policy
Why it’s so hard to study involuntary treatment
JEFF PACHOUD/AFP via Getty Images)
Since 1999, New York state has given judges the power to mandate outpatient psychiatric treatment for people with a history of serious mental illness, hospitalizations, or violence related to mental illness. Over the ensuing decades, this sort of involuntary treatment has only become more common, while the evidence gets murkier.
A new report tries to clear things up amid renewed debate and Trump administration support for the practice. But it’s a tricky subject: “We can only measure certain outcomes,” said Bevin Croft, one of the authors. “We can’t measure the impact of going to be picked up by the cops. We can’t measure with quantitative data the impact on a person’s self-esteem, or a person’s relationships, or a person’s motivation to get a job or get on with their lives when they’re under a court order.”
The report’s conclusions divided experts, including the state officials who requested it. Read more from STAT’s O. Rose Broderick on where people landed.
one big number
$5.4 million
That’s the estimated societal cost of the 2025 measles outbreak in New Mexico, in which 100 cases were confirmed and one person died. The economic analysis, published yesterday in Annals of Internal Medicine, incorporated the cost of public health response, direct medical costs, and productivity losses. Public health response made up the highest proportion of the costs at $3.2 million. About $2.1 million of that went to vaccination labor, supplies, and doses.
As measles continues to spread in even greater numbers this year, we can expect to see even higher societal costs.
fact check
Kennedy and Oz try to myth-bust Medicaid cuts
The Trump administration isn’t cutting Medicaid, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. commented at a press stop recently. That’s just a “myth people believe,” he said. But as STAT’s Chelsea Cirruzzo reports, the truth is more complicated than that.
“What’s challenging is that [the One Big Beautiful Bill] set in motion various policy changes that affect state Medicaid programs and not all at once,” said policy analyst Amber Bellazaire. Those changes will significantly alter Medicaid enrollment rates and eligibility, according to expert analysis. Read more on where we’re headed.
