#universal-healthcare

#universal-healthcare

New Zealand was crowned the best country for life-work balance for the third year in a row, improving on its score in 2024, thanks in part to a slight jump in minimum wage. Workers there can enjoy 32 days of paid leave, six months of fully paid maternity leave, and one of the world's highest minimum wages.

"Too often new developments don't come with the services and infrastructure they need. Our policy would get new or expanded GP surgeries up and running to serve new developments, right from the moment the first homes are sold."

The Forest of Dean could soon get its first drive through KFC, but Gloucestershire Live reported some residents were concerned it could "blight the area's beauty".

Maria Elena Healy, a registered nurse at Laguna Honda, stated, 'I am just one of the few who have been laid off. They are eliminating an entire department. These people will no longer have the specialty nursing care that we provide.'

Statistics Canada reported that the income gap measuring the difference in disposable income between the top 40 percent and bottom 40 percent reached 46.7 percentage points in 2025, up from 46.4 percentage points the previous year.

Most people leave doctor visits with prescriptions, but still feel unsure—instructions make sense, but no one asks about their life. In contrast, when a provider knows your name, remembers your story, and explains care in a way that fits you, the experience feels different—and that difference matters.

Congress has kept key drug assistance funding at $900.3 million annually since 2014. New enrollments for state programs jumped 30% from 2022 to 2024, in part because states cut off pandemic-era Medicaid assistance. As of January, at least 18 states have pulled back their Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, known as ADAPs, in some way.

Doctors told us my grandson wouldn't live past three months, but they didn't know Elijah was capable of. Today he's 7 years old, stubborn as ever and fighting every day to prove them wrong. Elijah was born with cerebral palsy. Caring for him is a full-time, all-hands-on-deck operation that includes in-home nurses, physical and occupational therapy, school support and a small pharmacy's worth of medications.

A child born this morning in Britain can expect to be in good health only until they are 61. The last 20 years of their life will be blighted by illness: dodgy hearts, painful joints, an inability to get about. Our healthy life expectancy has been dropping for years; it is now the lowest since 2011, when records began.

Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

In light of the systemic dismantling of America's public health agencies, these moves essentially create a shadow infrastructure to maintain some of what is being lost. While this is a promising development, it does nothing to stop a troubling trend that has been emerging for some time: The country is quickly becoming fragmented along partisan lines when it comes to public health.

The issue is particularly critical right now for people who have insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Prices for those plans have skyrocketed this year after Congress failed to extend critical tax credits. Without those credits, monthly premiums for ACA plans have, on average, more than doubled. Early data on ACA enrollments for 2026 not only suggests that fewer people are signing up for the plans, but also that those who are enrolling are often choosing bronze plans, which are high-deductible plans.

Asia's healthcare challenges include aging populations, rising disease, and strained infrastructure, but the crisis is better understood at the kitchen table, where families decide what conditions to treat, and what to ignore, according to their savings. While the APAC region makes up 60% of the world's population, the region accounts for a mere 22% of global healthcare spending. According to the World Health Organization, most developing Asian countries spend just 2-3% of GDP on health, and in many cases public