Healthcare-NOW

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…

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…

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…

Action Alert: Never Mind the Mandate

The Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of the individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or “Obamacare,” in late March. The mandate would require that almost everyone in the US be covered by some form of health insurance, public or private, by 2014 or be fined. Therefore, it’s no surprise that…

As Court Showdown Nears, Our Healthcare System Still a Mess

By Rose Ann DeMoro – With the approaching Supreme Court showdown on the President Obama’s 2010 health care law (the Affordable Care Act, modeled, of course, on Mitt Romney’s law in Massachusetts), the U.S. healthcare system remains a dysfunctional mess, as nurses bear witness to every day. In late March, the Court will devote six…

50 doctors for single payer urge Supreme Court to strike down individual mandate

By Single Payer Action – WASHINGTON — Fifty medical doctors who favor a single-payer health insurance system today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the individual mandate. In a brief (pdf) filed with the Court, the 50 doctors and two nonprofit groups – Single Payer Action and It’s Our Economy – said that…

Private insurers increasingly reliant on government business

From the Washington Post – Despite the sluggish economy, the nation’s major health insurers have prospered in large part by expanding their role in government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, according to a study released Thursday. The share of large insurers’ revenues contributed by their Medicare and Medicaid business has jumped from 36 to…

Health Reform Devolves Into ‘Unaffordable Under-Insurance’

From In These Times – Healthcare reform in the shape of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) was supposed to relieve working Americans of the burdens of rising healthcare costs as they struggle to survive the jobless recovery. Instead, working Americans are being confronted with the emergence of a new stage in America’s downward…