Healthcare Policy Impact Explained
Patients Rising’s issue-focused publication exploring the policies shaping patient access, affordability, and innovation.
PR Magazine breaks down complex healthcare policy through patient stories, expert insight, and clear analysis. Each issue focuses on a specific topic affecting patients — from medical debt and hospital accountability to innovation policy and access to care.
Latest Issues
Exploring the policies shaping patient access, affordability, and innovation.
Medical debt appears consistently in bankruptcy filings across the United States, revealing how illness can become a financial crisis long after treatment ends. This issue examines how hospital billing practices, coverage gaps, and policies like the 340B program intersect with household finances, pushing families toward insolvency and exposing the hidden costs of the American healthcare system.
Prescription Drug Affordability Boards were introduced as a way to lower drug costs for patients. This issue examines how PDAB policies work, why promised savings have yet to materialize in many states, and why patients worry these boards could add new barriers between them and their medicines.
Medicaid provides essential coverage for millions of Americans, but coverage does not always guarantee access to care. Through patient stories, this issue examines how long approval delays, limited provider networks, and administrative barriers quietly reshape health outcomes for the people who rely on the program.
Health Savings Accounts allow patients to prepare for medical expenses that insurance does not fully cover. Through the experiences of patients managing chronic illness and unexpected costs, this issue explores why expanding access to HSAs could give families greater stability and control over their healthcare decisions.
The federal 340B program was created to help hospitals stretch resources for vulnerable patients. This issue examines how the program has evolved into a major hospital revenue stream, why many patients never see the savings, and how some nonprofit hospitals profit from discounted drugs while pursuing patients for unpaid medical bills.
Rare disease families often face a system where research moves slowly and treatments remain out of reach. This issue explores how the Rare Pediatric Disease Priority Review Voucher program creates incentives for innovation, helping move promising therapies from clinical trials to FDA approval and giving families hope for treatments that once seemed impossible.