NEWS HEADLINES:
uninsured

Cobra payment aid appears likely to end

June 5, 2010

MartketWatch – Just a few months after passing comprehensive health reform, U.S. lawmakers appear willing to risk a short-term backslide in the push to reduce the number of uninsured Americans until the overhaul’s major provisions take effect in 2014.

Sandy Springs: Health care mess starts with the sick

June 4, 2010

ajc.com – The slumberous economy, I am told, has led to a number of accomplished professionals starting their own businesses when they found the job market glutted with competition. No doubt this will result in some wondrous entrepreneurial output, but self-employment is not all stout and skittles.

Medicaid Pain Might Be Less Than Governors Claim

June 3, 2010

NPR – When 20 states filed suit over the new health law just after President Obama signed it in March, the expansion of Medicaid was a major part of their beef.

Bud Chiles says 1 million Florida children are without health insurance

June 3, 2010

PolitiFact Florida – Lawton “Bud” Chiles III, son of the late Gov. Lawton Chiles, announced his independent run for governor on June 3, 2010, by saying he’d be a voice for those who traditionally have been cut out of the democratic process.

Unemployed face rise in health care

June 3, 2010

Daily Times – Health-care premiums for millions of unemployed Americans could triple with the expiration of government subsidies to the COBRA program.

Read more about COBRA health insurance coverage.

How to Stretch the Federal High-Risk Health Coverage Pool Budget

May 27, 2010

Health Blog (Wall Street Journal) – You know that federal high-risk pool for people with a pre-existing condition and who haven’t had health insurance for six months? There’s a slight fiscal issue – while as many as 7 million people may qualify for participation, the money allocated may be enough to cover only 200,000 of them, according to an analysis released today by the National Institute for Health Care Reform.

Read more about high-risk insurance pools.

Report: Ranks of uninsured in Alabama, Mississippi to plunge under health care overhaul

May 26, 2010

al.com – The ranks of low-income adult Alabamians and Mississippians without health insurance will fall by more than half in the coming decade under an expansion of the Medicaid program tied into the recently signed health care overhaul, a new report says.

COVERAGE: Picking Up the Tab for Medicaid

May 26, 2010

The New Health Dialogue – Starting in 2014, the new health reform law will expand Medicaid coverage to most of the population below 133 percent of federal poverty level, amounting to about 15.9 million newly eligible enrollees by 2019. In a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, John Holahan and Irene Headen of the Urban Institute crunch the numbers and provide a state-by-state breakdown of what the Medicaid expansion means to states – and their budgets.

Medicaid Costs And The New Health Law

May 26, 2010

NPR – Governors are complaining about the new financial burdens that will be imposed on states by a major Medicaid expansion included in the new health law. But a new study by researchers from the Urban Institute finds that the vast majority of the costs will be borne by the federal government, and some states could even save money as a result.

Uninsured more likely to die in ICU

May 24, 2010

WHYY – In Pennsylvania, hospital intensive care units are less likely to provide some common, and potentially life-saving, treatments to people who are uninsured. The study from researchers at Penn Medicine also found that patients who are covered by health insurance are less likely to die in the ICU, compared with patients with no coverage.

Big Gains for Young People in Health Law

May 24, 2010

The New York Times – After Eric Heininger left his job (and medical insurance) to follow his girlfriend to graduate school in New Haven, he wanted to get a physical, so he volunteered to take part in a medical study.

As Consumer Group Slams Health Plans’ Profits, Insurers Point Finger Elsewhere

May 13, 2010

Shots (NPR’s Health Blog) – The health care bill may now be the health care law, but the war against the health insurance industry is raging on unabated. Apparently, consumer groups’ strategy seems to be if they can demonize the insurance companies enough, they can redirect some of the unhappy feelings now being aimed at the still new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

HEALTH REFORM: The One Month Retrospective

May 4, 2010

The New Health Dialogue – Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director of the White House Office of Health Reform, recently offered us a look at what health reform has accomplished in a few short weeks. And HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Tuesday announced how it’s going to help early retirees stay covered before reaching Medicare age. The pace is pretty impressive.

Can’t Un-Ring the Bell on Health Care Reform

May 3, 2010

The Lewin Report – Despite admonitions of the Tea Parties, worried hospitals, physicians and insurers, and angry Republican leaders in Congress, health care reform is here and going forward. There will be a series of clean-up bills, but regulatory changes are already happening, and major environmental shifts are afoot. Nonetheless, there will be controversies and competing interests at every step along the way. Just this week in Washington, some of those tension-laden issues include:

Myths & Facts about HealthCare Reform: The Impact on Hospitals, and Patients Who Need Hospital Care – Part 3

April 21, 2010

Health Beat – Summary: Short-term, at least, hospitals are winners. When it came to negotiating with reformers, they “got into the tent early,” and the reductions in Medicare increases that they accepted will be offset by an influx of paying patients. Granted, government payments to hospitals that take a disproportionate number of uninsured low-income patients will be slashed, but because there will be many fewer uninsured patients, most hospitals will come out ahead. Those that continue to care for larger share of those who can’t pay will receive additional payments.

For Pre-existing Conditions, Separate and Unequal Coverage?

April 15, 2010

Prescriptions (The New York Times) – They may all get coverage through their state’s high-risk insurance program, but some participants may have better and cheaper coverage than others starting in July.

Sweden, Canada Outrank U.S. On Confidence In Health Care

April 14, 2010

The Huffington Post – While It remains to be seen whether or not the monumental health care legislation passed last month will dramatically alter Americans’ feelings about their country’s heath system, a new online poll from Ipsos/Reuters suggests that there is certainly room for improvement.

Health Care by the Numbers

April 13, 2010

Huffington Post – On Tuesday, Barney Frank got nailed on Healthcare by a couple of doctors on a flight back to Boston. So they hate the new health care law. It is complex and full of deals. It fosters big government. They worry – as you should – about the costs of health care, the bank bailout and two wars. They are doctors who know they’re getting stuck with lower fees. All of these concerns are worthy of at least reality-based paranoia.

Millions of unemployed may never recover

April 11, 2010

The Seattle Times – Despite recent job gains, one grim statistic casts a long shadow over the recovering economy and the futures of more than 6 million workers: Fully 44 percent of the nation’s 15 million unemployed have been out of work for more than six months.

New Health Law Expands High-Risk Coverage

April 8, 2010

NPR – When Miles Owyang was born, six weeks premature, the doctors determined that he had a heart ailment. It was nothing serious, just something to monitor.

Sebelius Begins Push for High-Risk Pools

April 2, 2010

The New York Times – In one of the first steps toward implementing the recently adopted health care legislation, the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, on Friday sent a letter to governors and state insurance commissioners asking whether they were interested in creating high-risk insurance pools.

Insurance Protection For Adult Children Won’t Come Fast Enough For Some Parents

April 2, 2010

Kaiser Health News – When Allison McMaster Young heard that the new health overhaul law would allow her and her husband to keep their 21-year-old son on their family health insurance policy until age 26, she breathed a sigh of relief. Alex will graduate from Fordham University on May 21. Under the terms of the family plan they have through her husband’s job, he’ll lose his coverage the very next day because he’ll no longer be a full-time student. Keeping Alex on the family policy would be by far the simplest and most affordable way to keep him covered after graduating.

Read more about student health insurance.

Repeal Of Bill, All Or In Part, Is Problematic

March 24, 2010

Investor’s Business Daily – It’s springtime, and with the enactment of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid health care monstrosity, repeal is in the air. And why not?

Unemployed, But Not Uninsured

March 23, 2010

Newsweek – Say what you will about the politics surrounding health-care reform, but the new legislation undoubtedly will boost the quality of life for the unemployed and the underemployed. In the midst of the Great Recession, that’s a lot of folks: roughly 15 million Americans. “Those are precisely the type of people helped by this bill,” says Linda Blumberg, a health-policy expert at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social think tank in Washington, D.C. NEWSWEEK’S Nancy Cook recently spoke with Blumberg about the specifics of the bill and what it means for the jobless, the self-employed, and small-business owners.

‘Fix-it’ bill: Final fight on health care front

March 22, 2010

USA TODAY – Senate Democrats vowed to start debate today on a series of changes to President Obama’s landmark health care legislation, launching the final battle in the year-long effort to revamp the nation’s health insurance system.

Biggest pro-life vote in history

March 21, 2010

Health Insurance Resource Center – 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:

A Historic Vote for Health-Care Reform

March 21, 2010

The Nation – It fell to the senior member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Michigan Democrat John Dingell, to put Sunday night’s vote in favor of landmark health care legislation in perspective.

“Today we are doing something that ranks with Social Security and Medicare,” declared the man whose father served during the New Deal era that gave America Social Security and who himself was present for the historic vote to create Medicare and Medicaid.

Why We Reform

March 18, 2010

Paul Krugman (The New York Times) – One way or another, the fate of health care reform is going to be decided in the next few days. If House Democratic leaders find 216 votes, reform will almost immediately become the law of the land. If they don’t, reform may well be put off for many years — possibly a decade or more.

Will you be one of 2.4 million Americans bankrupted
each year by medical bills?

March 11, 2010

Health Insurance Resource Center – 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.

What can you do to help reduce the number of uninsured?

March 3, 2010

Health Insurance Resource Center – For many Americans, getting off the rolls of the uninsured is a simple matter of getting information about coverage that’s already available to them. And, while state governments and health care advocacy groups are making concerted efforts to direct the uninsured to coverage, efforts by ordinary citizens can also help reduce the rolls of the uninsured.