Last Word

Health Insurers Have Been Breaking State Laws for Years

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Health insurers reject millions of claims for treatment every year in America. Corporate insiders, recordings and internal emails expose the system and its harm. In North Carolina, lawmakers outraged that breast cancer patients were being denied...

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Who Will Care for Older Adults? We’ve Plenty of Know-How but Too Few Specialists

Thirty-five years ago, Jerry Gurwitz was among the first physicians in the United States to be credentialed as a geriatrician — a doctor who specializes in the care of older adults. “I understood the demographic imperative and the issues facing older patients,” Gurwitz, 67 and chief of geriatric medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, told me. “I felt this field...

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Inside the Psychiatric Hospitals Where Foster Kids Are a ‘Gold Mine’

This story was produced by Mother Jones. Get their investigations emailed to you directly here. The first time Katrina Edwards was locked in a psychiatric hospital for children, she was sure a foster parent would pick her up the next day. It was a spring night in 2012 when Edwards, then 12 years old, was admitted to North Star Behavioral Health in Anchorage, Alaska. In a photo taken upon her...

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NIH’s Letter to Wuhan Lab Confirms Rand Paul Was Right and Fauci Was Wrong about Gain-of-Function

In the summer of 2021 , Americans saw something unusual: Dr. Anthony Fauci on tilt. "Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially," said the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director. “I totally resent the lie you are now propagating.” Fauci’s comments were made during one of his testier exchanges with Rand Paul ,...

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Depression recovery can be hard to measure − new research on deep brain stimulation shows how objective biomarkers could help make treatment more precise

Deep brain stimulation can alleviate treatment-resistant depression for some patients. PM Images/Digital Vision via Getty Images ~~~~~ It can be challenging to create a treatment plan for depression. This is especially true for patients who aren’t responding to conventional treatments and are undergoing experimental therapies such as deep brain stimulation. For most medical conditions, doctors...

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Could a single drug treat the two leading causes of death in the US: cancer and cardiovascular disease?

Identifying the commonalities between cardiovascular disease and cancer could lead to improved treatments for both. Sveta Zi/iStock via Getty Images Plus ~~~~~~ What would you guess are the two biggest killers in the world? Based on media coverage, maybe you guessed gun violence, accidents or COVID-19. But the top two killers are actually cardiovascular disease and cancer. These two diseases...

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