Moments after gunman Adam Lanza's mass murder of 26 people—including 20 children—at Sandy Hook Elementary last week, President Barack Obama called on the nation's leaders to set politics aside and take “meaningful action” to prevent future tragedies like the one in Newtown, Conn.
In less than a week's time, those efforts are taking shape in Washington as some lawmakers have made a connection between the nation's recent spate of shooting sprees and the need for stronger mental healthcare services—and adequate federal funding for those services—in America.
Two days after the massacre, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) appeared on “Fox News Sunday” calling for a federal commission on mass violence. “It's like the slogan we use in Homeland Security: 'See something; say something,'” Lieberman said. “If you see a younger person that really looks like they are really troublesome, get them mental health help,” he continued. “Is there enough mental health help available for these kids?”
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Elections have consequences, right?
Although Democrats and their allied organizations have spent the weeks since the Nov. 6 election crowing that President Barack Obama's re-election decisively endorsed his approach to healthcare policy, some polls might cloud that picture.
For instance, a new Gallup poll taken after the election found a first-time outright majority opposing the federal government ensuring all Americans have health insurance. Fifty-four percent of Americans opposed such a government role, while 44% supported it.
The opposition to such federal action has grown 23 percentage points since 2000, while support for it plummeted by 22 percentage points. The drop in support for a federal health coverage role included a 10 percentage point decline since just 2008.
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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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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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Did the door to compromise close for Catholic hospitals this week?
Even as the Obama administration attempts a delicate negotiation with Catholic hospitals and other religious-run institutions over the healthcare law's birth control mandate, speech after speech at the Democrats' nominating convention showed little interest in compromising on the issue.
“We ensured life-saving preventive care and the full range of reproductive services are now covered,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) in her primetime convention speech in reference to the inclusion of birth control within preventive services that all insurance policies are required to cover.
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Fifty shades of Medicare.
The addition of Paul Ryan to the Republican presidential ticket has led President Barack Obama to expand his Medicare focus on the stump. But his Medicare comments include an unexpected twist.
Conventional wisdom in Washington was that the selection of Ryan, chairman of the Budget Committee and author of two budget blueprints that would add an insurance subsidy component to Medicare, would open the Republican ticket to charges of trying to undermine Medicare. The healthcare program for seniors is traditionally a third-rail issue in Washington that politicians from both parties have studiously avoided. And now, Mitt Romney appeared to be following Ryan right onto the tracks.
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GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's choice of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate sent a clear signal that Medicare will be a major issue in this presidential election, and President Barack Obama's remarks Sunday indicate he got the message.
Ryan, the 42-year-old chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee, is the chief architect of a budget plan that made headlines in 2011 and 2012 for proposing a massive overhaul to the Medicare program. Any other choice for a vice president would not have nearly the same effect on healthcare policy issues as the Wisconsin Republican who recommends a premium support model—in which federal payments are made to health plans that consumers choose—to save the Medicare program. Ryan’s 2012 budget proposal differs from last year’s plan because it would give consumers a choice between premium support and the traditional Medicare program.
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Call it the awkward phase of the campaign.
This past week one of the most glaring examples of conflicts between core supporters of the President Barack Obama’s healthcare policies—feminists and religiously motivated social justice advocates—was on full display. As was his attempt to please both groups on opposite sides of a controversy spurred by his healthcare law that nearly all employers cover no-cost birth control.
It came this past Wednesday when Obama added a Catholic twist to his re-election campaign pitch for the healthcare overhaul that usually touts the birth control mandate as a standout component.
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Call it the awkward phase of the campaign.
This past week one of the most glaring examples of conflicts between core supporters of the President Barack Obama’s healthcare policies—feminists and religiously motivated social justice advocates—was on full display. As was his attempt to please both groups on opposite sides of a controversy spurred by his healthcare law that nearly all employers cover no-cost birth control.
It came this past Wednesday when Obama added a Catholic twist to his re-election campaign pitch for the healthcare overhaul that usually touts the birth control mandate as a standout component.
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