The owner of two closed drug treatment centers in Ohio has been sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison for his role in a Medicaid fraud scheme. 

Right now, there are dozens of patients — U.S. citizens — in New Zealand hospitals who are fighting the clock. They have only a few weeks to recover and get home to the tiny island of American Samoa, a U.S. territory in the South Pacific.

Nearly half a million more children were uninsured in 2018 than in 2017, according to data out Tuesday from the U.S. Census Bureau. The drop stems primarily from a decline in the number of children covered by public programs such programs as Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.

The U.S. poverty rate declined slightly last year, but finally fell below the 2007 level, right before the Great Recession pushed millions of Americans out of work and into financial distress.

The improving economy was a key factor in the decline. The U.S. Census Bureau noted in its annual report on income and poverty that there were 2.3 million more full-time, year-round workers last year and that median earnings for all such workers rose by more than three percent.

Ohio's Medicaid enrollment has dropped by more than 250 thousand in the past two years. It's unclear whether those people now have other health coverage or are no longer insured. 

Updated Aug. 27, 2019, 9:55 a.m. ET

The Trump administration is moving forward with a wave of new rules and regulations that would make it more difficult for low-income Americans — especially those in families that include non-citizens — to get government aid. NPR detailed many of the proposals in June, but there have been several developments since then.

For a second time in nine months, the same federal judge has struck down the Trump administration's plan to force some Medicaid recipients to work to maintain benefits.

The state is suing a company that managed prescription benefits for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, seeking to recover nearly 16 million dollars in alleged overcharges. 

A backlog in processing applications for Ohio Medicaid eligibility continues to delay health care and cause financial difficulties for providers. 

Federal authorities say six people have been indicted in a 48 million dollar Medicaid fraud scheme. 

Last September, the Trump administration unveiled a controversial proposal — a policy that, if implemented, could jeopardize the legal status of many immigrants who sign up for some government-funded programs, including Medicaid.

Updated at 2:42 p.m. ET

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a case brought by Republican-led states that were seeking to defund Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide women's reproductive health services.

After years of steady decline, the number of U.S. children without health insurance rose by 276,000 in 2017, according to a Georgetown University report released Thursday.

A federal grand jury has indicted a central Ohio doctor on charges related to a health care fraud scheme that included marketing unnecessary prescription creams in low-income neighborhoods and billing Medicaid for millions of dollars. 

Records obtained by the Associated Press show the state did not hesitate to spend the first round of federal funding targeting the opioid crisis, unlike other states, to expand Medicaid.