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

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 governors and the president needs the other. Each side has a (possibly perverse) stake in the other’s success. Each would also be wise to make some concession, if for no other reason than to provide their counterpart with a dignified path to compromise during the second Obama term.

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.”

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.

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

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.

In states where governors have vowed not to expand Medicaid, health insurance premiums are likely to go up as hospitals struggling to care for millions of uninsured patients pass the cost on to private sector insurers, who will, in turn, pass the bill on to their customers.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

How did we get to this point … where an audience at a Presidential debate feels comfortable laughing about the fate of a man who represents the millions of uninsured?

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

As politicians go round and round talking about how health reform legislation will increase or decrease the deficit, or how a win on this bill will help or hurt Democrats, I think it’s worth mentioning again that there’s one really huge number that matters: 62. Sixty-two is the the percentage of U.S. personal bankruptcies in [...]

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 [...]