Maya Miller is an engagement reporter at ProPublica working on community-sourced investigations. She’s collaborated across and beyond the newsroom on series about aggressive medical debt collection practices, housing and evictions, as well as toxic air pollution and health. The impact of her reporting includes a national doctors’ group announcing it would stop suing patients for medical debt, state legislators introducing a bill to repeal a criminal eviction statute, as well as federal lawmakers and officials promising investigations and reforms.
Her reporting within ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, which has included working with residents to monitor air quality and crowdsourcing real-time reactions to air pollution, has contributed to several awards. These include a 2020 Selden Ring Award and Gerald Loeb Award (“Profiting from the Poor”), as well as a 2021 finalist for the Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics and the Gather Award in Engaged Journalism (“State of Denial”). Her work has appeared in NBC Investigations, Chicago magazine and the Chicago Tribune, among others. She lives in New York and speaks Spanish.
In dozens of cases ProPublica reviewed, judges found that some doctors working for these companies engaged in “selective readings” of medical evidence and “shut their eyes” to medical opinions opposing their conclusions.
Cities often take belongings — including important documents and irreplaceable mementos — when they conduct sweeps of homeless encampments. ProPublica gave notecards to people across the country so they could explain what they lost in their own words.
Storage programs are meant to protect people’s property rights and allow them to reclaim their possessions. But they rarely accomplish either objective, according to a ProPublica investigation of cities with the largest homeless populations.
United used an algorithm system to identify patients who it determined were getting too much therapy and then limited coverage. It was deemed illegal in three states, but similar practices persist due to a patchwork of regulation.
The regulations will force health insurance plans to collect and report more data on how they limit and deny mental health claims. ProPublica’s reporting has found that insurers regularly shortchange patients seeking treatment.
Insurers have wide latitude on when and how they can deny mental health care. We looked at the laws in all 50 states and found that some are charting new paths to secure mental health care access.
Those who need therapy often have to pay out of pocket or go without care, even if they have health insurance. Hundreds of mental health providers told us they fled networks because insurers made their jobs impossible and their lives miserable.
We’re working with journalists in New York, Maine and Oregon on projects related to homelessness. We’re also interested in how cities have further criminalized sleeping outside. Learn more about our work and how to get in touch.
Cigna tracks every minute that its staff doctors spend deciding whether to pay for health care. Dr. Debby Day said her bosses cared more about being fast than being right: “Deny, deny, deny. That’s how you hit your numbers,” Day said.
The new rule comes after a 2021 investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune revealed the EPA’s yearslong failure to inform communities of the risks they faced from cancer-causing ethylene oxide emissions.
After ProPublica reported on a Michigan insurer that wouldn’t cover a cancer patient’s last-chance treatment, a state lawmaker introduced a measure compelling health plans to cover a new generation of advanced cancer therapies.
ProPublica’s reporters want to talk to mental health providers, health insurance insiders and patients as we examine the U.S. mental health care system. If that’s you, reach out.
After ProPublica reported on a health insurer that refused to cover the only medicine that could save a cancer patient’s life, Michigan insurance regulators clarified that, by law, many plans must pay for any clinically proven treatments.
States have passed hundreds of laws to protect people from wrongful insurance denials. Yet from emergency services to fertility preservation, insurers still say no.
A Michigan law requires coverage of cancer drugs. One insurer came up with a “defensible” way to avoid paying for treatments that offered Forrest VanPatten his last chance for survival. “We crossed the line,” says a former executive.
Federal regulations require insurers to promptly hand over records to patients facing claim denials. Some insurers only turned over their files after ProPublica reached out.
You likely have the right to access records that explain why your insurer denied your claim or prior authorization request. Use ProPublica’s free tool to generate a letter requesting your claim file from your health insurance company.
Help journalists at the investigative nonprofit newsroom ProPublica examine plastics from creation to recycling and disposal. If you’ve worked in or been affected by the plastics industry, we want to hear from you.
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