March 2012 – Healthcare-NOW

Justices meet Friday to vote on health care case

By Mark Sherman for the AP – While the rest of us have to wait until June, the justices of the Supreme Court will know the likely outcome of the historic health care case by the time they go home this weekend. After months of anticipation, thousands of pages of briefs and more than six…

Partisan Confusion

Outside the Supreme Court While the Mandate is Debated By Kevin Zeese for It’s Our Economy – I was standing outside the U.S. Supreme Court holding a sign that said “Single Payer Now, Strike Down the Obama Mandate.” It was the second day of argument on the Affordable Care Act. As I watched the crowds…

Healthcare Jujitsu

By Robert Reich for RobertReich.com – Not surprisingly, today’s debut Supreme Court argument over the so-called “individual mandate” requiring everyone to buy health insurance revolved around epistemological niceties such as the meaning of a “tax,” and the question of whether the issue is ripe for review. Behind this judicial foreplay is the brute political fact…

As Supreme Court Hears Landmark Case, Does Law Do Enough to Fix Health Crisis?

By Democracy Now! – As the Supreme Court weighs whether the Affordable Care Act goes too far, we host a debate on whether the law goes far enough. The case is reviving the heated tensions that surrounded the healthcare reform law in the debate leading up to its passage two years ago. Although support for…

Injecting Single-Payer Into the Mandate News Cycle

With the Supreme Court hearings on the individual mandate happening this week, healthcare reform is back in the news. It’s time to send letters to the editor all over the country saying, “Individual mandate or not, we need Medicare-for-all.” The Supreme Court hearings on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate provision to…

Battle over Obama health law reaches high court

By the AP – The monumental fight over a health care law that touches all Americans and divides them sharply comes before the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. The justices will decide whether to kill or keep the largest expansion in the nation’s social safety net in more than four decades. Two years and three…

Ryan Budget May Lead to Single-Payer Health Care

By Ezra Klein for Bloomberg View – Let’s play a game: I’ll describe a health-care bill to you. Then you tell me if I’m describing President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act or the budget released this week by Representative Paul Ryan. The bill works like this: The federal government subsidizes Americans to participate in health…

The Conservative Case for Single Payer Health Reform

By Dr. Joe Jarvis for Utah Healthcare Initiative Blog – Recently, Charles Krauthammer, conservative Washington Post commentator and Fox News analyst, who is also a physician, spoke to an audience of mostly physicians in San Antonio (find coverage of the speech in the San Antonio press here). Excerpts: If President Barack Obama’s health care reform…

Supreme Court Prepares To Determine Fate Of U.S. Health Care System

By Sahil Kapur for Talking Points Memo – In one week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on a legacy-defining case for President Obama as it determines whether a crucial piece of his signature legislative achievement meets constitutional muster. The health care reform law’s path to the high court has underscored a climate of supercharged…

Recession’s Toll on Health Coverage

From the New York Times – It’s a startling reminder that when people lose their jobs, they typically also lose their health insurance coverage. The share of children and working-age adults who had insurance through an employer fell 10 percentage points during the last recession, according to a study released on Thursday by the Center…