Rep. Marilyn Lands, a Democrat from Huntsville who flipped Alabama House District 10 last year running on reproductive rights, filed a bill this week to provide presumptive health

Alabama Medicaid program reopens

Many legal experts say the pause is an illegal impoundment and compromises Congress’s constitutional “power of the purse.”

Huntsville, filed a bill this week to provide presumptive health care to pregnant women in Alabama through Medicaid.

The legislation, Senate Bill 50, would expand access to medical coverage to Georgians making less than 138% of the federal poverty limit and would request a waiver to do so from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

At least three U.S. lawmakers said on Tuesday healthcare providers were blocked from the Medicaid payment portal after the Trump administration announced a federal funding pause, even as the White House said the program was exempted.

The online system for federal health funding warned of delays due to executive orders after the Trump administration announced a freeze.

The outage at least temporarily jeopardized payments the federal government makes to state programs, and sowed uncertainty for patients, doctors, hospitals and others.

Many of the largest federal funding sources are considered mandatory programs, meaning they can’t simply be cut or eliminated.

New leaders of financially troubled Jackson Hospital & Clinic in Montgomery said the hospital might close unless the city of Montgomery guarantees $20.5 million of its debt. At a news conference Thursday outside the hospital,

In Alabama, 20 percent of new mothers experience PPD, a rate significantly higher than the national average.