The Senate delayed plans to act before the July 4th holiday recess on their version of the House bill – the “Better Care Reconciliation Act”- due to lack of sufficient support, but Republicans’ efforts to garner more votes continue. The Senate’s plan would closely follow the House, funding tax cuts for wealthy Americans by cutting...
Category: News
“Verify First” Health Care Bill Is an Attack on Immigrants and Access to Health Care
The U.S. House of Representatives voted Tuesday on a bill that would prevent hundreds of thousands of people from accessing affordable health care due to bureaucratic glitches. HR 2581, or the “Verify First” Act, would create roadblocks to health care eligibility by making people pay the price for incomplete and deficient government databases. This would prevent people...
Tackling the Opioid Epidemic Depends on a Strong Medicaid Program
The number of cases of death from drug overdose in 2016 most likely exceed 59,000, the largest annual jump ever recorded in the US, due in large part to the opioid crisis. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans under 50, and early data suggests that drug overdose deaths will continue to rise...
The Future of State Insurance Marketplaces
Insurance commissioners all over the country are pushing back filing deadlines for enrollment and offering new concessions to insurers to keep them from leaving their state marketplaces amid the uncertainty over the ACA. Insurers want assurances that they will continue to receive cost-sharing reduction payments from the federal government, totaling about $7 billion this year, but the...
Trump’s Fight Against Contraceptive Care
News sources report that the Trump administration has drafted a rule that would make birth control coverage the choice of any employer regardless of size, location, or business type. While the ACA requires nearly all employers to offer health insurance that covers contraceptive care, this draft rule, not yet released, would broaden the types of organizations that can request...
HEAL Act of 2017
Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham reintroduced the “Health Equity and Access under the Law (HEAL) for Immigrant Women and Families Act,” which would restore access to affordable health coverage and care for immigrants who are authorized to live and work in the U.S. The HEAL act restores eligibility and eliminates the 5-year waiting period for all...
A Cautionary Tale
In the spring of 1995, Washington State GOP legislators rolled back the law expanding health coverage in the state while pledging to keep health insurance affordable, but that’s not the way it worked out. The repeal destroyed the Washington insurance market, caused premium costs to skyrocket, and drove health insurers away. It took almost 5...