Susan Carter

Susan Carter is Senior Correspondent: Health, Medicine & Public Policy at Just Right News, where she leads coverage of Health, Medicine & Public Policy and authors the signature series The Cost of Care. Born October 27, 1980, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and now based in Baltimore, Maryland, she brings a Midwestern work ethic and a sharp, numbers-first mindset to some of the most complex questions in American life: how we heal, how we pay, and how policy choices ripple through families and communities. Susan’s perspective was shaped early by a front-row view of the healthcare system’s promises and trade-offs. Growing up in a household that balanced caregiving and small-business realities, she saw both the compassion of bedside care and the strain of premiums, deductibles, and compliance costs that can make the difference between hiring a new employee or keeping the lights on. Those experiences anchored a belief that good intentions are not enough—that accountability, transparency, and respect for personal choice are essential ingredients of compassionate policy. Before stepping into her role at Just Right News, Susan spent years embedded where real decisions get made and felt: in community clinics, at local health boards, and in statehouse hearing rooms where a single line of legislative text can reset the incentives for an entire industry. She learned to follow the money, read a budget, and spot the gap between press release rhetoric and outcomes on the ground. That habit—pairing human stories with hard data—defines her reporting style. At The Cost of Care, Susan examines the forces driving prices and access: consolidation among hospital systems, the murky role of middlemen, barriers to competition, scope-of-practice rules, and the fragile finances of rural and inner-city providers. She has chronicled the rise of telehealth, the promise and pitfalls of price-transparency mandates, and the way regulation can either encourage innovation or choke it off. Her guiding questions are simple: Does this policy expand choices for patients and clinicians? Does it reward value, not volume? Does it respect taxpayers? Living in Baltimore sharpens her focus on the intersection of health and public safety, maternal care, addiction, and the social infrastructure that helps people get and stay well. She is a frequent moderator of community forums and town halls, known for plain-spoken questions, careful sourcing, and a commitment to airing diverse viewpoints without losing sight of first principles: individual liberty, local control, and fiscal prudence. Colleagues describe Susan as relentless about facts and respectful in debate. Readers know her for explainers that cut through jargon, interviews that let practitioners speak candidly, and investigations that illuminate the unseen costs hiding in a system too often designed for administrators rather than patients. Her mission at Just Right News is straightforward: bring clarity, elevate practical solutions, and hold institutions—public and private—to the same standard of stewardship. Follow Susan Carter’s reporting across Health, Medicine & Public Policy and The Cost of Care for grounded, solutions-minded journalism that puts patients and taxpayers first.