Prove me wrong.

Tuesday, March 10, 2026    3:00 p.m.

AGENDA

Presentations on Maternal and Child Health:

Amy Zaagman and Ta'Sheena Williams with the Michigan Council for Maternal and Child Health

Nicole White with Birth Detroit

Kiara Baskin with Bump to Birth

Tamika Jackson with Mothering Justice

Sabrina Luvene with Nia Purpose 4 Life

Janai Frazier with Universal Prevention Services

Isador Martinex, Michigan Associate Centering Advisor with CenteringPregnancy

Sonia Hassan with SOS Maternity Network

Dr. Muzammil Ahmed, Comprehensive Urology, a division of Michigan Healthcare Professionals

Trevor Hodges with Upper Great Lakes Family Health

And any other business properly before the committee.

https://bridgemi.com/michigan-government/aric-nesbitt-includes-more-state-psychiatric-hospitals-in-anti-crime-agenda/

• GOP gubernatorial candidate Aric Nesbitt says Michigan needs more state psychiatric hospitals
• Sheriffs and prosecutors backing Nesbitt say jails have become de facto housing for mentally ill because of bed shortage
• Michigan has fewer than 500 state psychiatric beds, a tenth of what advocates claim is needed

This has not escaped the attention of our ripped HHS Secretary and his MAHA movement:

https://thehill.com/homenews/education/5769170-childhood-obesity-maha-rfk-jr-cdc-fda-glp-1s/

Childhood obesity at a record high as MAHA presses for changes to kids’ diets
By Lexi Lonas Cochran - March 8, 2026

New data showed childhood obesity has hit a record high in recent years, while federal changes such as cuts to food assistance programs and a revamped food pyramid reignite debates over how to handle the issue.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report late last month showed more than 1 in 5 U.S. children and teenagers were obese between 2021 to 2023, compared to only 5.2 percent between 1971-1974. The number of children with severe obesity in recent years has hit 7 percent.

School meals, physical activity and weight loss drugs have all become talking points in the problem, which is a major issue in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement associated with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Experts point to school meals and increased activity as key ways to address childhood obesity, with research showing school meals are the healthiest eating options some students have all day.

“They’re noting that this increase in obesity occurred during COVID-19 and that jump in childhood obesity happened during the years when millions of kids lost access to reliable school meals. So, when schools closed for virtual learning, children lost a critical source of daily nutrition,” said Erin Hysom, senior child nutrition policy analyst on the Child Nutrition Programs and Policy team for the Food Research & Action Center.

“I think that the data underscores … the important role in healthy school meals for all, the important role in the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program in supporting children’s health and well being,” Hysom added.

Only nine states currently offer free breakfast and lunch to all public school students, but others have been looking to expand their programs.

The importance of school meals has been recognized by the Trump administration, with Kennedy releasing an upside food pyramid earlier this year that could affect how food looks for students in the future.

“As noted in the MAHA Strategy, more than 60 percent of children’s daily calories come from highly processed foods, a pattern linked to higher rates of obesity, diabetes and other chronic conditions. Addressing childhood obesity is a priority for the Administration as part of its broader effort to improve the nation’s health and reduce diet-related chronic disease. Expanding access to nutritious foods and promoting healthy lifestyles for children are central to that work,” a spokesperson for HHS said in a statement to The Hill.

“The Dietary Guidelines issued under Secretary Kennedy emphasize whole, minimally processed foods. These Guidelines inform dozens of federal nutrition programs, including school meal programs,” the spokesperson added.

The new food pyramid shows vegetables, fruits, proteins, dairy and healthy fats at the top and whole grains at the bottom. While the pyramid caused some stir in the health community over its friendliness toward meat and fat, there was agreement over its emphasis in eliminating ultra-processed foods.

But it could be years before the changes actually work their way down to school lunch lines.

“We know that school meals are one of the healthiest sources of meals, and there’s been increased attention about: Are there ways to reduce some of the processed meals available in schools? And this, I think, is can be an incredible opportunity to help address some of the obesity as well, so long as we’re making those investments in schools,” said Juliana Cohen, professor of health sciences and nutrition at Merrimack College and principal investor at NOURISH Lab.

“Because to be able to provide the healthier school meals, we really need to make sure that we have adequately trained and paid staff. They need to have access to the highest quality foods available, have the equipment and the infrastructure for more scratch cooking,” she added.

The Trump administration is also approving requests from 18 states to take junk food and sodas off of food assistance programs.

Kennedy, meanwhile, announced this week that multiple top medical schools have agreed to require that all their students go through 40 hours of nutrition education, starting in the fall of 2026.

This will “reshape the way that we train doctors in our country and deliver on President Trump’s promise and the chronic disease epidemic in America,” Kennedy said Thursday, adding “more than 30,000 physicians each year will now graduate equipped with nutrition education to help prevent and reverse chronic disease. This is how we implement the MAHA agenda.”

Getting children enough exercise is another big part of the problem. Only 10 states currently have laws on the books with strong recess mandates at schools, with no federal mandate on the books.

“Over the past several decades, many of those physical activity opportunities that a lot of us kind of take for granted that we had in schools, like recess and opportunities for physical education and just general movement throughout the day, have been taken away and replaced by a focus on standardized tests,” said Erin Hager, professor at the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“And so, I think what we really need is an increase in opportunities for kids to be physically active during the school day, including recess for all kids, including middle school and maybe even high school, and incorporating other ways that we can get kids moving throughout the school day,” she added.

And under the surface of the food and exercise discussions is the medical debate on weight loss drugs for children, which has accelerated since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved GLP-1s for use with Americans as young as 12.

There are currently four medications approved to treat obesity for those ages 12 to 17: Wegovy, Saxenda, Orlistat and Qsymia.

The CDC found in 2023, the year new weight loss drugs for adolescents came on the market, there was a 300 percent spike in obesity medication prescriptions for 12 to 17 year olds. While that increase is high, it still only represents 0.5 percent of children in this age group with obesity receiving medications for it.

A study that came out in 2024 showed Saxenda helped lower the body mass index in those ages 6 to 12, fueling debate to how young these drugs should be offered.

“I think that prevention is a high priority, and there are things that pediatric primary care providers can give guidance to families, even in infancy and toddlerhood and early childhood, they can establish healthy habits that can help to prevent childhood obesity,” said Matthew Haemer, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Obesity.

“Thinking about the tools that the health care system has available, there’s individualized counseling by primary care providers that can be supplemented with behavioral interventions that have a strong evidence of being able to treat childhood obesity. And for those children — especially those children with the most severe obesity and those children that are already suffering from health conditions related to their obesity — FDA-approved medications can be a helpful tool in the toolbox to help improve their health and quality of life,” Haemer added.

Updated March 10 at 9:33 a.m. EDT

For healthcare freedom fans, it raises a tough question. Which is more important for healthcare freedom: constitutional principles, or a seat at the table? (That's the progressive substitute for inalienable rights.)

These authors insist upon nurses having a seat in the hospital C-suite, and they cite plenty of hard fact along the way.

Citations at the link.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/the-value-of-nurses-on-boards-is-no-longer-debatable/

The Value of Nurses on Boards Is No Longer Debatable

Christina Dempsey, DNP, MBA, RN , CNOR, CENP, FAAN Board of Directors, Children’s Mercy
Alejandro Quiroga, MD, MBA President and Chief Executive Officer, Children’s Mercy
February 18th, 2026

Michael Porter defined value as outcomes divided by cost1. Healthcare embraced the equation quickly but applied it unevenly. For decades, nurses have been treated primarily as a cost to be managed rather than as the people and capability that make outcomes possible. They are bundled into room charges, excluded from RVUs, and discussed more often as labor expense than as strategic assets. Yet nurses remain the largest segment of the healthcare workforce and the primary drivers of inpatient care, safety, and patient experience.2

For years, nurse leaders have asked how to assign value to nursing. The more urgent question today is simpler and more uncomfortable: how can healthcare be governed without nurses at the table?

Boards exist to steward trust, oversee risk, and ensure long-term viability. That responsibility becomes compromised when boards govern abstractions rather than the work itself. A healthcare board without nursing expertise is not balanced; it is incomplete. Most hospital and state healthcare association boards currently lack nurses as voting members of the board. Even when Chief Nursing Officers (CNOs) and Registered Nurse (RN) executives are present, formal governance power remains concentrated among Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and other executive leaders. Representation without governing and voting authority creates an uneven table. The 2025 National Governance Report by the American Hospital Association states that the actual number of clinicians on hospital boards has decreased from 29% in 2014 to 26% in 2024. Physicians still make up most clinicians on hospital boards, but their proportion fell from 20% in 2014 to 16% in 2024. Nurses make up only 5% of clinicians on hospital boards and this is unchanged from 2014.3 This is not about representation. It is about whether governance reflects how care is actually delivered.

The breakdown becomes most visible around measurement. Leadership often says it wants better data on nursing. Nurses often resist being measured. The reason is not technical or ideological. It is trust. Trust that is visible and mutual.

Historically, healthcare made nurses’ work harder while removing the supports that once made the job doable. Unit clerks disappeared. Transport and ancillary roles thinned. Tasks that were never designed as nursing work were pushed onto nurses simply because someone had to absorb them. At the same time, patient acuity increased, technology proliferated, and documentation demands expanded relentlessly. Time-motion and EHR studies consistently show that nurses now spend roughly a third of their shift documenting care.4 That time does not replace patient care; it stacks on top of it.

This accumulation created a job that is no longer realistically finishable. The pandemic did not cause this. It exposed it.

In that context, resistance to measurement is rational. When visibility has historically preceded cuts rather than improvement, measurement feels like threat, not learning. The dominance of staffing ratios reflects this reality. Ratios are not what nurses want. They are the only measure nurses trust. They are blunt, incomplete, and insufficient—but they are defensible in a low-trust system. Ratios are not a solution; they are a symptom.

This is not a nursing failure or a leadership failure. It is a relationship failure, and therefore a governance failure. Measurement without trust is experienced as control. Measurement with trust becomes learning. And healthcare will not get better data, better workflows, or better outcomes until trust is addressed first.

That is precisely why nurses on boards matter.

As a nurse with more than four decades of experience across clinical care, administration, academia, and industry, I have focused this chapter of my career on bringing the nursing lens into governance. When I joined the Board of Directors at Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, MO, I was the only nurse and one of only a small number of clinicians. The response from nursing leaders was immediate. They did not experience it as symbolic. They experienced it as practical. For the first time, they believed decisions affecting their work would be shaped by someone who understood the realities they lived every day.

From the board side, the shift was equally tangible. Discussions about quality, safety, experience, and workforce sustainability became more grounded. Metrics were interrogated differently. Risks surfaced earlier. Strategy became more executable because it was anchored in how care actually happens, rather than how it is assumed to happen.

From a CEO perspective, this is not optional. Governing healthcare without nursing expertise is no longer defensible. A nurse on the board makes one governance question unavoidable: who was part of this decision? That question matters because the tradeoffs facing healthcare today are real and consequential. When nurses are part of governance, decisions become rounder and more credible. Consequences are anticipated rather than explained after the fact. And because nurses trust nurses, decisions shaped with nursing input land differently inside the organization.

The evidence supports what experience makes obvious. Higher patient-to-nurse ratios are associated with increased mortality, higher failure-to-rescue rates, and greater nurse burnout.5 Stronger nursing work environments are associated with better patient outcomes and improved retention.6 Missed nursing care is consistently linked to adverse outcomes.7,8 If boards care about outcomes, they must govern the conditions under which those outcomes are produced. One of the key tenets of high reliability is deference to expertise. Highly reliable organizations value expertise over authority and governance must reflect this principle.9

The important point is this: this is fixable. The AHA postulates that fewer clinicians on hospital boards may be the result of the difficulty in recruitment of clinical expertise outside of their own organizations.3 However, a large number of clinicians and nurse leaders specifically are in academia, self-employment, industry, and retirement. Perhaps recruitment needs to expand to these areas. But the first step is not a new metric, a new dashboard, or another performance initiative. The first step is trust. Trust is what allows transparency. Transparency allows learning. Learning allows redesign. Without trust, every attempt to “measure nursing better” will be interpreted as preparation for further extraction.

Boards helped create the conditions that made nursing work undoable. Boards therefore have a responsibility to help redesign it. That work cannot be done without nurses as full participants in governance.

This is now the baseline for competent healthcare governance.

It's a great opportunity to press for an accounting of all those jobs MEDC promised, to say nothing of LEO's cozy relationship with unions. Oh, and has unemployment's efficiency improved at all since COVID??

Wednesday, March 11, 2026    3:00 p.m.

AGENDA

Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity Presentation of the Governor's FY 2026-27 Budget Recommendation

Michigan Arts and Culture Council presentation on the Arts and Cultural Program

And any other business properly before the committee.

I indicated with italics that the Michigan Arts and Culture Council doesn't impact healthcare.

If I'm wrong, please comment. Thanks!

If history is any indication, the senate will strike higher ed accountability reports on aborted fetal cell research, while the MI house will insert such language. Differences will be reconciled later, possibly in conference committee.

DATE:

Wednesday, March 11, 2026              9:00 a.m.

AGENDA

Presentation of the FY 2026-27 Governor's Recommendation for the Higher Education and Community Colleges budgets.

And any other business properly before the committee.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/120173

A weekly roundup of healthcare's encounters with the courts

Kristina Fiore    |    March 5, 2026

More than two dozen couples have accused California fertility doctor Brian Acacio, MD, of holding their embryos hostage. (CBS News Los Angeles)

Surgeon Thomas Steffens, DO, who was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman, was wounded during a shootout with law enforcement in Florida when they tried to arrest him. (9 News)

Former state senator and emergency physician David Hartsuch, MD, is once again suing two state licensing boards over an investigation into his practices during the acute COVID pandemic. (Iowa Capital Dispatch)

An Italian ambulance driver is being investigated on suspicion of murdering five patients who may have been given harmful substances while riding in the vehicle. (The Guardian)

A surgeon and a hospital director in South Korea were convicted of murdering a baby and sentenced to 4 and 6 years in prison. The mother, who was also convicted of murder, reportedly wanted to terminate the pregnancy at 36 weeks, but prosecutors said the baby was born alive and later killed. (BBC)

Cardiologist Christopher David Adams, MD, who reportedly was fired after faking a cancer diagnosis and misrepresenting his medical training, has surrendered his licenses in Tennessee and Kentucky. (Courier Journal)

A Wisconsin nurse was sentenced to 18 months in prison after admitting to having sex with a patient and then falsely accusing that patient of sexual assault. (People)

The New York attorney general is investigating how Columbia University handled allegations against gynecologist Robert Hadden, MD, who was ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexual abuse. (New York Times)

An Atlanta gastroenterology practice will pay $4.75 million to settle allegations that it took kickbacks for patient referrals and also provided unnecessary medical services, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Six Texas doctors will pay $5 million to settle allegations that they billed federal insurers for services that weren't needed or never provided, including pulmonary function tests, federal prosecutors said.

https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2026/03/06/tv6-investigates-state-legislators-work-increase-michigans-medicaid-funded-personal-needs-allowance/

TV6 Investigates: state legislators work to increase Michigan’s Medicaid-funded Personal Needs Allowance
By Griffin Weinberg - March 6, 2026

UPPER MICHIGAN (WLUC) - An Upper Peninsula nursing home resident may be getting his wish after writing to state legislators trying to increase Michigan’s Personal Needs Allowance.

People who live in nursing homes and are covered by Medicaid receive a set monthly allowance to use however they’d like.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia decide how much money is in their respective Medicaid-funded PNA. However, federal law requires the minimum PNA to be set at $30/month. The maximum allowance is $200/month. In Michigan, the PNA is $60/month.

Mel Joslin, a Medicaid-covered resident at the Marquette County Medical Care Facility in Ishpeming, is leading the effort to see that number get doubled.

“That’s only fair to ask for that because everybody else gets raises and, I mean, we just get left out in the cold,” Joslin said.

People on Medicaid are responsible for their patient liability, or ‘share of cost.’ That means most people on Medicaid use most, if not all, of their monthly income to cover the cost of their care.

What’s left for Joslin to spend however he’d like comes from Medicaid’s PNA.

“I run out quick. I run out (in) about a tenth of the month,” Joslin said.

Joslin uses part of his allowance to pay for soaps and lotions to treat his skin. He says it’s hard to ration $60 over 30 days.

“(I have) credit card bills. Even to get a haircut costs money,” Joslin said. “A lot of these people, they just can’t function on $60 and they’re just barely getting by.”

According to the American Council on Aging, Alaska’s PNA is at the maximum of $200. Alabama’s is the minimum $30. The average PNA in the United States is about $76, making Michigan’s PNA below the national average.

According to the Michigan Long Term Care Ombudsman Program, the state’s PNA hasn’t been changed in more than 30 years.

To find out why, we reached out to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the state’s primary payer for long-term care.

In a statement, the DHHS said:

“As the state’s primary payer for long‑term care, ensuring that nursing facility residents can maintain a basic level of independence and quality of life is a priority for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Federal law requires that a Medicaid-funded nursing home resident receive a Personal Needs Allowance (PNA) and the federally mandated PNA is set at $30 a month. States can allow for a higher PNA and Michigan’s PNA is set at $60 per month, allowing residents to keep $60 from their income for personal needs. That amount is deducted from the patient pay liability, which means Medicaid covers a larger share of the cost of care than it would if the PNA were lower or did not exist.

Increasing the PNA in Michigan would require additional Medicaid funding, as any increase reduces the amount residents contribute toward their cost of care and shifts those costs to the program. If funding were appropriated by the Legislature to support such a change, it would then require CMS approval through a State Plan Amendment."

As president of the Marquette County Medical Care Facility’s resident council, Joslin says he commits himself to improving the quality of life for his fellow residents.

“If the room is too cold, or something like that, I get to the bottom of it. If they have any other complaint, I try and solve it,” Joslin said.

Joslin also collected feedback from residents about the current PNA. Then, Joslin sent that feedback to Rep. Karl Bohnak (R-109th State House District).

“What we’re asking for is $125 (per month) and a cost-of-living allowance that grows and coincides with Social Security every year,” Joslin said.

Bohnak said he received those letters. Now, Bohnak says he’s working with Rep. Greg Markannen (R-110th State House District) and Rep. Dave Prestin (R-108th State House District) on drawing up legislation.

“We’re in the process of getting a legislative fix for this because it’s high time that this changed,” Bohnak said. “Not as much as Alaska, but certainly a heck of a lot more than some of the other states. Even California only has $35 a month for Personal Needs Allowance.”

Bohnak says he wants to double Michigan’s PNA to $120.

“We wanna try to get it in the middle there, and I think that would work out, (and) hopefully help these residents because they certainly are overdue for a raise,” Bohnak said.

Any set of bills drafted up by Bohnak, Markkanen and Prestin will have to pass through the appropriate committee before making it to the House of Representatives and into law.

https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/news/u-s-supreme-court-delivers-historic-groundbreaking-victory-for-parental-rights-dismantles-californias-secret-gender-transition-regime

March 2, 2026

U.S. Supreme Court Delivers Historic, Groundbreaking Victory for Parental Rights, Dismantles California’s Secret Gender Transition Regime

Supreme Court rules that California cannot hide children’s gender transitions from parents; landmark decision protects parental rights nationwide

Washington, D.C. – In a historic and groundbreaking ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court today granted the Thomas More Society’s emergency application in Mirabelli v. Bonta, holding that secret gender transition policies in schools violate the religious liberty and due process rights of parents. The ruling restores the class action injunction that Thomas More Society had secured against the State of California for parents across the state who object to the state’s directives requiring schools to conceal children’s gender transitions from their own parents, facilitate those transitions without parental knowledge or consent, and compel teachers to actively deceive families.

The landmark 6-3 decision is the most significant parental rights ruling in a generation. The Court found that California’s secret transition regime likely violates parents’ rights under both the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, holding that the state “cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.”

“This is a watershed moment for parental rights in America,” said Paul M. Jonna, Special Counsel at Thomas More Society and Partner at LiMandri and Jonna LLP. “The Supreme Court has told California and every state in the nation in no uncertain terms: you cannot secretly transition a child behind a parent’s back. The Court’s landmark reaffirmation of substantive due process, its vindication of religious liberty, and its approval of class-wide relief together set a historic precedent that will dismantle secret gender transition policies across the country.”

Peter Breen, Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation at Thomas More Society, added, “No more can bureaucrats secretly facilitate a child’s gender transition while shutting out parents. California built a wall of secrecy between parents and their own children, and the Supreme Court just tore it down. This groundbreaking ruling will protect parents’ rights to raise their children as they see fit for years to come.”

On the First Amendment, the Court declared that California’s “unconsented facilitation of a child’s gender transition” is an even greater intrusion on parents’ rights than the government actions struck down in last year’s Mahmoud v. Taylor. The Court’s forceful reaffirmation of substantive due process sets a landmark precedent for parental rights nationwide, holding that parents, not the state, hold primary authority over “the upbringing and education of children,” including the right not to be “shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health.”

The Court also rejected the Ninth Circuit’s attempt to dismantle the class certification, finding that the parents protected by the injunction “very likely have standing” and that “class certification was likely proper.” This precedent-setting holding ensures that the injunction protects not just the named plaintiffs but entire classes of California parents—effectively shielding teachers as well, since the class-wide parental victory prohibits the very policies that teachers were being compelled to enforce.

The ruling reinstates U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez’s December 2025 decision on behalf of statewide class of parents, finding California’s secret gender transition regime unconstitutional.

Alongside Jonna and Breen, on the petition are Jeff Trissell, Special Counsel at Thomas More Society and Attorney at LiMandri & Jonna LLP; Michael McHale, Senior Counsel at Thomas More Society; and Christopher Galiardo, Staff Counsel at Thomas More Society.

Thomas More Society, a conservative Roman Catholic public-interest law firm based in Chicago, describes members as Guardians of Justice.

Since 1998, Thomas More Society has steadfastly preserved the rich heritage of American liberty. Our distinguished track record showcases an unwavering commitment to defending your fundamental rights to life, family, and freedom.

Wouldn't that be something!

Toggle the "next bill" button to see the other bills in the series.

Wednesday, March 11, 2026     9:00 AM

AGENDA

HB 4902 (Rep. VanderWall)
Health occupations: counselors; limited license option for certain counselors; eliminate.

HB 4903 (Rep. Meerman)
Health occupations: counselors; relicensure requirements; modify.

HB 4904 (Rep. DeBoer)
Health occupations: counselors; professional disclosure statement requirements; eliminate.

HB 5074 (Rep. Thompson)
Health occupations: mental health care professionals; number of renewals of temporary or limited licenses; modify.

SB 398 (Sen. Bellino)
Health: substance use disorder treatment; substance use disorder services programs requirements; modify, and prohibit the promulgation of certain rules.

OR ANY BUSINESS PROPERLY BEFORE THIS COMMITTEE