Medicaid Makes ‘Big Difference’ In Lives, Study Finds
But a new study – the first of its kind in nearly four decades – finds that Medicaid is making a bigger impact than even some of its supporters may have realized.
McKinsey Stands By Contested Health Insurance Survey
Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Monday stood behind the findings of its controversial survey that found as much as 30 percent of employers could drop their health coverage. It also released the methodology for the survey.
Democrats Revive Medicare As Political Weapon
Republicans used Medicare as their weapon in the midterm elections last fall, and now Democrats are turning the tables on them. They’ve taken aim at the budget plan House Republicans voted for in April.
Abortion Foes’ New Target: Redefining What A Person Is
Activists want to rewrite laws to recognize someone as a person from the moment a sperm fertilizes an egg. But a redefinition could threaten the use of a long list of commonly used contraceptives.
Memo To GOP: Cutting Medicaid Is Unpopular, Too
Changing Medicare is looking politically risky, so budget-cutters may focus on Medicaid instead. That, too, could prove unpopular because a recent poll shows the public does not favor large cuts to the program.
Who Pays For Unintended Pregnancies?
The cost of unintended pregnancies is large, and much of the bill – about $11 billion per year – is ultimately picked up by the government, a new study finds.
Remaking Medicare: Saving Money Or Shifting Costs?
Lawmakers disagree, fundamentally, on how to save costs in the Medicare program and if recent proposals — like the GOP one passed recently in the House — will save money or just shift costs to Medicare patients.
Brief Federal Shutdown Wouldn’t Faze Medicare Or Medicaid
If the current budget standoff on Capitol Hill leads to a shutdown of the federal government on Friday, recipients of the Medicare and Medicaid health programs won’t have to worry. At least not for a while.
Budget Office: GOP Medicare Plan Could Lead To Rationing
Remember all those allegations from Republicans that the Affordable Care Act would inevitably lead to health care rationing? It turns out the same might be true of the House GOP budget plan for Medicare.
Dems To GOP: Show Us Your Health Insurance
A bill introduced by House Democrats would require members of Congress to declare whether they are taking health benefits subsidized by taxpayers. The bill has next to no chance of passing because Republicans control the House. But its introduction puts some heat on the GOP.
GOP Wants States To Lead On Health Coverage
If Republicans are successful in repealing last year’s health law, they want to replace it with legislation that would give states far more discretion about how to cover people, according to a top Senate Republican.
How Much Will Federal Health Law Cost States? Depends Whom You Ask
A raft of studies have come out recently purporting to say how much the health overhaul will cost states. And they reach dramatically different conclusions on the subject.
Obama To Governors: Opt Out of Health Law If You Can Do Better
President Obama offered governors a smaller concession to health spending flexibility than they expected by endorsing a bipartisan proposal to allow states to opt out of most of last year’s health law’s requirements.
Judges Reviewing Health Law Say Penalty Is Not A Tax
Congress took great pains to ensure that the penalty imposed on people who don’t get health insurance was not called a tax in the health law. This could make it tough for the Justice Department to argue that it is a tax.
GOP Counts The Ways To Defund Health Law
House Republicans have come up with more than half a dozen ways to throttle spending on overhaul. Democrats in the Senate can block them, and President Obama still wields the veto pen.
New Contraception Rules Spark ‘Conscience Clause’ Debate
Religious exemptions that allow health care workers to decline certain services to patients if they have a religious exemption should not include contraception. That’s the bottom line of the administration’s new regulations on the “conscience clause.”
Hardliners On Health Law: End It, Don’t Mend It
The conservative group FreedomWorks recommends a system of vouchers to replace Medicare, Medicaid and provisions of the new health law.
Intellectual Backer Of Insurance Mandate Faults Alternatives
While some lawmakers and wonks are busy cooking up alternatives to the controversial federal mandate requiring people to have health insurance starting in 2014, one early backer of the approach insists it remains the best way to get more people covered at the lowest cost.
Alternatives To Mandating Insurance? Maybe
Some experts are proposing alternatives to mandating that nearly all Americans purchase health insurance – a requirement in the health law – including offering discounts for early buyers and instituting eligibility periods to use subsidies.
Scholars, Politicians Debating Implications Of Health Lawsuit Decision
After a federal court declared the new health law unconstitutional, it’s still unclear how far the ruling reaches. The Obama administration says that it will continue to implement the law.
