Health

Guardian - Researchers found that in 2022, 22.3 US women per 100,000 died either during pregnancy or within a year of giving birth. That is a slight improvement from 2021, when American women died at a rate of 32.9 per 100,000. Still, alarming disparities persist, particularly between white and Black mothers. White mothers in America died at a rate of 19 per 100,000 in 2022. By contrast, Black mothers died at a rate of 49.5 per 100,000, or roughly 2.5 times the rate of white Americans. Nearly every demographic group of American mothers dies at a higher rate than all mothers in peer nations. Norway, for instance, did not document a single maternal death. The United Kingdom, which conducts an in-depth investigation into every death, counted 5.5 maternal deaths per 100,000.

Time - Cancer care costs vary widely by the type of disease and the stage at which it’s diagnosed. Insurance claims for an initial kidney cancer diagnosis average about $39,500 annually, according to July 2020 research in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, & Prevention. For end-of-life kidney cancer care, that number can stretch to an average of $92,300 a year, with an additional $11,400 for prescription medications. If you have insurance, you aren’t responsible for all of that, but depending on your coverage, you can still owe thousands. Some people with cancer say they spend more than 20% of their annual income on medical care, according to the National Cancer Institute.