Dear Readers,
I’m thrilled to share the news today that four STAT reporters have won the George W. Polk Award, one of the most prestigious honors in American journalism, for their series that highlights how UnitedHealth Group wields its unrivaled physician empire to boost its profits and expand its influence.
Long before the killing last December of a top executive sparked extraordinary interest in United Health, reporters Bob Herman, Tara Bannow, Casey Ross, and Lizzy Lawrence and their editors recognized that the conglomerate’s anticompetitive behavior and emergence as a modern-day Standard Oil set it apart and deserved months of our investigative focus.
In awarding the Polk for health care reporting, the judges said STAT’s “Health Care’s Colossus” was “a penetrating six-part series examining the massive reach of UnitedHealth Group into every aspect of a broken health care system. The series focuses on how the conglomerate milks the system for profit at the expense of taxpayers, patients and clinicians by providing assembly-line care that treats millions of patients as products to be monetized.”
This is STAT’s third Polk award over the last five years. Helen Branswell won for public service for her prescient coverage of Covid-19; the team of Matthew Herper, Adam Feuerstein, and Damian Garde won in the medical reporting category for their investigation revealing that Biogen used a FDA back channel to win approval for a controversial treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
John Darnton, curator of the Polk awards, said the winners announced today reflected “exceptional and occasionally remarkable reporting” and “represent the best of the best.”
We also learned last week that the Colossus series is a finalist in another prestigious competition, the National Magazine Awards, in the public interest category. STAT is also a finalist for general excellence among special interest publications.
As shockwaves from Washington rattle the world of health and science, STAT’s tough-minded and authoritative reporting from D.C., around the country, and in Europe is more essential than ever. Over the last few days, we have broken story after story, including the Trump administration planning to slash thousands of health care jobs, the expected devastation of a “crown jewel’’ of public health, and consequences for the health of every American.
Day after day, new subscribers are flocking to our site in record numbers for these stories.
If you read our free stories but do not subscribe, I’d be grateful if you sign up. Our work is costly, and we rely on subscribers to fund it. Most of our exclusive stories are available only to subscribers.
To get a behind-the-scenes taste of how we see our mission at STAT, I hope you’ll watch this video in which I interview the four award-winning reporters about how they produced the Colossus series. You’ll understand why I am so proud of what they’ve accomplished.
I pledge to you that we are steadfast in our determination to continue delivering the most impactful journalism about the political forces, power brokers, personalities, and technologies that are affecting the health of every one of us.
