Katheryn Houghton
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Montana is signaling it might step away from an innovative way of setting the prices its public employee health plan pays hospitals for services, an approach that has saved the state millions of dollars and become a model for health plans nationwide.
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Montana is one of the latest states to suggest many nonprofit hospitals aren't giving back enough in charitable contributions to the community to justify their tax-exempt status.
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More than two years into the pandemic, hospital budgets are beginning to crack. One of the biggest drivers of financial shortfalls has been the cost to find workers.
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The pandemic laid bare the gaps and disparities in the U.S. public health system, and often resulted in blowback against local officials trying to slow the coronavirus’s spread. But one positive outcome, in part fueled by a boost in federal dollars, is that health workers have started adapting lessons they learned from their COVID-19 response to other aspects of their work.
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Montana is an island of legal abortion, but three of the state's five clinics now restrict abortion pills from people in states with trigger bans to shield themselves and patients from legal attacks.
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In a neighborhood near the mining town of Butte, many people have a hard time believing the air they are breathing is safe.
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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.
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Abortion politics have created a power struggle over the administration of federal family planning dollars in conservative-leaning states.
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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.