The Medicaid portion of the House GOP’s massive domestic policy bill would result in 10.3 million people losing Medicaid coverage by 2034 and 7.6 million people going uninsured, according to a partial (CBO) Congressional Budget Office estimate. Republicans released the estimates just ahead of the start of Tuesday’s markup of the Energy and Commerce portion of the party-line legislation.

Source: The Hill

The Center’s latest fact sheet, Access to Maternity Care in Pennsylvania: Labor and Delivery Services, provides an overview of current access to maternity care, specifically labor and delivery services, in rural Pennsylvania. The closure or consolidation of labor and delivery services has increased travel distances for expectant mothers, effectively creating barriers to maternity care in many rural communities. Timely access to labor and delivery services is a critical factor in supporting maternal and infant health outcomes.

In 2024, rural Pennsylvania saw a welcome decrease in the number of drug overdoses and related deaths. According to 2023 and 2024 data from the Pennsylvania State Police Overdose Information Network (ODIN), the number of reported rural overdoses decreased 40 percent, and the number of deaths decreased 52 percent. Urban areas had a similar decrease. While the drug crisis remains a serious issue, any reduction in overdoses is a positive step forward. Read the Center’s fact sheet, Reported Rural Drug Overdoses Decline 40 Percent in One Year, to learn more.

In March 2025, the U.S. Census Bureau released its 2024 population estimates for counties, metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, and Puerto Rican municipalities. The U.S. Census Bureau releases these estimates on an annual basis, and the 2024 estimates serve as an update to the previous estimates for 2020 through 2023. Check out the Center’s fact sheet, Rural Pennsylvania Shows Slight Population Decline but Attracts Out-of-State Residents, analyzing the U.S. Census Bureau’s updated county and municipal population estimates.

The Flex Monitoring Team (FMT) is excited to announce a new product, Characteristics and Trends of CAHs That Own or Operate Ambulance Services. This study addresses the extent to which CAHs do so, identifying trends in the number of CAH-based ambulance services and comparing the characteristics (location, ownership, financial) of CAHs that own or operate ambulance services to CAHs that do not.

Data collected through qualitative interviews with eight CAH-based ambulance services highlights the challenges of operating these services, workforce recruitment and retention issues, the role of partnerships and community involvement, and lessons learned. The results of this study provide useful information to State Flex Programs seeking to improve the performance of CAH-based ambulance services in their states and/or explore the use of the model to expand access to ambulance services in rural communities.

The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) is a federal agency, part of the U.S.  Department of Transportation, with a mission to save lives on American roads.  NHTSA provides national leadership to emergency medical services (EMS) and 911 systems through its Office of EMS.  Check out EMS.gov for resources, events, and training that celebrate EMS. A 2023 report from the Maine Rural Health Research Center analyzed 41 states and found that 4.5 million people lived in an ambulance desert; more than half of them in rural counties.

This study from the Rural and Underserved Health Research Center compares access to, and services offered by, Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs) in rural and urban communities. The increasing numbers of CCBHCs in rural communities combined with their range of offered services holds promise towards increasing the availability of care for rural communities within an integrated model.

Access the full report here:  Rural Access to Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics.

The U.S. Census Bureau released estimates of the July 1, 2024 population at the municipal level. This release includes total population estimates for all 2,572 municipalities in Pennsylvania.

Key Findings from the Report:

• 1,057 municipalities increased from 2020 to 2024. Among those with populations over 2,500, Westfall township in Pike County (+34.0%) had the largest percentage increase.
• 1,446 municipalities decreased from 2020 to 2024. Among those with populations over 2,500, California borough in Washington County (-13.8%) had the largest percentage decrease.

For more information on county population change in Pennsylvania, read this month’s brief.

The Flex Monitoring Team (FMT) is excited to release the National Report for the 2024 National Critical Access Hospital (CAH) Quality Inventory and Assessment (“Assessment”)! The Assessment provides a wealth of information on quality improvement processes from CAHs in a standardized manner, in order to enhance support to CAHs in quality improvement activities. This report provides a high-level summary of national data from the Assessment, fielded in Fall 2024. Over 1,290 CAHs (94%) completed the Assessment and provided data on a variety of characteristics, including service lines, patient volume, and CAH quality infrastructure.

To understand the housing market, you need data, and the Home Mortgage Explorer has it. This go-to resource has been updated with 2022 and 2023 data.

With this tool from the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland and Philadelphia, you can:

• Easily search Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data from 2010 to 2023.
• View trends in applications, originations, denials, and denial reasons for home purchase, refinance, and home improvement loans.
• Zoom in on data for states, counties, metro areas, and neighborhoods.

Start exploring now.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the Health Insurance Exchanges 2025 Open Enrollment Report. The report summarizes data on health plan selections through the individual Exchanges during the 2025 Open Enrollment Period (OEP). This report includes OEP data for the 31 states with Exchanges that use the HealthCare.gov eligibility and enrollment platform for the 2025 plan year, as well as for the 20 State-based Exchanges (SBEs) that use their own eligibility and enrollment platforms.

During the 2025 OEP, 24.3 million consumers selected or were automatically re-enrolled in health insurance coverage through the HealthCare.gov platform and SBEs. Nearly 2.9 million more consumers signed up for coverage during the 2025 OEP compared to the 2024 OEP, a 13% increase. Nearly 8 million more consumers signed up compared to the 2023 OEP, and 9.8 million more consumers signed up compared to the 2022 OEP, a 49% and 68% increase, respectively.

CMS also released the associated Public Use Files (PUFs) with state, county, plan, and demographic-level data for the 2025 OEP.

• To view the 2025 Open Enrollment Report, visit: https://www.cms.gov/files/document/health-insurance-exchanges-2025-open-enrollment-reportpdf508-compliant.pdf
• To view the Public Use Files (PUFs), visit: https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-reports/marketplace-products/2025-marketplace-open-enrollment-period-public-use-files

May is National Foster Care Month, a critical time to recognize and uplift the lived experiences of the nearly 20,000 children and youth who are served in the Pennsylvania foster care system annually. Foster children have a multitude of traumatic experiences, including the reasons leading to their placement and the unintended consequences due to being placed outside of their homes. Unfortunately, children and youth are most frequently placed in foster care for reasons not related to abuse, but reasons of neglect. Those neglect allegations could be better mitigated by social safety net programs and community-based support. Foster children and youth are left to navigate challenging situations, which can lead to negative outcomes, including disconnection from their biological and kin families, separation from friends and supportive connections, and challenges with mental health, behavioral health, and educational outcomes. Yet, every day, they show that they are worthy of the safety, stability, and well-being that their peers outside the foster care system have. We should not only recognize and support foster children and youth in May but find ways to uplift and support them every day.

For foster care month, it’s important to highlight one of the biggest challenges facing children and youth in foster care—education. For the first time, Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children (PPC) and Education Law Center-PA (ELC) are analyzing data on educational outcomes for children and youth in out-of-home care. Together, in the newly released brief, PPC and ELC identify policy solutions aimed at improving educational outcomes for these students based on data and research, coupled with insights drawn from case examples, and consultation with educational liaisons directly involved with the education and child welfare systems. These policy solutions could lead to better outcomes for children and youth in the foster care system.