States already have grappled with insurance coverage of contraceptives before the Obama administration issues rules in 2012 called for under the Affordable Care Act. Twenty-six states have passed laws mandating insurance coverage for contraceptives; another two have administrative rulings requiring coverage. Nineteen states also have included exemption provisions for religious organizations. The Hawaii statute was the model used for the Obama compromise on exemptions.

Prescription drug abuse continues to be recognized as the nation’s fastest-growing drug problem.  The latest “Monitoring the Future” study from the University of Michigan indicated that prescription drugs are second only to marijuana in their frequency of abuse. In Kentucky, the rate of overdoses from prescription drugs doubled among men and tripled among women between 2000 and 2009. In Florida, estimates suggest as many as seven people are dying daily from accidental overdoses. Deaths from prescription drug overdoses are the leading cause of accidental death in 17 states.

A recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health found prescription medication abuse is a significant societal health issue, with more Americans abusing prescription drugs than cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens and inhalants combined. It also found that one in five teens will abuse a prescription medication at least once in their lifetime.  Preventing prescription drug abuse and misuse, an epidemic in our country, is one of the key strategic priorities of the Cardinal Health Foundation.

Prescription drug abuse continues to be recognized as the nation’s fastest-growing drug  problem. Data from the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health indicated that nearly one-third of people age 12 and older who used drugs for the first time started by using prescription drugs for nonmedical purposes.

Even as overall private-sector employment fell by 0.7 percent during the Great Recession, jobs in the life sciences grew by 1.4 percent, according to the latest state-of-the-industry study released last summer. Overall, the field of life sciences, which includes pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, gained 19,000 jobs in 2008, according to the report released by Battelle Memorial Foundation and the Biotechnology Industry Organization, known as BIO.

The Affordable Care Act mandates that states operate insurance exchanges to enable every citizen across the country to purchase or renew health insurance. The reform legislation provides federal support for “necessary” expenses so states can plan, establish and operate the exchanges for the first year of 2014. Although it specifies several conditions that insurance products offered through the exchange must meet, it allows the states great flexibility in determining how they will regulate and how much reform they will introduce for their state insurance market. Read about what health insurance exchanges can accomplish, how state Medicaid programs will be involved and what decisions states are facing in 2011 and 2012 related to health insurance exchanges.

This brief from the Midwestern Legislative Conference Health and Human Services Committee explores what actions states must take this year in order to set up health insurance exchanges.

States in the Midwest are looking for new strategies to trim costs in their second-largest budget item: Medicaid.