Sooner or later, all of us need health care. That’s why I’ve never tired of the subject after 15 years of writing about it.
I came to the health care beat by accident, but at an opportune moment. It was 2011, the year after the Affordable Care Act had become law, and there were a lot of things to figure out: How would the new insurance marketplaces work? How would Medicaid absorb millions and millions of new enrollees? Was the law even legal in the first place?
But after volunteering to take the beat at Governing magazine, where I was working at the time, it quickly became clear to me that these were not just abstract policy questions. These issues would determine whether or not somebody could see a primary care doctor or get screened for a deadly disease or undergo a lifesaving surgery. There are few policy areas where the stakes are as clear as they are in health care — and I have made it my mission to try to help people to understand how this system works, why it works the way it does (or often doesn’t seem to work at all), and how our health care system might be built differently to better serve all of us.
I’ve encountered these issues in my own life — my family was uninsured for most of my childhood, because my dad was self-employed and the premiums in that pre-ACA era were too steep for us. Now, I have a family of five and worry about paying for all of our medical needs. And I’ve talked with countless patients who have both suffered while navigating the bureaucratic maze that the US health system forces people into and people who have enjoyed the benefits of getting health care they couldn’t previously afford — simple things like an annual physical or a flu vaccine. When I came to Vox in 2017, Republicans were debating whether to repeal the ACA. While covering the debate from Capitol Hill was exciting, what I remember most from those days is hitting the road with health care journalist Sarah Kliff (then at Vox, now at the New York Times) and hearing the complicated and surprising takes on health care that normal Americans possessed.
From ACA repeal to the Covid pandemic to the Make America Healthy Again movement, the health care beat is always changing — but it’s always important. Health is at the very center of what it means to be alive. But while we are all aware of the challenges we face in attaining and maintaining good health, I’ve also sought to explore how things could be different — most notably in our 2020 series called Everybody Covered, in which we traveled to three continents to get a better idea of how other countries have managed to achieve universal health care. Everyone deserves access to health care — and I see my role as synthesizing this complicated part of American life to help more people navigate our ever-changing medical system.
Support from Vox members allows me to do this kind of ambitious and patient-centered reporting free of any outside influence or bias. Thank you for being a reader, and if you would like to support Vox’s independent journalism, consider becoming a Vox Member today.
