General Mental Health Issues
- Black mothers are more likely to face eviction and housing discrimination, which has lasting impacts on their mental and physical health — as well as that of their neighbors, a new report says. Read more here.
The Opioid Crisis
- Coloradans will continue to have access statewide to a key medication that reverses overdoses — thanks to a $3 million grant. Attorney General Phil Weiser announced that money from Colorado’s opioid settlement haul will go into a statewide fund to buy naloxone, also called Narcan, in bulk. Read more here.
Climate Change and Mental Health
- Anxiety, grief, anger, fear, helplessness. The emotional toll of climate change is broad ranging, especially for young people. Many worry about what the future holds, and a daily grind of climate anxiety and distress can lead to sleeplessness, an inability to focus, and worse. Some young people wonder whether it’s moral to bring children into the world. Many people grieve for the natural world. Activists, climate psychologists, and others in the fight against climate change have a range of ways to build resilience and help manage emotions. Read more here.
- As triple-digit temperatures hit the East Coast, individuals with a mental illness -- specifically those who take prescribed medication -- are at risk for heat intolerance, with psychiatric hospitalizations peaking in the summer months, according to experts. During heat waves or especially warm days, there is often an uptick in the frequency of psychiatric hospitalizations, with one study finding that "higher temperatures may trigger bipolar disorder relapses that require hospital admission, and higher expositions to sunlight may increase the risk of manic episodes." Read more here.
Health Insurance
- Top officials in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are touting a multipronged effort from major payers to reform the oft-criticized prior authorization process. Mehmet Oz, M.D., administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), said during a press conference that the prior auth pledge is just the first step in a broader push. Read more here.
Medical Debt
- Proposed federal spending cuts to health care in Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” may increase some families’ medical debts by as much as $22,800, according to a new report from Third Way, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The Republican budget bill proposes $1.1 trillion in cuts to health care that target both Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage. The Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, a nonpartisan legislative scorekeeper, projected that about 11 million people would lose health-care coverage due to provisions in the bill passed by the House of Representatives if it’s enacted in its current form. Read more here.
Transgender Issues
- Bills passed by the North Carolina Senate reinforce the Trump administration’s attitude toward transgender issues. However, they are also an extension of legislation already approved in North Carolina. Last legislative session, the GOP-dominated General Assembly cleared bills that largely banned gender-affirming care for minors and transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports at the middle school, high school, and collegiate levels. Read more here.
- The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision to uphold a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth dealt a painful blow to families of trans kids — but the fight is not over. LGBTQ+ rights attorneys say that even as the Trump administration makes it harder for trans Americans to live without fear of discrimination, there are still openings — some left by the court ruling itself — to fight gender-affirming care bans and other anti-trans laws. Read more here.
Medicaid and the ACA
- The Senate parliamentarian has advised that a Medicaid provider tax overhaul central to President Donald Trump’s tax cut and spending bill does not adhere to the chamber’s procedural rules, delivering a crucial blow as Republicans rush to finish the package this week. Read more here.
- California, New York, and Texas are projected to lose the most healthcare jobs stemming from federal Medicaid spending reductions included in Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, according to a June 23 brief from the Commonwealth Fund. The budget reconciliation bill, passed by the House of Representatives on May 22, reduces federal funding for Medicaid by $863 billion over the next decade. Read more here.
- Louisiana is poorer, sicker, and hungrier than most states, and the deep cuts to Medicaid have a growing number of Republicans in Louisiana worried that Congress and the White House are going too far. They are anxious that rural hospitals whose finances are highly dependent on federal Medicaid funds would face crippling revenue losses and be forced to shut down, depriving all residents of accessible health care. Read more here.
- Republican efforts to restrict taxes on hospitals, health plans, and other providers that states use to help fund their Medicaid programs could strip them of tens of billions of dollars. The move could shrink access to health care for some of the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable people, warn analysts, patient advocates, and Democratic political leaders. Read more here.
- In southern Colorado's San Luis Valley, clouds billow above the towering mountains of the Sangre de Cristo range. A chorus of blackbirds whistle, as they flit among the reeds of a wildlife refuge. Big circular fields of crops, interspersed with native shrubs, give it a feel of bucolic quiet. Despite the stark beauty in one of the state's most productive agricultural regions, there's a sense of unease among the community's leaders as Congress debates a budget bill that could radically reshape Medicaid, the government health program for low-income people. Read more here.
- In Illinois, more than three million people have Medicaid health insurance — about 1 in 4 people statewide. The wide-ranging program covers people from seniors in nursing homes to mothers and newborns. The number of medically fragile children like Marely is small, at least 1,500 people, according to a 2024 state report. However, their care and needs are incredibly expensive. Read more here.
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