News Articles

Insurers Are Gaming Medicare — To The Tune Of $140 Billion By Matthew Cunningham-Cook and Lucy Dean Stockton Published October 4, 2023   The federal government is losing as much as $140 billion per year by subsidizing private Medicare Advantage plans, according to a bombshell new report. In the groundbreaking investigation, health care researchers identified […]

Healing Justice Lineages: Disrupting the Medical-Industrial Complex By Sonia Sarkar, Cara Page and Erica Woodland Published April 18, 2023   Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety is a new book from Cara Page and Erica Woodland. I had the opportunity to speak with both authors about the movement

A slow start for Newsom’s gun plan By Lara Korte, Jeremy B. White and Dustin Gardiner Published October 27, 2023   DRIVING THE DAY: Gov. Gavin Newsom is again in Beijing today. Our intrepid colleague Blanca Begert is traveling with the governor during his tour. You can read her coverage in the California Climate newsletter.

US surgeons are killing themselves at an alarming rate. One decided to speak out By Christina Frangou Published September 26, 2023   Carrie Cunningham puffed out her cheeks and exhaled. She looked out at the audience filled with 2,000 of her peers, surgeons who were attending the annual meeting of the Association of Academic Surgery,

Health care CEOs hauled in $4 billion last year as inflation pinched workers, analysis shows By Bob Herman, J. Emory Parker, Adam Feuerstein, Lizzy Lawrence and Mohana Ravindranat Published August 17, 2023   The health care industry didn’t just provide a safe haven for jittery stock investors in 2022, a year defined by inflation and

2022 Employer Health Benefits Survey By KFF Staff Published October 27, 2022   Section 10: Plan Funding   Many firms, particularly larger firms, choose to pay for some or all of the health services of their workers directly from their own funds rather than by purchasing health insurance for them. This is called self-funding. Both

Medicare Advantage plans have little reason to address people’s long-term health needs By Diane Archer Published September 13, 2023   Nearly half of all Medicare Advantage members leave their Medicare Advantage plans within five years of enrolling, according to a recent study by David Meyers et al. at the Brown University School of Public Health

Patients Are Dying in Emergency Department Waiting Rooms By Alexander T. Janke, MD, MHS, Jennifer Tsai, MD, Med, and Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD Published February 19, 2023   A special session of Congress was called 35 years ago to make lawmakers and the public aware of stories of patients left to die in hospital parking

Medical Debt Is Killing Our Patients By Arvind Venkat, MD Published September 16, 2023   As an emergency medicine resident in the early 2000s, I cared for a patient in her early 60s with back pain. Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), approximately 16% of emergency department patients were uninsured. Often

Facing higher health costs, employers get tough By Tina Reed, author of Axios Vital Published September 19, 2023   Employers girding themselves for an especially pricey health care benefits season this fall are pushing back harder in negotiations, armed with new price transparency data and emboldened by increased industry scrutiny.   Why it matters: Employers