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Incremental proposals would make health care reform more complicated – many of the pieces of the current reform bills are interrelated – but they can provide significant and sustainable changes in the right direction.
A spike in prices charged by the largest Medicare drug plans raises a question about the impact regulated health insurance marketplaces would have on prices.
As part of his campaign to push Congress to pass a health reform bill, President Barack Obama spoke before a crowd in a St. Charles, Missouri high school auditorium.
What if your state helped you turn unused home equity into cash to pay for the care you need when you become old and frail?
Workers at a Portland, Ore., steel mill soon will be able to pick a new type of health insurance: one with financial rewards to use proven treatments and disincentives to use less-effective surgeries and diagnostic tests.
One family in Tampa is trapped in an expensive insurance policy because it covers their 19-year-old daughter, who has a serious digestive disease and has been through several surgeries.
As the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ point man on abortion, Richard Doerflinger has emerged as a major player in the health care debate, one likely to play a pivotal role in the outcome.
To help pay for his health care overhaul package, President Obama is proposing that wealthy Americans pay Medicare taxes on the money they make on their investments. The proposal would affect millions of people.
Since the Senate passed its version of a health overhaul Christmas Eve, most of the debate has focused on the politics of the effort. By now, many people have forgotten – if they ever knew – what the bill would actually do.
Finding the right balance between too much and too little care is excruciating and highly personal for physicians, patients and families – one reason it’s not discussed at a national level. This reluctance is mirrored by an unwillingness by lawmakers to confront hard choices on medical spending.
President Obama will visit Philadelphia and St. Louis this week to continue his push to have Congress pass health overhaul legislation this month.
If the Democrats get their way, Blue Cross companies will have to change their business model, so that they act a bit more like the Blue Cross plans of old–the ones that helped schoolteachers, not stockholders.
Under the health bills being debated in Congress, young adults would be required to buy insurance – but they could buy low-cost “catastrophic” plans, requiring high deductibles. That’s igniting a fierce debate whether young adults – sometimes known as the “young invincibles” – would benefit from such plans.
Lawmakers are under intense pressure in the health care debate. The president is hitting the road to reassure nervous House members and shore up support for his plan. Republicans are taking their opposition to the bill directly to the voters, too.
One of the central arguments President Barack Obama has made on behalf of the health care plan he wants Congress to approve in coming weeks is that it would begin to address the problem of rising costs and thus also begin to bring down future federal budget deficits. But will it?
In the era of modern medicine, there is often no easy way to navigate between an acceptable quality of life and a death with dignity. But palliative care specialists, relatively new players on the health care scene, offer comfort, support, pain control and, if requested, spiritual counsel, helping people sort through often confusing and ambiguous medical options.
Living wills and advance directives were the hope for end-of-life decision-making decades ago. But a 2004 survey by FindLaw found that 36 percent of Americans have a living will, and even when people have filled out living wills, doctors often ignore them.
Palliative services are designed to help patients and their families sort through their options – ome of which may help restore the patient, while others may increase suffering for a minimal health benefit.
There are exempt insurance practices that, at least in theory and under certain conditions, could help insurers defend and expand their market share against competitors. But the exemption simply does not shield the most straightforward kinds of conduct by which companies get big.
A proposed tax on high-cost insurance plans could make it more difficult for small businesses to purchase health coverage. Even though many businesses don’t offer rich benefits, their plans may be costly because the covered employees are predominantly older, sicker or female, three categories that currently result in higher premiums. Other provisions in health overall legislation could mitigate the impact of the tax, however.
