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Is ICE undermining patient privacy by using Medicaid data?
ICE agents and bystanders in Minneapolis after the Jan. 7, 2026, fatal shooting of Renée Macklin Good. Photo by Chad Davis (CC BY 4.0) In December, a court decision allowed federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to use states’ Medicaid data to identify where people — including immigrants — live as part of enforcement…
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Despite federal efforts, drug prices may not drop much
Three years after Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, a significant change from that law will go into effect next month. The law gives the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) the right to negotiate the prices of high-cost prescription drugs and forces drug companies to give back money when they…
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How to find stories in states’ plans for the Rural Health Transformation Program
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced in early November that all 50 states had submitted applications for grants from its $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, an initiative aimed at strengthening health care across rural America. States had been invited to design and submit plans to transform rural health care in their locales…
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CMS Chief of Staff: House bill aims to slow — not cut — Medicaid spending
You may not have heard this interpretation of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: The House-passed legislation is not designed to cut Medicaid spending, according to Stephanie Carlton, deputy administrator and chief of staff at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “Just to be clear, nobody’s proposed a cut,” Carlton said Friday at…
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How to uncover immediate jeopardy citations — and how AHCJ can help
Every year dozens of hospitals violate federal safety regulations so severely that patients are in imminent danger of serious injury or death. Yet often these major infractions — which are referred to as immediate jeopardy — go unreported to the public. Regulators and hospitals are not obliged to announce immediate jeopardy citations, which means journalists…
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CMS reports national health spending grew 7.5% in 2023, far outpacing inflation
In 2023, the United States spent $4.9 trillion on health care, a growth rate of 7.5% in 2022 or about $14,570 per person, according to a CMS report from the National Health Expenditure Accounts Team. To put the 7.5% in context, consider that 7.5% is almost twice the growth rate in the Consumer Price Index,…
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STAT+: Medicare Advantage membership grows 7% for 2023
STAT+: Medicare Advantage membership grows 7% for 2023 Nearly 31.2 million seniors and people with disabilities are now enrolled in a private Medicare plan, known as Medicare Advantage, according to new federal government data analyzed by STAT. That total is 7.1% higher than the 29.1 million people who had a Medicare Advantage plan in 2022.…
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