Policy
Advertising & Affiliate Disclosure
The Health Almanac is supported by advertising and by a small number of affiliate relationships. Here is exactly how — and where the wall sits.
How we're funded
The Health Almanac is an independent publication supported by two revenue sources:
- Display advertising — third-party ads served programmatically by advertising partners including Google AdSense. Google and its partners use cookies to serve ads based on your visits to this and other sites. See the Privacy Policy for details and opt-out links.
- Affiliate relationships — a small number of Medicare-related services (for example, plan-finder tools and licensed brokerages) may pay us a commission when a reader signs up through one of our links. Where an outbound link is affiliate, it is marked as such at or near the link.
The wall between business and editorial
Advertising and affiliate revenue never influence editorial coverage. Specifically:
- No advertiser, affiliate partner, insurance carrier, Medicare Advantage plan, broker, agency, or field-marketing organization pays for coverage or reviews our drafts before publication.
- Carrier reviews use a documented rubric published alongside each review issue, drawing on CMS Star Ratings, prior-authorization denial and appeal-overturn data, CMS Complaint Tracking Module data, and state Department of Insurance findings.
- Editorial contributors disclose any financial relationship with a company they cover — current or within the prior 24 months — and recuse themselves where the relationship would create a real or apparent conflict.
Sponsored content
If we ever publish paid, sponsored, or partner content, it will carry a clear label at the top of the article — in the same typeface as the byline, not in a footnote — identifying the sponsor and stating that it is not the work of the Editorial Board. As of the last update to this page, we do not publish sponsored articles.
Ad content and placement
- Display ads are selected by our advertising partners' systems, not hand-placed by us.
- Ads are not placed inside the personalized reader flow (the snapshot assessment, the personalized Living Almanac edition, or the account pages).
- We do not permit ad partners to target readers based on sensitive categories of health information.
- If you believe an ad served on the site violates Google's Advertising Policies or our own standards, please tell us via the contact page.
Reader choices
You can control advertising cookies via the site's cookie banner and via industry opt-outs listed in our Privacy Policy. Declining advertising cookies does not remove ads; it changes them from personalized to contextual.
Related
Read the full editorial standards.