Charles Ornstein
Charles Ornstein is managing editor, local, overseeing ProPublica’s local initiatives. These include offices in the Midwest, South, Southwest and Northwest, a joint initiative with the Texas Tribune, and the Local Reporting Network, which works with local news organizations to produce accountability journalism on issues of importance to their communities.
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Charles Ornstein is managing editor, local, overseeing ProPublica’s local initiatives. These include offices in the Midwest, South, Southwest and Northwest, a joint initiative with the Texas Tribune, and the Local Reporting Network, which works with local news organizations to produce accountability journalism on issues of importance to their communities. From 2008 to 2017, he was a senior reporter covering health care and the pharmaceutical industry. He then worked as a senior editor and deputy managing editor.
Prior to joining ProPublica, he was a member of the metro investigative projects team at the Los Angeles Times. In 2004, he and Tracy Weber were lead authors on a series on Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, a troubled hospital in South Los Angeles. The articles won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for public service, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service.
In 2009, he and Weber worked on a series of stories that detailed serious failures in oversight by the California Board of Registered Nursing and nursing boards around the country. The work was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for public service.
Projects edited or co-edited by Ornstein have won the Pulitzer Prize for public service, the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, the Scripps Howard Impact Award, the IRE Award, the Online Journalism Award and other major journalism honors.
He previously worked at the Dallas Morning News, where he covered health care on the business desk and worked in the Washington bureau. Ornstein is a past president of the Association of Health Care Journalists and an adjunct journalism professor at Columbia University. Ornstein is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
‘Please Wait’: New-and-Improved HealthCare.gov Has Same Old Problems
The Obama administration says the site can now handle 50,000 unique visitors at a time, but it doesn’t appear able to keep up with the load.
For Medicare Drug Plans, the High Cost of Doing Nothing
There's a steep price for doing nothing when it comes time for open enrollment for Medicare prescription drug plans.
Six Questions About HealthCare.gov’s Future
It’s unclear whether the improvements are enough to salvage the Affordable Care Act’s central element and ensure consumers can get coverage before the Dec. 23 deadline.
Rate Hikes Hidden in California’s Glowing Obamacare Reviews
Half those whose insurance is being canceled will pay more for plans meeting the Affordable Care Act requirements.
A Cheat Sheet For The Obamacare Hearings
Over a month, 10 hearings plumb the problems with HealthCare.gov.
Q&A: How California’s Insurance Enrollments Beat Healthcare.gov
Covered California exec predicts peak enrollments in mid-December: “There will be some people who have price bumps. That is unfortunate.”
Generic or Name-Brand? 10 Docs Talk About Picking Drugs
With billions in potential savings for Medicare at stake, we asked drug experts and practitioners alike why more doctors don’t recommend generics when they can.
Medicare’s Failure to Track Doctors Wastes Billions on Name-Brand Drugs
The failure to track doctors who shun cheaper generics racks up huge costs for taxpayers in Medicare Part D, which fills one of every four U.S. prescriptions.
Brushes With the Medical System
Four veteran health-care journalists describe the personal experiences that helped shape their reporting.
How Low Will Health Care Enrollments Be? Here’s What to Watch For
Just a fraction of the 500,000 people expected to enroll in Obamacare via the new health exchanges have done so, according to media reports anticipating the official numbers. But there’s more to the story.