I like economist Jared Bernstein’s paraphrase of CBO’s response: “You guys go ahead and keep gettin’ your crazy on … over here we’re kinda busy doin’ actual work, so can’t help you right now.”

Perhaps the most under-covered aspect of health reform is its dramatic expansion of coverage for the treatment of psychiatric and substance abuse disorders. The Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion will finance care for millions of low-income Americans, now uninsured, who suffer from these conditions.

The latest greatest edition of Health Wonk Review is live over at Managed Care Matters and, as host Joe Paduda notes, it’s all about health care cost trends, reform implementation. This edition includes a collection of posts speculating about the likelihood of decreasing health care costs over the next decade. It also offers several pieces focused [...]

It will be almost five months before the states’ health insurance exchanges will be up and running and already we’re seeing media stories suggesting that some insurance companies will not sign up to sell their policies on the exchanges – at least not right away. “Big insurers wary of entering new Obamacare markets,” read the [...]

We at Families USA estimate that nearly 26 million Americans will be eligible for premium tax credits to help make health coverage affordable.

The HHS has announced a temporary change to rules for the ACA’s SHOP program. Critics of the ACA are using the change to spread confusion and doubt about the law.

In case you missed it last week, the latest edition of Health Wonk Review is live. This week, it’s hosted by Julie Ferguson over at the Workers’ Comp Insider.

In fact, one of the real objectives of the “Time for Affordability” PR and advertising campaign the insurance industry is waging is to obscure a reality they want us and our lawmakers to ignore or forget: insurance premiums have become unaffordable not because of health care reform but because insurers have been able to get away with raising rates as high as necessary to meet profits expected by board members, shareholders and Wall Street financial analysts.

The latest edition of Health Wonk Review is up, hosted over at the Health Business Blog. Thanks to David E. Williams for the great wrap-up.

Harold Pollack continues his series of interviews with health policy experts, talking this month with Michael Chernew, Professor of Health Care Policy in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. The two discuss a wide range of topics, including the ACA’s daunting goal of controlling spending while improving quality.

Escape Fire, The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, describes how health care in America has turned into a business. How the quest for money has hurt the quality of care provided to patients and how it has kept millions of us from having access to even mediocre care.

Miss last week’s edition Health Wonk Review? No worries, it’s still up over at the Disease Management Care Blog.

The latest edition of Health Wonk Review went live over at the Health Talent Transformation Blog today.

Harold Pollack talks with Jonathan Cohn, Senior Editor of The New Republic about the “wild ride” ahead for the Affordable Care Act, now that it’s survived a fierce Congressional battle, a Supreme Court challenge and the recent Presidential election.

Maggie Mahar provides a round-up of some of the most provocative healthcare posts of the past two weeks in this edition of Health Wonk Review.

Last week, President Obama signaled that he is ‘open to making modest adjustments to programs like Medicare.’ Should seniors brace for bad news? No. There are many ways to cut Medicare spending without drawing blood. It’s a matter of using a scalpel, not an axe, to trim the fat.

If you’re a 20- or 30-something and have health coverage, you’re being targeted by insurance industry campaign to eliminate two important consumer protections in the Affordable Care Act.

Today, many Americans are asking, “Will my premiums go up in 2014?” There is no simple answer … but the answer for many Americans is that premiums will actually fall.

The latest edition of Health Wonk Review went live over at the Health Affairs Blog yesterday.

Host Chris Fleming decided to kick off the New Year with an “Inauguration” theme (because of the Presidential inauguration and because this is the inaugural edition of 2013). Fittingly, the review started with a collection of health policy predictions for 2013 from Health Wonk Review cofounder Joe Paduda.

Harold Pollack talks with blogger Aaron Carroll about how he became a policy wonk, about his favorite health policy charts and the road ahead for health reform.

In case you missed it, the most recent edition – the “Baby New Year Edition” of Health Wonk Review is on the virtual stands. This week, it’s over at Wright on Health, and Brad Wright has done a great job of packing it full of great hard-hitting health policy opinion. Thanks to Brad for providing [...]

If you haven’t caught this week’s edition already, Saturday morning’s as good a time as any to grab a cup of coffee – or eggnog – and drink in the Health Wonk Review. It’s posted this week over at Workers’ Comp Insider, and it features a stocking full of posts – one each, actually – from 16 different health policy blogs.

Now, the president will have to decide where he is willing to compromise on cutting government spending. There are, in fact, places where he could rein in Medicare without hurting beneficiaries.

Being what it is, Health Wonk Review is chock full of great blog posts – including a handful of them addressing the issue nearest and dearest to our hearts at healthinsurance.org: health reform.

Health policy historian Paul Starr, author of Remedy and Reaction, explains why Barack Obama succeeded on health reform while Bill Clinton failed … and why the battle over reform is far from over.

Joe Paduda over at Managed Care Matters put together a great collection of posts focused on the Affordable Care Act and what’s ahead now that President Obama has won re-election.

EDITOR’S NOTE: HIO Curbside Consult is a periodic informal dialogue with medical and health policy experts about pressing issues of the day. For this edition, I conversed by Gchat with Dr. Jonathan Gruber, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the health care program at the National Bureau of [...]

Even if Mitt Romney were elected, he alone could not overturn major provisions of healthcare reform. Only Congress can pass the legislation needed to change the ACA. Republicans are expected to maintain control of the House, but if Democrats hold the Senate, they will be able to block House bills aimed at eviscerating “Obamacare.”

If you haven’t yet had a chance to check out the most recent edition of Health Wonk Review, no worries: it’s still live over at HealthBeat. Maggie Mahar, who blogs regularly here, hosted this week’s edition, and spared no ink … uh pixels … in reviewing a nice collection of election-related health policy blogs. Her [...]

In 2014, 12 million Americans will begin purchasing health insurance in the new marketplaces known as “exchanges.” Some are now uninsured and will be gaining coverage for the first time. Others have insurance through a small employer, or purchase their own policies. But few have the comprehensive coverage that will be available in the Exchanges [...]

Mitt Romney’s web site makes a bold promise: ‘On his first day in office, Mitt Romney will issue an executive order that paves the way for the federal government to issue Obamacare waivers to all 50 states. He will then work with Congress to repeal the full legislation as quickly as possible.’

Many of Romney’s supporters assume that this is what will happen if he wins. But in truth, even if Republicans take both the White House and the Senate, Romney wouldn’t have the power to ‘repeal the full legislation.’ Nor could a new president grant waivers that would let states ignore the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We live in a nation ruled by law, not magic wands.”

During Wednesday’s first Presidential Debate, President Barack Obama faced a confident Mitt Romney, who continued to play “rope-a-dope” on specifics regarding health and tax policies, says blogger Harold Pollack.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to our first HIO Curbside Consult – a periodic informal dialogue with medical and health policy experts about pressing issues of the day.  Tonight, President Obama and Governor Romney will face off in their first debate. Medicare and Medicaid will be central topics of the conversation there. HIO’s Harold Pollack caught up [...]

Blogger Maggie Mahar says a second stage of health reform will focus on disparities in health providers’ prices that have little to do with the quality of care. A study in Health Affairs revealed that in some cases, reimbursements for medical procedures varied by as much as 250 percent.

We almost forgot to remind you that the latest edition of Health Wonk Review hit the virtual stands on Wednesday over at Wing of Zock. Fortunately, it’s filled with plenty of great articles that aren’t yet past their wonkspiration date.

Conservatives have claimed for years that emergency care provides a suitable safety net for people who cannot or do not obtain health insurance coverage. As I described early in the health reform debate, these conservatives are wrong.

The latest edition of Health Wonk Review is on the virtual stands over at Colorado Health Insurance Insider. As usual, it’s chock full of compelling health policy wonkery from HWR’s usual gang of respected contributors.

ACA opponents are using scare tactics to convince Americans that a mandate to buy comprehensive health insurance represents a tax on the middle class they can’t afford.

“For 30 years, Republicans have been getting away, politically, with providing fuzzy numbers about so many things. The Romney campaign has rather explicitly decided that it’s better to offer vague bromides about the virtues of limited government than it is to get down to the specifics in proposing unpopular measures required to make their proposals work.” – Harold Pollack

Harold Pollack: Clinton delivered the best speech of the 2012 campaign. “No one in American politics can rival Clinton’s ability to weave history and policy detail into a stem-winding performance that remains somehow compelling to average voters.”

From the explicit mention in the Democratic platform of the Affordable Care Act to the embrace of the term “Obamacare”, Democrats started off their 2012 Convention by praising health reform not burying it. In contrast to the Republicans, who mentioned it only in terms of opposition to the President, Democrats proudly and loudly touted the benefits of Obamacare in the first night of their convention.

“Ted Kennedy’s speech at the 1980 Democratic convention still echoes in my mind. It remains the finest, most inspiring political oration that I have ever heard … this was a full-hearted, rousing speech delivered by a man who realized that in the battle ahead, the issues at stake were far, far more important than his own loss. Intuitively, he knew that the country had reached a turning point.” – Maggie Mahar

Romney running mate Paul Ryan’s speech last week criticized President Obama for enacting “a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for.” But health policy writer Harold Pollack says the WE Ryan embraced left many people out.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are peddling a magical Medicare concoction that’s appetizing to seniors – promised protection from $716 in purported ObamaCare cuts to Medicare – but also mouth watering to the Tea Party and fiscal hawks salivating for entitlement reform.

Alleged Obamacare-related increase in price of Papa John’s pizza ? 11 cents. Ensuring working Americans have a health care safety net? Priceless.

The latest edition of Health Wonk Review is hosted by the kind folks over at the Disease Management Care Blog t’s chock full of health reform blog posts, from “obscure legal theorizing over the constitutional legitimacy of the Affordable Care Act” to an Olympic tribute to universal health care and look at what insurance brokers think about the law.

In colonial times, Massachusetts was considered the “Cradle of Liberty” as the center of the fight for American Independence. That spirit thrives today as the Bay State strikes a blow for freedom from the fee-for-service healthcare model that threatens bankrupt the nation.

Aetna CEO Mark T. Bertolini obviously heard Arijit Guha’s Tweets – and felt the resulting heat – ultimately deciding that Aetna would cover an Arizona graduate student’s mounting medical expenses and give the student a new policy with no lifetime cap.

The tragic July 20 movie theater attack in Aurora, Colorado, serves a grim reminder of the importance of universal coverage for even young and healthy Americans – and a reminder that the nation can not afford to undo the health coverage protections promised by the Affordable Care Act.

Harold Pollack explains that America’s working single moms have much to lose if states refuse to expand Medicaid under health reform.

Inevitably, opponents of the Affordable Care Act will continue to hunt for ways to undermine reform, says Washington & Lee law professor Timothy Jost, though “they may be shooting themselves in the foot.”

Thanks to the publicity, some learned that the Affordable Care Act’s mandate will apply only to Americans who don’t have employer-based insurance, Medicaid or Medicare. And while that relatively small group will be subject to a penalty if they don’t buy insurance, they also will be eligible for a subsidy if they do.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney appears amused during 15 seconds of booing that followed his comment that he would “eliminate every non-essential expensive program I can find … that includes ObamaCare …” Romney made the comment Wednesday during his speech at the NAACP National Convention.

The media picked up the story, repeated the heated rhetoric, and “fanned the flames … Before long, what constitutional experts thought was a non-story became a Supreme Court case.”

What the Clinton Administration tried to do with health reform may not have succeeded legislatively, but it taught us a lot of lessons that informed the Obama Administration’s efforts 25 years later.

Supporters of the Affordable Care Act breathed a sigh of relief after Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling. Yet many remain worried about the decision’s Medicaid section. Although the court upheld the constitutionality of expanding Medicaid, it also ruled that the federal government may not withhold all of a state’s Medicaid funding to induce a state’s participation in ACA’s Medicaid expansion.

The nation dodged a bullet Thursday when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, upholding the law’s individual mandate.

I was not entirely surprised by the Court’s decision. Indeed, on March 26, the day that the Supreme Court began to hear oral arguments, I wrote about why I felt the law would not be overturned by the Court.

We celebrate this decision was a huge win for millions of Americans who have so much at stake. We’ve said it again and again … that the law’s reforms are a huge victory for women, for Baby Boomers, and especially for so many families who have faced denial of coverage because of pre-existing conditions. At the same time, we sincerely expect this will be a win for all of us who hope reforms will actually reduce costs in the long run.

If the Supreme Court overturns the individual mandate that would require most Americans to buy insurance, it may rule that if everyone doesn’t have to buy insurance, insurance companies shouldn’t have to insure everyone.

Since when did breast pumps become an “essential benefit?” Answer? Since we realized that if 90 percent of women nursed their babies for six months, giving them breast milk only, we could save 900 lives per year, and reduce health care spending by $13 billion annually.

This week’s Health Wonk Review features columns from healthinsurance.org bloggers Maggie Mahar, Harold Pollack, and Henry Aaron. They discuss the pending SCOTUS decision, the 2012 elections and what both will mean to the health reform law.

The goal of the mandate is to draw more healthy people into the insurance pool, so that the cost of care when we become sick can be spread over a larger group. But the mandate is only one of many provisions in the PPACA that makes health insurance more attractive and more affordable.

This legislative program is why the 2012 elections are the most important in living memory. Conservatives could achieve goals long in gestation and fervently sought. Liberals could see seventy-five years of social welfare legislation undone.

This week, Maggie Mahar edits the Health Wonk Review, a biweekly compendium of the best of the health policy blogs.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) calls on the states to create health insurance exchanges – marketplaces where individuals and small businesses can shop for and compare health insurance plans. Beginning in 2014, insurers peddling policies on an exchange will have to meet the ACA’s standards by covering “essential benefits,” capping out-of-pocket expenses for individuals, and [...]

While America waits for the U.S. Supreme Court to make its decision about health reform, is the health care system standing still?

Quite the contrary.

Under reform legislation, insurers selling policies in the individual or small-group markets can charge older boomers up to three times more than a younger adult would pay for an identical policy – unless the older person lives in a state that limits age-rating.

If I’m trying to sell health reform, the smiling waitress with two kids, the laid-off steel worker, and the 7th grader with cancer work better on the campaign posters. Yet for many reasons – some obvious, some not – the health and well-being of ex-prisoners has a disproportionate impact on us all.

Mr. and Mrs. Romney might ponder why so many people whose lives have been altered by chronic disease and disability become passionate supporters of health reform. Some of these advocates directly experience medical-economic hardship. Others have not faced the most punishing financial consequences. They merely see what happens to others, less-privileged, who face the same medical challenges with fewer resources.

When they buy their own health insurance in the individual market, women must lay out an extra $1 billion a year, simply because they are women.

The timing is perfect for everyone who despises Obamacare to demonstrate loudly and clearly your total disgust for the health reform law. It’s time to vote with your check … insurance rebate check, that is.

“Repeal and replace” efforts to kill health reform especially focus on repealing the Medicaid expansion that would extend coverage in 2014 to millions of low-income adults and kids. Ironically, these measures are unlikely to much improve the federal budget.

Two years from now, when the main pillars of health reform become operative, young families will be able to buy decent coverage through an insurance exchange. Families will receive financial help if they can’t afford to buy such coverage.

The Court might damage or destroy the centerpiece of the Obama presidency. This would be an abuse of judicial power. It would also hurt millions of people whose pleas for help seem quite abstract to men in robes who might snatch that help away.

For nearly 20 years the GOP trumpeted the virtues of the individual mandate … until it was enacted by a Democratic president.

I cannot believe for a minute that this Court wants to go down in history as the Gang of Nine that quashed the most important piece of legislation that Congress has passed in 37 years. If it did, we could find ourselves on the brink of a constitutional crisis.

I was only a bit player in health reform, way in the back of the room when the real work was done. I still consider that work the most significant I have ever done.

Give your member of Congress a ‘health reform checkup’ at HealthReformVotes.org before the November elections.

More good news for health care reform. The Congressional Budget Office – that nonpartisan referee that scores the financial impact of legislation – now says its revised figures show the 10-year cost of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will be $50 billion less than it estimated just a year ago. Considering that health reform was [...]

The costs of removing lifetime caps on health insurance coverage are expected to be modest for insurance carriers. The impact for insured American families with catastrophic health conditions? Monumental.

While critics have been wailing about the impact of reform on health care costs, health care costs have been moderating and in some cases even going down.

The new summary of benefits was mandated in the federal health reform law to help consumers make sense of complicated insurance plans and compare them with one another when shopping for coverage.

Some will be disappointed that President Obama barely mentioned health care reform in his State of the Union address last night. In a speech that focused on the military, manufacturing, education, and energy, health care received very few mentions.

Dr. “H” Rob Huizenga of “The Biggest Loser” knows that education equals motivation for folks who need to change unhealthy behavior. The individual mandate could do the same: getting more folks back to doctors for the treatment – and education – that they need. (Photo courtesy of NBCUniversal)

These are telephone hotlines providing callers with knowledgeable human beings to help with health insurance problems. Now, sadly, Congress seems to be allowing the program to die an early death, declining to fund it beyond the initial $30 million, which was distributed to 35 states.

For anyone who wonders how the battle over health reform came to dominate so much of the nation’s attention over the past few years – and whether the battle will ever end – Paul Starr provides answers in Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Reform.

You will hear a lot of bashing of “Obamacare” during the current political season. But while we wait for full implementation of health reform in 2014, there have been meaningful changes that are helping American families every day.

The fact that the Affordable Care Act defines ten mandatory categories of “essential benefits” provides a “floor” of coverage that can not be taken away. After 2014, no plan offered to individuals or small groups can exclude maternity care, prescription drugs, rehabilitation or habilitation services, or mental health services, to mention a few.

Ensuring young adults are covered now saves us all money down the line and gives parents and their kids the peace of mind that they’ll have coverage they can count on when they need it the most.

It’s been widely accepted that Mitt Romney is the father of  what Republicans have tagged “Obamacare.” The legislation he signed into law in Massachusetts became the blueprint for national health care reform. But there is plenty of paternity credit to go around:  the individual mandate – the requirement that all Americans must purchase health insurance [...]

It is heartening to know that the medical loss ratio rule will keep a lid on the amount of our premiums that can be spent on marketing, salaries, and other non-medical activities going forward. For the 99 percent of us, this 80 percent gift is a gift that will keep on giving.

Most of the health reform act pertaining to the uninsured and restraining health care costs will not be implemented until 2014. But in the last year and a half, there have been some substantial changes in health care that you may not have noticed.

The Conservative Action Alert Web site starts its article with the observation “There’s an old saying: ‘You can’t fight something with nothing.’” It was gleefully touting a bill introduced by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), but they could as easily been providing post-debate analysis  from last night’s Republican slugfest in Michigan. The strains of “repeal Obamacare” from [...]

Whether you’re happy about it or not, your state is, at this very moment, very likely moving to set up a state health insurance exchange. In fact, it’s entirely possible that you have some form of health insurance exchange already in operation.

We always love when politicians make witty jabs and then later get jabbed back. We love it, especially, when they’re jabbing health reform. Mitt Romney’s feeling a return jab right now. The GOP Presidential contender wisecracked in the spring that President Obama was giving Romney way too much credit for helping set the stage for national health [...]

Not entirely sure when state health insurance exchanges will take effect? Curious about Grandma’s new free preventive services? Call someone who cares.

How ‘ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm (after they’ve seen Paree?) We love that old post-World War I tune, but we feel like it’s due for an update – and we think it could go something like this: How ‘ya gonna keep ‘em satisfied with the health insurance status quo after they’ve seen [...]

On Monday, the federal government announced that, starting in 2012, insurers will be required to cover a broad range of preventive services – including contraception – at no cost to patients. It’s not every day that the feds tell insurers what to do, so this is kind of a big deal. Making it easier to [...]

America has always been defined by progress.  Yet the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has elements in many states trying to turn back time. Louisiana, with it’s barrel-bottom ranking of the 49th healthiest state to live in, adds to a growing list of states bucking reform as its governor refuses to set up a federally-mandated health insurance exchange, those [...]

Instead of mandating coverage on the front end, the states favor penalizing the uninsured on the back end – punishing those who presumably would be taking a “free ride” on the system.

If you are on this site, you likely do not have employer-provided health insurance and if so, today is a big day for you: today is the one year anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, often referred to derisively as “Obamacare.” As Forbes columnist Rich Unger recently pointed out, those foes of [...]

We Americans pay more dollars, and live shorter lives, than our counterparts in most other modern countries. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in 2008 America spent $7,538 per capita on health care, while the other 33 nations surveyed spent an average of $3,000. The reason is clear: it’s how we pay [...]

After months of assuring Americans that they don’t hate everything about the recently passed Affordable Care Act – and that there’s room to improve the law – Republican legislators are now being cautioned to change their tune and their strategy. By improving the law too much, the memo says, legislators could make the law more popular.

One hundred and fifty years ago, North Carolina defied a U.S. President from Illinois when it became the final state to secede from the Union, resulting in more deaths for its citizens than any other Confederate state. Fast forward to today. The Tarheel State is defying another inspirational President from Illinois who is striving to [...]

Kay, over at Balloon Juice, brings up an excellent point today about coverage of yesterday’s ruling by a federal judge that the health reform law is unconstitutional. Her point, simply, is that the ruling from this particular federal judge – Roger Vinson – isn’t the nail in the casket for the health reform law. The [...]

There’s no question in our minds that House Republicans will be successful today in voting to repeal health reform legislation. So what happens after the inevitable yelling and the inevitable House vote for repeal? Nothing. The Senate will not vote for repeal and President Obama will certainly veto anything that even smells like repeal. That, [...]

As the old saying – and the song by Cinderella – goes, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. We think health reform is like that, and – while we’re not at all certain that the upcoming House Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act will be anything more than political theatre – we [...]

It’s hard to feel good about the way Congress finally passed those provisions into law. We’re as disheartened about the way Congress functions as we are about the nation’s health care system, and we feel that it’s definitely due for major reform. But the fact is that the nation has waited far too long for the free market to solve the system’s ills – and regardless of the process, the resulting legislation at least moved us forward.

We appreciated this assessment of health reform’s controversial individual mandate provision by William Pewen over at the Health Affairs Blog. He makes some predictions about the future of health reform if the mandate is ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but we’re more interested in his take on the problem with Americans and their health insurance. [...]

Health reform’s individual mandate provision – the requirement that all taxpayers purchase health insurance beginning in 2014 – has been struck down by a federal judge appointed by none other than President George W. Bush. What is it with America’s continuing suffering inflicted by the former President? The deficit is about to go into hyperdrive [...]

Most folks are confused by all of the health insurance options. But as confusing as that is it doesn’t – in our opinion – hold a candle to the dizzying, mind-boggling maze that is the Medicare system.

Back in the spring and summer of last year, the debate about health reform exploded over an issue that was not, in my estimation, worthy of a firecracker-sized pop. The issue was advanced care planning consultations, and looking back now, it seems to me the most odd point of contention that could have been raised [...]

We know it’s stating the obvious to say that the health insurance industry was not pleased by the outcome of the battle over health reform that concluded in March. But this article on Bloomberg shows just how bad the battle went, according to industry execs, whose ideas now include jettisoning Karen Ignani from her position as [...]

When you start talking about the recently passed health reform legislation, there’s a good chance you’re headed for an argument. But it’s hard to see how anyone – other than health insurance companies – could argue against the consumer protection provisions announced by the Obama Administration yesterday. Anyone who’s fought it out with an insurance [...]

Say what you will about the recently passed health reform legislation – good or bad – but you can’t say that its supporters are withholding information about what’s ahead. With mid-term elections around the corner, the Obama Administration is readying a Lollapalooza of a dog-and-pony show to highlight its accomplishments to date – and the [...]

Tomorrow, many states will start taking applications for insurance coverage through the temporary high-risk insurance pools established through this year’s historic health reform legislation. As the Associated Press points out, it’s a “huge investment” by the federal government. It’s no secret that many critics believe the pools are a huge mistake. Though the funding for [...]

If you listen to John Boehner, health reform is not only completely abhorrent to the critics who pummeled it for months on end, but it’s now also uniformly despised by everyone, everywhere. In reality, health reform is probably viewed negatively (ranging from “completely loathed” to “not really certain what it will do”) by about half [...]

Like Avis, the United States is apparently not Number One – not in health care performance at least – when compared against a bunch of other countries. And they’re countries that repeatedly got a really bad rap during the health care debate as being examples of poor quality, inefficiency, and – worst of all – [...]

President Obama likes his health reform legislation. Go figure. And today, he also gave consumers more reasons to like the legislation – namely a bunch of consumer protections the administration is calling the “patient bill of rights.” How about reversing course? The POTUS said – in a nutshell – “Let’s not and say we didn’t.” [...]

Seriously. Ask, “What have you done for me lately?” Do it today – submit your questions about health reform progress to About.com. Maybe if you ask nicely, Katherine Sebelius will actually answer your question during a live event streamed tomorrow at 3 p.m. (Eastern) at Whitehouse.gov/live. Questions that probably WON’T get answers: “Why are you [...]

You know that old saying about how even bad PR is good PR? Well, The Nation has a pretty decent argument for its validity. Seems like the more Republicans turn up their messages about the recently passed legislation, the more they’re turning off listeners to their arguments. November will be interesting. That’s for sure.

The health reform legislation passed in March by Congress is giving Americans plenty to look forward to over the next decade, but according to recent reports from law enforcement and anti-fraud groups, the legislation will also give Americans plenty to look out for. Within weeks of the legislation’s passage, consumers began reporting a wave of [...]

In the circus surrounding the Tea Party reaction to the health insurance reform bill, Republican Congressman Eric Cantor is stepping in as a ringmaster. In the midst of death threats against nearly a dozen Democrats who voted for the bill, Cantor is blaming the victims, saying they are using these threats as political fodder. Cantor, [...]

An interesting poll surfaced yesterday, revealing that – in the days since health reform legislation was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and signed into law by President Obama – more Americans have taken a favorable view of the legislation than they did before the vote. Nearly 50 percent of those polled now say [...]

Our statement has nothing to do with the last-minute deal cut between the White House and Rep. Bart Stupak (D- Mich.). Here’s why the historic vote authorizing health insurance reform is the biggest pro-life vote in history: Fifty-five thousand Americans die every year because of lack of health insurance coverage. Those are deaths that no [...]

Throughout the health care debate, it’s been fascinating to watch opposition responses to each bit of reform-related news. The complete inability of opponents of Democratic reform proposals to see anything positive in the legislation has been simply stunning. How determined were opponents of reform? Determined enough to threaten that legislation promising free assistance to those [...]

We thought this editorial cartoon in the Kansas City Star was pretty good – and not just because we agree with them on that whole Global Warming thing. We also got a chuckle because it hit so close to home in terms of the ongoing health reform debate. We’d rewrite the caption to read, “If [...]

The headline in the StarTribune says “Health care for poor may get axe.” Minnesota’s Governor Tim Pawlenty, a 2012 Presidential hopeful, is set to veto a bill that would pay health care costs for 85,000 of the state’s poorest and sickest residents. The bill he is threatening to kill is a stripped-down version of a [...]

There’s a lot of debate today over what President Obama was saying to his supporters last night when he described what he thinks needs to happen with the health reform legislation from here on in. The point he made that seems to be drawing the most speculation is this passage: “That’s why I think it’s [...]

We don’t like the phrase, “It’s now or never,” especially when it comes to the health reform battle. If legislation doesn’t succeed now, it doesn’t mean the nation’s health care system can never be improved. Even with a complete failure by the Democrats, the system could conceivably gradually evolve into something better over time with [...]

The current status of the health reform legislation in the nation’s capital reminds of us the popular quizzes that challenge players to speculate as to whether celebrities are dead yet. If you asked opponents of health reform, they’d surely tell you that – like the failed health reform efforts of 1994 – the current Democratic proposals [...]

In the days following last week’s special election in Massachusetts, it wasn’t surprising at all to hear opponents of health reform announcing that America had – loudly and clearly – told Congress to start over on health reform. But here’s the thing: If the Democrats had barely eked out a win, opponents would have said [...]

“It’s all about the health benefits.” I personally have heard it dozens of times from friends and family, who make it painfully clear that they’re not banging on the door of Corporate America because they’re dying to work in a cubicle. They tell me they’re reluctantly looking for gigs in big business because that’s where [...]

Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic said today what a lot of liberals have been saying about the Senate bill. Basically, it’s been stretched and pulled like a gob of saltwater taffy as it morphed into something barely acceptable to barely enough Democrats, but also largely disappointing to a large contingent of other liberals (and [...]

Anyone who thought passage of a health reform bill in 2009 would be easy, given the Democratic majority in Congress, was deluded. To think that all of Congressional Democrats – and the Independents they court – would vote in lock step was just plain fantasy. But even Democrats who knew reform legislation would be all [...]

Pundits, including the Wall Street Journal, are calling it the “Grand Compromise.” It’s an agreement Senate Democrats struck late yesterday on health reform legislation that will allow those who oppose the public option to say that it’s out, while proponents of the public option can claim that it’s still in the bill – sort of. [...]

One of the things that has bugged us for months and months is health care opponents’ preoccupation with the number of pages in the health care bills that have been introduced in the House and Senate. The most recent bill to emerge is the Senate bill unveiled by Harry Reid yesterday and SURPRISE … it’s [...]

There are plenty of stories out there about the nightmares already faced in the nation’s existing health care system. But folks really want to know how coverage will look after health reform legislation is passed. (We’re assuming it will be.) That why we liked this story, which examines what the current legislative proposals would mean [...]

When the House passed its version of health reform legislation last week, the development may have sent chills down the spines of those who oppose the Democrats’ proposed solutions. But a quick read-through of Suzy Khimm’s piece in The Treatment yesterday should be equally chilling to folks who think the battle over health reform is [...]

You’d think opponents of health care would be content with getting Americans worked up about issues like abortion and immigration in order to bog down passage of a health reform bill, but today, bloggers and Tweeters are whispering in a really loud, gasping voice, “Jail time for folks who don’t buy health insurance?” We’re not [...]

We’re happy to hear folks asking this question: If Democrats succeed in passing health reform legislation with an opt-out public option as included in Harry Reid’s Senate bill, would any states actually opt out? Conservatives seem to like the idea that states could take a pass on a public option provision they dread. But really, [...]

Will Democrats unite to allow an up-or-down vote on health reform legislation? Robert Creamer explained on the Huffington Post this morning why he thinks it’s in Democratic legislators’ best interests to pull together. Creamer’s reasons include, briefly: That Americans have already swung overwhelmingly in support of the public option. A vote to defeat the filibuster [...]

For a political proposal that appeared ready to be staked in the heart by its opponents just weeks ago, the public option looked surprisingly perky this week. In fact, the only thing that now sounds optional about the proposed reform initiative is the abundance of public option options being floated. The perkiness is due, of [...]

There were squeals of joy and howls of rage when Olympia Snowe crossed the aisle (or as Republicans would say “went over to the Dark Side”) yesterday to vote for the Senate Finance Committee’s version of a health reform bill. But now that it’s done, both sides might be rethinking their outbursts. The Right could [...]

Okay, we know that it’s the conservative members of the House that are called “Blue Dogs” (not members of the Senate), but what a perfect visual for the actions of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL party’s put-down of its own senator, Kent Conrad (D-ND). The party’s members recently reaffirmed a commitment to an even much more progressive [...]

Governor Arnold Schwarznegger (R-CA) has made a formal statement supporting health care reform, urging congressional Republicans to cooperate with the Democrats in forming and passing significant legislation this year. His pleas to his party-mates may stir reminders of his role as a Kindergarten Cop as many in both parties are entranced by the siren call [...]

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson hit the hornets’s nest squarely this week and then hit it again for good measure. We have a hunch he’s not about to put down his stick. Now, Rep. Grayson faces the prospect of a bunch of ticked-off Republicans who suddenly are OK with the idea of a huge debate in [...]

There’s something about this huge debate on health care that’s been sorely lacking and … and that something is a  discussion of what health reform could mean to entrepreneurs. Remember the American Dream? Where you come up with a great product or service and then open your own business? You work harder, not smarter? The [...]

This week, the Congressional Progressive Caucus did a head count of its members to see whether House liberals still strongly opposed any health reform bill that would not include a public option. Word from the Hill Thursday indicated that opposition is still plenty strong. Not so strong? Blue Dog opposition to a public option, apparently. [...]

Students of history may get a chuckle when they hear Republicans define Obama’s health care plan as “socialism.”  If we look to the past, we see Obama’s plan is pretty much in line with Republican President Richard M. Nixon’s failed efforts in 1974. Like Nixon, Obama seeks to tweak America’s existing private health care system, [...]

According to a new poll published in yesterday’s New England Journal of Medicine and reported on National Public Radio, 63 percent of the nation’s doctors want health care reform to include a public option, while another 10 percent would go even further, endorsing a single-payer plan. Dropping Medicare age requirements Furthermore, nearly 60 percent of [...]

When we went to the polls last fall, middle America voted for an end to partisan bickering and for our elected representatives to confront issues together in a practical, common sense way. For better or worse, that’s what we got at the Oval Office: “no drama Obama”. In his address to Congress last week on [...]

One of the most interesting reactions to the ongoing health reform debate has to be the public’s revulsion at the prospect of increased government control of the health care system. I understand concerns about additional financial burdens that come with new government programs … and concerns about adding to the nation’s deficit. I get that. [...]

This morning, I opened my email to find a news item that read “Polls show support slips for Obama’s health plan” – citing a New York Time/CBS News poll in which 69% of respondents said they “were concerned that the quality of their health care would decline if the government put universal health insurance in [...]

We’re tempted to say that President Obama got Punk’d yesterday by the Senate, as Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Senate will not be able to get a health reform bill wrapped up before a month-long Congressional recess that starts in August. We would love to have had Congress hammer out the bill. We [...]

It’s hard enough trying to convince Americans that it’s time for drastic health reform measures when that reform is being fought tooth and nail by the health insurance industry, which today launched a seven-figure advertising campaign to put pressure on moderate Congressional Democrats. The pressure, of course, is to urge them to help kill momentum [...]

Organizing for America, the campaign arm of the Obama machine, is targeting constituents of moderate Senators in both parties with a cable TV ad buy. We have no quarrel with the content of the ad, shown below. The stories of the people featured ring true, and this campaign serves a noble purpose in letting their [...]

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), newly appointed as ranking minority member of the House Education and Labor Committee, is giving Rep. Michelle Bachmann a run-for-her-money as the looniest representative from the land of 10,000 lakes. Interviewed on Minnesota Public Radio, Kline says as far as he’s concerned, a  health reform bill with a public option is [...]

Since the health insurance industry stonewalled the Clinton Administration’s attempts to drastically overhaul our trainwreck of a health care system, Americans have been waiting. We’ve been waiting for something nearly miraculous: a convergence of conditions that would include a frightening global economic climate; a national realization that our system is an ineffective, unfair mess; and [...]

President Obama has a lot on his plate. If you hadn’t already sensed the magnitude of the challenges he’s facing, the POTUS (President of the United States) spelled them out last night in his 100th-day press conference. Between bailing out the auto industry, fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, keeping an eye on North Korea [...]