Senior Research Reporter
Doris Burke is senior research reporter. Prior to joining ProPublica in 2019, she was a researcher at the New York Times working on investigative and daily stories. While at Fortune Magazine, she collaborated on award winning financial crime stories. Before moving to journalism, she was research librarian at several investment banks. She has a history degree from St. Bonaventure University and library science degree from Pratt Institute.
Internal documents and former company executives reveal how Cigna doctors reject patients’ claims without opening their files. “We literally click and submit,” one former company doctor said.
Never-before-seen IRS records show that CEOs are sometimes making multimillion-dollar bets on the stocks of direct competitors and partners — and doing so with exquisite timing.
After a college student finally found a treatment that worked, the insurance giant decided it wouldn’t pay for the costly drugs. His fight to get coverage exposed the insurer’s hidden procedures for rejecting claims.
In what may prove to be one of the more remarkable intelligence failures of the drug war, the U.S. missed warnings that Genaro García Luna, the chief architect of Mexico’s fight against organized crime, could be in league with the criminals.
The tech giant has long sought access to a priceless trove of veterans’ skin samples, tumor biopsies and slices of organs. DOD staffers have pushed back, raising ethical and legal concerns, but Google might win anyway.
As abortion access dwindles, America’s “parental-involvement” laws place further restrictions on teenagers — who may need to ask judges for permission to end their pregnancies.
Half of all Americans now die in hospice care. Easy money and a lack of regulation transformed a crusade to provide death with dignity into an industry rife with fraud and exploitation.
The wireless industry is rolling out thousands of new transmitters amid a growing body of research that calls cellphone safety into question. Federal regulators say there’s nothing to worry about — even as they rely on standards established in 1996.
A previously unreported boom in profits for the shipping supply giant Uline has provided the funds for a deeply conservative Midwestern family to bankroll anti-democracy causes around the country.
Texas-based RealPage’s YieldStar software helps landlords set prices for apartments across the U.S. With rents soaring, critics are concerned that the company’s proprietary algorithm is hurting competition.
Across the Caribbean, soaring national debt is a hidden but decisive aspect of the climate crisis, hobbling countries’ ability to protect themselves from disaster. One island’s leader is fighting to find a way out.
Susquehanna founder and TikTok investor Jeff Yass has avoided $1 billion in taxes while largely escaping public scrutiny. He’s now pouring his money into campaigns to cut taxes and support election deniers.
The IRS, the Justice Department and Congressional Republicans and Democrats are all trying to put an end to syndicated conservation easements. But with lobbyists like Henry Waxman helping lead the resistance, the efforts have had little effect.
Vladimir Putin has increasingly relied on the Wagner Group, a private and unaccountable army with a history of human rights violations, to pursue Russia’s foreign policy objectives across the globe.
The upgrade to 5G was supposed to bring a paradise of speedy wireless. But a chaotic process under the Trump administration, allowed to fester by the Biden administration, turned it into an epic disaster. The problems haven’t been solved.
Secret IRS files reveal the top US income earners and how their tax rates vary more than their incomes. Tech titans, hedge fund managers and heirs dominate the list, while the likes of Taylor Swift and LeBron James didn’t even make the top 400.
In the early 1900s some of the wealthiest Americans claimed their fortunes would never last through the generations. A century of tax avoidance later, the dynasties are going strong.
An alarming number of people (especially children) have drowned after disappearing into storm drains during floods. The deadly problem should be easy for federal, state and local government agencies to fix, but tragedy strikes again and again.
The United States’ inability to curb a treatable sexually transmitted disease shows the failures of a cash-strapped public health system. Increasingly, newborns are paying the price.
The 2017 tax cuts made it more attractive for certain company owners to be paid in profits instead of wages. Some cut their own wages, expanding a loophole that was already costing the U.S. billions.
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