Many Americans are worried about how they will afford care if they get really sick, and policymakers are responding to this concern with a whole range of complicated policies. Are you confused about what these policies mean for you, your family, and the health system in general?

You’re not alone, so on this episode of The Dose, host Shanoor Seervai sits down with the Commonwealth Fund’s Sara Collins to break down what she learned in her latest survey on American’s views about health care.

They discuss how Medicare for All, and other Democratic proposals, would change the health system; they also talk about open enrollment, an ongoing court case on the future of the Affordable Care Act, and much more.

What do you think is the best way to fix our health care system? Send us an email on [email protected].

African American women die of pregnancy-related causes at three times the rate for white women, even after accounting for income, education, and access to other resources.

What is it about being born black in America that leads to such outcomes?

To answer this question, Shanoor Seervai interviews Kennetha Gaines, clinical nurse manager for UCSF Health in San Francisco, for the latest episode of The Dose podcast. Gaines, a Pozen Commonwealth Fund Fellow in Minority Health at Yale University, speaks candidly about her personal experiences and her work to transform the way health care providers treat black women.

Does the health care system treat people differently based on race? Tell us what you think – send an email to [email protected].

Each day, Philadelphia’s fire department responds to nearly a thousand emergencies, whether it’s saving someone from opioid overdose or helping a person having trouble getting out of bed.

What would it be like to spend a day in the life of the person who runs emergency medical services for a big city? Listen to the latest episode of The Dose podcast to find out how Philadelphia EMS deputy commissioner Crystal Yates deals with crises on a daily basis.

Yates, one of the first recipients of the Pozen-Commonwealth Fund Fellowship at Yale University, has made it her mission to find innovative ways to come to the rescue of people with no other resources to turn to.

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Sickle cell disease is a life-threatening blood disorder that affects around 100,000 Americans, mostly African Americans. In addition to coping with the disease itself, many face a host of other challenges, like getting to the hospital for treatment, paying bills, and figuring out where their next meal will come from.

On the latest episode of The Dose, Dr. Cecelia Calhoun talks about her work helping children and young adults with sickle cell cope with these issues day to day. Calhoun is one of the first experts to receive the Pozen-Commonwealth Fund Fellowship at Yale University to advance her work on health disparities.

Many poor Americans get health coverage through Medicaid. Last year, with encouragement from the Trump administration, some states decided to try and change their Medicaid programs. For people to be eligible for health coverage, they needed to show that they were working, or met some other requirement.

On this episode of The Dose, Ben Sommers, a professor of health policy, and economics at the Harvard School of Public Health, talks to host Shanoor Seervai about what happened in Arkansas the first state to implement a “work requirements” program.

The program was intended to promote better health and employment – instead, it led to more than 17,000 people losing health coverage in just three months, and no significant increase in the number of people with jobs.

Listen to learn more, and then subscribe to The Dose wherever you get your podcasts.

Should having a job be a requirement to get health coverage through Medicaid? Tell us what you think – send an email to [email protected].

Most Americans are indignant about high prescription drug prices. But for women living in poverty, life-saving medicines are often completely out of reach. Many poor women skip getting needed care because of the high cost, putting themselves and their families at risk. On the latest episode of The Dose, host Shanoor Seervai sits down with two women who have found innovative ways to tackle this problem. Jessica Grossman, who works for the nonprofit pharmaceutical company Medicines360, sells medicines at a lower price so that all women can get the treatment they need. Reforming the complex U.S. patent system, one of the root causes of high drug prices, is how Priti Krishtel, with the Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge (I-MAK), is trying to remove barriers to treatment. Have you or someone you know gone without a medicine because it’s too expensive? Send us an email on [email protected].

When a homeless person gets discharged from hospital, he needs a safe place to recover. When a poor patient faces a high co-pay for a medicine she needs, she is often too embarrassed to tell her doctor – instead, she may not fill the prescription.

Doctors don’t typically try to solve these social problems, but some want to do better at understanding patients’ lived experiences. In the latest episode of The Dose, Ishani Ganguli and Janine Knudsen, both primary care providers at innovative clinics, talk to Shanoor Seervai about how they are trying to treat a patient as a whole person, rather than focusing on a single medical condition. They discuss the successes and challenges of caring for patients in their daily practice in light of the findings of a recent survey of people living with serious illness in the United States.

Several bills introduced in Congress over the past year seek to make health care more accessible to all Americans while also tamping down growing health care costs. In particular, “Medicare for All” proposals have garnered a lot of recent attention.

How would these proposals change the way Americans get health care? On this episode of The Dose, Shanoor Seervai sits down with the Commonwealth Fund’s Sara Collins to break down the different options policymakers are weighing as they try to reform our health care system.

When Americans talk about the Canadian health system, they often bring up wait times. But how long do people really have to wait to get care? This week, we talk to Christopher Hayes, the chief medical information officer at an academic and research health care organization in Canada. In spite of being neighbors, the U.S. and Canada take dramatically different approaches to health care. Join us as we try to untangle what this means for people on both sides of the border when they go to see a doctor.

In Cuba, the neighborhood is not only the center of public life, it is the center of the health care system as well. Primary care is delivered at a consoltorio, a community-based clinic staffed by doctors, nurses, and even statisticians.

When Commonwealth Fund staff traveled to Cuba recently to learn about its primary care system, they discovered that the secret sauce missing from primary care in the United States might just be the role of community.

On this episode of The Dose, we talk about how cultural differences play out in the way Cuba and the U.S. approach the delivery of health care. As a bonus, you’ll also hear a listener’s response to our recent episode on “Medicare for All.”