health

Activists went all out to save Obamacare. Now they’re fighting for opioid recovery funds.

health, health care, News, resistance

It’s Phil Krauss’ first time protesting on Capitol Hill. He’s an advocate who kicked heroin three years ago when he was 32 years old.He’s new to organizing but he’s surrounded by veterans, many who were just at the Russell Senate Office Building two months ago trying to save the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

About 50 activists — affiliated with a host of grassroots organizations — met for the first time Monday in Washington, D....

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Fear over healthcare locks Americans in jobs – and throttles creativity | Jonathan R Goodman

health, News, Society, US domestic policy, US healthcare, US news, US politics, World news

What could and should make America great is the freedom to follow one’s dreams – not stay trapped in a cubicle, paralysed by fear

Millions of Americans are stuck in what some economists call “job-lock” or the inability to leave employment because of the risk of losing health insurance. A 2001 paper from Princeton’s Center for Economic Policy Studies showed, for example, that self-employed people are 25% less likely to have health insurance than office workers.

Uncertainty surr...

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Stress is bad for your health. Today’s political uncertainty makes it worse

health, inequality, News, Society, US healthcare

Americans are exposed to one of the most damaging sources of stress: uncertainty. The assault on our fundamental sense of security can make us sick

David Dobbs’ 13-year-old daughter has type 1 diabetes. Since 2015, the 59-year-old freelance writer and author has relied on Obamacare, officially known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), to help pay for his daughter’s insulin, blood testing supplies and other medical needs. But as the endless series of cliffhangers over the fate of the ACA continues, Dobbs says he’s starting to feel hunted.

Without insurance, diabetes treatment alone would cost his family about $20,000 to $30,000 a year, he estimates – and that’s if nothing goes wrong and prompts an astronomically expensive hospitalization.

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Trump’s Obamacare sabotage accidentally resulted in more free health plans

Affordable Care Act, health, health care, News, obamacare

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 ...

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While the nation focused on Mueller, Trump proposed dangerous changes to Obamacare

Donald Trump, health, health care, News, obamacare, politics

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...

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The hollow, contradictory hype of Trump’s big emergency speech on opioids

Donald Trump, drugs, health, Jeff Sessions, News

Like the rash of executive orders he signed in the early months of his administration, President Donald Trump’s Thursday address declaring a national public health emergency to help fight deaths linked to opioids was long on performance and short on substance.

The failure to invest new funding in the project and the vague promise that more policy specifics will be revealed in the coming weeks are symptomatic of Trump’s high-flash, low-focus approach to policymaking.

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Trump declares public health emergency over opioids, adds no new funding

Donald Trump, drugs, health, health care, News, politics

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...

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