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In the face of mounting pressure from Catholic leaders and politicians, the White House on Friday tweaked its position on contraception coverage mandates in the Affordable Care Act. Rather than require large religious institutions like Catholic colleges and hospitals to provide employees with free health insurance coverage for contraception, insurance companies themselves will have to [...]
It’s no secret that passing health care reform was a balancing act from beginning to end. For President Obama, keeping the legislation alive meant making sure congressional Democrats stayed happy, along with for-profit industries like insurers and Big Pharma and powerful non-profit interest groups like the AARP and the American Medical Association. Through health reform’s [...]
The Medicare reform plan released Thursday by GOP budget prophet Paul Ryan and wonky Democratic Senator Ron Wyden is a rare hybrid strain. Politically, it’s the result of a collaboration between two men with very different ideological inclinations. On the policy, it maps out a kind of DMZ for the entitlement debate: an expansion of [...]
With all this presidential politics going on, it’s hard to keep up with some of the subtler and wonkier public policy developments. The always-excellent Matt Miller has a fascinating column in the Wapo today on the proposed health care compromise backed by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Paul Ryan. This could be a big [...]
After hovering around split support since its passage, Obama’s health care overhaul has taken a sizable popularity hit this month according to new data form the excellent Kaiser Family Foundation, with just 34% of Americans now expressing a favorable opinion of the law. The drop appears to be primarily driven by Democrats, whose approval has [...]
On Tuesday, the highly respected, non-partisan Institute of Medicine released a report that is sure to draw fire from some critics of Democratic health reform. In a much-anticipated paper on which services should be classified as preventive medicine under the Affordable Care Act – and therefore be 100% covered by insurers – the IOM said [...]
On Wednesday afternoon, a coalition of Ohio conservatives will flex their muscles in a show of force against President Obama’s health-care reform law. Activists opposed to a health-insurance mandate will submit nearly 550,000 signatures to Ohio’s Secretary of State in order to place a constitutional amendment – known as the Healthcare Freedom Amendment — on [...]
Former Obama Administration budget director Peter Orszag has not exactly worked hard to maintain friendly ties with the White House since he left his post in the summer of 2010. First, he took a job writing columns for The New York Times, the first of which ran in September 2010 and suggested extending the Bush [...]
The majority opinion by a 6th circuit panel Wednesday upholding Obama’s health care reform law is a victory for the administration on its face. But to understand just how big a victory it is, you have to read the concurring opinion by Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton. Sutton, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin [...]
Wednesday’s appeals court ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act was undoubtedly a win for the Obama Administration. The Sixth Circuit, based in Cincinnati, agreed with a previous district court ruling that the law’s individual mandate does not violate the Constitution. Challengers argued in this case, as they have in others across the [...]
