Sick Care

On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was executed in broad daylight on a busy Manhattan street. The horrific act of violence shook the world, and as investigators searched for answers, public discourse turned to our broken medical system—where profit often comes before patients, impacting Americans of every stripe.

Sick Care is a gripping investigative podcast about these systemic failures of the U.S. medical industry, and the tragic events that expose its deadly flaws. Stakeholders from across the political spectrum now recognize the unsustainable status quo.

Every day, millions face an impossible choice: battle an unyielding bureaucracy for care or risk their lives waiting. Social media erupted with stories of heartbreak and preventable tragedies, reigniting urgent calls for change. Meanwhile, journalists raced to uncover the truth about the web of corporate influence that has shaped the industry for decades.

For Adam Stone, publisher of The Examiner News, a small newspaper group in New York’s Hudson Valley, the nation’s wake-up call was a story he had already been investigating for two years. Since late 2022, his local investigative reporting on Optum, a UnitedHealth subsidiary, uncovered whistleblower allegations, personal accounts of mistreatment, and DOJ scrutiny—issues that would soon resonate on a national scale.

Produced by No Smiling, Little Everywhere, and Examiner Media, Sick Care builds on Stone’s reporting, with Peabody-winning audio producer Sean Cannon shaping an urgent, eye-opening narrative. Through exclusive interviews, expert analysis, and hard-hitting storytelling, Sick Care exposes the human cost of a system designed to deny care and profit off illness—and also explores what we can do to treat the metastasizing disease.

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