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 ...
ThinkProgress
Meet the ‘prophets of the resistance’: Faith leaders battle white supremacy and Trump
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA — Bishop Dwayne Royster wasn’t even halfway through his speech, but members of the crowd were already on their feet. With one hand doggedly clutching the wooden pulpit at the front of Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, he suddenly threw his other arm in the air as he kicked his message into high gear, working the impromptu congregation into a spiritual frenzy—and a political one.
“We’re not the ‘nice’ faith people!” he bellowed...
Even Manafort’s indictment can’t keep Paul Ryan from talking about tax reform
The biggest tax wonk in Congress is having a frustrating morning.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates were told to surrender Monday morning following reports over the weekend that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had filed the first indictment in his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The Manafort and Gates indictment was unsealed Monday morning and contains 12 counts: conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy ...
While the nation focused on Mueller, Trump proposed dangerous changes to Obamacare
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...
The hollow, contradictory hype of Trump’s big emergency speech on opioids
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
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...
Baltimore’s short on a lifesaving drug. Declaring the opioid crisis a national emergency can help
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND — If the paramedics had gotten there two minutes later, Darrin Dorsey would be dead. “Through the process you don’t even know you are about to die or you’re dead,” said Dorsey. “You only know what happened to you when you wake up and someone tells you.”
He recalled overdosing on fentanyl-laced heroin nearly two weeks ago. Dorsey’s near-death experience comes as Baltimore city officials have been trying to get naloxone, a...
The U.S. abortion rate fell dramatically. Will Trump learn the right lessons?
A new study found that the U.S. abortion rate fell dramatically between 2008 and 2014, thanks in large part to more people using effective birth control. But researchers are worried that lawmakers won’t learn the right lessons from the study’s findings — and that recent progress in the area is already being reversed under the Trump administration.
One of the other central findings of the study, authored by Guttmacher Institute researchers Rachel Jones and Jenna Jer...
The uninsured rate is rising as Trump successfully sabotages Obamacare
Providing some of the clearest evidence yet about President Donald Trump’s ability to undermine Obamacare even without the GOP votes in Congress required to officially repeal it, the national uninsurance rate is now on the rise.
According to Gallup, which has been tracking the uninsurance rate since 2008, the percentage of Americans without health care has been gradually ticking up since Trump was elected.
The uninsured rate had been on a steady downward trajectory sinc...
Man says he was discriminated against because of his MAGA hat, claims it’s a ‘spiritual’ symbol
A man is claiming his Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat has religious significance, arguing he was unfairly discriminated against for his “spiritual” beliefs when he entered a New York City bar wearing the iconic red cap.
According to the Gothamist, Philadelphia accountant Greg Piatek filed additional court papers last week in an ongoing suit against West Village bar The Happiest Hour, which he says discriminated against him in January. Piatek initially filed suit in March with th...