Health care

Montanans who need help shopping for health insurance or enrolling in Medicaid may soon be on their own. The Trump administration is cutting federal funding for a service that helped people get insured.

Community Medical Center in Missoula is the latest hospital to stop offering treatments like puberty blockers or hormone therapy to kids. The Trump administration has subpoenaed hospitals for data on gender affirming care, and threatened to prosecute providers.

Montanans with marketplace health insurance plans will pay significantly more starting next year. That’s because premiums are likely to spike just as federal benefits that help pay those bills expire.

As human-driven climate change makes winters shorter, ticks are spreading to new parts of the country. And when ticks find hospitable homes, they bring new tick-borne illnesses to the humans who live there. Now, surveyors in Montana are searching for invasive ticks to track and prepare for the diseases they can carry.

Montana health officials will ask federal regulators to approve work requirements for Montanans on Medicaid expansion. The state also wants enrollees to pay premiums and co-payments for doctor visits.

The state psychiatric hospital has a new CEO. This will be the fifth leader of the embattled facility in the past four years.

State lawmakers have overridden Gov. Greg Gianforte’s veto of a bill that will pay county jails for holding inmates awaiting space at the state psychiatric hospital.

Briefs: Polson medical center expansion will double primary care services; Montana launches teacher apprenticeship program; Public comment opens on proposed BLM oil and gas leases; FWP urges anglers to kill and report brown trout caught on the Flathead River.

The Montana State Hospital lost its federal certification in 2022 due to patient deaths. That decertification means the state can’t bill Medicaid or Medicare for patient services – a funding loss that has cost the state millions of dollars. State health officials plan to apply for federal recertification next year.

The state health department plans to request federal approval to enact both Medicaid work requirements and co-payments for doctor visits in September. The department opened a 60-day public comment period.