Affordable Care Act
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Open Enrollment for 2021 Coverage

The Affordable Care Act (ACA; aka Obamacare) Health Insurance Marketplace began its ninth Open Enrollment period yesterday. American healthcare consumers can sign up on the federal insurance exchange at healthcare.gov or through their state marketplaces. In recent years there has been increased confusion surrounding Open Enrollment due to changes (and attempted changes) made to the ACA under the Trump administration, leading to the U.S. uninsured rate to rise for the first time since 2014 and the largest single-year increase since 2008.   When Obama was president and launched the ACA, Open Enrollment period ran 90 days beginning November 1 and […]

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Affordable Care Act, Healthcare Reform
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Healthcare in the 2020 Election

The United States is in the midst of a presidential election at a time when healthcare is a major concern for Americans, even before the global pandemic. We have covered many of the changes to healthcare during the Trump administration as well as proposals from the candidates during the primaries, and continue to strive to empower and educate our audience on the policies that affect their healthcare costs. As such, we felt it remains important to cover the healthcare records and policy proposals of the major candidates.   Incumbent President Donald Trump ran on a platform of abolishing the Affordable […]

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Health, NeedyMeds
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Talk About Your Medicines to Improve Adherence

October has been observed as Talk About Your Medicines Month (TAYMM) for 35 years. Started by the BeMedWise Program at NeedyMeds (formerly known as the National Council on Patient Information [NCPIE]), the awareness month is an annual opportunity to spotlight safe medicine use with the goal of improved health outcomes. This year’s theme is Medication Adherence – On Track With Your Meds and Your Health. Medication adherence is a vital part of maintaining your health. Our goal is to empower patients to maximize the benefits while minimizing the risks of the medications they are taking, and provide the tools they […]

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Mental Health
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Suicide Prevention

Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States. Each year over 45,000 people in America kill themselves — a rate that has increased 41% since 1999. Mental health conditions are often seen as the cause of suicide, but 54% of those who commit suicide do not have a known mental illness.    Suicide is rarely caused by a single factor, and is also affected by personal relationships, substance use, physical health, and stress from jobs, money, legal issues, and/or housing. The realities of the COVID-19 pandemic and systemic injustices have also had a chilling effect on Americans’ […]

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Health, Safety
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The Costs of Coronavirus – Part 2

The effects COVID-19 has had on healthcare have been a significant part of nearly every article written here since March. The last time we looked into the costs associated with coronavirus infections, things were very different. We didn’t know what the summer would look like or how schools would reopen. Daily briefings from the White House were still happening.   The first U.S. case of COVID-19 was discovered in late January. By the end of February, there were 24 cases and one American death. In the first few weeks of the outbreak testing was very limited, sometimes as few as […]

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About Us

Welcome to the NeedyMeds Voice! We look forward to presenting you with timely, provocative pieces on healthcare reform, patient advocacy, medication and healthcare access, and other health-related news. Our goals are to educate, enlighten, and elucidate; together, we will try to make sense of the myriad and ongoing healthcare-related changes in the U.S. today.