The Food and Drug Administration announced Friday it will allow Florida to import medications from Canada, following decades of attempts by states in the U.S. to purchase drugs in bulk at a cheaper price from the country.

Florida will be allowed to purchase medicines in bulk for the state’s Medicaid program, government clinics and prisons from Canadian wholesalers under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, the FDA said Friday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved importation of prescription drugs from Canada into the state of Florida.

Citing significant cost benefits for patients, Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration proposed the import model under section 804 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act).

"The FDA is committed to working with states and Indian tribes that seek to develop successful section 804 importation proposals," FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf, M.D., said in the statement.

Amanda Singleton had just gotten married and bought her first home when her mom was diagnosed with brain cancer. Essentially overnight, she went from being a 30-year-old just starting a new phase of her life to being a 24-hour caregiver. “My mom couldn’t walk, she couldn’t talk, she couldn’t eat,” Singleton said.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are pressuring President Joe Biden's administration to take action after reports that states were disenrolling thousands of Medicaid recipients following a recent congressional vote to end protections for Medicaid recipients set during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Half a million Texans have lost their Medicaid coverage since April, mostly for procedural reasons like not responding to messages from the state.

Preliminary data, released Friday by the state’s Health and Human Services Commission, paints a grim picture of Texas’ early efforts to redetermine Medicaid eligibility for the first time since COVID-19 hit three years ago.

Days out from a surgery and with a young son undergoing chemotherapy, Kyle McHenry was scrambling to figure out if his Florida family will still be covered by Medicaid come Monday.

One form on the state’s website said coverage for their sick 5-year-old son, Ryder, had been denied. But another said the family would remain on Medicaid through next year. Still, a letter from the state said McHenry now makes too much money for him, his wife and their older son to qualify after the end of the month.

Republicans in staunchly conservative states are championing some atypical legislation this session — promoting sex education, government welfare and more birth control.

The proposals are part of what some governors and lawmakers have referred to as a “new pro-life agenda” for the post-Roe era — one that is increasingly breaking with their party’s socially conservative approach to maternal and reproductive health in favor of one more commonly pushed by Democrats.

President Joe Biden is giving states a year to check whether millions of low-income Americans are still eligible to receive health insurance through their government’s Medicaid program.

Arkansas is planning to do it in half that time.

One day, Alexandria Robertson’s carefully crafted life suddenly started falling apart.

She returned from vacation in January 2020 to learn she’d been laid off from her corporate job in the Austin area. Her car was totaled in an accident. At the same time, she found out she was pregnant with her first child.

“I was pregnant. I had no job. I had no car. And I had no health insurance,” Robertson said. “I at the time just did not have money for the expenses of having a baby.”

President Biden's State of the Union address will include calls for insulin cost caps for privately insured patients and a renewed bid to close the Medicaid coverage gap in Republican-controlled states that haven't accepted the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion.

The big picture: Neither proposal has much of a chance, but the speech gives Biden a chance to draw contrasts with Republicans and highlight policy successes in the Inflation Reduction Act, according to Larry Levitt, executive vice president of health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.