Under a new two-year pilot project, local and regional authorities are covering the costs of “museum prescriptions” issued by doctors who believe their patients could benefit from visits to any of the town’s four museums as part of their treatment.

People with severe asthma insured by BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois may soon face a new hurdle in accessing a treatment that providers say is critically important to keeping certain patients alive and well.

Finland is the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Report 2025 published Thursday. Other Nordic countries are also once again at the top of the happiness rankings in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford.

A pharmacy benefit manager negotiates prices with wholesalers, sets reimbursement rates on drugs and compiles the lists of which medicines an insurer will cover. But critics describe the industry as focused on self-enrichment and in need of regulation.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in 2023, diversity is in decline at medical schools nationwide.

State Rep. Bob Morgan (D-Deerfield) is sponsoring two bills that would place restrictions on the use of AI in online therapy services as well as AI use in decision-making processes that determine a person’s health insurance coverage.

“It’s like a storm that takes over your body,” Marta Cerda said of her struggles with long COVID. “It’s just a nightmare for me and I’m trying to maintain hope that there will be these treatments and cures, but it’s sometimes very hard to have hope.”

More than 1.2 million Americans have died from COVID-19. Despite having one of the most sophisticated health care systems in the world, the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic fell well short when compared to other developed nations.

States and the federal government jointly pay for Medicaid, which offers nearly-free health care coverage for roughly 80 million poor and disabled Americans, including millions of children. It cost $880 billion to operate in 2023.

Cuts to Medicaid would especially impact the most vulnerable in communities, such as low-income individuals and people with disabilities, according to state Democratic congressional members.

Gov. JB Pritzker’s recently unveiled 2026 budget proposal includes a controversial cut. It proposes to get rid of two programs that allow immigrants without legal status to receive healthcare coverage.

The report found more than 6,000 people enrolled in the state-funded programs were classified as “undocumented” despite actually having social security numbers. Some of those people were green card holders who would have instead qualified for health coverage like Medicaid or traditional insurance.

“We started this program with a simple premise: In a healthy and functioning society, no one should fall into financial ruin simply because they got sick,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said during a news conference announcing the latest round of medical debt relief.

Lawmakers are considering legalizing a controversial medical practice that proponents say could ease suffering for the terminally ill. It’s sometimes called “assisted suicide,” although physicians and advocates for the practice prefer the term “medical aid in dying.”

Pritzker’s budget team provided a rosier projection of an extra $1.5 billion in revenue growth, meaning he has to cover a $1.7 billion budget gap to balance the budget, rather than the $3.2 billion deficit previously estimated.

Chicago residents struggling with mental health issues often encounter barriers to accessing traditional care like therapists or medication.