health insurance

Playing Politics, Governors Jindal, Perry Ditch State Citizens on Healthcare

Marc Morial

Last week, 400,000 poor and underserved Louisianans, many them people of color, were shut out of potentially life-saving health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). A Louisiana House health committee voted down a measure that would have forced Governor Bobby Jindal to opt into the Medicaid expansion provision of ACA that is being subsidized by the federal government to cover vulnerable communities.

The Consequences of Failing to Obtain Health Insurance in 2014

Viji Sundaram

To buy or pay the penalty? That is the question that will confront many U.S. residents in the coming months, when open enrollment season begins for health insurance coverage, under the terms of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare. ACA will be fully implemented on January 1, 2014, when most legal U.S. residents will be required to have “minimum essential health coverage” or make a “shared responsibility payment,” as the Congressional Budget Office puts it in regulations it rolled out last fall. 

Low-Income Health Programs Are Crucial to Success of Healthcare Reform

Daniel Zingale

The state legislative session is now in full swing, and lobbyists and advocates are descending on Sacramento to talk health care coverage – who should be eligible and how they should get it. It's a debate you might have expected Obamacare to end. But though California and millions in our state will benefit when the president's plan kicks in next January, about 3 million to 4 million Californians, the majority of whom are legal residents, will remain uninsured.

‘Escape Fire’ Documentary Sheds Light on the American Healthcare Crisis

Kurt Thurber

Escape Fire, which opens October 5, 2012, is constructed on three-levels: the human element, the problems with healthcare and the examination of the solutions for providing world-class, cost-efficient healthcare. While a work of nonfiction, the message and narrative pace suffers to some degree without an impact singular villain-- no Roger for Michael Moore to badger, no McDonald’s dollar menu to clog Morgan Spurlock’s arteries or usurpers to the King of Kong throne. Only the mass poor decisions of nutritional diet, antiquated training of medical students and a system that is more profitable if the U.S. general population is in need of constant medicinal treatment. 

Obama, Justice Roberts and How the Crucial Health Care Victory Will Affect Millions

Mark Bizzell

Shakespeare's plays all begin with a conflict that is well underway by the time the curtain goes up.  A divided court, controversial law, and a presidential election five months away took center stage in this summertime drama.   In what seems to be the climax for President’s Obama signature legislation, we are actually in the midst of the greatest health care transition this country has ever seen. 

The Long and Necessary March to American Health Care Reform

Matthew Rudow

Talk of the end of American exceptionalism seems to be everywhere lately, but in at least one area, the United States inarguably reigns supreme.  Currently, per capita health care expenditures in the U.S. are approaching $8,000 a year, far more than anywhere else in the world.  The nation with the second-highest per capita cost, Norway, spends  $2,500 less per person per year.  What do Americans get for their money?  A life expectancy of 78.2 years, slightly ahead of Panama and Libya.

If Health Care Law is Overturned, Millions of Working-Class Americans Will Suffer the Consequences

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

There was never much doubt that if the Supreme Court ever got a chance to decide the constitutionality of the health care reform law that it would be in for rough sledding from the court’s five conservatives. The judicial torpedoing of the law will hurt millions of poor, working-class Americans who desperately need health care, but couldn’t get affordable care before the law was passed, and are just as unlikely to get affordable care if it’s struck down. It’s no mystery who among those millions will be hurt the most.

Ron Paul and the Choice to Live

Nicholas F. Palmer

The positions of Ron Paul and other Republicans on the issue of healthcare—whether it be through the advocacy of unrealizable autonomy or the use of various red herrings—serve only as an impediment to access, degree of coverage and improvement in quality of care. The reality of attaining health insurance is not just about choice; for many, it’s about luck. Expanding healthcare coverage diminishes the unjust force luck has in each person’s life.

 

 

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