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

Tens of millions of medical claims are denied every year, yet little scholarly attention has been paid to their scale or impact on patients' health and financial security. Coverage Denied combines compelling patient and physician narratives with original survey data to show how denials deepen health and economic inequality.

In the aftermath of the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024, everyday Americans took to social media to share stories of the challenges they'd faced trying to navigate the American health insurance system. Why did this event strike such a nerve with the American public? For a topic as central to the lives of Americans as health care, there is no book that examines the impact of coverage denial, whereby health insurers decide whether to cover health services that appear to be within the scope of a plan's benefits – not until now. In Coverage Denied, health policy professor Miranda Yaver offers a sobering account of the ways in which coverage denials damage patient health and exacerbate inequalities along income, education, and racial lines. Combining rich interview material with original survey data, Yaver draws critical attention to the tens of millions of medical claims denied by health insurers every year, shining a necessary light on our inequitable health care system.