Tens of thousands of low-income people previously locked out of affordable coverage got good news tonight.
Voters in Maine elected to expand the Medicaid program, which offers health insurance to low-income people. Before this ballot measure’s success, the state’s legislature repeatedly tried to expand Medicaid, but Gov. Paul LePage (R) issued five different vetoes blocking the legislation.
The Medicaid expansion is a major provision of the Affordable Care Act, bu...
health care
Dangerous Medicaid waivers likely to be approved under Trump administration
A philosophical change is underway for the decades-old Medicaid program, which provides health coverage for over 68 million people, including children, pregnant persons, seniors, modest income-earners, and those living with disabilities.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a division within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), released new criteria Tuesday outlining how it will judge state applications that look to innovate the 1965 insurance program....
What you need to know about the Trump administration’s next anti-abortion push
While the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers have failed to restrict abortion providers (in the United States, that is) from receiving any federal funds, it doesn’t mean they’ll stop trying.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will likely release funding notices for the Title X program — which funds family planning services to nearly four million, mostly low-income people — next week, according to the Washington Post. Health clinics t...
The Trump administration’s two-faced approach to the opioid crisis. Case in point: Medicaid
What’s opioid addiction treatment without health insurance? Expensive. Nearly one in 10 people receive treatment, and nearly a third of those people cited high costs and no insurance as a barrier, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The Trump administration’s health care track record so far — riddled with efforts to weaken insurance access, specifically for lower income people — undermines a White House that says itR...
Trump’s Obamacare sabotage accidentally resulted in more free health plans
People can start buying insurance on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace, otherwise referred to as Obamacare or the Federal Health Insurance Exchange, on Wednesday. Last year, 12.2 million people signed up for an ACA health plan through healthcare.gov or their state’s own health website. Given the dysfunction coming from Washington, D.C., consumer activists are concerned that not as many people will sign up for coverage this year. (Pro-ACA groups have ...
While the nation focused on Mueller, Trump proposed dangerous changes to Obamacare
On Friday, shortly before word of pending indictments from Special Counsel Robert Mueller sucked up all the oxygen in the news cycle, the Trump administration dropped a 365-page proposal including numerous potential tweaks to the rules governing Obamacare. Among other things, the proposed rulemaking from the Department of Health and Human Services could allow insurers to sell stripped down health plans in the Obamacare exchanges, potentially leaving people without coverage when they need i...
Trump declares public health emergency over opioids, adds no new funding
President Donald Trump has finally declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency, two months after he first said he would. The belated declaration is short of what is immediately needed to combat this epidemic. It offers no new funding that experts on the frontlines of the crisis say is needed — one expert says hundreds of billions in investment is necessary — and does not seem to yet prioritize increased access to the critical overdose reversal drug nalox...
The U.S. abortion rate fell dramatically. Will Trump learn the right lessons?
A new study found that the U.S. abortion rate fell dramatically between 2008 and 2014, thanks in large part to more people using effective birth control. But researchers are worried that lawmakers won’t learn the right lessons from the study’s findings — and that recent progress in the area is already being reversed under the Trump administration.
One of the other central findings of the study, authored by Guttmacher Institute researchers Rachel Jones and Jenna Jer...
The uninsured rate is rising as Trump successfully sabotages Obamacare
Providing some of the clearest evidence yet about President Donald Trump’s ability to undermine Obamacare even without the GOP votes in Congress required to officially repeal it, the national uninsurance rate is now on the rise.
According to Gallup, which has been tracking the uninsurance rate since 2008, the percentage of Americans without health care has been gradually ticking up since Trump was elected.
The uninsured rate had been on a steady downward trajectory sinc...