Health Care Costs

Maggie Carmichael wasn’t developing like other kids. As a toddler, she wasn’t walking and had a limited vocabulary for her age. She was diagnosed with PMM2-CDG, potentially fatal gene mutations that cause abnormal enzyme activity — and affect fewer than 1,000 people worldwide. Her parents, Holly and Dan Carmichael, raised $250,000 for scientists to screen […]

When Sebastian Rios was a toddler, he hardly talked. “Don’t worry,” his pediatrician told Amparo and Victor Rios, Sebastian’s parents. Kids who grow up in households in which both Spanish and English are spoken are sometimes slower to develop language skills, she said. Plus, Sebastian was developing well in other ways: When he was just […]

Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names. It is appalling that an article like this even has to be written. Our “healthcare” system is broken. How to get rid of medical debt — or avoid it in the […]

KHN’s Noam N. Levey talks with Sasha-Ann Simons of WBEZ about America’s sprawling medical debt crisis. Levey explains that the problem is only partially addressed with recent moves by the three major credit reporting bureaus to remove some medical debt from consumer records. A lot of this debt never reaches the credit bureaus, he says, […]

In 2013, Tonya Taylor was suicidal because her epileptic seizures persisted despite taking a long list of medications. Then a fellow patient at a Denver neurologist’s office mentioned something that gave Taylor hope: a CBD oil called Charlotte’s Web. The person told her the oil helped people with uncontrolled epilepsy. However, the doctor would discuss […]

RAPID CITY, S.D. ― Jeni Rae Peters would make promises to herself as she lay awake nights after being diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago. “My kids had lost so much,” said Peters, a single mom and mental health counselor. She had just adopted two girls and was fostering four other children. “I swore […]

An ounce of prevention … well, you know the rest. In medicine, prevention aims to spot problems before they worsen, affecting both a patient’s health and finances. One of the more popular parts of the Affordable Care Act, which allows patients to get certain tests or treatments without forking out cash to cover copayments or […]

Lori Mangum tenía 32 años cuando aparecieron tumores del tamaño de manzanas en su cabeza. Ahora, seis años y 10 cirugías después, el cáncer de piel desapareció. Pero su dolor sigue vivo, en la forma de una deuda médica. Incluso con seguro, Mangum pagó $36,000 de su bolsillo, cargos que surgieron del hospital, el cirujano, […]

Consumers, employers, and just about everyone else interested in health care prices will soon get an unprecedented look at what insurers pay for care, perhaps helping answer a question that has long dogged those who buy insurance: Are we getting the best deal we can? As of July 1, health insurers and self-insured employers must […]

Lori Mangum was 32 when apple-size tumors sprouted on her head. Now — six years and 10 surgeries later — the skin cancer is gone. But her pain lives on, in the form of medical debt. Even with insurance, Mangum paid $36,000 out-of-pocket, charges that stemmed from the hospital, the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the pharmacy, […]