With Democratic control, Michigan’s governor pushes for health care and climate change laws

August 30, 2023 News

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer gave an outline of Democratic plans for the final months of the year in a speech Wednesday that included calls for funding paid family and medical leave, mandating a 100% clean energy standard and codifying protections ensured by the Affordable Care Act.
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With Democratic control, Michigan’s governor pushes for health care and climate change laws

August 30, 2023August 30, 2023 News

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Paid family and medical leave, a 100% clean energy standard and codifying protections ensured by the Affordable Care Act are among the issues that Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is directing Democrats to tackle in the final months of the year.
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The percentage of Americans skipping medical care because of cost is back at pre-Obamacare levels

May 26, 2023 health, healthcare, medicaid, News

More Americans than ever before had health insurance coverage in 2022, thanks to Medicaid’s continuous enrollment, a feature of the covid emergency. And yet at the same time, 28% of people in the US chose to skip medical care due to costs—the highest percentage since Obamacare, or Affordable Care Act, became…
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A Texas ruling threatens to take away several free preventive health services for Americans

March 31, 2023 health, medicine, News, politics

One of the most important changes Americans experienced with the onset of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was that a large suite of preventive services and treatments—from contraceptives to heart monitoring to mammograms—had to be covered in full by insurance policies. But a new ruling could change that.
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Texans are bearing the cost of keeping the working class out of the statehouse

November 29, 2021 health, healthcare, medicaid, News, politics, Research, texas

In March, members of the Texas House of Representatives presented a proposal to expand Medicaid benefits. The bill, signed by 67 Democrats and nine Republicans, had enough votes to pass. It would have set Texas on the path to join the majority of US states (38 so far) that have expanded their populations’ eligibility for Medicaid—which provides healthcare insurance to low-income groups—since it became a possibility under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
In Texas, Medicaid is ...

Obamacare survives, China’s investment in Europe, Juneteenth

June 18, 2021 News

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Covid-19 showed the US how it could make universal healthcare work

April 15, 2021 health insurance, healthcare, News

The US has always relied heavily on private insurance to cover its citizens.
As of 2019, roughly two thirds of Americans with healthcare (about 90% of the population) got it through a private company. The remaining third used public coverage like Medicare, Medicaid, and tax credits for private insurance through the Affordable Care Act. It’s not a perfect system by a long stretch: Even those with insurance encounter debilitating medical bills due to the exorbitant, variable ...

Covid-19 showed the US how it could make universal healthcare work

April 15, 2021 health insurance, healthcare, News

The US has always relied heavily on private insurance to cover its citizens.
As of 2019, roughly two thirds of Americans with healthcare (about 90% of the population) got it through a private company. The remaining third used public coverage like Medicare, Medicaid, and tax credits for private insurance through the Affordable Care Act. It’s not a perfect system by a long stretch: Even those with insurance encounter debilitating medical bills due to the exorbitant, variable ...

The more the US invests in Obamacare, the more unsustainable it looks

March 25, 2021 Affordable Care Act, healthcare, News, obamacare

Obamacare has never been more successful. It’s also never been more obviously unsustainable.
In the wake of Covid-19 and the subsequent rise in unemployment, more Americans than ever turned to the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s marketplace to buy health insurance. Since early March, when president Joe Biden started a new open-enrollment period, more than 200,000 Americans have signed up. In 2020, 11.5 million health insurance policies were bought through the ACA, and of them, ...

Nursing homes owned by private equity have higher death rates

February 25, 2021 healthcare, News

Between 2004 and 2016 there were 20,150 excess deaths in American nursing homes, amounting to an estimated 160,000 lost years of life. The cause wasn’t a pandemic, but private equity.
Economists analyzed the mortality of patients in 18,485 nursing homes acquired by private equity companies between 2000 and 2017, versus other forms of for-profit ownership. It found that the likelihood of dying in a nursing home within the first 90 days of being admitted—a measure that’s a pr...