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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.
Mississippi Gov. Barbour’s ways to control the rising costs of Medicaid are sometimes controversial, but he maintains that states need more freedom to run the program.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has issued nearly 40 pages of new health spending and cuts it says would reduce the federal deficit by billions of dollars including changes to the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
A reader wonders if she can put her 22-year-old self-employed daughter, who currently has insurance on her own, back on the family policy.
We can’t evaluate the backstage politics, but one thing is certain. Both Democrats and Republicans should be dismayed at the sight of a partisan campaign driving yet another distinguished figure out of American government.
The American Medical Association is one of the best-funded lobbying shops in Washington, and their current CEO and Executive Vice President, Michael Maves, will leave his post in June.
Kaiser Health News consumer columnist Michelle Andrews answers a question from a reader on if access to good health insurance will be better for his sick wife after 2014.
Kaiser Health News consumer columnist Michelle Andrews answers a question from a reader on if her son with a pre-existing condition will be able to buy health insurance under the new law.
House Republicans cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood and other Title X programs, and Senate Democrats tried to restore it. But the Senate Wednesday failed to pass either bill and so the programs, which once had strong bipartisan support, remain a point of contention.
Analysis by advocacy group NAMI finds cuts of $1.8 billion, or about 8 percent of the states’ total budgets, from 2009 through 2011.
President Barack Obama’s surprise signal last week to governors that he was willing to give states some extra flexibility in implementing the law is particularly noteworthy because it offers a useful window into the health law’ s evolving politics and the future bargaining that will likely take place.
This table details 2008 Medicaid spending in each of the nation’s 306 hospital markets.
CMS analysis shows that some regions with high spending levels are below the national average if patient health and special expenses are factored in.
Florida’s annual Medicaid bill runs in the billions – it’s nearly one-third of the state’s budget. As Florida struggles to close a budget shortfall of $4.5 billion, Medicaid is a target for cuts. Often, that means moving Medicaid recipients into managed care.
These new plans cut out insurance policies and offer unlimited access to doctors and nurse practitioners for a modest, set fee.
Federal law does not guarantee beneficiaries under the age of 65 the right to buy Medigap coverage and even when they do qualify for a plan, it is often prohibitively expensive.
Kaiser Health News staff writer Mary Agnes Carey talks with KFF’s Jackie Judd about last week’s order by a federal judge in which he stayed his earlier decision striking down the health law, but also ordered the Obama administration to file an appeal. Also, the Senate considers how it will fund the federal government.
A Florida District Court judge issued a stay of his earlier ruling on the health law that found the law unconstitutional, but he ordered the Obama Administration to file an appeal within seven business days. Meanwhile, two different funding approaches to keep the government operating beyond March 18
Despite the rhetoric about compromise, what President Barack Obama actually did when he announced that states would have some flexibility in implementing the health law was give states the option of replacing his law with a single-payer health system three years earlier than it otherwise could have happened.
Although cynics may claim conservative credentials, their view of government is really nothing more than a quarrel about its cost. It brings to mind Oscar Wilde’s immortal phrase, “The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
