FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, October 10, 2024
NEW YORK — The Loeb Awards, the highest honor in business and financial journalism, announced Thursday night that STAT reporters Casey Ross and Bob Herman won the 2024 investigative prize for “Denied by AI: Consequences for Sick and Vulnerable Americans.” The series revealed an explicit strategy by the nation’s largest health insurer to use a flawed computer algorithm to cut off care for seniors, increasing profits in its Medicare Advantage business at the expense of vulnerable older Americans.
The award was presented at a ceremony held at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center in New York. The winners were chosen from a list of finalists from 491 entries, representing the work of more than 200 journalists across local, regional, national, and global media outlets.
The series had significant impact, leading to the filing of class action suits against the nation’s largest insurers, and an investigation by a U.S. Senate subcommittee and a separate inquiry by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which also stiffened regulations on the use of AI and unveiled plans to audit insurers’ denials for Medicare Advantage patients in 2024.
In accepting the award on behalf of himself and Casey Ross, Herman said, “We hope our series brings more attention, and a sense of urgency, to a growing crisis: More older adults and people with disabilities are being herded into a privatized version of Medicare, and their ability to recover from serious illnesses and injuries could be at the discretion of an algorithm or piece of artificial intelligence. It’s a warning of how unregulated technology imperils the care of the country’s most vulnerable people — all while being funded on the backs of taxpayers.”
STAT was also honored at the Loeb banquet as a finalist in the explanatory category for its yearlong series, “The Obesity Revolution.” It chronicled the rise of a new class of weight loss-inducing drugs and their potential to transform patients’ lives for the better — but also to worsen inequities, increase fat bias, strain national health spending, and make billions for drug companies. The reporters cited as finalists were Elaine Chen, Megan Molteni, Nicholas Florko, Isabella Cueto, and Matthew Herper.
Ross and Herman are also part of a team of reporters on an ongoing, related project this year — “Health Care’s Colossus” — revealing how UnitedHealth Group wields its unrivaled physician empire to boost its profits and expand its influence.
“This recognition is important to us because it shows that, though we are a relatively young media company, we are operating at the very highest levels of our profession,” said Rick Berke, co-founder and executive editor of STAT. “Our North Star has been to deliver trusted and authoritative coverage of health and medicine that pulls no punches.”
Ross was recently promoted to STAT’s chief investigative reporter for data and technology, and Herman is STAT’s business of health correspondent. Their series was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. It won other major honors, including the Poynter Batten Medal, the NIHCM Award, two Online Journalism Awards, the Sigma Delta Chi award, and the National Headliner Award. The series was a finalist for several other top journalism prizes, including the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the 2023 Investigative Reporters & Editors Awards, and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing “Best in Business” Awards.
The last STAT winner of a Loeb award was Ed Silverman, who in 2018 won the commentary award for his “Pharmalot View” column.
The Loeb Awards were established in 1957 by Gerald Loeb, a founding partner of E.F. Hutton, and they have been presented by the UCLA Anderson School of Management since 1973. Find the full list of The Loeb Award winners here and view all of STAT’s recent awards here.
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About STAT
STAT is a global news site that was launched in 2015 to deliver trusted and authoritative journalism about health, medicine, and the life sciences. Millions of new readers turned to us as we sounded the alarm early on about the Covid-19 pandemic. Our journalists go deep in tough-minded coverage of the business of making medicines, health tech, science, and public health.
STAT’s main newsroom is located in Boston, with reporters also in Washington, New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and London. www.statnews.com
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