Week of June 2–6, 2025

General Mental Health

• A Denver mental health program for the community's most vulnerable members is sharing its success. That program is called Transforming Health by Reducing Inequities for the Vulnerable (THRIVE). Read more here.

Veteran Mental Health

• Veterans with mental health disorders consistently rated their experiences with private care as less satisfactory than those without a mental health condition — a finding that indicates a need for better care coordination by the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to new research. Read more here.

The Opioid Crisis

• In the fallout of over 9,000 Mississippians dying of overdoses since 2000, lawyers and lawmakers have set up a plan to distribute the hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations that catalyzed the crisis. However, public health advocates and Mississippians closest to the public health catastrophe worry the setup could enable these dollars to be spent on purposes other than ending the overdose epidemic. Read more here.

Medicaid and the ACA

• Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) doubled down on his claim that there won’t be Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” despite projections that millions of low-income individuals would lose health insurance as a result of the bill. Johnson, during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” pushed back on independent projections that the bill would lead to 4.8 million people who would lose coverage because of work requirements, saying they won’t lose it “unless they choose to do so.” Read more here.
• Kenny Capps is a cancer patient who has been battling multiple myeloma for a decade. A 53-year-old father of three children who lives in North Carolina, he was on the brink of losing his health insurance coverage due to rising costs — until Democrats passed an Obamacare funding boost four years ago. Read more here.
• Stricter Medicaid eligibility checks look destined to be included in President Donald Trump-backed reconciliation legislation charging through Congress, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill. New work requirements are likely to make it more difficult for current Medicaid enrollees to keep their insurance coverage, leading to a push aimed at exempting managed care plans from a 1991 law restricting their ability to text members. Read more here.
• Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz defended President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” over criticism that millions of people could lose health coverage, saying those who would face new work requirements should “prove that you matter.” Oz made the comments during an interview on Fox Business, arguing that when Medicaid was created in the 1960s, lawmakers did not include work requirements because it “never dawned on anybody that able-bodied people who work would be on Medicaid.” Read more here.

Transgender Issues

• In this study of 8,733 SGM adults using difference-in-differences analysis, anti-GM policies were associated with worse mental health symptoms among SGM adults but no changes in mental health symptoms among GM adults. As these policies proliferate, it is important to consider how they may affect mental health. Read more here.

Federal Policy

• President Donald Trump wants his “big, beautiful bill” of tax breaks and spending cuts on his desk to be signed into law by the Fourth of July, and he’s pushing the slow-rolling Senate to make it happen sooner rather than later. Trump met with Senate Majority Leader John Thune at the White House and has been dialing senators for one-on-one chats, using both the carrot and stick to nudge, badger, and encourage them to act. However, it’s still a long road ahead for the 1,000-page-plus package. Read more here.