BOOK LAUNCH! Miranda Yaver, "Coverage Denied" (w/Sarah Boden)

We are honored to host local author Miranda Yaver, assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburgh, in store to celebrate the publucation of Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States. Tens of millions of insurance claims are denied every year, yet little attention has been paid to their scale or real impact on patients’ health and finances. Coverage Denied combines compelling patient and doctor interviews with disturbing original data to show how these denials deepen health and economic inequality. Miranda Yaver will be in conversation with Sarah Boden, local journalist with NPR and Spotlight PA.

“Miranda Yaver has produced a deeply disturbing interrogation of America’s deeply dysfunctional health care system. Brilliantly researched, with stories that will enrage you, Coverage Denied is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand why America’s health insurance bureaucracy can be so arbitrary and heartless – and why it doesn’t have to be that way.” Jonathan Cohn, author of The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage

“Infuriating and original, urgent and expert, Coverage Denied lays bare the power of private health insurers to decide who gets care – and who does not. Combining path-breaking survey research, compelling stories, and a keen understanding of America’s distinctive policy landscape, Miranda Yaver has written the book on insurance coverage denials, why they cause so much hardship and inequality, and how they must be fixed.” Jacob S. Hacker, author of The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream

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, 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.

SARAH BODEN covers health, science and technology for 90.5 WESA, Pittsburgh's NPR station. Before coming to Pittsburgh in November 2017, she was a reporter for Iowa Public Radio where she covered a range of issues, including the 2016 Iowa Caucuses. Sarah's reporting has appeared on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition Saturday and WBUR's Here and Now. She has won multiple awards, including a regional Edward R. Murrow for her story on a legal challenge to Iowa's felon voting ban. She was the 2022 Association of Healthcare Journalists Reporting Fellow on Health Care Performance.

MIRANDA YAVER is an assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburgh. She was the 2025 Author-in-Residence at the Roosevelt Institute. Her op-eds and other health care commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post’s Monkey Cage Blog, STATNews, and The Hill.

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