Bram Sable-Smith

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brams@kff.org
@besables

States Target Health Insurers’ ‘Prior Authorization’ Red Tape

Doctors, patients, and hospitals have railed for years about the prior authorization processes that health insurers use to decide whether they’ll pay for patients’ drugs or medical procedures. The Biden administration announced a crackdown in January, but some state lawmakers are looking to go further.

These Patients Had to Lobby for Correct Diabetes Diagnoses. Was Their Race a Reason?

Adults who develop one autoimmune form of diabetes are often misdiagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Those wrong diagnoses make it harder to get the appropriate medications and technology to manage their blood sugar. Many Black patients wonder if their race plays a role.

Ohio votó a favor del aborto. Podrían seguir otros 11 estados el próximo año

El impulso para llevar el polémico tema a los votantes llega después de la serie de victorias en las votaciones del año pasado a favor del derecho al aborto en seis estados: California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana y Vermont.

Funyuns and Flu Shots? Gas Station Company Ventures Into Urgent Care

A Tulsa-based gas station chain is using its knowledge of how to serve customers and locate shops in easy-to-find spots to enter the urgent care industry, which has doubled in size over the past decade. Experts question how the explosion of convenient clinics will affect care costs and wait times.

Medical Exiles: Families Flee States Amid Crackdown on Transgender Care

As more states restrict gender-affirming care for transgender people, some are relocating to more welcoming destinations, such as California, Illinois, Maryland, and Nevada, where they don’t have to worry about being locked out of medical care.

Can a Fetus Be an Employee? States Are Testing the Boundaries of Personhood After ‘Dobbs’

Laws granting rights to unborn children have spread in the decades since the U.S. and Missouri supreme courts allowed Missouri’s definition of life as beginning at conception to stand. Now, a wrongful death lawsuit involving a workplace accident shows how sprawling those laws — often intended to curb abortion — have become.