Boston Globe Media

Steward Health Care was a promising hospital chain. What went wrong? A new Globe Spotlight Team story reveals a cautionary tale about the role of private equity in American health care and the corporate push for profits — often at the expense of patients.

Globe Opinion: With 10 days off from the ICU, registered nurse Ernesto Barbieri picked up the guitar to take his mind off work — “It’d been a dark stretch,” he says in an animated story illustrated by graphic journalist Jess Ruliffson. The calluses he developed by practicing, ironically, helped him play more elegantly — “But calluses are weirdly fragile,” he says. And if he wasn’t careful, Barbieri risked turning his calluses into open wounds. Explore the story: https://trib.al/hArPjJ9

Apply now to be named one of New England's Fastest-Growing Companies by The Boston Globe. www.Globe.com/fastest

On the Street: There aren’t many places around here quite like Moody Street. The six-block shopping strip in Waltham has a little bit of everything, from a flooring shop to a photo studio to not one, but two, Indian grocers. But ever since a COVID-era experiment in outdoor dining, when the city closed the street for months at a time to help the restaurants weather the pandemic, there has been a roiling debate over how Moody Street should best be used — and, by extension, who it is for. https://trib.al/Q9lkCKX

Massachusetts has roughly the same number of jobs as it did in February 2020, just before the pandemic hit. Nationally, payrolls have risen 4.6 percent. Larry Edelman explains why this is not good.

Why did it take investigators so long to support what Sandra Birchmore’s loved ones had been saying from the beginning? We may not know the whole story of the 23-year-old’s death, if not for a close look at the object found beside her body: her phone. This is the first of a two-part story.

Bold Types: How do you construct a building on air? If you’re Steve Samuels, it takes both patience and engineering prowess. Samuels is both principal and namesake of Samuels & Associates, a longtime Boston-based development firm that recently completed the construction of the Lyrik building at the intersection of Newbury and Boylston streets, the first “air-rights” construction project over the Massachusetts Turnpike in over 40 years. The project is two buildings, an office tower that houses CarGurus and will soon be home to the US headquarters of Lego, and a Citizen M hotel. https://trib.al/gHzx8pi

The Federal Reserve Board's soft landing is still on course. But the ETA has been extended. Boston Globe Media's Larry Edelman explains why.

Massachusetts has some of the highest health insurance premiums in the country. Why? There's been a whole lot of talk in recent weeks about the state of health insurance in the US, where the average annual contribution by a private-sector employee to individual health coverage stood at $1,640 in 2023. In Massachusetts, it was quite a bit higher: $2,018. For my latest for Boston Globe Media, I spoke with Amy Lischko at Tufts University, Ashley Blackburn at Health Care For All, Lora Pellegrini at Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, and Paul Shafer at Boston University to try to explain why coverage in the Bay State can be so expensive. Read more:

Massachusetts has some of the highest health insurance premiums in the country, with the average annual contribution by a private-sector employee clocking in at $2,018 in 2023, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Meanwhile, the national average contribution that year was considerably less, at $1,640. What makes Massachusetts premiums so high? Health policy experts and advocates say that, at least in the Bay State, the root cause of these frustrations do not lie — at least primarily — with profiteering insurers. Instead, experts said, insurance premium hikes are mostly fueled by the mounting cost of health care itself. Read more: https://trib.al/1c810uT