All articles tagged with #access to health care
Massachusetts and several other states have halted or reduced Medicaid coverage for GLP-1 weight-loss medications, leaving low-income patients who started treatment unable to continue. Coverage had been about a third of states in mid-2025, but by 2026 the share fell to roughly one in five, underscoring widening disparities in access to obesity therapies due to high costs.
A government inspector general report finds that for-profit Medicare Advantage insurers—CVS Health (Aetna), UnitedHealthcare and Humana—denied about 80% of long-term hospital care and inpatient rehab requests, raising concerns that some elderly patients may have been refused medically necessary care and prompting CMS to review coverage practices.
Utah's collaboration with Doctronic to empower an AI to refill prescriptions substitutes machine decision-making for clinicians, raising urgent regulatory and safety questions about accountability, patient protection, and how quickly policymakers should adapt as AI enters medical practice.
Lorena Alvarado Hill, a Florida teacher’s aide, was billed for medical care after her government-subsidized insurance was canceled over a 1-cent premium, leading to thousands in bills; she fought back under state and federal law and ultimately had her balances reduced to zero, highlighting flaws in automated billing and the need to monitor small debts.
Two Gallup polls show that roughly one-third of Americans are cutting daily spending to cover medical costs, and about half of middle-income households have delayed major life events such as buying a home or starting a family because of health-care expenses, as premiums rise and Medicaid spending is trimmed.
Washington Post reports that a Hims & Hers Super Bowl ad promotes access to wellness products and a controversial cancer-detection blood test, highlighting concerns that such tests can yield false positives or negatives and underscoring broader debates about wealth-based equity in health care.