For nearly three years, Jonathan Bledsoe of Reading, Pennsylvania, took one prescription to stabilize his mood and one to keep his cholesterol in check, among a handful of other medications.

“You wouldn’t think you would have to be your own advocate and look out for yourself as far as managing your medications,” the Marine veteran said. “But when you wake up one morning and what you pee comes out the color of fresh brewed coffee, there’s an issue.”

He took his concerning symptoms back to his multiple doctors and learned the interaction between his medications was starting to damage his liver. After he changed medications, his liver and kidney function returned to normal.

Adverse drug interactions are becoming a bigger health concern as more people take multiple medications, said Amanda Mixon, a hospitalist and associate professor of bioinformatics at Vanderbilt University.

The percentage of Americans over 65 taking five or more medications, known as polypharmacy, nearly doubled from 2000 to 2020, according to a study published in . Now, more than a third of older adults are taking five or more medications a day.

Mixon said she sees older patients with an average of 16 medications, often from multiple prescribers and pharmacies.

“As you accumulate more and more medications, the chance of them interacting with each other and having bad interactions increases,” Mixon said. “As these medications get added sort of progressively, that can accumulate over time, and then people are having more side effects.”

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

Daniel said she wondered: “Am I cheating on him? Am I going behind his back? Am I acting like I don’t trust him by seeking a second opinion?”

Many patients find themselves in this position, but family medicine physician Jen Caudle said patients shouldn’t feel awkward about asking for a second opinion. In fact, in her practice in New Jersey, she encourages people to have open conversations with their care team.

“We shouldn’t be offended,” Caudle said. “We should support you.”

Patients can also think of their primary care provider as the quarterback of their care team, Caudle said, and ask that doctor for help navigating opinions or diagnoses from specialists.

Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer, hosts of the HealthQ series, spoke with Caudle about the sometimes-awkward art of asking for a second opinion.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

When Lori Baute first learned about precautionary full-body MRI scans, she dismissed the idea.

“ I heard Kim Kardashian got one, and some other wealthy people,” Baute said. But at 59, she was worried about her long-term health. She has a family history of cancer, and she’s a critical caregiver for her aging mom and her adult brother with special needs.

After a close friend was diagnosed with bladder cancer, Baute decided to make an appointment with a clinic that offers full-body scans near where she lives in Ocala, Florida. Her results came back a week later. One major finding: She has lesions on her pancreas. “When I got that, I was really petrified,” she said.

Worried about pancreatic cancer, Baute shared the results with her gastroenterologist, who ordered a targeted MRI scan as a follow-up. That test showed the lesions were benign cysts.

Baute’s experience is becoming more common as companies pitch body scans directly to consumers as a way to detect cancer and other diseases early. But no major medical association — including the American Cancer Society and the American College of Radiology — recommends these scans for people without a very high risk of certain cancers.

And even medical screenings that doctors do recommend can carry some of the same reasons for caution.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

But their shared disenchantment with profit-driven healthcare has provided a unifying target: pharmacy benefit managers, known as PBMs. The Josephs’ frustration is focused on CVS Health. The conglomerate, which reported $400 billion in revenue last year, includes a major health insurer (Aetna), one of the country’s dominant PBMs (CVS Caremark), and America’s largest retail pharmacy chain.

“We hate CVS. I’m going to be straight-up,” Amye Joseph said.

She laments the lack of face-to-face interaction with pharmacists, prices that seem to rise without explanation, and pressure from the couple’s CVS Caremark drug plan to use CVS stores instead of their local pharmacy. “They’re not even a middleman,” she said. “They’re a money grab for CVS.”

PBMs were conceived as a way to manage prescriptions and hold down costs. But these middlemen have become bipartisan punching bags, accused of sucking up profits at the expense of employers, governments, and patients.

And while healthcare debates still divide Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C., taking on PBMs has become a unifying cause in an era of widespread frustration over rising healthcare costs.

In recent years, every state has imposed restrictions on PBMs. The Josephs’ home state of Tennessee, where the GOP has a lock on state government, is among a growing number looking to outlaw companies that own PBMs from also owning brick-and-mortar pharmacies, as CVS does.

That’s aligned conservative, business-friendly Republicans with Democrats traditionally more open to government regulation.

This legislative push reflects a feeling even in the GOP that the market for prescription drugs is being gamed, said Antonio Ciaccia, CEO of , a nonprofit think tank that tracks drug pricing.

“Republicans are looking at this issue, saying, We know what competition is supposed to do, and it isn’t happening,” said Ciaccia, a critic of the PBM industry. “This is not a free market.”

Charlie Joseph, a retired fire captain who now works as a custodian, was miffed when he realized he could save money on his blood pressure medication if he paid cash at his local pharmacy rather than using his CVS Caremark drug plan. He now buys a 90-day supply for the same price he would have paid for a 30-day supply through the CVS plan.

“Right now, it’s more of an inconvenience than anything else as far as it goes, but there’s no consistency,” he said. “The whole healthcare thing is just frustrating, on a good day.”

CVS spokesperson Phil Blando said the price of individual drugs can vary.

“Looking at the price of a single prescription does not reflect the value of a comprehensive pharmacy benefit,” he said in a statement. “Our focus remains delivering the lowest possible total cost and the greatest overall value for members and plan sponsors.”

Unified Opposition

PBM officials say their industry has been unfairly maligned. “PBMs are the only part of the prescription drug supply chain working to lower drug costs, which makes PBMs the target of powerful groups, Big Pharma and pharmacists,” said Greg Lopes, a spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which represents PBMs across the nation.

“Drug manufacturers attempt to shift blame for high drug costs to PBMs in order to retain their profit margins and weaken PBMs’ ability to lower costs,” he said.

Drugmakers have worked for years to cast PBMs as unnecessary go-betweens, said Barak Richman, a lawyer and economist who studies healthcare competition at George Washington University. He called the fight between the two industries a corporate “cage match.”

“We have wildly passionate partisan divides on a lot of healthcare,” he said. “But there’s a lot of healthcare policy that I don’t think is obviously partisan.”

PBMs haven’t won over many Democrats or Republicans. Attorneys general from nearly 40 states and U.S. territories last year to congressional leaders arguing that “horizontal consolidation and vertical integration have transformed PBMs from useful administrative service providers into market-dominating behemoths.”

In state legislatures like Tennessee’s, shared ownership of PBMs and pharmacies has drawn particular fire. Independent pharmacies have little choice but to contract with major PBMs while also competing with the conglomerate-owned pharmacies. Many lawmakers have said they want to protect small businesses.

“If a corporation argues that its pharmacy cannot survive unless it is owned by the same entity that sets the reimbursement rate, then we’re not talking about a free market. We’re talking about control,” Tennessee state Sen. Bobby Harshbarger said in a February legislative hearing.

Harshbarger, a Republican who led the legislative push, is a pharmacist in a small city in northeastern Tennessee.

His mother, U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.), is also a pharmacist and has sponsored a similar PBM ownership ban . The Senate version has brought together some unlikely bedfellows, such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

State Lawmakers vs. CVS

CVS officials argued the Tennessee legislation was misguided. “Any proposed reform should be evaluated based on whether it improves access to care, simplifies the patient experience, and enhances affordability,” Blando said.

It’s unclear whether the PBM ownership ban will do that in Tennessee. by the state legislature’s researchers concluded that the bill could drive up healthcare costs in the short term.

To fight the bill, CVS launched a $7 million , claiming it would have to close all its 134 pharmacies in the state, similar to its threat in neighboring Arkansas when state lawmakers there passed in 2025.

CVS also sent to Tennessee customers, asking them to contact their lawmakers to keep pharmacies open. from CVS helped kill a PBM ownership ban in Louisiana last year.

Sponsors of the legislation said closure wasn’t the only option: CVS could also divest either its stores or its PBM.

Tennessee lawmakers moved forward. State Sen. Rusty Crowe, a Republican from northeastern Tennessee, where the Josephs live, told his colleagues before the vote that they should consider the fierce resistance a sign that they were onto something.

“I learned when I was in the Vietnam War, when you start taking on flak, you know you’re over the damn target,” he said.

As with most votes in Tennessee’s legislature, Republicans didn’t need support from Democrats. But they got it anyway.

State Rep. Antonio Parkinson, a Democrat from Memphis, said he felt like he was voting in favor of lower drug prices and supporting “ma and pa” pharmacies. “If there’s a benefit to my people, I’m supporting it.”

CVS has not divested or closed its pharmacies in states that have passed ownership bans — the laws have yet to take effect. The Arkansas ban is being held up in court after CVS challenged the constitutionality of the law. CVS also sued in Tennessee, though the ownership ban doesn’t take effect until 2028.

This article is from a partnership that includes , , and ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

We’re expecting our first baby boy in end of August. And when I think about what it’s going to feel like to take care of my wife and my new son and my mom, it’s a bit overwhelming.

If you are taking care of a child and you have a parent over 65, you’re among millions across the U.S. in the same life stage.

Nearly a quarter of all American adults — and half of all adults in their 40s — fall into this “sandwich generation” category, . And being in the middle of that sandwich can feel … intense.

“I have kind of prided myself on being self-sufficient. And in this season of life, that’s almost been laughable,” said Jason McAnally, a Nashville father of two who helps care for his aging dad.

HealthQ hosts Cara Anthony of ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and Blake Farmer of Nashville Public Radio, both in the sandwich generation themselves, are your approachable guides to an unapproachable healthcare system. In this one-hour special about navigating health and caregiving, they tap researchers, physicians, experts, and their own personal experience to explore:

• Identity: When to start calling yourself a caregiver, and why it matters.
• FMLA: How to start a conversation with your boss about taking federally protected leave from work.
• Kids and mental health: How to know it’s time to take an anxious child to therapy.
• Early-onset cancer: What you need to know about spotting diseases that are on the rise among people under 50.

The HealthQ team acknowledges the messiness, the humor, and the beauty of this season of life. Come on the journey with us.

Can’t see the audio player? Visit kffhealthnews.org to listen.

This installment is part of HealthQ’s reporting on caregiving among the sandwich generation. For more, check out the series archive.

HealthQ is a health series from reporters Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer, approachable guides to an unapproachable healthcare system. It’s a collaboration between Nashville Public Radio and ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

Can’t see the audio player? Visit kffhealthnews.org to listen.

Cara Anthony tries to convince her HealthQ co-host Blake Farmer that there are benefits to embracing the caregiver identity when helping an aging parent.

When his father was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer in 2025, William Morrison immediately went into caregiving mode.

“We were in the hospital every day,” he said. “I was really playing the intermediary between the medical staff and our family and kind of helping have those conversations and push for those answers.”

One in 10 Americans say they are a caregiver for a parent 65 or older, . And many people in the sandwich generation — those who have both children and aging parents — start their caregiving journeys like Morrison: stepping up during a medical crisis and becoming a family caregiver essentially overnight.

For other people, taking on the role and identity of a caregiver happens more slowly.

Researchers and experts say the spectrum of caregiving is broader than many people realize and that embracing the caregiver title before there’s a crisis can make a significant difference in this phase of life.

Worry Comes First

Being a caregiver can start long before you go to a doctor appointment with a loved one or move your parents into your house. “Oftentimes what we see out in the world is a very limited definition of who a family caregiver is,” said Denise Brown, a caregiving coach and the founder of Caregiving Years Training Academy in Illinois. Being a caregiver is “not necessarily around defining caregiving by tasks and chores, but about that emotional impact.”

Brown created a framework that defines caregiving as a . She said the first stage — the “expectant caregiver” — begins the moment you start to feel concerned about a loved one.

“ You look into the future and you think, ‘Oh, I think someone’s going to need help in the family,’” Brown said.

When you start to get actively involved in a loved one’s care, that triggers the second stage, what Brown calls the “freshman caregiver”: “You’re learning the lay of the land. You’re learning the language of all the systems that you now manage. The best thing to do in this stage is to get comfortable experimenting.”

Caring for Parents Brings Different Stressors

The kind of care that Morrison provided — responding to an immediate medical crisis — catapulted him into the third stage of caregiving, the “entrenched caregiver.” By the time you hit this point, Brown said, “you can feel completely overwhelmed and swallowed up by the experience.”

that the stress is especially acute for people taking care of parents. The role reversal stresses the relationship: Caregivers who focus solely on children don’t deal with the tension linked to shifting power dynamics and other changes that happen when an adult child starts to care for a parent.

Burnout, defined by physical and psychological fatigue, was higher among caregivers of aging parents than among caregivers caring only for children. And for caregivers in the “sandwich generation,” who were taking care of both children and aging parents, personal burnout scores were even higher.

The Title Makes a Difference

Many people who perform care tasks don’t consider themselves caregivers, , but those who do are more likely to access support services and feel a sense of community with other caregivers.

“Anyone in a caregiving situation deserves support and help,” Brown said.

Embracing the role of caregiver early also allows you to have “really good conversations with people in your life” about their desires — and yours — as you enter this phase, Brown said.

Morrison, whose father died earlier this year, is about to enter his own sandwich generation era: He and his wife are expecting a baby boy in August, and he’s been stepping in to help his mom with housework and administrative tasks.

Morrison and his wife have already had conversations about making time for themselves and each other after their son is born. Morrison also wants to be more intentional with his own health, even if that means just going for walks.

People and Policy

Beyond the emotional strain, caregiving comes with substantial costs. On average, caregivers spend more than $7,000 a year on medical and other expenses to support a loved one, according to in 2021.

Some efforts aim to mitigate the financial burden. In most states, family members can get paid to take care of relatives who qualify for Medicaid. But state Medicaid programs face new pressure from federal cuts, and some states have pulled back funding for home-care programs designed to help residents with disabilities.

Meanwhile, a handful of states for unpaid caregivers. For example, starting in 2027, Connecticut will allow family caregivers who make less than $50,000, or couples who make under $100,000, to apply for a tax credit up to $2,000.

This installment is part of HealthQ’s reporting on caregiving among the sandwich generation. For more, check out the series archive.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

LISTEN: After a guilty verdict for negligent homicide, a former nurse has found receptive audiences on the speaking circuit. She says she hopes her story can help shed light on problems in the healthcare industry.

When RaDonda Vaught got her first speaking request, it had been a year since that day in a Nashville courtroom, when she listened as a jury read her guilty verdict for negligent homicide and neglect of an impaired adult.

That was in 2022. Vaught was sentenced to three years of probation for administering the wrong medication and killing a patient at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2017.

She also lost her nursing license. So Vaught became a full-time farmer. She and her husband live on a in Bethpage, Tennessee, tucked in the rolling hills north of Nashville. They sell eggs at farmers markets on Saturdays and supply meat to local butchers and restaurants.

The controversial trial had been national news, and now the healthcare industry wanted to hear from her. So Vaught started giving speeches across the country about what happened that day in the hospital. She says her hope is that others in an industry increasingly turning toward automation and artificial intelligence can understand the multiple factors that contributed to the deadly medication mix-up.

She says she’s painfully aware that it could appear she is profiting from a tragedy of her making.

“It wasn’t something that I wanted to happen. It wasn’t even something that was on my radar to think about,” Vaught said of the speaking requests. “The opportunities just kept presenting themselves.”

The speaking engagements provide her with an income that replaces what she made as a nurse, a career she can never return to. Last year, she told her story more than 20 times, and she is paid $5,000 to $10,000 per event.

But her speaking engagements also provoke criticism. After she told her story at length on Nashville Public Radio’s in March, a retired nurse, Gary Wood, fired off an email to the station. Such medical mistakes could never be justified, he wrote: “It put a stain on a proud and dedicated profession.” Yet, Vaught often finds a receptive audience, eager to hear her perspective.

“I’ve seen her a few times now in person, and I’ve never seen RaDonda tell the story and not be upset,” said Charlene Verga, who invited Vaught to be the closing speaker at the ’s clinical nursing conference last year.

“RaDonda speaking the way she is, she literally is transforming her mistake into a teaching moment,” Verga said.

Vaught expected the speaking gigs would be short-lived. But the reviews were good. And she realized she was comfortable in front of a crowd.

“It was emotionally overwhelming and a little cathartic, but I’m going to tell you, you could have heard a pin drop,” Vaught said of her first talk in 2023 to hundreds of industrial professionals at a meeting organized by , a Knoxville, Tennessee-based company that specializes in root cause analysis.

Vaught has turned her story into a cautionary tale that she hopes will make hospitals safer. She says that humans are going to make mistakes and that systems in healthcare need to be designed so people can fail without killing someone.

“This whole mockery of our healthcare system — people feeling afraid to talk about mistakes and come forward when they happen — it doesn’t save people. It kills them,” she said in a presentation to the .

Onstage, Vaught confronts the painful and embarrassing details directly, often choking back tears when talking about the patient who died — Charlene Murphey.

It wasn’t just one mistake that led to the death.

A doctor had ordered a sedative called Versed to settle Murphey’s claustrophobia before an imaging procedure. Vaught typed “VE” into the search function to retrieve Versed from the electronic medicine cabinet. When it did not dispense, she overrode the system.

In Vaught’s trial, fellow nurses testified that during a time when the hospital was upgrading some of its technology, they could use overrides to bypass delays.

When Vaught took that step, one of the drug options available was vecuronium, a powerful paralytic. Vaught overlooked multiple warnings about the danger of vecuronium, including on the bottle’s cap, which said “Warning: Paralyzing Agent,” according to court records.

Vaught administered the vecuronium and also left the patient alone.

While not disputing most of the facts, Vaught pleaded not guilty to all charges, claiming there were other factors, such as a new electronic health record system that was causing widespread problems in the hospital. A lead investigator for the prosecution testified in the criminal case that Vanderbilt also shared some responsibility.

As previously reported by ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ, Vanderbilt did not initially report the error to regulators as required and told the medical examiner that the patient died of natural causes. The medical center fired Vaught and negotiated a settlement with the Murpheys that keeps the family from talking publicly about her death.

Once the case became a criminal matter, though, the details entered the public record. Vaught is not bound by the hospital’s settlement, allowing her to share whatever she feels comfortable sharing with whomever she wants.

Vanderbilt spokesperson Craig Boerner declined to comment about Vaught’s public speaking or what the medical center learned from the incident.

The two largest companies that make drug-dispensing cabinets, Omnicell and BD, have updated their machines with recommendations from the . One update requires the user to type in more than the first two letters of a medication to pull up a list of options.

Many hospitals also tweaked their drug administration protocols, such as by requiring wristband barcode checks anywhere a patient gets medication in a hospital.

Reacting to Vaught’s case, the state legislature in Kentucky that became law in 2024 providing immunity for on-the-job healthcare mistakes. Support wasn’t just bipartisan. It was unanimous.

Nursing consultant went to nursing school with Vaught and has worked directly with her as a nurse. Vaught’s criminal case inspired him to go to law school, he said. He now plans to help other nurses defend themselves in similar cases, even though he sees the need for accountability.

If it had been up to him, he also would have fired Vaught, Garvey said. He also thinks that the Tennessee Board of Nursing should have taken action immediately. Only after the patient’s death escalated to a criminal matter did the board revisit the case and revoke Vaught’s license.

But the defendants’ side of the story is rarely ever told, Garvey said, because they are advised by their lawyers not to talk.

Now that she has a platform, Garvey said, it’s therapeutic for Vaught. Her talks resonate with anxious nurses across the nation, he said, and promote a much-needed discussion about collective responsibility.

“We can’t change what happened. We can only change what we do moving forward,” Garvey said. “Having the individual who can tell you the play-by-play — that was there when it actually happened — is incredibly valuable.”

This article is from a partnership that includes ,Ìý, and ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

LISTEN: AI scribes are changing medical care. Here’s what to know if the technology shows up at your next doctor’s appointment.

Family physician Eric Boose has been using an artificial intelligence tool to get back to what he calls “old-fashioned medicine” — talking with patients face-to-face, without having to type into a computer at the same time. 

“I can really just sit there and engage and just focus on them and listen,” said Boose, who . 

Roughly two years ago, he started using an AI notetaker app during patient visits. The tool listens while he talks with patients and then automatically generates a visit summary based on the conversation. The summary is usually ready within seconds after the appointment ends. 

“It’s taking care of all that tedious work of charting and taking notes during the visit,” he said. “It’s just freeing up a lot more time to get that done, and I can get home to my family earlier.” 

Nearly a third of physician practices are using AI scribes and others are working to add the tool, in an effort to cut down on administrative work. 

If your practitioner suggests using an AI scribe at your next appointment, here are three things to keep in mind:

1. Clinicians should ask for your permission. 

At the start of an appointment, your doctor might ask something like, “Are you OK if I use an AI scribe to help me take notes during this appointment?” A common practice is to accept verbal, not written, consent from patients before turning the tool on. However, the legal requirements for getting permission to record a patient conversation vary by state. 

Boose said you can ask to pause the AI scribe at any point, especially to discuss something sensitive. And if you decline altogether, your practitioner will likely return to taking manual notes on a computer. 

2. AI scribes make mistakes too, so check their work. 

Like other AI tools, medical scribes can “hallucinate,” or spontaneously add errors into a record. AI scribes can also omit important information or miss context clues within a conversation. 

Clinicians are supposed to review and edit the AI-generated visit summaries before adding them to a patient’s record. As a patient, it’s a good practice to carefully review your visit summary and contact your health provider if you notice errors. 

3. Yes, the AI company could use your data, with limitations. 

Companies and health systems that offer AI scribe tools have access to medical data and are subject to federal standards about how they use and store patient data, under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, more commonly known as HIPAA. 

They may use data from your appointment to help improve their software without informing you, said Darius Tahir, who reports on health technology for ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ. “ If information is ‘de-identified,’ which can mean stripping it of identifiers [and] making sure it’s not personally traceable back to people, then it is more free to be used in more ways,” he said. “There are way fewer regulatory requirements.” 

If you want to know how your data is being used, ask either your practitioner or medical system for more information. But you might not get a clear answer, Tahir said. 

People and Policy 

The U.S. health care system will likely continue to integrate AI technology into patient care. The Trump administration strongly supports the development and use of AI, especially in health care. In early 2025, President Donald Trump issued  reducing existing regulations on AI to help the U.S. “retain global leadership of artificial intelligence.” In December, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released an  stating that the department supports “integrating AI to modernize care and public health infrastructure to improve health at the individual and population levels.” 

Emily Siner at Nashville Public Radio contributed to this report. 

HealthQ is a health series from reporters Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer, approachable guides to an unapproachable health care system. It’s a collaboration between Nashville Public Radio and ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

LISTEN: Taking a GLP-1? Doctors say don’t forget to move your body and tend to your mental health, too.

Severe ankle pain drove Jelon Smart to start taking a weight loss injection a year and a half ago.

Smart was 285 pounds and worked as a caterer in Savannah, Georgia. After she’d been standing on her feet for long hours, her ankles would be “as swollen as a football,” she said. She was walking with a limp. An orthopedic doctor diagnosed her with Achilles tendinitis and recommended losing weight to mitigate the symptoms. Smart began taking the brand-name GLP-1 Ozempic.

The appetite suppression resulted in her shedding pounds quickly, at first.

“I lost 30 pounds initially without changing anything,” said Smart, 48. But then she found herself unable to shed additional pounds.

GLP-1s have quickly become one of the most popular types of weight loss drug in America. Nearly 1 in 5 people have taken them at some point, , a health information nonprofit that includes ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ. But doctors say it takes more than a regular shot for patients to achieve their weight goals in the long run.

Here’s what to know.

The Old-School Rules of Weight Loss and Health Still Apply

Regular exercise, smart food choices, plenty of sleep — those basic, healthy lifestyle choices are not only going to help you lose weight on a weight loss drug but also help you keep it off, said Dafina Allen, an  obesity medicine physician who runs a clinic in Saginaw, Michigan. For example, some people find that they eat less on a GLP-1, “but they’re not improving their health because they’re not exercising. They’re not improving the quality of the food they’re eating,” Allen said. The path to weight loss is also guided by hormones, metabolism, and genetics.

After her weight loss on Ozempic plateaued, Smart realized she needed to start moving her body, too.  “I’m in the gym now six days a week,” she said. “I went from 285 to 175” pounds. The swelling and pain in her ankle went away as well.

Mental Health Matters, Too

The mind and body are deeply connected. Food and body image can be especially emotional, Allen said. “I can tell you about the patients that I helped lose 50 pounds, that I helped lose 100 pounds, and they still look in the mirror and are not happy.”

The key is seeking help for mental health along the way, said Gerald Onuoha, who practices internal medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. “Making sure that you’re talking to people about your problems, whether it’s a family member or a licensed professional, I think goes a long way,” he said.

Work With a Doctor To Closely Monitor Your Dosage

Onuoha said people can run into serious problems if they increase their GLP-1 dosage too quickly or don’t follow the recommended schedule. He’s seen patients come to the hospital with pancreatitis, gallstones, or acute kidney injury.  “I always ask patients that are on GLP-1s: How long have they been on them?” he said. “Are they adhering to the directions? Because those things determine whether or not you’re going to have those complications.”

Part of the issue, Allen said, is that GLP-1s are relatively easy to access — and often much cheaper — through online pharmacies or websites, but those providers may not educate patients about their dosage or side effects. “So they might just go online, find a random company that will ship it to their house, where they don’t even know what dose of the medication they’re taking, or even if the medicine is safe for them as the patient with the medical conditions they have,” she said.

People and Policy

GLP-1 drugs can be costly, and most insurance programs — public or private — don’t cover the medications for weight loss. Medicaid, the government program that covers 69 million Americans, covers GLP-1s for medically accepted conditions like diabetes, but only about a dozen state Medicaid programs cover GLP-1s for obesity treatment, . For older Americans with Medicare, the federal government is planning to allow temporary coverage of GLP-1s for weight loss starting in July.

Katherine Ruppelt at Nashville Public Radio contributed to this report.

HealthQ is a health series from reporters Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer, approachable guides to an unapproachable health care system. It’s a collaboration between Nashville Public Radio and ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

LISTEN: Your dental insurance might not cover what you expect.

Russell Anthony made eight trips to the dentist last year. The 65-year-old retiree in Nashville, Tennessee, hopes to go less often in 2026, but he’s already made a few visits.

“I had a root canal just last week that was like $500,” he said. “The week before that, I had a crown that cost me several hundred dollars. And as we speak, I have a broken tooth, and I have to go and see the dentist soon.”

In all, Anthony — uncle of HealthQ host Cara Anthony — expects to pay about $2,000 for dental care this year, even though he has dental insurance.

“Trying to weigh the cost of when to go to get dental care and paying for it, versus the other needs that I have, is something that’s very important,” Russell Anthony said.

The American Dental Association reported that had dental insurance in 2021. But that coverage does not necessarily protect against large bills. In fact, 1 in 4 adults with dental insurance reported costs as a barrier to care, according to a by KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ.

Here are three things to know to better understand your insurance plan and keep your dental costs as low as possible:

1. Even With Dental Insurance, You’ll Have To Pay for Procedures

Dental plans typically cover routine care in full but pay only a portion of additional work. Benefits vary, but many plans follow the “100/80/50” rule, covering 100% of preventive care like cleanings and exams, 80% of basic procedures like fillings and root canals, and 50% of other major procedures.

Plus, dental plans often have a maximum annual payout, usually between $1,000 and $2,000. Patients are responsible for any costs above that. For example, if your plan maxes out at $1,500 and you need $4,000 of dental treatments, you will be on the hook for the difference of $2,500.

2. Facing a Big Dental Bill? You Have Options

It might feel uncomfortable to talk about finances directly with a dentist, but it’s helpful to be up-front about what you can afford.

Many dentist offices offer financial options to help patients manage the cost of care, including pretreatment estimates and payment plans. If you get an estimate that seems especially high, talk through the items and consider getting a second opinion. It never hurts to ask the office for a discount.

If you need a lower-cost alternative, consider looking into dental schools, which often offer discounted care, or , which use sliding scales based on a patient’s income.

3. Seeing Your Dentist Regularly Can Help Keep Costs Low

Sarah Olim, a general dentist in Katy, Texas, encourages her patients to come in for visits every six months.

“The best thing that you can do to mitigate the cost of going to the dentist is make sure that you are going regularly and trying to take care of things early,” she said.

Olim welcomes patients no matter how long it’s been since their last visit. But she cautioned that patients who wait a few years between visits may find their appointments are more expensive and more uncomfortable.

The reason? Dental problems often don’t resolve on their own. For example, a small cavity that needs a quick filling might cost $200. If left untreated, it could turn into a larger issue requiring a root canal and crown — and cost thousands.

Your dentist will also encourage you to follow the best preventive maintenance: brushing your teeth for two minutes twice a day. Olim tells her patients to use a timer or listen to a favorite song to make sure they brush long enough.

People and Policy

Federal lawmakers have tried to increase children’s access to dental insurance. Under the Affordable Care Act, dental care is considered , so health insurance plans on the individual marketplace must offer dental coverage for those 18 or younger. State Medicaid programs are also for children.

Emily Siner at Nashville Public Radio contributed to this report.

HealthQ is a health series from reporters Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer, approachable guides to an unapproachable health care system. It’s a collaboration between Nashville Public Radio and ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .