With massive cuts to Medicaid on the horizon due to the work requirements included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a new study underscores the potentially life-and-death urgency of helping people with opioid use disorder retain their coverage. Read my latest: psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

In a new column, KFF’s @drewaltman.bsky.social explains that while affordability is the most salient issue in health care politics right now, the issue of the uninsured will make a comeback if the number of people without coverage continues to climb as expected. https://on.kff.org/4mhgHWk

In the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology's recent recommendations for deprescribing psychotropic medications, a shocking 27% disagreed with the routine deprescribing of valproate in women of childbearing age. Psychiatric News recently covered this. 1/3 jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

I wrote a three-part series exploring conversion therapy--what it's like to survive it, what it's like to lose a child to it, and what the Supreme Court's case could mean. This is the third and, perhaps, my favorite installment: psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10....

Poll: People View Prior Authorization as Greatest Burden in Navigating the Health System www.kff.org/public-opini...

My latest is the first in a three-part series about conversion therapy--the Supreme Court case that may overturn laws across the country that ban it, the advocacy of those trying to fight it, and the stories of people who have survived it. Read it here: psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10....

“Here we have a report issued from the... highest level of the federal government with regard to health and it’s casting psychotropic medications for children...as a leading cause of chronic disease... When I read that, it struck me as profoundly wrong.” psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

"It's definitely like a catastrophic situation for public health nutrition,” said Leah's Pantry founder and executive director Adrienne Markworth. www.reuters.com/world/us/sta...

"For the first time, the CMS has provided a notice that directs hospitals to transport Medicare patients in the hospital at home program back to a brick-and-mortar facility or discharge them if the program authority runs out." www.fiercehealthcare.com/regulatory/t...

The @nwlc.org warns that pronatalist policies like baby bonuses and motherhood medals are designed to control women’s bodies rather than genuinely support families.

"Bounds, who lives in Oak Hill now, is one of thousands in the state who need oxygen and nebulizer treatments just to get through the day. The CDC estimates that about one in five miners in Appalachia is impacted by the disease." wchstv.com/news/local/a...

Federal Report on Drinking Is Withdrawn The upcoming U.S. Dietary Guidelines will instead be influenced by a competing study, favored by industry, which found that moderate alcohol consumption was healthy. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/h...

NO PAYWALL: We have copies of the MAHA report. Farm groups are pleased, but key parts of the MAHA coalition are not happy with the report’s soft touch on pesticides. “There are way too many industry influences on things,” one MAHA supporter told me. @politico.com

AHRQ, the federal agency once prized by health care researchers, has been "decimated" @chelseacirruzzo.bsky.social reports. With ~ 90% of its workers gone following Trump admin cuts and early retirements, AHRQ can't distribute grants or perform other key functions www.statnews.com/2025/08/13/f...

"The fear that I see in patients’ eyes is not theoretical; it is lived. It is the resurgence of long-buried wounds, the echoes of past bullying and rejection now amplified by a government that seeks to erase their very existence." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

NEWS: Trump and his GOP allies are pursuing policies that would intentionally cause millions of Americans to become uninsured. There's no precedent. kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

"Former foster youth who describe the humiliation of using garbage bags during such moves have spent months calling attention to the problem, through advocacy campaigns and public demonstrations." New York is only the 4th state to end the use of trash bags.

#Breaking: 10.9 million people would lose health insurance under Trump’s tax cut bill, CBO projects buff.ly/DnBihzo

"From failing to publicize a major outbreak to scaling back safety alert specialists and rules, the Trump administration’s anti-regulatory and cost-cutting push risks unraveling a critical system that helps ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply." kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

In a letter to the editor, a group claimed that my story about executive orders that target transgender people took "a one-sided approach to the debate on the care of transgender youth." These are my thoughts: (Read the story here: psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...)

In California, Black women are at least three times as likely as white women to die of pregnancy-related causes. Black infants have the highest rates of preterm birth and mortality. But programs to address racial disparities appear at risk. kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

"About two-thirds of Republican-leaning parents are unaware of an uptick in measles cases this year while about two-thirds of Democratic ones knew about it, according to a KFF survey released Wednesday."

Under a massive restructuring, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) will become part of the new Administration for a Healthy America. Mental health and substance use experts are worried.

HHS terminated about $11 billion in grants, including $1 billion from SAMHSA that was meant to help states respond to the mental health ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, a judge blocked that termination. psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

Two physicians are suing the Trump administration over the removal of two research papers from a government website, because they included the terms “LGBTQ” and “trans(gender).”

Excellent reporting on the chaos, staff reduction, and demoralization taking place across SAMHSA via @rosebroderick.bsky.social www.statnews.com/2025/03/12/s...

My colleagues did a great story about what happens now that the clozapine REMS are no more. The REMS was a burdensome program, advocates say, that prevented patients with schizophrenia from getting this life-saving medicine. (1/5) psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

There tends to be an assumption that Medicaid is just for the poor. In reality it covers 72 million Americans, paying for about half of all nursing care and 40 percent of births. (Corrected post: The earlier one said Medicare, not Medicaid). www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

APA's statement on transgender individuals serving in the military: www.psychiatry.org/News-room/Ne...

“Although the risk of severe neutropenia with clozapine still exists, FDA has determined that the REMS program for clozapine is no longer necessary to ensure the benefits of the medicine outweigh that risk.” ow.ly/kFZw50V6xsP

I spoke with the American Psychiatric Associaiton's Psychiatric News about the impact of Trump's recent executive orders targeting #trans youth. @apapsychiatric.bsky.social psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

Psychiatrists respond to the attacks on the rights of transgender patients. “I feel like I’m in Weimar, Germany, in the 1930s. A vulnerable minority has been singled out as somehow dangerous to everybody else... The goal is to render them invisible.” Read here: psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

NEWS The FDA, which operates under the authority of Robert Kennedy Jr., canceled the meeting to discuss next year’s flu vaccines. This could interfere with or delay production of flu vaccines. 86 children and 19,000 adults have died from flu this season. About 430,000 people were hospitalized.

open.substack.com/pub/pauloffi... No group has been hurt more by anti-vaccine activists than children with autism.

As the article notes, this practice generally harms low-income people. Those with high incomes have lawyers who can craft estates in such a way that it's safe from these Medicaid debt collectors.

Amid a political environment in which government websites are being gutted of vital health information, @acog-org.bsky.social has stepped up to host PDFs of government-issued #ob/gyn -related guidance at risk of being purged. @davidnhackney.bsky.social www.medpagetoday.com/obgyn/genera...

Many parents live with, "a feeling that, if we don’t do these things perfectly, we may be responsible for damaging our children." Read about parental stress as a public health crisis here: psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

The Physician Support Line has become a permanent fixture in the medical landscape, supporting physicians who deal with burnout and rarely ask for help. “Of all the things I have done in my career, this support line has been the most meaningful." Read here: psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

Now when you call 988, you're almost guaranteed to be connected with a call center near you. psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10....

in case you were wondering if Trump would really leave abortion to the states, he's not. My latest: kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

The authors of this study published another this week which found that more cases of schizophrenia and psychosis have been linked to cannabis use disorder. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Let’s not forget that Mark Zuckerberg & Meta announced that they think it’s a matter of opinion whether being #LGBT is a mental illness. My latest Substack: open.substack.com/pub/jackturb...

Really helpful information for anyone who wants to become well-versed in the health space ahead of these hearings.

⚡ KFF’s @sartiga.bsky.social writes about the likely health-related impacts of President Trump’s recent immigration policy changes. #QuickTake on.kff.org/4hrREfN

“It’s bad for US innovation for research to be designed suboptimally,” said Patti Zettler a professor of Law at the Ohio State University. “The goal is products that actually work in the populations in which they’ll be used, and for that you need to study them in such populations.” #healthpolicy

“Even in clinical trials, the experience of taking a psychedelic is not easy... We need to move beyond the idea that we can run trials that will tell us if these drugs are safe and start doing more studies of varying designs to monitor for adverse effects that occur outside of trials.”

Thank you Katie O Connor for a great article. Check out the thoughts of a couple of autistic psychiatrists in Psychiatric News, the official Journal of the American Psychiatric Association. Thank you Mary Doherty and Stacy Lynn Greeter for coming along 🙂 psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

Meet Dr Stacy Greeter & Dr Bernadette Grosjean @bernaharbor.bsky.social from the Autistic Doctors International leadership team, sharing their experiences as autistic psychiatrists👏 #Autism #AutisticHealthcare #AutismResearch #AutRes psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

When drug companies lowered prices for common drugs like insulin, it ended up raising costs for patients at community health clinics. It’s another example of the upside-down world of drug pricing. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/h...

In contrast to the stereotype that autistic people are not empathetic, Greeter and Grosjean described being uniquely able to connect with autistic patients whom their colleagues deemed difficult.