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They’re marketed as healthy, “dietitian-approved” meals and delivered directly to the homes of people seriously ill from cancer, diabetes, or heart disease: a Jimmy Dean frozen sausage breakfast sandwich, biscuits and gravy, a cheeseburger. These are among the offerings sold by an Idaho-based company, Homestyle Direct, which is paid millions of dollars each year by taxpayer-funded state Medicaid programs to deliver what the company calls medically tailored meals. The company, which advertises delivering 7.8 million meals annually, has menus catering to customers trying to manage their cancer and diabetes, as well as “heart healthy” and “renal friendly” dishes. (Florko, 7/11)

Hospitals are volunteering, sometimes begrudgingly, to pay bigger taxes to help states close Medicaid budget gaps. When fiscal 2025 began in most states July 1, health systems in Delaware, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico and elsewhere are on the hook for higher taxes in exchange for Medicaid reimbursement increases or coverage expansions. (Tepper, 7/10)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Colorado Dropped Medicaid Enrollees As Red States Have, Alarming Advocates For The Poor
Colorado stands out among the 10 states that have disenrolled the highest share of Medicaid beneficiaries since the U.S. government lifted a pandemic-era restriction on removing people from the health insurance program. It’s the only blue state in a cluster of red states with high disenrollment rates — a group that includes Idaho, Montana, Texas, and Utah — in the Medicaid “unwinding” underway since spring 2023. (Bichell, 7/11)

Investigators are examining potential Medicaid fraud among Minnesota autism services, and state lawmakers say they will consider licensing the providers, whose numbers have increased dramatically across the state. The Minnesota Department of Human Services has 15 active investigations into organizations or individuals providing certain autism services and has closed 10 other cases, the agency told the Star Tribune. The investigations were first reported by the the Reformer, which wrote last month that the FBI is looking into fraud by autism service providers. (Berkel, 7/10)

In other health news from across the U.S. —

Coming off some of the deadliest years on record for drug overdoses in the state, Rhode Island finally saw its first decline in fatalities in five years, according to data released by the state Department of Health Wednesday morning. Fentanyl and other opioids are continuing to drive these fatalities, totaling about 85 percent of all fatal overdoses in Rhode Island in 2023. (Gagosz, 7/10)

The idea was ingenious, Richard Lopez thought: a slow but relentless way to phase out tobacco for good. Lopez chairs the board of health in Reading, Mass., a town of 25,000 north of Boston. Last month, the board adopted a regulation to create what advocates call a “nicotine-free generation. ”Anyone born in 2004 or later will not be allowed to buy cigarettes or nicotine products in Reading when they turn 21, the legal age to purchase. (Slater, 7/10)

Sonja Verdugo lost her husband to an opioid overdose last year. She regularly delivers medical supplies to people using drugs who are living — and dying — on the streets of Los Angeles. And she advocates at Los Angeles City Hall for policies to address addiction and homelessness. Yet Verdugo didn’t know that hundreds of millions of dollars annually are flowing to California communities to combat the opioid crisis, a payout that began in 2022 and continues through 2038. (Pattani and Thompson, 7/11)