Rachel Spahnn

Sick by Design

News EN ↓ 2 episodes

Through personal stories, expert insight, and deep dives into the systems shaping American healthcare, each episode explores how policy decisions translate into lived experience — and why the consequences are often felt most by the people with the least power to navigate them. From mental health services and insurance denials to hospital closures and public health failures, this show examines the gap between how healthcare is supposed to work and what actually happens to people inside the system.

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Author

Rachel Spahnn

Episodes

How We Built a Fragile Mental Health System 01.06.2026 30:31

In Episode 1, we explored what happened after Idaho cut Medicaid-funded Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) services for people living with severe mental illness. Providers warned that patients would become destabilized. Some warned that people could die. According to subsequent reporting, several patients did. But the deeper question is: how did American mental healthcare become fragile enough th...

When Care Disappears Overnight: Idaho’s Mental Health Cuts 19.05.2026 13:46

In Idaho, cuts to a Medicaid-funded mental health crisis program left some of the state’s most vulnerable patients without intensive community-based support. In this first episode of Sick by Design , we examine the human stories behind those cuts — and how healthcare policy decisions translate into real-world consequences for patients, families, providers, and communities. Through reporting, polic...