In today’s newsletter: Community health centers are garnishing wages and suing patients for unpaid bills; the EPA nearly doubles the amount of formaldehyde considered safeto inhale; and tax cuts leave many states vulnerable to a SNAP and Medicaid crisis.
These Health Centers Are Supposed to Make Care Affordable. One Has Sued Patients for as Little as $59 in Unpaid Bills.
Federally funded community health centers receive grants in exchange for serving patients regardless of their ability to pay. But ProPublica found at least five across the country garnishing patients’ paychecks to collect unpaid bills.
Environment
Under Former Chemical Industry Insiders, Trump EPA Nearly Doubles Amount of Formaldehyde Considered Safe to Inhale
Chemical industry lobbyists have long pushed the government to adopt a less stringent approach to gauging the cancer risk from chemicals, one that would help ease regulations on companies that make or use them. They finally got their wish.
Last week, in a highly unusual move, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it is revising an assessment of the health dangers posed by formaldehyde, a widespread pollutant that causes far more cancer than any other chemical in the air. Working on that effort were two former chemical industry insiders, who are now top EPA officials.
The proposed revisions nearly double the amount of formaldehyde considered safe to inhale compared with the version that was finalized in the last weeks of the Biden administration. Even that older assessment significantly underestimated the dangers posed by formaldehyde, ProPublica found last year.
An EPA spokesperson described the changes to the formaldehyde assessment as corrections of past scientific mistakes. The spokesperson noted that the two former industry insiders who worked on the assessment had obtained ethics advice from the agency that approved their work on the issue. “Because formaldehyde is produced by many manufacturers and is used across many industrial sectors, this risk evaluation is not a specific party matter that raises concerns for them under the federal ethics rules,” the spokesperson wrote.
P.S. Formaldehyde can be found in common household items, from couches to clothes. Revisit our 2024 guide on how to reduce exposure in your home.
Wave of Tax Cuts Has Left Many States Vulnerable to Trump SNAP and Medicaid Crisis
This fall, Americans got to see what it’s like to go without a safety net for the hungry.
With the U.S. government shut down for multiple weeks and President Donald Trump refusing to fund SNAP, the federal food stamp program, a panic set in among the more than 40 million people who rely on it. Food banks ran out of food, families skipped meals and babies went unfed.
It was just a glimpse of what’s to come. Starting next October, Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act will shift billions in SNAP and Medicaid costs from the federal government onto states. But with 26 states having cut or eliminated state income taxes since 2021, they may not have the money to continue the programs.
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