Samantha Liss - KFF Health News

The pandemic underscored the importance of paid sick leave, a benefit to help workers and their families when they fall ill. Now voters in Missouri, Nebraska, and Alaska are deciding whether employers must provide it.

As Florida and other states wait for Deloitte to make fixes in computer systems, Medicaid beneficiaries risk losing access to health care and food.

The technology has generated notices with errors, sent Medicaid paperwork to the wrong addresses, and been frozen for hours at a time, according to state audits, court documents, and interviews.

The February breach halted payments to doctors and disrupted patients' access to health records. One provider laments it is "more devastating than COVID.” Yet, UnitedHealth reports much is back to normal.

The bottleneck caused by states’ reevaluation of Medicaid enrollees has swept up low-income families that rely on other safety-net services.

As Medicaid programs across the country review enrollees’ status in the wake of the pandemic, patients struggle to navigate the upheaval.

Two dozen states, from Florida to Washington, have passed laws that allow hospital systems to merge into monopolies, disregarding FTC warnings that such mergers can become difficult to control and may decrease quality of care.

Patient advocates are tackling the “overwhelming task” of connecting people with health insurance as millions lose coverage due to the end of pandemic protections on Medicaid eligibility.

To drive down costs, insurers are delivering high-priced infusion drugs via third-party pharmacies. Hospitals and clinics are trying to convince states to limit this practice, known as "white bagging."