Health

Guardian - More than two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, state abortion bans are forcing doctors to provide substandard medical care, new research released Monday shows. 

The study describes how one woman, whose water broke too early on her pregnancy, ended up in the ICU with severe sepsis because she could not get an abortion to end her doomed pregnancy. Her story is one of dozens of narratives collected by the research group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, which is housed at the University of California, San Francisco.

Another woman’s liver transplant was canceled because doctors discovered that she was pregnant – even though the pregnancy was unwanted. Yet another was forced to give birth to a baby with anencephaly, a severe and fatal fetal anomaly. By the time the baby was handed over to the mother, the baby’s skin had turned from pink to navy....

Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health first started collecting narratives from doctors about their post-Roe experiences in August 2022, shortly after Roe fell in the supreme court case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The group published a preliminary report of their findings in May 2023; they have collected a total of 86 narratives.

Time -  Recent research from the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that researches health care issues, finds that 17% of U.S. adults have in the past year had their insurance company deny doctor-recommended care, with denials happening about as frequently for people on both commercial and government insurance plans.

Denials can occur either before you’ve gotten a test, procedure, or treatment—when a provider submits a request for prior authorization, for example—or after you’ve already received care. The insurer may argue the service isn’t one it covers or is medically unnecessary for you, or it may deny care on logistical grounds, like a claim having incorrect information or coming from an out-of-network provider. Receiving a denial letter can be discouraging, but you can take certain steps to fight back. Here’s what to do.