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For three years during the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government gave Texas and other states billions of dollars in exchange for their promise not to exacerbate the public health crisis by kicking people off Medicaid. When that agreement ended last year, Texas moved swiftly, kicking off more people faster than any other state. (Klibanoff and Kriel, 9/26)

The Maryland Department of Health has agreed to renew Kaiser Permanente’s contract as a Medicaid provider, averting an outcome that one prominent health care advocate said would have amounted to a blow to public health. (Pitts, 9/25)

The worst could be yet to come for Colorado’s troubled Medicaid program, as public agencies, health care providers and low-income patients all struggle to find their way back to something resembling the pre-pandemic normal. (Eason, 9/25)

Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador — along with attorneys general and officials from 20 other U.S. states — has accused the American Academy of Pediatrics of possible “violations of state consumer protection statutes” over its standards and recommendations for gender dysphoria care for children. In a letter sent by Labrador, a Republican, on Tuesday, the attorneys general requested information detailing the academy’s evidence for its current recommendations for puberty blockers for gender dysphoria-diagnosed youth. (Lords, 9/25)

Attorneys for people with disabilities have filed a federal lawsuit alleging the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration has not provided adequate oversight of Medicaid managed care plans that care for people in their homes. (Saunders, 9/25)

A judge on Wednesday dismissed a federal lawsuit challenging a suburban New York ban on wearing masks in public except for health and religious reasons. The class action lawsuit was filed last month by Disability Rights New York on behalf of two individuals with disabilities against Nassau County’s Mask Transparency Act, or MTA. The law makes it a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine for anyone in the county to wear a face covering to hide their identity in public. (9/25)

Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected a bill Wednesday for the second year in a row that would have required high schools to offer free condoms to students, arguing that it would cost too much. The bill was overwhelmingly supported by Newsom’s fellow Democrats in the Legislature and mainly opposed by conservative and Christian groups, like the California Family Council. But Newsom said the ongoing price tag would be too much to bear. (Bluth, 9/25)

Since April, D.C. medics responding to emergencies have administered blood transfusions to scores of trauma victims, pulling them back from the brink of death. (Williams, 9/25)