“Thank you for calling our free clinic. How can I help you?” I have spent countless hours listening to the pleas of people in desperate need of medical attention, often with nowhere else to go. Our free clinic in Maryland provides comprehensive care free of cost to those who are uninsured and meet our eligibility criteria. Part of the screening process, though, is determining why someone might be uninsured and helping connect them to other resources that could assist them. To many, it can be surprising why patients might lack health insurance, ...

The Steward Health Care system collapse has raised alarm bells and activated a crisis response from many levels of Massachusetts’ political and health care leadership. Through a still-evolving series of action steps, this crisis will eventually resolve. When the fire has been put out, however, an important lesson will remain: this crisis has its origins in the dangerous set of health care policies and decisions that got us to this point. As health care leaders ...

Jamal was a young, promising athlete whose coordination suddenly deteriorated, at only 12-years-old, with the onset of terrible headaches. Scans revealed a large brain mass, and he was referred to a regional academic medical center for what would be a complicated surgery. Moments before he was to be wheeled into the operating room, a nurse pulled Jamal’s mother, Lisa, aside to tell her apologetically that the procedure was cancelled. The medical center had learned that Jamal’s Tennessee Medicaid plan, TennCare, had been terminated, and he was uninsured. “I’m afraid you’ll need to take him ...

Throughout the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified many existing inequities in health care and throughout society. CommunityHealth, a free health clinic in Chicago, saw its patients face these ...

Patients tell me all the time that our health care infrastructure needs reformation. Many people, including myself, would agree with that statement, but reformed to what? As a Patient Access Specialist at

Like many Americans, Hector, a resident of Revere, Massachusetts, was overwhelmed by health care costs. He had insurance through his employer, but he could barely afford his $600 a month premiums, and he quickly learned that his coverage was not enough to keep his out-of-pocket costs manageable. Needing treatment for hearing, liver and heart conditions, Hector faced deductible costs from hospital care, $175 co-pays per visit with his specialist, and ongoing prescription costs of more than $100 ...

If you ask a patient to describe their experience finding a therapist or psychiatrist in the community, don’t be surprised if ‘expensive,’ ‘difficult,’ and ‘discouraging’ are some of the first words that come to mind. The decades-long separation of mental healthcare from physical health has left patients and clinicians alike with serious challenges navigating options for care. And the cost has been much more than just inconvenience—our poorly integrated system is responsible for

We’ve all seen the headlines—primary care practices are in trouble: “America’s looming primary care crisis,” “Fewer than 10% of primary care practices have stabilized operations amid COVID-19 pandemic,” and “

From the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear that America’s deep-rooted inequities would play a central, and likely devastating, role in the magnitude and distribution of the burden of disease. In early March, former New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett and I outlined these inequities and called for a human rights-based response focused on ...