The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
Medicaid is the rope in the current tug of war between the states and the federal government over health reform. So far, the feds think they are winning. But don’t discount the governors.
Supported by the tea party, Renee Ellmers pulled an upset victory over the Democratic incumbent in North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District last fall. As a nurse married to a physician, Ellmers says her own experience has convinced her that health care “is a personal responsibility” and the only way to bring down high health insurance costs is for government to step aside and let the private market work better. Rep. Ellmers was interviewed in her office on Capitol Hill by Kaiser Health News reporter Jessica Marcy.
N.C. Republican, with 20 years of health care experience, says Democrats’ health law is “overstepping, unconstitutional and extremely costly.”
A sampling of Medicaid changes some state chief executives would advance if they were given more flexibility from the federal government. This issue is likely to be a hot topic this weekend as the governors convene in Washington, D.C. for their winter meeting.
Democrats say Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to tackle a two-year $3.6 billion deficit by making speedy changes in health care programs needs wider scrutiny.
Federal officials are trying to soothe deficit-saddled governors headed for their winter meeting in Washington D.C.
A Maryland program to curb hospital infection rates is showing signs of success, but nine hospitals still fell short last year and were penalized a total of $2.1 million.
Melanie Bella heads the new federal office that seeks to help people whose coverage is often fragmented because they qualify for both programs and to save the government money by streamlining that coverage.
Nearly a year after passage of the health care overhaul law, barely half of Americans know the law remains intact, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows.
As Congress wrestles with medical liability reform, more than 40 years of experience with California’s cap on non-economic damages offers evidence that this approach is an effective way to achieve the goal of reducing health care costs while preserving sufficient deterrence in the legal system.
As challenges to the health law’s individual mandate wind their way through the courts, it is important to focus on the real question: what happens to the health law if this provision is ultimately struck down?
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.
Few options are available for the 42,000 people losing coverage.
The public employee backlash against Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to help balance the state’s budget by imposing higher health care and pension co-pays is spreading across the nation, as newly-elected conservative governors seek to roll back benefits granted during better economic times.
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.
House Republicans passed measures to defund implementation of the health law, while the Obama administration fires back, rescinding a regulation they say could jeopardize patient access to care. Watch the video.
The Obama administration is dispatching aides to states to offer advice on holding down spending on the program for the poor.
As part of legislation to keep the government funded through March 4, House Republicans passed a series of amendments aimed at defunding implementation of the health care law. Separately, the Obama administration rescinded part of a 2008 conscience clause regulation they said could impact patients’ access to medical care.
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.”
Those who believe the health law is unconstitutional have a solemn obligation not to implement it.
