Health Care Costs

Pregnant and scared, Natasha Valle went to a Tennova Healthcare hospital in Clarksville, Tennessee, in January 2021 because she was bleeding. She didn’t know much about miscarriage, but this seemed like one. In the emergency room, she was examined then sent home, she said. She went back when her cramping became excruciating. Then home again. […]

Nonprofit hospitals are fighting Montana’s attempt to boost oversight of the ways they claim they provide benefits to their communities in exchange for millions of dollars in tax breaks. It’s the latest clash in a national struggle between policymakers and the industry over whether hospitals’ charitable giving is enough to justify their tax-exempt status. Montana […]

[UPDATED on Feb. 13] When a private equity firm closed Seasons Midwifery and Birth Center in Thornton, Colorado, in October, the state lost one of its few non-hospital birthing centers and 53 families with pregnancy due dates in November and December were left scrambling to find providers. But then staffers and community advocacy groups stepped […]

El presidente Joe Biden pronunció el martes 8 de febrero su discurso sobre el Estado de la Unión ante un Congreso políticamente dividido por primera vez, y pidió soluciones permanentes para las prioridades políticas, como los costos de atención médica inasequibles. A diferencia de sus discursos anteriores, éste fue a Cámara llena, y sin limitaciones […]

President Joe Biden on Tuesday delivered his State of the Union address to a politically divided Congress for the first time, calling for permanent fixes on policy priorities like unaffordable health costs. In one marked difference from his earlier speeches, attendance in the House chamber was at capacity with no covid-19 limitations in effect. And […]

NEW YORK — The fear started when a few patients saw their nurses and dietitians posting job searches on LinkedIn. Word spread to Facebook groups, and patients started calling Coram CVS, a major U.S. supplier of the compounded IV nutrients on which they rely for survival. To their dismay, CVS Health confirmed the rumors on […]

The “An Arm and a Leg” podcast is back. This season, host Dan Weissmann will tell stories about patients finding creative ways to fight back against outrageous bills.  This first episode of Season 9 updates a story from 2019 about a listener who got a $35 bill from a medical testing lab she had never […]

[UPDATED at 3:45 p.m. ET] Brenna Kearney was seven months pregnant in December 2019 when she experienced what she thought were bad flu symptoms. Her husband, Casey Trumble, drove her from their Chicago home to her OB-GYN’s office at Northwestern Medicine Prentice Women’s Hospital downtown. With suddenly elevated blood pressure and protein in her urine, […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Health care’s business class returned to its San Francisco sanctuary last week for JPMorgan’s annual health care confab, at the gilded Westin St. Francis hotel on Union Square. After a two-year pandemic pause, the mood among the executives, bankers, and startup founders in attendance had the aura of a reunion — as […]

One evening in February 2017, Sarah Dudley’s husband, Joseph, started to feel sick. He had a high fever, his head and body ached, and he seemed disoriented, she said. The Dudleys had a decision to make: go to the hospital emergency room or to an urgent care clinic near their home in Des Moines, Iowa. […]