Category
11 articles
Social Security's work incentive programs were sold to Congress and the public as a bridge from disability benefits to economic independence. For millions of Americans with disabilities, they have become something far darker: a labyrinthine system that strips away healthcare coverage and income supports the moment someone tries to work, leaving them worse off than if they had never tried at all.
Across a growing number of states, vague abortion statutes enacted after the fall of Roe v. Wade are being weaponized against women who have suffered natural miscarriages, stillbirths, and other pregnancy losses — with Black women bearing a disproportionate share of the legal exposure. Physicians, terrified of prosecution, are delaying or withholding standard obstetric care. The result is a medical system in retreat at the precise moment patients need it most.
Three years after the federal government unveiled 988 as a transformative alternative to dialing 911 during mental health emergencies, the line is still routing a troubling share of callers to law enforcement rather than clinicians. Chronic underfunding, absent mobile crisis infrastructure, and political inertia have hollowed out the reform before it could take root. For Black Americans and people experiencing homelessness, the stakes of that failure are not bureaucratic — they are existential.
Across the country, state governments have quietly outsourced the administration of food assistance and Medicaid to predictive algorithms and automated fraud-detection systems — and the results have been catastrophic for hundreds of thousands of eligible recipients wrongly cut off from the benefits they depend on to survive. The technology is marketed as efficiency. The reality is automated disenfranchisement, with racial disparities baked in from the start.
Three years after the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline launched with bipartisan fanfare as a landmark shift toward mental health-centered crisis response, the infrastructure needed to back up that promise remains dangerously underfunded. For millions of callers — particularly those in rural areas, low-income communities, and communities of color — the lifeline still ends with a police dispatch. The gap between what 988 promised and what it delivers is not a technical oversight. It is a policy cho
The federal 340B Drug Pricing Program was conceived as a lifeline — a mechanism through which safety-net hospitals could purchase medications at steep discounts and redirect the savings toward care for low-income and uninsured patients. Decades later, the program has been colonized by institutional self-interest on two fronts: hospital systems that have dramatically expanded their 340B eligibility while capturing the financial benefits internally, and pharmaceutical manufacturers waging a legal
American universities have quietly become addicted to full-tuition international students who subsidize domestic education and pad endowments. But these students have almost no legal protections and are increasingly used as political pawns in immigration crackdowns.
Private equity firms have quietly acquired hundreds of hospice providers across America, stripping staffing and maximizing Medicare reimbursements while vulnerable patients receive substandard care in their final days. How we treat the dying is a moral test—and Wall Street is failing it spectacularly.
America's largest 'nonprofit' hospital systems are paying executives millions while claiming tax exemptions worth billions. The community benefit they promise? It's mostly accounting fiction that enriches a managerial class while patients face medical bankruptcy.
The United States has the worst maternal mortality rate among wealthy nations, with Black women dying at three times the rate of white women. State reporting failures and healthcare cuts are making this deadly crisis invisible.
CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid have shuttered thousands of locations in the past five years, with closures concentrated overwhelmingly in low-income, Black, and rural communities. These pharmacy deserts are creating a public health emergency that federal and state governments refuse to address.