Columns

It’s rare these days that we get an amazing piece of health journalism that really explicates what’s wrong with the U.S. health system. But “Out of Control: America’s losing battle against diabetes,” is a series of three stories published starting in August by Chad Terhune, Robin Respaut, and Deborah J. Nelson at Reuters, gets right to the troubles plaguing American health care.

In the summer 2016, I was talking to Kate Long, the mentor for my Center for Health Journalism fellowship project, about why so many babies in Indiana didn’t survive past their first birthdays.

Last year Ellin and her husband, both new to Medicare, signed up for a Medicare Advantage plan from Essence Healthcare, a managed care firm based in a St. Louis suburb. She contacted me wanting to share her experiences in choosing a Medicare Advantage plan to cover what the Medicare program does not pay, and agreed to track how the plan paid for services throughout the year — especially the heavily advertised extra benefits such as vision and dental touted in TV ads during this season’s open enrollment period.

The pandemic’s racial disparities know no age limit, and children of color have been more deeply affected than their white peers, reports Edwin Rios at Mother Jones. Rios leads with a recent study from the journal Pediatrics, which found nearly two-thirds of the more than 140,000 U.S. children who lost a caregiver during the pandemic were from racial or ethnic minorities.

A slew of state legislative efforts aimed at transgender youth put a target on young people’s backs, bullying them and singling them out, said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, a transgender advocate and policy expert.