On November 6 a federal district judge in New York struck down a Trump Administration rule that embraced denying access to health care under the guise of promoting health care providers’ rights to follow their “conscience.” A May 2019 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rule scheduled to take effect on November 22...
Category: News Posts
Oregon judge blocks Trump’s health insurance requirement for visa applicants
Last month’s blog post described President Trump’s October 4 proclamation that would require some categories of immigrants seeking to enter the U.S. to have certain kinds of health insurance within 30 days of entry in order to obtain immigrant visas at U.S. consulates abroad. The kinds of insurance that count are so limited that the...
Congressional health care advocates keep up momentum for reform
Health care advocates and consumers should take heart that federal bills to improve health care access and affordability are advancing as far as politically possible in this divided Congress, even as the focus on impeachment hearings dims prospects for major legislation this year. The key House committees favorably reported H.R. 3, now called the “Elijah...
Immigrants and health care – Courts suspend implementation of Public Charge rule, and other developments
Within the space of one week, the Trump Administration took two new steps to stifle immigrants from getting public health coverage to which they are entitled. But last Friday three federal courts put on hold the Department of Homeland Security’s drastic changes to the”public charge” regulation: On October 11, federal district courts in Spokane, WA,...
The House Democrats’ Lower Drug Costs Now Act – A step possible this year?
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s September embrace of a “transformative” prescription drug plan on which “we do hope to have White House buy-in” sparked hearings, renewed hopes for legislation during this first year of a sharply-divided Congress, and was widely lauded as at least a “good first step” toward relieving the burden on consumers....
Patient debt is forgiven – Charity Care case in Spokane settles
On October 7, Empire Health Foundation announced that it had settled its lawsuit against Community Health Systems (CHS), the former owner of Deaconess Medical and Valley Hospital and Medical Center in Spokane from 2008-2017. The settlement requires CHS to eliminate hospital debt for thousands of former patients of the two hospitals, estimated as high as...
Breaking down the silos in health care reform
By Bevin McLeod, Co-Founder and Board President, Alliance for a Healthy Washington It’s no secret that our fragmented health care system operates in silos when administering care. We see it particularly when important communications about a patient’s care aren’t shared with the pertinent providers, resulting in care gaps, and this fragmented system plays a big...