The last time Atul Gawande started a company, he named it after a Greek myth.
Ariadne Labs, based in Boston, Massachusetts—where Gawande also works as a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and teaches at Harvard—has been trying since 2012 to innovate in an area that has historically resisted innovat...
obamacare
What a governor, insurer regulator, and consumer advocate want Congress to do about Obamacare
Congress won’t be able to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) after the midterm elections handed Democrats control of the House of Representatives — but that doesn’t mean lawmakers are done tinkering with the 2010 health care overhaul law.
Democrats ran and won on health care and the new House majority is expected to make strengthening the ACA a top priority next year. For some lawmakers, this means passing measures to further stabilize the marketplace...
Why Is Obamacare Enrollment Down?
Sign-ups for health plans are 11 percent lower than last year, with two weeks left in open enrollment. Here are some possible reasons.
Trump admin can’t use Congress to repeal Obamacare, so it’s asking states to rewrite the health law
Less than a month after the midterm elections ended the possibility of Obamacare repeal in Congress, the Trump administration has called on states to rewrite the health law in the image of failed GOP health bills.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued new guidance on Thursday encouraging states to implement changes to the marketplace that fundamentally undermine the goals of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
States have always had the ability to modify the ACA...
Republican who crafted health care repeal is officially ousted from Congress
As the final votes are tallied and Democrats continue to notch midterm election victories this week, Republican incumbents were toppled in New Jersey and California by opponents who built campaigns focused on affordable and accessible health care.
Former Obama administration official Andy Kim was officially declared the winner in New Jersey’s 3rd district Wednesday, ousting Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ). MacArthur was one of the left’s biggest health care foes, and earned th...
The Supreme Court will hear a subtle but terrifying threat to Obamacare
In a sensible world, Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill would have nothing whatsoever to do with the Affordable Care Act. On its surface, Bethune-Hill is a racial gerrymandering case which, the Supreme Court announced on Tuesday, will be heard by the Court for the second time.
Yet Bethune-Hill also presents a difficult issue regarding when non-parties to a federal lawsuit may appeal lower court decisions to a higher authority. And this technical q...
Getting Obamacare plans to cover abortion is hard. Trump is trying to make it even harder.
The Trump administration wants insurers to send Obamacare enrollees two separate, monthly bills if the plan covers abortion services, per a new proposed regulation that creates more administrative burden for patients and companies alike.
It wouldn’t matter if the patient never had an abortion. The administration would require insurance companies to send two different invoices to patients who purchase Obamacare plans: one for the standard monthly fee for the insurance policy an...
Voters just gave more than 300,000 people health care
Residents in Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah voted to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Tuesday, granting health coverage to more than 300,000 low-income people.
Although all three states historically voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential elections, activists gathered enough signatures to put Medicaid on the ballot in each red state and residents managed to set partisan politics aside.
This means upwards of 62,000 people in Idaho, roughly ...
The biggest thing on the ballot today is the health of Americans
There is a lot at stake in today’s US midterm elections (Nov. 6). There are 435 seats in the US House of Representatives up for a vote, and Democrats need to add 25 to their current 193 seats to take the majority (two Democratic representati...
Democrats winning the popular vote won’t be enough to save Americans’ health care from Republicans
The 2010 election was a historic disaster for the Democratic Party. Republican House candidates won the national popular vote by 6.8 percentage points and took a commanding majority as a result. It marked the end of President Obama’s legislative agenda and the beginning of an era when Republicans demanded massive concessions just to keep the government open.
Now imagine that 2018 is the mirror image of 2010 — that is, that Democrats win the popular vote by the exact same...