Publisher Health

But high medical costs contributed to results that disappointed Wall Street, and the company’s stock fell on the news that it had made less than analysts expected.UnitedHealth Group reported on Thursday that it earned less than expected this past quarter, citing higher medical costs and pressure on its insurance division at a time when the company is still reeling from the shocking murder of a top executive last month.Revenues for UnitedHealth Group amounted to $100.8 billion for the fourth quarter, below what analysts had predicted but still 6.8 percent higher than in the same quarter the year before. The company’s full-year revenue for 2024 rose to $400.3 billion. For UnitedHealthcare, the insurance division, full-year revenue increased to $298.2 billion, up 6 percent from 2023.The results were the company’s first since Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down in front of a Midtown Manhattan hotel.The murder unleashed public outrage aimed at big health insurers, over lack of access to health care and denials of coverage and insurance claims.Some shareholders have urged UnitedHealth to issue a report on its practices that “limit or delay access to health care.”Andrew Witty, UnitedHealth Group’s chief executive, said on a call with analysts on Thursday that frustrations about claims, including delays in receiving care and coverage, were “key areas for us to work hard at to improve.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Emergency service teams, local councils and government officials will take part in a full, multi-day pandemic preparedness exercise, to help the UK prepare for potential future threats.

Although long considered a disease of aging, certain cancers are turning up more often in younger women, according to a new report.More Americans are surviving cancer, but the disease is striking young and middle-aged adults and women more frequently, the American Cancer Society reported on Thursday.And despite overall improvements in survival, Black and Native Americans are dying of some cancers at rates two to three times higher than those among white Americans.These trends represent a marked change for an illness that has long been considered a disease of aging, and which used to affect far more men than women.The shifts reflect declines in smoking-related cancers and prostate cancer among older men and a disconcerting rise in cancer in people born since the 1950s.Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, but the leading cause among Americans under 85. The new report projects that some 2,041,910 new cases will occur this year and that 618,120 Americans will die of the disease.Six of the 10 most common cancers are on the rise, including cancers of the breast and the uterus. Also on the rise are colorectal cancers among people under 65, as well as prostate cancer, melanoma and pancreatic cancer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Well’s new Ask the Therapist columnist, Lori Gottlieb, helps a reader who is sick of being her mother’s dumping ground.My mother is hypercritical of my brother’s wife, to the point that she blames my sister-in-law for my brother’s “failings” (not getting a better job, not taking better care of his health, etc.). It has gotten worse now that there are grandchildren. My mother constantly criticizes how my sister-in-law is raising the kids, who are lovely and adore their grandparents.Although my mother will occasionally raise criticisms with my sister-in-law and brother, I am mostly her audience.I have a great relationship with my sister-in-law, and when my mother goes off on one of her rants, I defend her. I tell my mother how lucky she is to have such wonderful grandchildren, and point out that my brother is an adult who makes his own decisions. This just leads to an argument between my mother and me.When I finally told my mother how much it hurts me to hear her say these things about my sister-in-law, she said that she needed to air her frustrations with someone. I want to be there for my mother, but I don’t like being put in this position. How do I navigate this?From the Therapist: The short answer to your question is that you can navigate this by no longer engaging in these conversations. But I imagine you already know this. What you might be less aware of is that you aren’t being “put in this position” of supportive daughter, protective sister-in-law and unwilling confidante. You’ve chosen it, and it’s worth examining why you’ve signed up for a job you don’t want — and what makes it hard to resign.Usually when we find ourselves repeatedly engaging in uncomfortable family patterns, it’s because they echo familiar roles from our childhood. It sounds as if you’re struggling with enmeshment, a relationship pattern in which boundaries between family members become blurred or are nonexistent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A law that coaxed companies to lower the price of drugs came with a little-known consequence: smaller discounts for low-income health clinics.Maricruz Salgado was bringing her diabetes under control. Thanks to a federal program that allowed health clinics that serve poor people to buy drugs at steeply discounted prices, she was able to pay less than $75 for all five of her diabetes medications every three months.But in July, the cost of three of those drugs soared. Ms. Salgado, who does not have health insurance, suddenly faced costs of hundreds of dollars per month. She could not afford it.Her doctor switched her to cheaper medicines. Within days of taking one of them, she experienced dizzy spells so severe that she said could barely keep up with her hectic daily schedule as a phlebotomist and an in-home caregiver. By the time she returned to the doctor in September, her blood sugar levels had ticked up.“We were in a good place,” said Dr. Wesley Gibbert, who treats Ms. Salgado at Erie Family Health Centers, a network of clinics in Chicago that serves patients regardless of their ability to pay. “And then all the medicines had to change.”The price hikes at the clinic happened for a reason that is symptomatic of the tangled web of federal policies that regulate drug pricing. In 2024, drug makers lowered the sticker price of dozens of common medications, which allowed them to avoid massive penalties imposed by the American Rescue Plan, the Covid relief package passed three years earlier. But that change backfired for low-income people like Ms. Salgado.The decision to make these medications more affordable for large swaths of patients has quietly created another problem: a severe financial hit to the clinics that are tasked by the federal government with caring for the country’s poorest people. These nonprofit clinics operate in every state and serve nearly 32.5 million people, or about 10 percent of the country’s population.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Tanzania has dismissed a World Health Organisation (WHO) report of a suspected new outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg virus in the north-west of the country.

By day, he helped run an autism center he opened in a suburb of Paris. In the evening, he delighted audiences as a clown named Buffo. In between, he wrote novels.Howard Buten, a college dropout from Detroit, juggled three extraordinary lives.In one, he was a tender, clumsy and wordless red-nosed clown named Buffo. He sold out theaters around the world. Critics compared him to Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx.In another, he volunteered as an aide with autistic children, went back to school to earn a doctorate in psychology, helped pioneer a therapy for autism and opened a treatment center.He squeezed in a third life as a novelist. “Burt,” written in the voice of a disturbed 8-year-old boy, flopped in the United States but implausibly achieved “Catcher in the Rye” status in France, where it sold nearly a million copies and he became — to his amusement and slight chagrin — a cultural sensation.“Howard Buten is a kind of walking poem,” the French writer and actor Claude Duneton wrote in his introduction to Mr. Buten’s autobiography, “Buffo” (2005). “Images emanate from him, producing a slow music, a concentric adagio like ripples on water.”Mr. Buten died on Jan. 3 at an assisted living facility near his home in Plomodiern, France, a town in coastal Brittany. He was 74.His partner and only immediate survivor, Jacqueline Huet, said the cause was a neurodegenerative disorder.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Getty ImagesPatients are dying in corridors and pregnant women are miscarrying in side rooms as overwhelmed hospitals struggle to cope, nurses say.

Getty ImagesCovid vaccines saved lives. Lots of them. Research by the World Health Organization (WHO) now puts the number at 475,000 in the UK with many more kept out of hospital or off a ventilator.

Family handoutFamilies of those harmed by Covid vaccines told the UK Covid Inquiry they were forced to support each other during the pandemic because there was no other help.