Affordable Care Act – Page 3

Medical debt still problem in Mass.

From the Boston Globe – Architects of the pioneering 2006 Massachusetts health law, which required most residents to have insurance, expected it would reduce families’ medical debt. But the most recent data suggest the scope of medical debt has remained largely unchanged. Temporary lapses in insurance coverage and increasingly common plans with high deductibles and…

The Illusory Promise of Free-Market Healthcare Miracles

By Wendell Potter for The Center for Public Integrity – While listening to the promises to repeal ObamaCare during the Republican National Convention, I was reminded of what those of us in the health insurance industry said when our friends in Congress were able to block passage of President Clinton’s health care reform legislation 18…

VT Gov. Shumlin Pushes For Single-Payer Health Care At DNC

From Vermont Public Radio – Governor Peter Shumlin says he hopes Congress will amend the Affordable Care Act to allow individual states to implement a single payer health care system as soon as possible. Shumlin says controlling health care costs is critical to creating new jobs and he’s convinced that a single payer plan is…

So Much for Fixing the Affordable Care Act Later

From Fire Dog Lake – I remember during the end of the health care reform fight how top Democrats promised activists unhappy with the bill that they would “fix it later.” I remember being told that it was very important to pass a bill despite many serious problems, design flaws and terrible compromises, because it…

Healthcare Spending to Remain High

Unnecessary care, fraud and high administrative costs are among factors. From the LA Times – With all the squabbling about healthcare, there’s one fact on which all sides can agree: American medicine costs too much, especially when you consider what we’re getting for our money. And as experts look toward the future, they don’t see…

Action Alert: Tell 12 Governors Not to Block Medicaid

Matthew Solis, 22, is a single father in San Juan, Texas with joint custody of his 4-year-old daughter. He works 25 hours a week for minimum wage while attending college full-time. He can’t afford private insurance, and he makes about $8,700 a year–too much to qualify for Medicaid in his state. Let’s change that. Obama’s…

The ACA Leaves Out, Cuts Funds for Uninsured Immigrants

From the New York Times – Hospitals Worry Over Cut in Fund for Uninsured Community Health Centers Funding Cut President Obama’s health care law is putting new strains on some of the nation’s most hard-pressed hospitals, by cutting aid they use to pay for emergency care for illegal immigrants, which they have long been required…

Nurses Union Will Keep Fighting for Medicare for All

By Rose Ann DeMoro for the Nation – Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act, former insurance company executive Wendell Potter’s appeal to single payer advocates to “bury the hatchet,” recently published in The Nation, is both misdirected and shortsighted. Potter argues that insurance industry pirates will exploit left critiques of…

States could leave millions of low-income people uninsured

The new Medicaid “doughnut hole” From the Washington Post – For Gov. Rick Perry, saying “no” to the federal health care law could also mean turning away up to 1.3 million Texans, nearly half the uninsured people who could be newly eligible for coverage in his state. Gov. Chris Christie not only would be saying…

Healthcare Advocates: Time To Bury the Hatchet

By Wendell Potter for the Nation – Health insurance executives breathed a sigh of relief when the Supreme Court upheld their favorite part of the Affordable Care Act (the part that is one of the least popular among the rest of us)—the individual mandate. And then, I’m confident, moments after they exhaled, they were on…