Tag: ACA

ACA linked to reduced racial disparities, earlier diagnosis and treatment in cancer care

New research backs up earlier data showing the law increased access to care.

Proponents of the embattled Affordable Care Act got additional ammunition Sunday: New research links the law to a reduction in racial disparities in the care of cancer patients and to earlier diagnoses and treatment of ovarian cancer, one of the most dangerous malignancies.

The findings, coming as health care emerges as an increasingly important issue in the 2020 presidential campaign, were released Sunday as abstracts at the annual meeting in Chicago of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The conference attracts some 40,000 cancer specialists to one of the world’s largest oncology meetings.

According to researchers involved in the racial-disparity study, before the ACA went into effect, African Americans with advanced cancer were 4.8 percentage points less likely to start treatment for their disease within 30 days of being given a diagnosis. But today, black adults in states that expanded Medicaid under the law have almost entirely caught up with white patients in getting timely treatment, researchers said.

View the complete June 2 article by Laurie McGinley on The Washington Post website here.

Phillips Votes to Lower Prescription Drug Costs, Strengthen the Affordable Care Act

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Rep. Dean Phillips (MN-03) voted in favor of H.R. 987, the Strengthening Health Care and Lowering Prescription Drug Costs Act, an omnibus bill of health care measures that passed the House today.

“Today we took action to reduce prescription drug and health care costs, while strengthening the ACA,” said Phillips. “We’re making health care more affordable and accessible for Minnesotans and people across the country. This bill is just common sense – it makes government work better and saves everyone money in the process.”

The price of prescription drugs continues to grow rapidly. 24 percent of Americans didn’t fill a prescription in the past year, and 19 percent of Americans said they skipped a dose or cut pills in half, all due to high costs

H.R. 987 packages together a group of bills into an omnibus that would lower the price of prescription drugs and reduce the Federal deficit in the following ways: Continue reading “Phillips Votes to Lower Prescription Drug Costs, Strengthen the Affordable Care Act”

Health-care law more popular despite Trump’s repeated attempts to destroy it

President Trump has begun a fresh assault on the Affordable Care Act, declaring his intent to come up with a new health-care plan and backing a state-led lawsuit to eliminate the entire law.

But Trump and Republicans face a major problem: The 2010 law known as Obamacare has become more popular and enmeshed in the country’s health-care system over time. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid — including more than a dozen run by Republicans — and 25 million more Americans are insured, with millions more enjoying coverage that is more comprehensive because of the law.

Even Republicans who furiously fought the creation of the law and won elections with the mantra of repeal and replace speak favorably of President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.

View the complete April 13 article by Paige Winfield Cunningham on The Washington Post website here.

Watch: Trump voter tells MSNBC it would be ‘disastrous’ if she lost her Obamacare coverage

A Trump voter in West Virginia told MSNBC this week that she is worried about the Trump administration’s plan to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act.

Trump voter in West Virginia told MSNBC this week that she is worried about the Trump administration’s plan to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act.

While speaking with the network, West Virginia resident Margaret Grassie said that “it would be disastrous for me” if the entire health care law got overturned without any kind of replacement ready.

“My prescriptions each month are about $800,” she said. “The health care that I get here is amazing. The quality is great here, but if you take Obamacare away, it’s not just going to affect me, it’s going to affect thousands in West Virginia — thousands!”

View the video here:  http://www.msnbc.com/craig-melvin/watch/trump-voter-can-t-afford-to-lose-obamacare-after-2020-election-1469747267566

View the complete April 3 article by Brad Reed of Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

McConnell to Trump: We’re not repealing and replacing ObamaCare

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told President Trump in a conversation Monday that the Senate will not be moving comprehensive health care legislation before the 2020 election, despite the president asking Senate Republicans to do that in a meeting last week.

McConnell said he made clear to the president that Senate Republicans will work on bills to keep down the cost of health care, but that they will not work on a comprehensive package to replace the Affordable Care Act, which the Trump administration is trying to strike down in court.

“We had a good conversation yesterday afternoon and I pointed out to him the Senate Republicans’ view on dealing with comprehensive health care reform with a Democratic House of Representatives,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday, describing his conversation with Trump.

View the complete April 2 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Trump abandons plan for pre-election vote on health care after talking to McConnell

President Trump abandoned plans to press for a vote on a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act ahead of next year’s elections following a conversation with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican said Tuesday.

McConnell told reporters that he and Trump had “a good conversation” Monday afternoon in which he said that Senate Republicans had no intention of trying to overhaul President Obama’s signature health-care law during a campaign season — a move many in the GOP saw as politically perilous, given that the issue helped Democrats in last year’s midterm elections.

“I made it clear to him we were not going to be doing that in the Senate,” McConnell said, also pointing out the difficulty in crafting a bill that could pass the Democratic-led House. “We don’t have a misunderstanding about that.”

View the complete April 2 article by John Wagner and Erica Werner on The Washington Post website here.

By striking at Obamacare, Trump could unravel his own drug pricing proposal

By backing the wholesale repeal of the 2010 health care law, President Donald Trump could unravel his own plan on prescription drug prices and undermine his messaging on an important issue ahead of the 2020 election: the climbing cost of medicines.

Less than two weeks before the midterm elections last year, Trump delivered a proposal to rein in the costs of outpatient drugs by pegging them to the lower prices paid by foreign countries.

The policy was endorsed by advocates for lower drug prices and denounced by the powerful lobby for drugmakers, appearing to fulfill a promise Trump made in a speech in the Rose Garden earlier that year to take on the Big Pharma “gravy train.”

View the complete March 29 article by Emily Kopp on The Roll Call website here.

Trump says GOP senators are working on an Obamacare replacement and it will be ‘spectacular’

President Trump Credit: Win McNamee, Getty

President Trump announced Thursday that a team of GOP senators is ready to give health care another shot after nearly a decade of promising and failing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

But he added the caveat that he is in no rush to get it done.

Trump resurrected the issue this week after the Justice Department, in a court filing Monday, said it supported the full elimination of President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement. The president’s assertion that Republicans would become “the party of health care” surprised some Republicans, who thought they had missed their chance to replace the law.

View the complete March 28 article by Colby Itkowitz on The Washington Post website here.

Trump administration suffers another Obamacare blow in court

The Trump administration has lost another Obamacare legal battle — its second this week — just as the president has revived his drive to destroy and replace the 2010 health law.

A federal judge ruled late Thursday in Washington that the administration’s efforts to expand the availability of health plans that don’t meet the coverage rules of the Affordable Care Act is a deliberate and illegal “end run“ around the federal health care law. The ruling addressed insurance known as “Association Health Plans,” which cost less than many Obamacare plans but can also provide fewer health benefits.

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, comes just one day after another federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s embrace of work requirements for people on Medicaid, concluding that those new rules in Kentucky and Arkansas violate the program’s primary goal of delivering health care coverage to low-income Americans.

View the complete March 28 article by Paul Demko on the Politico website here.

Trump veers off post-Mueller ‘no collusion’ victory message as conservatives worry

WSJ editorial board, others warn president to drop legal effort to nix Obamacare with no replacement

ANALYSIS — President Donald Trump spent Wednesday night and Thursday morning veering from topic to topic and enemy to enemy, again stepping on a victory with other messages.

He and his surrogates could have seized on a common message after Attorney General William Barr sent Congress a summary of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report that found no criminal-level conspiracy between his 2016 campaign and Russia. They could have used that messaging blitz to more forcefully counter Democrats who are loudly noting Mueller, according to Barr, opted against exonerating Trump on obstruction of justice.

Instead, as the president and his team — inside and outside government — have done repeatedly since he took office, they instead have veered from a major victory and brought up other controversial topics or made moves that have pushed wins off the cable news chyrons that clearly capture the president’s attention most days.

View the complete March 28 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.