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Denied Care, Divided Nation: How America Fails Its Sickest Patients—and the People Fighting Back

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Across America, families are being broken not by illness alone, but by the quiet cruelty of denial letters from insurance companies.

Published

5 months ago

October 8, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

Across America, families are being broken not by illness alone, but by the quiet cruelty of denial letters from insurance companies. Patients in crisis are told their care is not medically necessary. Others learn too late that their coverage has been canceled. The denials come swiftly, the appeals take months, and the system often feels rigged against the very people it was built to protect.

A ProPublica investigation revealed just how devastating those denials can be. In North Carolina, Teressa Sutton-Schulman and her husband, identified as “L” to protect his privacy, endured escalating mental health crises. After two suicide attempts in 11 days, Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield repeatedly denied payment for psychiatric treatment. Hidden on page seven of a denial letter was a single line about a right to an external review. Desperate, Sutton-Schulman filed for that review. An independent physician overturned the insurer’s decision and forced the company to pay for more than $70,000 in care, ProPublica reported. “Appeal, appeal, appeal, appeal,” said Kaye Pestaina, a vice president at the nonprofit health policy group KFF, who has studied external appeals. “That’s all you have,” she told ProPublica.

The right to an external appeal was expanded by the Affordable Care Act in 2010, but the protections are uneven. Karen Pollitz, who helped draft the federal regulations under the Obama administration, told ProPublica that insurance lobbyists weakened the process. She said only a fraction of denials are eligible for external review and, in most cases, insurers still choose the reviewers who decide the fate of patients’ appeals. “There are all kinds of ways they could strengthen the laws and the regulations to hold health plans more accountable,” she said. Even when laws exist, few Americans know where to turn. That is why state-based consumer assistance programs, established under the Affordable Care Act, have become a vital safety net — though many states never created them, and others have defunded theirs. About 30 states still operate programs that guide patients through internal and external appeals, while the rest leave families largely alone.

“Every state needs one of these programs,” said Cheryl Fish-Parcham, director of private coverage at Families USA. “Health care is so complicated, and people really need experts to turn to,” she told ProPublica. Those experts are often housed in attorney general offices, state insurance departments, or nonprofit agencies. Maryland’s Health Education and Advocacy Unit, for example, has been a lifeline for residents struggling with denied care. “The numbers are low because some people just give up. They’re frustrated. They’re tired. They’re battling cancer,” said Kimberly Cammarata, the unit’s director. “And sometimes the information about why the claim was denied or about how to appeal is terribly unclear. A lot of these outcome letters will say you have a right to an external appeal, but they don’t exactly tell you where to go,” she told ProPublica.

In New York, the Community Service Society operates a similar program, where advocates draft detailed appeals on behalf of patients. “We can help people write their appeals,” said Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society. “We write appeals for them, sometimes going through thousands of pages of medical records and writing 15- to 20-page appeals,” she told ProPublica. Across the nation, CMS documents show an uneven patchwork of help. In California, consumers can call the Department of Insurance Ombudsman at 1-800-927-4357 for help with denied claims. In Georgia, the Office of Insurance and Fire Safety Commissioner fields appeals and complaints from residents at 1-800-656-2298. In Illinois, the Department of Insurance maintains a consumer hotline at 1-866-445-5364. New York’s Department of Financial Services handles cases through its consumer division, while Pennsylvania residents can reach the state Insurance Department at 1-877-881-6388. Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia all continue to run active programs through their respective attorney general or ombudsman offices.

Still, millions of Americans remain in states without fully funded consumer assistance programs. For those individuals, even knowing that an external appeal exists is a struggle. ProPublica found that the process is buried under jargon, hidden in small print, or placed deep within denial letters that few patients have the time or emotional strength to decode. Experts say one step can make a difference: persistence. “Appeal, appeal, appeal” has become a mantra not only for patients but for advocates who have watched insurers exploit confusion and fatigue to wear people down.

For urgent cases, the law allows expedited reviews that must be resolved within 72 hours. If the independent reviewer overturns the denial, the insurer is required by law to pay. When that happens, the victory is binding. But the system was never designed for easy victories. Most patients never reach that point. Many die waiting. And yet, despite the exhaustion and the heartbreak, people keep fighting. From North Carolina to California, from New York to Georgia, they continue to challenge billion-dollar corporations that have learned to profit from denial. What unites them is not just the pursuit of care, but a demand for fairness — a demand that too often goes unanswered. “Every state needs one of these programs,” Fish-Parcham said again. “Health care is so complicated, and people really need experts to turn to.”

Stacy M. Brown

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#NNPA BlackPress

Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

3 days ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

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Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

6 days ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke

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PRESS ROOM: NBA Hall of Fame Nominee Terry Cummings Joins 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to Launch Victory & Values Initiative

NNPA NEWSWIRE — NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th.

Published

6 days ago

February 27, 2026

admin

Cummings becomes an honorary member, joining other role model sports stars

NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings has officially become an honorary member of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County, marking a powerful new chapter for the 100 Black Men and youth development across the region.

Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th. The moment signified more than membership — it marked the launch of the organization’s transformative new platform, the Victory & Values Initiative.

The Victory & Values Initiative is a groundbreaking youth development program designed to empower elementary and middle school students through a dynamic blend of sports, mentorship, and STEM exposure. The initiative focuses on building health, discipline, character, leadership, and access to opportunity — creating pathways for long-term academic and personal success.

“This is about more than sports,” said Cummings during the ceremony. “It’s about using the platform of athletics to teach life lessons, create access, and build the next generation of leaders.”

The induction ceremony also featured notable guests including NASCAR’s newest Star Driver, Lavar Scott and NASCAR Director of Athletic Performance, Phil Horton, who joined Cummings for a powerful Victory & Values Town Hall discussion. The Town Hall was moderated by renowned Sports Emcee John Hollins and focused on leadership, resilience, discipline, and the importance of mentorship in shaping young lives.

A “Day at NASCAR” for 75+ Youth

Cummings wasted no time getting to work. On his first full day as an honorary member, he joined his new brothers of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to host a “Day at NASCAR,” escorting more than 75 youth to a once-in-a-lifetime experience at EchoPark Motor Speedway (formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway).

The youth participants received behind-the-scenes access including: an exclusive tour of Pit Row, access to the Garage Area and exploration of the interactive Fan Zone.

The experience culminated with a surprise meet-and-greet and Q&A session with NASCAR Superstar Bubba Wallace, who shared insights on perseverance, preparation, and breaking barriers in professional sports.

The day served as a living example of the ‘Victory & Values’ Initiative in action — exposing youth to new industries, expanding their vision for the future, and connecting them directly with high- level mentors and role models.

Building Leaders Through Access and Mentorship

The 100 Black Men of DeKalb County – a chapter of the largest, national mentoring organization in the county – continues to expand its footprint with programs focused on academic excellence, economic empowerment, leadership development, and health & wellness.

The launch of ‘Victory & Values’ represents a strategic expansion of the organization’s impact

intentionally integrating athletics and STEM to engage youth at an early age while reinforcing core principles such as integrity, accountability, teamwork, and perseverance.

“Our mission has always been to mentor the next generation,” said Vaughn Irons, President-Elect of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County. “With Terry Cummings joining the brotherhood, along with partners in NASCAR and professional sports, we are creating unprecedented access and exposure for our youth. Victory & Values is about turning inspiration into structured opportunity.”

By connecting elementary and middle school students to professional athletes, executives, STEM professionals, and community leaders, the initiative aims to:

Increase youth exposure to careers in sports business, engineering, and performance science
Strengthen mentorship pipelines
Promote physical wellness and mental resilience
Build character-driven leadership at an early age

Open Invitation to Youth and Families

All youth are invited to participate in the Victory & Values Initiative, along with the other countless, impactful programs offered by the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County.

Parents and guardians seeking mentorship, leadership development, academic enrichment, and transformative exposure opportunities for their children are encouraged to connect with the organization.

As NBA Legend Terry Cummings’ induction demonstrates, Victory & Values is more than a program — it is a movement designed to build champions in life, not just in sports.

For more information about the Victory & Values Initiative or to enroll a student, contact: 100 Black Men of DeKalb County at Phone at 404.241.1338, info@100bmod.org or Tee Foxx at 404.791.6525,