Exactly one year ago, President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – the most sweeping change to US healthcare since the legislation that created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The law’s most important achievement is its creation of a system that will slash our nation’s shameful uninsurance rate by an […]
This week, House Republicans are voting on whether to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Their bill, misleadingly titled “The Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act,” has a good chance of passing the House but virtually none of passing the Senate or being signed by the President. It’s a chance for House […]
Affordable Care Act
Promoting the “general welfare,” as in providing affordable, quality health care in the U.S.
After being sworn-in on Wednesday (1/5/11), the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives are promising to do at least two things this week: (1) read on the House floor the U.S. Constitution, and (2) repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the healthcare overhaul bill that was signed into law by President Obama in […]
United States Senator Bernard Sanders, Independent of Vermont, received this year’s Paul Wellstone Award at the Activist Dinner on 7 November in Denver, during the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association. Dr. Anthony Robbins presented the award “for his principled support for a universal comprehensive health care system…” Senator Sanders prepared this video […]
Yesterday a federal judge struck down the new healthcare law’s individual mandate, which requires everyone to have health insurance. (Actually, the mandate doesn’t apply to everyone: those who’d have to spend more than 8% of their income on coverage are exempt, as are undocumented immigrants – and if you don’t have coverage, you pay a […]
If you feel like you could use an overview of the new healthcare law – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – head over the the Kaiser Family Foundation’s website and watch their nine-minute animated video. Cokie Roberts narrates, explaining the problems the law’s designed to address and its major provisions. If you want […]
In a historic achievement, 60 Senators have agreed to a healthcare bill that will dramatically expand health insurance coverage and curb some of the insurance industry’s worst practices. Getting agreement between the Senate and the House, which has passed its own healthcare bill, will still be an arduous process, but the chambers agree on most essential elements, and this is the farthest Congress has come in decades towards fixing our healthcare system’s serious problems.
As the summer has worn on and Congressional committees have come out with specific proposals, healthcare reform supporters are getting a better sense of what we can reasonably hope to get out of this round of reform and what will have to wait.