News
Big Worries About Betsy DeVos
by Editorial Board
01.10.17 The director of the Office of Government Ethics, the nonpartisan agency charged with vetting the financial disclosures of cabinet nominees for potential conflicts of interest, sent an extraordinary letter to Senate Democratic leaders late last week. Never in the four-decade history of the agency, he wrote, have ethics officials felt such "undue pressure ... to rush through these important reviews," leaving "some of the nominees with potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues shortly before … Continue Reading
Americans don't want to scrap Obamacare without something to replace it, new poll shows
by Noam N. Levey
01.06.17 The vast majority of Americans do not support Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act without enacting a replacement, a new nationwide poll finds. Nearly half the country does not want the law, commonly called Obamacare, to be repealed at all. Even among those who want to see the law rolled back, most say Congress should wait to vote on repeal until the details of a replacement plan have been announced. Just two in 10 Americans support the GOP strategy to quickly vote for r… Continue Reading
Democrats Demand Betsy DeVos Reveal 'Complicated Web' of Money, Lobbying
by Andrew Ujifusa
01.05.17 Six Senate Democrats have a message for Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for education secretary: You owe us a lot of information. In a Thursday letter to DeVos, the Democrats asked her to provide them information about her role in founding advocacy groups supporting school choice, those groups' expenditures and donor lists, and other connections she has to various organizations. "Understanding your leadership roles in this complicated web of political and not-for-profit or… Continue Reading
Obamacare Repeal Costs: 3 Million Jobs Gone, $1.5 Trillion in Lost Gross State Product
by Dan Mangan
01.05.17 Spending less by getting rid of Obamacare could end up costing a whole lot more. Up to 3 million jobs in the health sector and other areas would be lost if certain key provisions of the Affordable Care Act are repealed by Congress, a new report said Thursday. At the same time, ending those provisions could lead to a whopping $1.5 trillion reduction in gross state product from 2019 through 2023, according to the study. "Repealing key parts of the ACA could trigger massive job los… Continue Reading
Republicans Are Courting Disaster on Health Care
by The Editorial Board
01.04.17 And so it begins. After six years of posturing and futile votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Republicans in the Senate have started a process to erase the most important provisions of the health reform law with a simple majority. Millions of Americans are at risk of losing their coverage. Republican opponents of the health care law insist that it has failed, though it has reduced the number of uninsured Americans to the lowest level in history. They say that it has driven up costs, though… Continue Reading
Democratic governors warn Congress on health care repeal
by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
12.21.16 Democratic governors Wednesday warned top Republicans in Congress that repealing the Obama health care law would stick states with billions of dollars in costs for providing medical care to residents made newly uninsured. The Democratic Governors Association to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In the letter, estimating that states could face nearly $69 billion in costs for uncompensated care over the next 10 years if the health law is repealed. States traditio… Continue Reading
Obamacare boosted number of people with health insurance in all states, decreased care cost barriers
by Dan Mangan
12.21.16 A lot of people got health insurance under Obamacare - and they've elected a president who has vowed to take it away. A new study out Wednesday notes that all 50 states and the District of Columbia saw decreases - often sharp decreases - in their rates of people lacking health insurance after implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Nine states "experienced 10 to 13 percentage-point reductions in their adult uninsured rate from 2013 to 2015," the Commonwealth Fund report said. Among… Continue Reading
Yet another report finds that Obamacare is working
by Stacey Burling
12.21.16 A new report from the Commonwealth Fund adds to the evidence that the embattled Affordable Care Act has been doing its job. Since the law's implementation, the number of people without health insurance has dropped in all states. It fell by at least three percentage points in 48 of them and the District of Columbia. The rates are now at "historic lows," said David Blumental, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports research on healthy policy issues. "The historic … Continue Reading
School Discipline in a Post-Obama World
by Emily Deruy
12.20.16 Education Secretary John King is a generally soft-spoken, thoughtful guy. It's hard to imagine him as a kid giving his teachers any trouble. But the topmost education official in the United States actually got booted from Phillips Andover Academy, an elite boarding school north of Boston, back when he was a high-school student there in the early 1990s. King, whose parents had both passed away by the time he was 13, felt "unhappy and overwhelmed" by the school's unfamiliar culture and strict rule… Continue Reading
Could black lung benefits be in jeopardy?
12.20.16 Last week, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health released a report indicating a spike in black lung cases in Eastern Kentucky. A big reason for the trend could be with the decline in the coal industry, many miners are now getting tested for black lung in order to get compensation. While the health concern lingers, there is now a new worry. Some former coal miners fear their black lung benefits could go away under President-elect Donald Trump's administration. Trump was voc… Continue Reading
Millions more Americans can afford a doctor's visit under Obamacare, study shows
by Noam N. Levey
12.20.16 The Affordable Care Act's historic expansion of health insurance coverage has brought medical care within reach of millions of Americans who previously couldn't afford it, new research shows. The share of adults who skipped medical care because of costs dropped by nearly one-fifth between 2013 and 2015, according to a report from the Commonwealth Fund. The gains were even more dramatic in the states that have most expanded coverage through the federal healthcare law, often called Obamacare. "… Continue Reading
Billionaire Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for Sec of Education, has even found a way to profit from the #FlintWaterCrisis
12.20.16 The image at the top of this post was once the Twitter banner of billionaire Betsy DeVos until she got busted for it. What makes the image so controversial is the blatant product placement. Those little white boxes that look like something out of the movie Repo Man are for a "boxed water" product sold by the company Boxed Water is Better LLC whose tagline is "Boxed Water is Better". The DeVos connection to Boxed Water is a short straight line. DeVos is the chairwoman of a privately held investm… Continue Reading
Trump Counties Would See Big Impact From Obamacare Repeal
by Dante Chinni
12.19.16 When he campaigned for president, Donald Trump made repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act a signature issue. Polling suggests that such a move would have the biggest impacts on communities that gave Mr. Trump some of his highest levels of support, potentially complicating the politics of a repeal effort. More than 20 million Americans now depend on the ACA, also known as Obamacare, for health insurance. Data from Gallup indicate that a lot of those people live in counties that favored… Continue Reading
Repeal and delay Obamacare is a cop-out
by The Editorial Board
12.18.16 For six years, congressional Republicans have been trying to kill the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. They've passed no fewer than 60 measures to repeal all or part of it, none of which has become law. Now, with a Republican about to move into the White House, they are in a position to get their way. The only problem is, they are like the proverbial dog who finally catches the car and doesn't know what to do. Defunding the health law through a budgetary process known as reconcili… Continue Reading
Advanced Black Lung Cases Surge In Appalachia
by Howard Berkes
12.15.16 Across Appalachia, coal miners are suffering from the most serious form of the deadly mining disease black lung in numbers more than 10 times what federal regulators report, an NPR investigation has found. The government, through the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, reported 99 cases of "complicated" black lung, or progressive massive fibrosis, throughout the country the last five years. But NPR obtained data from 11 black lung clinics in Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylv… Continue Reading
Real people rely on Obamacare: Column
by Topher Spiro
12.15.16 In policy and political debates, we often forget the human impact of weighty choices. Abstract numbers, ideological arguments, "he said, she said" talking points and outright falsehoods - these are the currency of our public discourse. But elections and policies have real consequences in the everyday lives of ordinary families. As Congress considers repeal of the Affordable Care Act, we at the Center for American Progress (CAP) are collecting stories from people who would be affected. In some… Continue Reading
52 Million Americans Have Pre-Existing Conditions
by Kimberly Leonard
12.12.16 About one in four people have pre-existing conditions that would have made it difficult for them to get health insurance prior to President Barack Obama's health care law, according to a new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The law, the Affordable Care Act, made it illegal beginning in 2014 for health insurance companies to deny coverage for someone with a pre-existing condition - a move that used to be common practice among insurers, who would use an applicant's health status an… Continue Reading
Report: Repealing Affordable Care Act Risky for Ohioans
by Mary Kuhlman
12.12.16 Congress is considering repealing parts of the Affordable Care Act, a plan that a new report suggests would double the number of uninsured people in Ohio and other states. The Urban Institute research shows that in Ohio, more than 960,000 children and adults would lose coverage. Brandi Slaughter, CEO of Voices for Ohio's Children, says without alternative health policies, the historic gains in improving the uninsured rate would be lost."Ohio has over 95 percent of our children covered, so re… Continue Reading
The GOP could wreck the health-care system, and soon
by Editorial Board
12.10.16 REPUBLICAN LEADERS are beginning to sketch the agenda they will pursue next year, and top on their list is repealing Obamacare, a move they have promised for years. It seems to be dawning on them, however, that reality is more complicated than sloganeering. The GOP's emerging plan is to vote immediately to repeal much of the Affordable Care Act but not have the repeal take effect for a few years, giving Congress time to deal with the complexities of crafting and passing a replacement. This "rep… Continue Reading
Health care industry is worried by GOP's 'Obamacare' repeal path
12.10.16 One by one, key health care industry groups are telling the incoming Republican administration and Congress that it's not a good idea to repeal the 2010 health care law without clear plans to address the consequences. Hospitals, insurers and actuaries - bean-counters who make long-range economic estimates - have weighed in, and more interest groups are expected to make their views known soon. Representing patients, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network reminded lawmakers that lives … Continue Reading