Projected Effects of Proposed Cuts in Federal Medicaid Expenditures on Medicaid Enrollment, Uninsurance, Health Care, and Health.

In January 2025, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives' Budget Committee offered a list of possible spending reductions to offset revenue losses from proposed tax cuts. In May, the Committee advanced a bill incorporating several reductions on the list. The Committee estimated that the 6 largest potential Medicaid cuts (for example, work requirements for some Medicaid enrollees) would each reduce the federal government's Medicaid outlays by at least $100 billion over 10 years.

Life Expectancy of American Indian and Alaska Native Persons and Underreporting of Mortality in Vital Statistics.

Importance: Mortality of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) persons is known to be high but may be underreported in routine vital statistics.

Objective: To estimate age-specific mortality rates and life expectancy for non-Hispanic AI/AN individuals and other racial and ethnic groups, using self-identified race and ethnicity data in a national cohort, circumventing errors due to racial misclassification on death certificates.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This longitudinal cohort study used data from the Mortality Disparities in American Communities (MDAC) study, a nationally representative cohort created through the US Census Bureau's linkage of the 2008 American Community Survey (ACS) with death records from the National Vital Statistics System through 2019.

Earnings and Earnings Disparities in the Veterans Health Administration and Other Healthcare Sectors.

Background: Many healthcare workers, particularly women of color, are poorly paid, and even among physicians, women and some minoritized groups earn less. Earnings inequalities are generally smaller in the public sector and might be attenuated in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

Objective: To compare earnings and earnings disparities among VHA and non-VHA healthcare workers.

Leading U.S. and U.K. Medical Journals' Coverage of Wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Recent wars in Ukraine and Gaza, prosecuted with U.S. backing, have caused massive losses of life and, in Gaza, destruction of medical facilities.

Disparate Use of Diagnostic Modalities for Patients With Limited English Proficiency and Neurologic Disorders.

Background And Objectives: Limited English proficiency (LEP) impairs health access-including outpatient specialty care-and quality care, i.e., inappropriate use of diagnostic tests.

Use and Costs of Supplemental Benefits in Medicare Advantage, 2017-2021.

Importance: Nearly all Medicare Advantage (MA) plans offer dental, vision, and hearing benefits not covered by traditional Medicare (TM). However, little is known about MA enrollees' use of those benefits or how much they cost MA insurers or enrollees.

Objective: To estimate use, out-of-pocket (OOP) spending, and insurer payments for dental, hearing, and vision services among Medicare beneficiaries.

Cross-Sectional Evaluation of State-Level Protections, Medical Debt, and Deferred Care Among Sexual and Gender Minority People.

Background: Millions of Americans have medical debt and/or defer care due to cost. Few studies have examined the association of such health-related financial problems with sexual orientation or gender identity, and whether state-level policies protecting sexual and gender minority (SGM) people affect disparities in such problems.

Objective: To examine the relationships between SGM status, state-level SGM protections, and health-related financial problems.

Health, Access to Care, and Financial Barriers to Care Among People Incarcerated in US Prisons.

Importance: Decades-old data indicate that people imprisoned in the US have poor access to health care despite their constitutional right to care. Most prisons impose co-payments for at least some medical visits. No recent national studies have assessed access to care or whether co-pays are associated with worse access.

Demand and Supply Drivers of Medicare and Non-Medicare Health Spending: An Analysis of U.S. States, 1991-2019.

For the last four decades, policymakers have attempted to control the United States's high health care costs by reducing patients' for care (e.g., by imposing managed-care restrictions or high costs on patients at the time of use).

Hospital Capital Assets, Community Health, and the Utilization and Cost of Inpatient Care: A Population-Based Study of US Counties.

Background: The provision of high-quality hospital care requires adequate space, buildings, and equipment, although redundant infrastructure could also drive service overprovision.

Objective: To explore the distribution of physical hospital resources-that is, capital assets-in the United States; its correlation with indicators of community health and nonhealth factors; and the association between hospital capital density and regional hospital utilization and costs.

Research Design: We created a dataset of n=1733 US counties by analyzing the 2019 Medicare Cost Reports; 2019 State Inpatient Database Community Inpatient Statistics; 2020-2021 Area Health Resource File; 2016-2020 American Community Survey; 2022 PLACES; and 2019 CDC WONDER.

Administration's Share of Personnel in Veterans Health Administration and Private Sector Care.

Importance: Health care administrative overhead is greater in the US than some other nations but has not been assessed in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

Objective: To compare administrative staffing patterns in the VHA and private (non-VHA) sectors.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cross-sectional study was conducted using US employment data from 2019, prior to pandemic-related disruptions in health care staffing, and was carried out between January 14 and August 10, 2023.