COVID-19 & Healthcare

‘ObamaCare’ Medicare savings extend the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund

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More good news from the Affordable Care Act aka “ObamaCare” — the ACA reforms applicable to Medicare are extending the solvency of the Medicare Trust. In an annual report today, Medicare finances improve as healthcare inflation slows, trustees say:

Image: Supreme Court Upholds Obama's Affordable Care ActImprovements in healthcare costs have extended the life of Medicare’s main trust fund by four years, the annual report of the Social Security and Medicare trustees said Monday, a further sign of the positive effect of lower medical inflation.

Medicare Part B premiums are expected to remain the same through 2015 because of that improvement, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell told reporters as the report was released.

Medicare is “considerably stronger than it was just four years ago,” she said.

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The GOP’s war on healthcare

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Q. What’s the difference between a Ukrainian rebel with a rocket launcher and a lawyer challenging the Obamacare subsidies?

A. The Ukrainian doesn’t intend to hurt innocent people.

So says Andre Koppelman at the Balkinization blog and The New Republic about the GOP’s war on healthcare. Obamacare Opponents Are Hurting 4.5 Million Workers to Win a Political War:

EthicsThe legal argument against the subsidies is weak on the merits.  But merits aside, the case raises important questions about the ethics of political warfare. When is it acceptable to deliberately aim to harm huge numbers of people in order to score a symbolic point? The point here is to discredit Obamacare; the casualties are simply a means to that end.

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Courts of Appeal split on semantics and statutory contruction of ‘ObamaCare’

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Image: Supreme Court Upholds Obama's Affordable Care ActThe New England Journal of Medicine in a report published last week estimated that some 20 million Americans had been covered by the Affordable Care Act aka “ObamaCare.”

Early this morning, Tea-Publicans in Congress were celebrating the possibility that millions of their fellow American citizens would lose their health insurance after a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the federal subsidies only apply to states that created their own health insurance exchanges. That could cripple the insurance exchanges and the ability of Americans to afford health insurance. What today’s Obamacare ruling reveals about the GOP.

Read the D.C. Circuit Court Opinion in Halbig v. Burwell Here (.pdf).

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Cathi Herrod’s law firm spreads lies about birth control in federal suit

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Herrod

Anti-choicers don’t have the truth or popular opinion on their side where birth control is concerned but that has not stopped the movement in its unrelenting quest to strip women of access to it. So they have devised a three part strategy to fool the public:

1. They have claimed repeatedly that effective forms of hormonal contraception used by women (IUDs, morning after pills, and even regular pills) are really “abortions” due to the slight theoretical possibility that such methods might interfere with a fertilized egg implanting on the wall of the uterus. I have yet to have an anti-choicer explain to me exactly how often they think an IUD or birth control pill snuffs out a fertilized egg* as opposed to working the way that the current scientific consensus holds that they do – by blocking fertilization. But scientific evidence is largely irrelevant to the anti-contraception crusaders.

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GOP War on Women: Senate Republicans filibuster birth-control bill

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Oh, lord, the Arizona Daily Star’s creative headlines writer strikes again. Why hasn’t this editor been fired for incompetence?

The print edition of the Star today (as opposed to the online version) contains this story caption to an AP report: Democrats fail in birth-control reversal. Oy!

Screenshot from 2014-07-17 12:35:07The only factually accurate headline for this story is “Senate Republicans filibuster birth-control bill.” In a real democracy, the bill actually passed the Senate with a majority of votes, 56-43.

And to AP reporter Donna Cassata: you should not suggest or imply that 60 votes is required or regular in the Senate. This is a GOP abuse of the Senate filibuster rules to obstruct legislation, an historic abuse unmatched in American history. Your reporting does not even use the word “filibuster,” nor does it point out the historic abuse of the Senate filibuster rules by the GOP.

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