KENTUCKY, a poor, rural state nostalgic for coal, has never been quite sure of its politics. For three years it was the darling of Obamacare. Governor Steve Beshear, a rare Appalachian Democrat, complied with the reform by creating a statewide health-insurance exchange and expanding Medicaid (governmen...
United States
The Museum of the Bible opens in Washington, DC
WHEN plans for the Museum of the Bible, which opens to the public in Washington, DC on November 18th, were first unveiled many predicted it would be a big, glossy advertisement for fundamentalist Christianity. The museum was founded and part-funded by Steve Green, a prominent evangelical and president of Hobby Lobby, a chain...
Chipped away
CONGRESS seldom agrees on health care, as is shown by the Republicans’ fruitless attempts to rip up the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. A longtime exception to partisan feuds was the Children’s Health Insurance Programme (CHIP), established in 1997. The scheme, which covers some 9m American children...
The Alexander-Murray bill does not solve all Obamacare’s problems
ON OCTOBER 25th the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its score of the Bipartisan Health Care Stabilisation Act, the cross-party effort by two senators, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Patty Murray of Washington, to shore up troubled health-insurance markets. The main goal of this bill is to restore, for two years,...
Op-Ed Contributor: How Republicans Can Make a Deal on Health Care
Give the states more flexibility in how they manage Obamacare.
The president’s indecision on health care is costly for middle-earners
INSURANCE is supposed to be about the careful management of risk. Recently, for America’s health insurers, it has had a lot to do with keeping track of President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. On October 12th the White House announced that it would cut off payments to insurers that underpin parts of the ...
Donald Trump’s health-care orders will hurt middle-class, self-employed Americans
THE strange thing about Donald Trump’s new executive actions on health care is the identity of those who will suffer their consequences. On October 12th Mr Trump kicked off a deregulatory process to permit widespread formation of so-called Association Health Plans (AHPs), insurance policies run by groups of small firms. Then...
The New Health Care: Which Country Has the Best Health Care System? Readers Respond
“Americans should understand the tranquillity of spirit that truly universal health care brings to a population,” one reader who lives in France says.
Republicans seek to turn health reform over to the states
AFTER Republicans failed to agree on a replacement for the Affordable Care Act earlier this year, the cause of Obamacare repeal looked dead. Yet a revival was always possible before September 30th, when a budget measure allowing a health bill to pass the Senate with only 51 votes, rather than 60, expires. The ticking clock has spurred four Republican senators, led by Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to have one last stab at getting a bill passed.
Messrs...