Miranda Yaver, "Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

About this episode

Miranda Yaver discusses her book on how health insurers contribute to inequality in the United States.

Miranda Yaver’s new book, Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States (Cambridge UP, 2026), has lots of examples and incidents that will seem quite familiar to anyone who has dealt with health insurance coverage in the United States. In a sense, this book speaks to everyone because we have all been in situations like the ones that Yaver hears about from her interviewees. We know what it is like to have a test or a scan or a prescription ordered by a medical professional for us only to have an insurance company tell us that we cannot have that test or scan or medicine. Yaver dives into this quagmire and unearths the constellations of causes and reasons why this is now the essential operating process for much of American health insurance. By unpacking these causes and reasons, Coverage Denied clarifies so many of our experiences and helps us to think about the myriad ways in which health insurers and health insurance contribute to inequality in the United States, across a range of dimensions including race, socio-economic position, gender, sexuality, ability, and more. Part of what Yaver’s research finds is that very few individuals appeal coverage…

People in this episode

Guest: Miranda Yaver

Topics covered

• health insurance
• inequality
• administrative burden
• coverage denial
• socio-economic factors

Keywords

• health insurance
• inequality
• coverage denial
• administrative burden
• socio-economic position
• race
• gender

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Cambridge UP

Books & works: Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States

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