Katheryn Houghton, Kaiser Health News

In a neighborhood near the mining town of Butte, many people have a hard time believing the air they are breathing is safe.

Mike Randol took over May 31 as head of Montana’s Medicaid program, which serves 280,000 people who live in low-income households or have disabilities in a state of 1.1 million people. The program has a roughly $2.3 billion annual budget, with the federal government picking up about 80% of the total.

Abortion politics have created a power struggle over the administration of federal family planning dollars in conservative-leaning states.

A year after a new Montana law stripped local health boards of their rulemaking authority, confusion and power struggles are creating a patchwork oversight system that may change how public health is administered long after the pandemic is over.

As the midterm election season ramps up, the Biden administration wants rural Americans to know it’ll be spending a lot of money to improve health care in rural areas.

Paramedics are hard to come by, and a long-standing workforce shortage has been exacerbated by turnover and resignations related to pandemic burnout.

Montana State Hospital’s forensic facility, which evaluates and treats patients in the criminal justice system, has always had a waitlist, but the pandemic has lengthened it.

Not a single project has begun despite the omicron surge that led to a new outbreak of COVID cases among Montana State Prison inmates in January. That delay has left weak points within Montana’s secure facilities.

In a few short months, states have gone from donating surplus rapid COVID-19 tests to states with shortages to hoarding them as demand driven by the spike in cases strains supplies.

For the first time, Little Shell members will have guaranteed access to health services — and see their culture reflected in the offerings.