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EVERYTHING
Help Paying for Basics Like Food, Housing, Cuts Health Costs in North Carolina
What: North Carolina’s Medicaid program says a pilot program that helps pays for things like safer housing, healthier food, and support for dealing with stress has been saving the state $85 per person in a preliminary analysis. In other words, spending on the “social determinants” of health may be able to reduce medical costs.
Why it matters: Medicaid covers nearly half of all births in the United States. If this pilot is shown to save money in one state, perhaps it can quickly expand to others.
Source: NC Department of Health and Human Services
FERTILITY
Feds (Finally) Start Offering Fertility Benefits
What: The federal government is the country’s largest employer, and starting this year they are offering insurance that covers fertility services. The new coverage can include “up to $25,000 annually for in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures and up to three artificial insemination cycles each year.”
Why it matters: This could push more private employers to offer fertility benefits. According to a 2023 survey, 45% of large employers offered fertility benefits, about double the number that did in the early 2000s.
Source: Kaiser Health News via The 19th
MENSTRUATION
Why So Few People Know About PMDD
What: We’ve known about premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) for nearly a century, but a 2022 survey of PMDD patients found that 40% of mental health providers had never heard of the condition. Shalene Gupta, a reporter who wrote a book on PMDD and her experience with the condition, explains that’s a byproduct of a 1970s world that conflated PMDD with PMS. And that led feminist leaders at the time to oppose PMDD from being categorized as a mental health condition, lest it be used to argue all women are unfit to pursue the lives and careers they wanted, due to menstruation.
Why it matters: The women who didn’t get diagnosed in the intervening years have suffered.
Source: Time
ABORTION ACCESS
Is ‘Abortion Clinic’ Still an Insult? Or a Badge of Honor?
What: NPR’s public editor breaks down how newsrooms have approached abortion language over the past few decades. Publications used to shy from referring to “abortion clinics,” since it could be interpreted as a pejorative categorization for health professionals who do more than provide abortions. One reader complained about NPR’s recent coverage of VP Kamala Harris’ historic first visit to a clinic that provides abortion, saying a headline that referred to Planned Parenthood as an abortion clinic ignored the other services they offer.
Why it matters: As NPR’s chief Washington editor put it: “The Biden campaign has made abortion rights a centerpiece of its reelection strategy…And it’s no coincidence that after several events where she has met with patients who have received abortions, and doctors who have performed them, the vice president went to a facility that provides abortion services.”
Source: NPR
ONCOLOGY
Trusting Your Gut Instincts and Getting the Care You Need
What: A first-person essay from a Marisa Peters, who was diagnosed with stage 3 rectal cancer at 39 years old. Her symptoms (“bleeding out of my butt like I was having a period every day”) were dismissed as hemorrhoids post-childbirth, delaying her treatment for years. Since 1995, new cases of colorectal cancer has nearly doubled for Americans under 55.
Why it matters: As Peters puts it: “It is urgent: If you are experiencing even one of the symptoms—like bloody stool, stomach pain, urgency to go, and/or anemia causing fatigue—go straight to your doctor and ask to be screened. If the doctors push back or minimize your concerns, keep going. Many of you have been told by doctors that it is just post-childbirth changes, gut health, perimenopause or menopause—but colorectal screening saves lives.”
Source: Ms. Magazine
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