Arizona suspended scores of behavioral health providers as authorities investigated them for defrauding the American Indian Health Program. The state’s actions left patients homeless and without treatment.
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In today’s newsletter: How a Medicaid fraud crackdown hurt Native American patients, improving services for non-English speakers in Wisconsin, brands that want to redefine “recyclable,” and more from our newsroom.
Arizona suspended scores of behavioral health providers as authorities investigated them for defrauding the American Indian Health Program. The state’s actions left patients homeless and without treatment.
Our reporting last year on how a language barrier led the Dane County Sheriff’s Office to mistakenly blame an immigrant father for his son’s death continues to spark changes in Wisconsin. The sheriff’s office reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, resolving a civil rights inquiry that followed the publication of our investigation; the agreed-upon reforms are meant to ensure that residents who speak little or no English can get the services they need.
The father featured in our story told us he thinks the coming reforms will help put other immigrants who don’t speak English at ease when they encounter police. “A lot of us get into a panic when we’re pulled over by the police or when something happens because of the language issue,” he said in Spanish. “We don’t know if officers are truly there to help us or, on the contrary, to harm us. So this is a good thing.”
