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As budget-weary state officials contemplate dropping out of the Medicaid program, a potentially game-changing question has arisen in Washington: Would poor people who lose coverage get subsidies to buy private coverage?
As Congress returns for its lame-duck session, lawmakers will debate legislation to stop an impending cut in Medicare physician payments.
Despite the outcomes of the mid-term elections, the health overhaul is the law, and it’s up to HHS to make the “vital protections” it put into a place a reality.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a likely GOP contender for the White House in 2012, publicly opposed the law again this week, this time with a preliminary filing supporting a challenge to the overhaul in a Florida court.
Faced with widening deficits, some conservative legislators in Texas and other states explore the “nuclear option” – quitting the state-federal health program for the poor.
But states’ increasing use of the private plans is raising questions about whether low-income residents are getting adequate care.
In the aftermath of Republicans’ election victories, defenders of the health care law are huddling to thwart GOP efforts to eviscerate the sweeping measure. Groups that back the law aren’t likely to coalesce around a single message to increase public support.
An untold number of dialysis patients are injured or die as a result of needle dislodgements, but Medicare rules don’t require clinics to report such adverse incidents to outside authorities.
Readers of The Washington Post posed questions about potential taxes on insurance, how to pick a plan and the increase in costs and KHN’s Michelle Andrews provided answers.
A new survey of more than 2,800 employers found no big reason for workers to worry.
Health care ranked fourth among factors that influenced how people voted last week, according to a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Beginning in 2011, the new health law bars payments for over items such as aspirin, vitamins and cough medicine from the popular accounts set up with pretax dollars. Consumers can still get the coverage with a prescription.
In states like Illinois, parents can provide at-home care for children with severe illnesses and Medicaid foots the bill. But the funding disappears the minute they turn 21, forcing families to make a painful choice: Find the money to pay for sometimes exorbitant health care costs or send their children to a nursing home.
On CBS’ “60 Minutes” President Barack Obama acknowledged that taking on “something as big as health care” probably “wasn’t great politics.” Senator-elect Rand Paul, R-Ky., a favorite of the tea party, told ABC’s “This Week” why he believes the law should be repealed.
The Republicans and their allies spent a lot of time – and a lot of money – attacking the new health law and promising to undo it. And they did so with such a fury that almost nobody seemed to notice they were making a pair of arguments that were fundamentally incompatible.
Conservatives are already debating whether it’s better for Republicans to chip away at part of the health law or just lay the groundwork for 2012.
Trying to spur enrollment in a new health insurance program for uninsured people with pre-existing medical conditions, the federal government is doing something private insurers almost never do: slashing rates.
In the wake of the GOP victories on election night, incoming House Speaker Boehner and President Obama responded to questions about the impact of health reform on the vote.
In the wake of the GOP victories on election night, President Barack Obama held a news conference to talk about the “shellacking” he and his party took. He was asked about the impact of the health law on the vote. Here is an excerpt of that part of the event.
Less than 24 hours after Republicans won control of the House, soon-to-be-speaker John Boehner denounced the new health care law, saying it would “kill jobs in America, ruin the best health care system in the world, and bankrupt our country” — and renewed his vow to try to repeal it. Kaiser Health News asked people around the country to answer the following question: “If you ended up in an elevator with Rep. Boehner, what single thing would you urge him to do about health care in this country?”
