States such as Kentucky and Arizona are seeking to change how their Medicaid programs work through new policies that include work requirements, enrollment lockouts and increased cost sharing.
Doctors are famously busy. Would having their staff run checks of patients’ prescription histories instead make drug-tracking databases more effective?
"There were a few times when I felt I had reached a dead end," writes Patricia Wight. "I worried that my stories would be missing the critical first-person experiences needed to bring the issues surrounding obesity to life."
The case of Dr. Reinaldo de los Heros illustrates a troubling tendency for critical information about a physician to go missing. State medical boards could do much more to keep the online paper trail intact over time.
Finding out about a doctor's record from state medical boards isn't as easy as it should be. Consider the story of Kelly Deyo, who died of a prescription overdose last year. Her doctor's record spans four states, but the details aren't easy to unearth.
Just because a medical board takes action, it doesn’t mean that the action is adequate. Consider the case of Dr. Reinaldo de los Heros, a Maine psychiatrist who columnist William Heisel first wrote about back in 2010.
In the final installment of Patty Wight's series on poverty and obesity, she looks at the power of social stigma and bias around weight, and the lasting effects they can have on a child.
In the fourth part of Patricia Wight's series exploring the link between childhood poverty and obesity, she visits an elementary school in Portland that has developed a creative way to get kids moving. Within minutes of the school doors opening, 16 kids are in the gym, ready for indoor soccer.
As schools across the country step up efforts to provide more nutritious foods to all children, they’re also focusing on ways get them interested in trying them. And it can be particularly important for kids from low-income families, who often lack access to nutritious food at home.
Tiffany Krastins stopped receiving food stamp benefits this past September. But with a family of six, money is still tight. “Eight-hundred dollars a month to feed six people, it breaks down to about $1.53 per meal,” she says.
