Recent revelations about a data analytics firm’s role in determining medical payments have heightened concerns about possible price fixing in health care and led to a call for a federal investigation. In a letter this week, Senator Amy Klobuchar asked federal regulators to examine whether algorithms used by the firm, MultiPlan, have helped major health…
Why are people obsessed with the length of Beyoncé’s hair? Beyoncé’s hair has been scrutinized for years. Usually spotted in wigs and braids, the pop star has mostly styled her hair with extensions, as many celebrities do. But her longtime use of weaves has made it hard for some to believe that her hair is…
Navigating the health care system in the United States can often feel like being lost in a maze. What kind of doctor should I see? Who takes my insurance? What even is a co-pay, anyway? For that reason, Chris Hamby, an investigative reporter, has devoted much of his five-year career at The New York Times…
The video shows Asa Akira lying on the bed, naked from the hips down, with her legs splayed open. Her hair is thrown into a messy bun. Then she reaches for some lubricant and a long, curved device. “You might want to insert it,” she says, “but that’s not the idea.” The device is a…
Insurance companies have long blamed private-equity-owned hospitals and physician groups for exorbitant billing that drives up health care costs. But a tool backed by private equity is helping insurers make billions of dollars and shift costs to patients. The tool, Data iSight, is the premier offering of a cost-containment firm called MultiPlan that has attracted…
The recent cyberattack on the billing and payment colossus Change Healthcare revealed just how serious the vulnerabilities are throughout the U.S. health care system, and alerted industry leaders and policymakers to the urgent need for better digital security. Hospitals, health insurers, physician clinics and others in the industry have increasingly been the targets of significant…
Sydell L. Miller, a self-made beauty mogul who went from the stay-at-home wife of a Cleveland salon owner to a Palm Beach mansion so immense that it was said to take an hour to walk through all of its rooms, died on Feb. 25 at her home in Cleveland. She was 86. Her daughter Stacie…
An urgent care chain in Ohio may be forced to stop paying rent and other bills to cover salaries. In Florida, a cancer center is racing to find money for chemotherapy drugs to avoid delaying critical treatments for its patients. And in Pennsylvania, a primary care doctor is slashing expenses and pooling all of her…
Six years ago, Dr. Elizabeth Comen, a breast cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in Manhattan, held the hand of a patient who was hours from death. As Dr. Comen leaned in for a final goodbye, she pressed her cheek to her patient’s damp face. “Then she said it,” Dr. Comen recalled. “‘I’m so…
Four mothers sat quietly in the nursing room around midnight, breastfeeding their newborn babies. As one mother nodded off, her eyelids heavy after giving birth less than two weeks earlier, a nurse came in and whisked her baby away. The exhausted new mom returned to her private room to sleep. Sleep is just one of…
