After Idaho eliminated Medicaid-funded outreach services for people with severe mental illness as part of broader budget cuts, at least four people who had been enrolled in the program died within weeks. The program provided home visits, medication management, and hands-on care to some of the state’s most vulnerable residents. Without it, patients stopped receiving medication and in several cases died from preventable causes. The deaths, along with a spike in psychiatric emergencies and jail bookings, pushed Idaho’s Republican-led legislature to restore funding, recognizing that the cuts carried both human and system-wide costs. Read more here.