Hospitals

Saturday

Chad Hagan

Stop the Medicaid ambulance grift

With Congress back in their districts for the August recess, GOP members will undoubtedly be bragging to their base about the Medicaid abuses they stopped by passing President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. These reforms include enrollment reductions and new work requirements for enrollees. However, many Members are hoping that no one calls them out for failing to address an intergovernmental transfer grift. This little-known accounting trick has turned this basic entitlement program into a bloated scam that enriches public agencies while squeezing out private providers. In theory, many of the services Medicaid covers, such as emergency ambulance rides, officially known as Ground Emergency Medical Transport (GEMT), should be straightforward.

Ambulance

Monday

David Sypher Jr.

America’s top medical schools still hire by race

The institutions just won’t quit. Even after the Supreme Court made it abundantly clear that race-based admissions violate the Constitution, many of America’s top medical schools are digging in their heels – and, apparently, digging graves for meritocracy. A new report by Do No Harm, a group of physicians and health policy experts, reveals that public medical schools continue to admit students with dramatically different qualifications based largely on race. In other words, the diversity-industrial complex is alive and well – just operating in the shadows. The numbers don’t lie. According to the report, black students admitted to these schools had average MCAT scores significantly lower than their white and Asian counterparts.

Hospital

Sunday

Birdie Hall

The radical alternative to a hospital birth

Giving birth hurts. A lot. Like any other major physical feat, it’s risky, but it’s not the inherently dangerous medical event some have come to believe. Plenty of women know this. Many are skeptical of the need to give birth in a hospital. But some are taking things further, deciding to forgo medical care entirely and give birth at home totally unassisted. Free birth, or unassisted birth as it’s called by most birth workers, is an intentionally unassisted birth: no professional, no midwife, no nurse, no doctor. For hardcore freebirthers, even having a doula present for your birth means you’re not doing it properly. Thanks to Instagram and one very compelling podcast called The Free Birth Society, the movement is growing.

birth

Monday

Mary Kate Skehan

Tales from the ER

I used to think I knew my hometown pretty well, after living here on and off for thirty years. And then I encountered my boyfriend, a third-year resident in the Emergency Department of the local hospital. It turns out, you only know a place as well as you know its emergencies. We met around July 4, when his days were filled with fireworks mishaps: burns, the occasional missing finger. “If I ever have children,” he said, with the tactical reserve of an early date, “no fireworks.” Fair enough! “And no ATVs,” he added. The four-wheelers and jury-rigged motorbikes that proliferate in the streets around my apartment every summer, annoying me with their noisy revving and curiously powerful stereo systems, also keep the ER busy with head traumas.

ER