In my latest investigation, I learned that EviCore stands out for its size, its connections and, doctors say, its propensity to say no. Through its contracts, EviCore covers more than 100 million people — far more than any single health insurer. It’s gotten so big by promising insurers a 3-to-1 return on investment — that is, for every $1 spent on EviCore, the insurer would pay out $3 less on medical care and other costs. My newest reporting shows how EviCore had contracts that would result in more money the more it turned down doctors’ requests, called prior authorization. You can call it the denials for dollars business.

EviCore says it scrutinizes requests to make sure that procedures recommended by doctors are safe, necessary and cost-effective.

“They ran the career people out. … This business about politicizing the civil service, that’s a problem. It’s something that should concern all Americans.”

— Steve Ellis, former deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management, referring to a 2020 exodus of federal workers when former President Donald Trump moved the bureau’s headquarters from Washington to Colorado. 

BLM employees who watched the relocation told ProPublica that the move out of Washington felt like naked politicking and the latest swing of the pendulum between administrations has pointed the agency in wildly different directions. If elected, Trump says he’ll move thousands of federal workers out of Washington, and some worry that Trump’s plan to relocate certain agencies would put the environment and public health at risk. 

At rallies and revival meetings across the country, activists from the Christian right are urging people, many of whom doubt the 2020 election results, to sign up to work the polls. ProPublica and Wisconsin Watch reporter Phoebe Petrovic went to one event — “a mashup of a Christian tent revival and MAGA rally” — to investigate further. Watch to discover what she found out and read the story.