Affordable health insurance is part of the “middle-class bargain” that President Barack Obama is promising all Americans if he's elected to another term on Nov. 6.
That message was included in The New Economic Patriotism: A Plan for Jobs & Middle-Class Security (PDF), a 20-page booklet of second-term plans that the president's campaign released Tuesday along with a new video ad. Pledging to build an “economy from the middle class out,” the agenda offers the president's objectives for American manufacturing, small business, education, healthcare, retirement security and the deficit. Not surprisingly, the section on healthcare touts the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and how the administration would ensure the controversial law's continued implementation in a second term.
“It is up to you whether we go back to a healthcare system that lets insurance companies decide who to cover, when to cover it, whether they can drop you from your coverage whenever you need it most, or whether we keep moving forward with a law that is already cutting costs and covering more people and saving lives,” the president says in it.
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A new study from the left-leaning Urban Institute says the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act relies on market-based principles to achieve its goals, which opponents of the law say they find puzzling.
Released Friday, the brief report from authors Randall Bovbjerg and Stan Dorn (PDF) starts with the premise that although critics of the 2010 law refer to it as a government takeover of the U.S. healthcare system, it is actually based on pro-competitive reforms reminiscent of the Reagan era.
“The argument that the ACA is market-based when the opponents say the market can't address healthcare is perplexing,” says Sean Riley, director of the health and human services task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council, a not-for-profit organization in Washington centered on free-enterprise principles and federalism at the state level.
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Did President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney miss an opportunity in Tuesday night's debate to attract the much-coveted female voting bloc by barely touching on healthcare issues? Or should moderator Candy Crowley take responsibility for that instead?
Ilisa Halpern Paul, managing government relations director at the law firm Drinker, Biddle and Reath watched the 90-minute debate with her colleague Jodie Curtis, who serves as government relations director at the firm. When I spoke with them late Tuesday, they both expressed surprise that the town hall discussion didn't include one direct question on healthcare.
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America's Health Insurance Plans on Friday had reason to celebrate after HHS released the 2013 quality ratings for Medicare's health and drug plans.
“Currently, 37% of Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are enrolled in a plan with four or more stars, an increase from 24% in 2011,” Karen Ignagni, president and CEO at AHIP, said in an e-mail. “This increase is indicative of the commitment by Medicare Advantage plans to advance new and innovative strategies to improve healthcare quality and health outcomes.”
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Here's to diving below the overheated healthcare rhetoric.
It's widely assumed that tonight's vice presidential debate will be a health policy wonkfest (with zingers) that submerges deeply into the numerous conflicting approaches of the two presidential tickets. Specifically, the debate likely will focus on Medicare due to the significant changes the Obama administration has made to the program and because of the overhaul proposed by the Romney-Ryan ticket.
But there are a couple health policy questions that each campaign has rarely addressed that could give some insight and move beyond the rhetoric of which side is “ending Medicare as we know it.”
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Coming off a historic slapdown by the government’s nonpartisan ethics watchdog over a recent political speech, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hopped right back into the political fray this week.
Sebelius spoke Wednesday to a Washington gathering of the National Hispanic Council on Aging just a few weeks after the independent U.S. Office of Special Counsel found she violated federal law. The office cited her “extemporaneous partisan remarks” delivered during a February speech in which Sebelius was acting in her official capacity as head of HHS. It was the first such finding against a senior administration official since 2007.
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“Debates are what make America great,” Johnny Carson said on The Tonight Show 28 years ago this month. “The candidates stand before their electorate and reporters ask hard-hitting questions, and it's up to the people to decide which one evaded them more skillfully.”
We'll have our first chance to do that in this election cycle tonight, as President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will match up at the University of Denver for the first of three presidential debates this month. On Tuesday, lawmakers and health policy experts prepared for healthcare to feature prominently in that discussion.
In a call with reporters, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm centered on women's health and equal pay for women. Granholm said she expects “zero details” from Romney about his plan for the future, even though American women and their families deserve more than “vague platitudes.”
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