Millions of Medicare enrollees who buy stand-alone prescription drug plans will see their average monthly premiums rise by 50% in 2027, a new analysis finds.
But enrollees can avoid the average increase — from $34 a month to $51 — by switching to lower-cost plans during the program’s open enrollment period, which runs through Dec. 7.
When Ashley Porter began slurring her speech one October day four years ago, doctors suspected a stroke. A spinal tap, an MRI, dozens of blood draws, another MRI, and a night spent at the hospital were followed, finally, by an answer: Porter had multiple sclerosis.
Her shock turned to outrage, she said, when she received the roughly $180,000 hospital bill, even though insurance covered most of it.
Porter and her husband have insurance through two separate employer plans yet have spent at least $75,000 a year — roughly a quarter of their gross income — on medical expenses since her diagnosis.
What’s scarier than ghosts and goblins? How about measles, unaffordable dental care, and an insurance claim denied by artificial intelligence?
Nearly 80 healthcare-themed haikus crept into our inbox this Halloween season. Meet the winners of KFF Health News’ eighth annual Halloween haiku contest below.
Follow KFF Health News’ social media accounts (X, Instagram, and Facebook) for more of our favorites. Enjoy!
1st Place
(Illustration: Oona Zenda/KFF Health News; Haiku: DJ Zelle)
Which is scarier?Jack-o’-lanterns and ghouls, orMeasles and lettuce?
— DJ Zelle
Chris McQueen finished treatment for leukemia a year and a half ago, but the ads for fake cures never stopped.
Juice cleanses to cure cancer, “natural” cancer treatments, clinics in Mexico promising full recovery with little chemotherapy — all appeared on McQueen’s mobile phone during routine oncologist visits and monthly bloodwork.
McQueen and others have taken to social media to vent about companies known as data brokers tracking their whereabouts via their smartphones’ location data, connecting it with other data gathered about them, and then drawing inferences about their health struggles...
The KFF Health News Minute is available every Thursday via direct download or the RSS feed.
Oct. 29
Arielle Zionts [arr-ee-ELL ZY-ence] reads the week’s news: Prescription drugs can be lifesavers, but taking many different meds can be risky. Plus, people shopping for Obamacare plans for next year may see some changes.
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Oct. 22
Stephanie Rowell was standing on her parents’ front porch in July when a wasp stung her left arm.
She said that almost immediately her arm felt like it was “on fire,” her body started itching all over, and her face became swollen and red.
Rowell, 53, took Benadryl, and her father started driving her to the nearest emergency room, about 25 minutes away. But after driving for 10 minutes they spotted a TruHealthNow urgent care facility in Purcellville, Virginia, and decided to stop, hoping she would get help faster.
“I thought I was going to die,” she said, recalling that she felt her throat...
PAGE, Ariz. — Doug Herrera still lives in the house his father built, though his dad died some time ago from cancer. Herrera wonders if that illness could have been linked to pollutants from nearby uranium mining. Now, he worries that a possible new neighbor — a proposed $10 billion mega data center — could imperil his health.
“I’m a patriot, but I’m highly against the data center,” Herrera, 64, said from his front porch near a yard sign that reads “No Data Centers.”
“There is light pollution, sound pollution. The temperature is going to rise,” he said.
CREVE COEUR, Mo. — Reneé Luckfield tries not to knock like a cop.
In fact, the 29-year-old spends a lot of time thinking about how to make strangers comfortable when she shows up at their door to talk about transgender healthcare. A syncopated “tap — tap-tap-tap” sounds friendly even when she knocks loudly. In each encounter, she masks her own unease.
“Honestly, it’s not something that I’m entirely comfortable with,” Luckfield, a transgender woman, said while walking door to door in this affluent St. Louis suburb. “And it’s not fair that we have to do this work.”
Hospital units dedicated to treating the nation’s sickest kids are disappearing nationwide. In the past year alone, hospitals have closed pediatric intensive care units for critically ill kids in Montana, Oregon, and Missouri. Overnight hospital wings for kids have also shuttered in Illinois and California.
Depending on the hospital, pediatric units — which are separate from neonatal intensive care units — can serve patients ranging from a few weeks old to well into their teens or early adulthood. As hospitals look to cut costs, many are converting those beds into more services for newborns...
Karlo Campana is usually outnumbered these days. He has three young kids under age 4. On a recent Saturday, he played a mini game of basketball with his two older kids in their Southern California home, shooting a ball into a hoop on the door, while his baby boy watched from his bouncy chair.
Campana took paid time off in May after the birth of his son — just as he did for his daughters.
“You need that adjustment period,” he said. Campana, who works at an ad agency, said having the time off not to think about work — or worry about losing income during that time — was crucial for him and his...
This article was produced in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.
(Maria Fabrizio for WPLN and KFF Health News)
Gina Conley, an Army veteran in Aberdeen, North Carolina, knew she wanted a low-intervention birth for her first child. But her plan started to go off the rails as soon as she got to the hospital.
“Everything that I did not want to happen had happened,” she said. “And I just remember that feeling of being just so utterly defeated.”
Her cervix wasn’t dilating quickly, and Conley said her midwife insisted that she take Pitocin to speed up the labor. Later, when she was nearly fully dilated, the midwife asked to break Conley’s amniotic fluid sac,...
Dianne Williams said she lost weight and lowered her blood pressure thanks to quarterly doctor appointments, monthly phone calls with a nurse, and a blood pressure cuff she uses at home that transmits data to her care team.
“It’s good to have somebody talk to you and tell you what your progress is like. And she’s a very nice person,” Williams said of her nurse.
Williams, who lives in rural Georgia, said these services — referred to as remote patient monitoring — encourage her to take her medication and inspired her to revamp her diet and exercise.
But many Medicare patients, especially those...
Bill McAdams, a 45-year-old travel nurse from Holiday, Florida, was uninsured last year when he experienced a stroke. He hadn’t been able to afford his agency’s health plan, which would have cost $3,600 monthly to cover him and his wife. The hospital that treated him sent him a bill for $93,000.
Janet Marx, 56, of Milford, Connecticut, has doubled up on insurance coverage through her husband’s employer and Medicare because she has lupus and fibromyalgia, disabling chronic conditions. Still the couple sold their home, the house where Marx grew up, to afford the costs of their medical care.
Refugees. Sex-trafficking victims. People fleeing war. They’re among the hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the country legally who no longer qualify for Medicaid. The change, in effect since Oct. 1, is part of the 2025 Republican tax law, which cuts Medicaid spending by an estimated $900 billion through 2034.
KFF Health News rural health reporter Andrew Jones joined WAMU’s Health Hub on Oct. 21 to explain which Medicaid enrollees are affected in the Washington, D.C., region and what other cuts to health services for immigrants are next.
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Ulises Hernandez has had health coverage through Medicaid for as long as he can remember. But he had never waited as long for care as he did in September after a dental crown slipped down his throat during a procedure. He spent eight hours in an emergency room waiting for care and more than two days without food.
Sitting in his wheelchair to protest looming federal Medicaid cuts outside Republican U.S. Rep. David Valadao’s Bakersfield office, Hernandez described his wait as a foreshadowing of what’s ahead.
“I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t drink, I couldn’t do anything, and I...
Consumers who buy Affordable Care Act health insurance are going to see changes both big and small as open enrollment for 2027 coverage kicks off. These include premium increases, possible additional identity checks, potential delays in working with a broker, and new limits on which immigrants can get subsidies.
Shoppers need to plan accordingly.
The United States spends a lot of money on healthcare. To better understand how much, who spends it, and what it’s spent on, we dug into the federal government’s data.
In 2024, the most recent year for which data was available, the U.S. spent $5.3 trillion on healthcare. That means an average of more than $14.4 billion was spent each day, and more than $10 million each minute.
Rising healthcare costs aren’t a problem just for those who buy their own health insurance. Increases hit employers and their workers this year, too, and more are expected for 2027 plans — adding to growing concerns about affordability heading into the midterm elections.
Days before it was to go into effect, the Trump administration pushed back a U.S. customs rule threatening the supply of vital prescription drugs imported by millions of Americans.
Under the rule, Customs and Border Protection and the FDA will require coding on packages that makes it easier to know what’s in them. It is aimed at collecting tariffs on even low-value imports, and at catching illegal drugs like fentanyl. It will also add costs and complex paperwork to each order.
Now the regulation, which was set to start Oct. 22, is delayed until Jan. 20.
