Healthcare-NOW

Constitutional or Not, It’s a Win-Win for the Health Insurance Industry

By Katie Robbins for the People’s Tribune – The recent Supreme Court hearing on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or “ObamaCare,” has reopened the false debate surrounding the President’s signature legislation. Whether to uphold or strike down the ACA isn’t about how to provide truly universal healthcare in a sustainable way. Common…

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…

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…

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…

Single-Payer Health Care Is Coming To America-Are We Ready?

By Rick Ungar for Forbes – Speaking at a recent conference, Mark Bertolli, CEO and Chairman of Aetna Insurance, announced that the end is near for profit driven health insurance companies. “The system doesn’t work, it’s broke today. The end of insurance companies, the way we’ve run the business in the past, is here.” In…

Court action could prolong health care fight

From USA Today – Next month’s challenge to the Obama-sponsored health care law could affect the care available to most Americans, alter the balance of power between Washington and the states and remain a flash point through this presidential campaign. Yet there is a path the Supreme Court could take when it hears the case…

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…

Insurance Mandate May Be Health Bill’s Undoing

From the New York Times – As Barack Obama battled Hillary Rodham Clinton over health care during the Democratic presidential primaries of 2008, he was adamant about one thing: Americans, he insisted, should not be required to buy health insurance. “If things were that easy,” Mr. Obama told the talk show host Ellen DeGeneres in…

Gallup: Uninsured adults rising

By Tim Mak for Politico – None of the components of President Obama’s health care law that have taken effect appear to be affecting insurance coverage of adults over 26, according to a new poll Friday. The percentage of adults with no health insurance is the highest on record, with 17.3 percent of adults being…

Health Law to Be Revised by Ending a Program

By Robert Pear for the New York Times – The Obama administration announced Friday that it was scrapping a long-term care insurance program created by the new health care law because it was too costly and would not work. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said she had concluded that premiums would…