Early in the summer, hearings on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) seemed unlikely to ever happen. But with fall swiftly approaching, the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has decided it will hold four, the first of which took place on Wednesday.
During this week’s hearing, senators were joined by state insurance commissioners. Wonk-ish health experts guided senators on how best to strengthen the law’s marketplace. Commissioners from blue and red state...
obamacare
Here’s the long list of legislative items Congress needs to get to in addition to DACA
The White House will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program with a six-month delay for Congress to act. The Trump administration is phasing out DACA — an Obama-era initiative that conferred deportation protection and work permits for nearly 800,000 young unauthorized immigrants — unless Congress passes a bill by March to protect recipients, often referred to as DREAMers.
President Donald Trump is punting responsibility to Congress. In a statement, ...
It’s official: Every Obamacare marketplace in the country has at least one insurer
The Ohio Department of Insurance announced Thursday that CareSource will sell Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans in Paulding County, officially marking the end of the health law’s empty counties problem. Every person looking to buy coverage on the ACA marketplace in Ohio and nationwide will have at least one health insurance option.
The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) has been tracking the state of counties that were at risk of having no insurer in 2018 at some point since Februar...
The Trump administration is ignoring these states’ questions about Obamacare enrollment
It’s late August, and state officials who work in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace in Nevada and Oregon say they still have not been contacted by their federal partners about open enrollment, which is slated to begin November 1. This is the latest testimony in a string of recent reports that suggest the president meant what he said when ACA repeal efforts in Congress failed last month: “let Obamacare implode.”
Nevada’s ACA health insurance marketplace avoi...
The trap the Supreme Court set for Democrats’ best health care ideas
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), Vox’s Sarah Kliff and Jeff Stein report, has a smart new plan to improve America’s health care system: allowing ordinary health insurance consumers to buy into Medicaid.
The proposal combines many of the beneficial aspects of former President Barack Obama’s original proposal for a public health plan — a government backstop for people who can’t find good insurance on the private market, a benchmark plan that can potentially driv...
Paul Ryan is lying about Obamacare collapsing
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said Monday evening at a town hall that “dozens of counties” across the country have no insurer on the Obamacare marketplace. But in reality, not a single county currently has no insurer and just one is at risk of not having an insurer next year.
“The status quo is not an option. Obamacare is not working,” Ryan told a constituent who asked about the GOP’s ongoing efforts to repeal and potentially replace the Affordable Care act. “A third of the c...
Congressional Hispanic Caucus demands Secretary Price prioritize Obamacare Latino outreach
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus sent a letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price Thursday, demanding he meet with members about Affordable Care Act (ACA) open enrollment. Members were prompted by recent reports that no one from the Trump administration had reached out to key members of the Latino ACA outreach coalition to begin preparing for the open enrollment session, which begins November 1.
Members of the coalition, like the League of United L...
Trump agrees to pay key Obamacare subsidies, extending its lifeline
Everyone and their doctor has asked President Donald Trump to continue funding Obamacare cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments. After flirting with eliminating these payments to insurance companies, he finally agreed to pay them for the month of August. A White House spokesman told multiple news sources on Wednesday that the Trump administration will make the payment.
CONFIRMED: Trump administration will make the August CSR Obamacare payments, a WH spokesman tel...
Obamacare is imploding in one state
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace is not imploding. As the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Drew Altman pointed out, the ACA stability crisis is a matter of perspective. To understand how the marketplace is doing, you’d need to look state by state or perhaps county by county to more accurately assess. A tweet can’t contextualize this.
In broad strokes, most ACA beneficiaries will go unaffected by 2018 premium hikes and have at least one insurer option. When insur...