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California will levy financial penalties against hospitals, health insurance companies and medical practices that don’t beat spending benchmarks. The California Office of Health Care Affordability voted unanimously Wednesday to discipline covered entities with penalties up to 125% of the amount covered entities spend above state-imposed growth targets. Providers and insurers also could face penalties up to $10,000 per day if they repeatedly fail to file acceptable performance improvement plans, or flat penalties up to $500,000 for not implementing corrective action plans or for falsifying information. (Hudson, 8/27)

Laura Richardson pays $450 a month out of pocket for a drug that could keep her off insulin for the rest of her life. She’s a California state senator — and even she can’t get her own insurance to cover it. Richardson started using a GLP-1 a year ago after learning she was pre-diabetic. Her state health plan does not cover it. (Ibarra, 8/27)

South Carolina Senate Democratic nominee Annie Andrews on Wednesday dismissed “Medicare for All” as an outdated policy as she seeks to become the first Democrat to win a statewide race in the Palmetto State in more than 25 years. “Medicare for All is a policy from a few decades ago,” Andrews, a physician, told host Leland Vittert on NewsNation’s “On Balance.” She added, “I’m a pragmatic person. When you work as a physician, you have to be a problem solver. You roll up your sleeves, you solve the problem in front of you, you work with whoever you need to work with, you don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” (Rego, 8/27)

Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown filed a lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group (also known as United Healthcare) and Optum, Inc., alleging they defrauded the Maryland Medicaid Program by supplying a defective computer system. (Buckheit, 8/27)

Easterseals NH, which provides services for individuals with disabilities statewide, said in a statement Thursday that it will continue operations of adult day programs in Manchester and Rochester, as well as certain in-home services in Strafford and Hillsborough counties, following a vote by the organization’s board of directors. (Richardson, 8/27)

Children in Oregon’s rural counties are more likely to spend at least one day in the foster care system than those living in urban areas, according to an InvestigateWest analysis of public data from the state’s child welfare agency. Since at least 2020, rural counties have consistently accounted for the highest rates of foster care involvement in Oregon, with some southeastern communities seeing rates three times higher than Multnomah County, the state’s most populous county. (Dawson, 8/27)

A typical kid riding a normal pedal bicycle can cruise down the street at about 10 mph, maybe faster if they’re really cooking. A kid on an e-bike can hit speeds of up to 28 mph. But a kid riding on an e-motorcycle, a machine that may resemble a bicycle or may look more like a dirt bike, can go much faster — sometimes above 50 mph depending on the model. One consequence of this is increasingly showing up in the Children’s Hospital Colorado emergency room. (Ingold, 8/28)

Jury deliberations are set to resume on Friday morning in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman charged with murder for strangling her three young children in 2023. After more than four weeks of often emotional testimony in the high-profile case, the lawyers on each side made their closing arguments at the courthouse in Plymouth, Mass., on Thursday. It was their final opportunity to convince the jurors whether or not Ms. Clancy should be held criminally responsible for the children’s deaths. (Fortin, 8/28)

The trial of Lindsay Clancy, a former nurse who killed her three kids, has brought renewed attention to the most tragic outcomes of postpartum psychosis. However, an expert told MedPage Today that postpartum psychosis is a complicated condition with a continuum of severity, and one group in particular has heightened risk. Nancy Byatt, DO, MS, MBA, a perinatal psychiatrist and professor at the UMass Chan Medical School in Shrewsbury, explained that postpartum psychosis occurs in 1 to 2 per 1,000 births. (Robertson, 8/27)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: High Fertility Costs Push Americans Abroad For IVF Treatment

In the summer of 2024, Emilie and Justin Solomon found themselves on a top-secret mission in Greece. Their family and friends thought the adventure-loving couple was on another jet-setting vacation, but they were keeping something else under wraps: They had turned off their phone locations to hide visits to a Greek clinic where they were trying to get pregnant. (Dawson, 8/28)