News Articles

Nearly $1 billion in funds left unspent by centers for disabled Californians By Emily Alpert Reyes; Staff Writer August 20, 2024   Nearly $1 billion allocated for regional agencies that purchase supportive services for Californians with developmental disabilities went unspent in a recent year and was ultimately returned to the state, even as some disabled […]

Can’t find a doctor? California bill would punish insurers for giving customers outdated info by Ryan Sabalow July 29, 2024; Updated July 30, 2024  

This Company Promised to Improve Health Care in Jails. Dozens of Its Patients Have Died. By Cary Aspinwall, Brianna Bailey and Sachi Mcclendon July 30, 2024   NORMAN, Oklahoma — Two days after Thanksgiving in 2022, Shannon Hanchett walked into an AT&T store for a new phone, and ended up in handcuffs.   Hanchett ran

What Elmo — and his human friends — learned by asking Americans about their mental health by Karen Kaplan August 15, 2024   Remember when Elmo went viral in January by asking folks on the Internet how they were doing and briefly became the unofficial therapist of X?   “The world is burning, Elmo,” an

Pluralistic: The long lineage of private equity’s looting by Cory Doctorow June 2, 2023   Fans of the Sopranos will remember the “bust out” as a mob tactic in which a business is taken over, loaded up with debt, and driven into the ground, wrecking the lives of the business’s workers, customers and suppliers. When

When private equity destroys your hospital by Cory Doctorow February 28, 2024   As someone who writes a lot of fiction about corporate crime, I naturally end up spending a lot of time being angry about corporate crime. It’s pretty goddamned enraging. But the fiction writer in me is especially upset at how cartoonishly evil

Private Equity in Health Care: Prevalence, Impact and Policy Options for California and the U.S. By Christopher Cai, Resident Physician, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Zirui Song, Associate Professor of Health Care Policy and Medicine, Harvard Medical School May 7, 2024   At its most recent peak in 2021, private equity (PE) investment into the broad

After private equity takes over hospitals, they are less able to care for patients, top medical researchers say By Gretchen Morgenson July 31, 2024, 11:00 AM PDT   After private-equity firms acquire hospitals, the facilities’ assets and resources diminish significantly, leaving the facilities less equipped to care for patients, according to a new study by

America’s Seniors Are About to Pay a High Price for Wall Street’s Growing Disenchantment with Medicare Advantage By Wendell Potter August 8, 2024   Over the past few days, both CVS/Aetna and Humana admitted to Wall Street that their Medicare Advantage plans are not nearly as profitable as those insurers had predicted a year ago.

Unforeseen Health Care Bills and Coverage Denials by Health Insurers in the U.S. By Avni Gupta, Sara R. Collins, Shreya Roy, Relebohile Masitha August 1, 2024   Americans are increasingly struggling to get their health insurance to work for them. High deductibles and copayments are causing nearly two of five working-age adults to delay visiting