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Helen Santoro is is a reporter with the Lever based in Colorado.
A government-granted monopoly has allowed a pharmacy benefit manager owned by Cigna to overbill the Defense Department for years, in what amounts to an enormous cash transfer from American taxpayers to Big Pharma’s shareholders.
The Trump administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued guidance yesterday prohibiting states from wiping medical debt from consumers’ credit ratings. The move could exacerbate the crippling effects of skyrocketing medical costs.
Women say Pfizer has failed to properly warn them about a link between birth control shot Depo-Provera and brain tumors. The pharmaceutical giant is now attempting to use a powerful legal maneuver to try to silence them.
Many states are moving to guarantee COVID vaccine access in defiance of restrictions from health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But big pharmacy chains like CVS and Walmart are still discouraging and barring people from booking these appointments online.
Experts warn that the one-click homebuying sites Zillow and Redfin are steering consumers to the platforms’ own mortgage lenders, squeezing out competition and discouraging buyers from finding cheaper options.
PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” are linked to a range of health risks. In California, some lobbyists fighting a bill that would ban PFAS in consumer products are also lobbying for another bill that would help remove the chemicals from the water supply.
In Colorado, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is spearheading state legislation that would prohibit consumers from suing businesses whose AI potentially violates consumer protection laws.
Private equity firms have been quietly taking control of dental care over the last decade, pushing practices to cut costs and, in some cases, encouraging unnecessary and irreversible procedures.
The US’s six largest health insurers reported massive profits last year, doling out billions on stock buybacks and dividends. That hasn’t stopped them from pushing for sharp hikes to Americans’ insurance premiums.
Taking advantage of a broken patent system, Big Pharma is making minor tweaks to medications just to keep affordable generics off the market, a new report suggests. They’ve made billions of dollars in the process.
Six so-called patient advocacy groups are working to advance corporate profits in the pharmaceutical industry by routinely lobbying in line with Big Pharma’s priorities and opposing drug price negotiations.
Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the FDA has purged public health information on vaccines, contraception, HIV, and more. Internal FDA emails reveal deceptive practices that are anything but the “radical transparency” Kennedy promised.
Health insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield just adopted a policy that will force many people with serious asthma and allergy conditions to self-inject vital medications at home. The move raises risks for patients while cutting costs for the insurance giant.
Nonprofit hospital chains are buying up billions of dollars’ worth of real estate across the US, dodging property taxes using their charity status.
Warren Buffett’s conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, profited off sale of a makeup ingredient that has been linked to cancer. The company is using fancy legal footwork to try to get out of paying remuneration to its victims.
The federal government has spent $6.2 billion on research and development for weight-loss drugs. Now, thanks to Big Pharma markups, Americans are paying up to 11 times more for these drugs than patients in other countries, despite already footing the bill.
Amazon helped fund Donald Trump’s inauguration. The retail giant and the insurer UnitedHealth waited less than a day to start begging the new administration to shut down their shareholders’ calls for transparency.
Drugmakers offer “copay assistance programs” to help people afford expensive medicines. But health insurers are milking these programs for billions of dollars in extra profits while denying patients the benefits they were designed to provide.
In the US, more and more doctors are now affiliated with the hospital conglomerates or Wall Street firms taking over the health care system — and these doctors tend to charge significantly more for office visits than independent practitioners do.
Direct-to-consumer drug ads are prohibited in almost all countries besides the US. By leading doctors to prescribe unnecessary and more expensive treatments at the request of their patients, they also raise health care costs across the board.