Congress' decision not to extend enhanced marketplace tax credits has boosted the appeal of alternative health coverage with lower monthly premiums.

When Melanie Miller saw that her health insurance premium payment was set to nearly triple to $914 a month this year, she stopped shopping on the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

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About this Episode

Episode 5, AI Series: How is AI applied to clinical care and hospital operations across a real health system at full scale? Chip Kahn talks to Dr. Michael Schlosser, Senior Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at HCA Healthcare, about how AI is developed for everyday use, starting with careful testing and customization, with clinicians and nurses engaged from the very beginning as end users. 

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WILLIAMSTON, N.C. — Two years after her brother’s death, Debra Pierce still wonders whether the 50-year-old would have survived his heart attack if her local hospital hadn’t closed.

“The sad thing is we’ll never know if he could have been saved that night or not, because we don’t have a higher level of care in this county,” Pierce said as she stood outside the mobile home where she last hugged her brother.

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As of 2024, there were 24 million noncitizen immigrants, including lawfully present and undocumented immigrants, living in the U.S. Noncitizen immigrants, particularly those who are undocumented, face significant barriers to accessing health coverage and care and are significantly more likely than citizens to be uninsured. These higher uninsured rates reflect more limited access to private coverage and eligibility restrictions for federally funded coverage options. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federally funded coverage options and lawfully present immigrants face eligibility restrictions for coverage. Under the 2025 reconciliation law there will be increased eligibility restrictions for many lawfully present immigrants for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), subsidized Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace coverage, and Medicare coverage.

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About this Episode

Episode 4, AI Series: What does AI mean for patients in bed and doctors at the bedside? Host Chip Kahn and guest Dr. Robert Wachter, Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, discuss whether AI will produce a different kind of doctor in the future — a “clinician curator rather than a clinician-diagnostician.” The answer could define the future of medicine and the doctor-patient relationship.

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Across the country, the practice of allowing children to remain hospitalized “beyond medical necessity” has become a costly problem, and states have struggled to address the issue.

Overwhelmed by the demands of caregiving, Quette dialed 911 when she found her teenage son downstairs in their kitchen struggling to breathe.

He had rolled his wheelchair to the oven to keep himself warm as he tried to regulate his temperature, she recalled, and was drenched in sweat from an apparent infection.

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The 2025 reconciliation law will—for the first time—require adults who are enrolled in Medicaid though the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expansion, along with those in partial expansion waiver programs in Georgia and Wisconsin, to meet work requirements or qualify for an exemption as a condition of eligibility starting in January 2027 in most states.

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Minnesota lawmakers are wrestling with how to sustain the state’s financially distressed hospitals while patients confront growing medical debt.

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GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — In a midwife’s suburban Atlanta home with a playground and chicken coop outside, Madie Collins lay on an examination table while the midwife measured her pregnant belly. Unlike at many a doctor’s office, no crinkly paper sheet covered the table and no antiseptic chill lingered in the air. The room next door, where Collins’ appointment began, was filled with children’s toys and scented candles and warmed by a wood-burning stove.

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Introduction

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