Tag: GOP health care bill

Health scare 2018: How Minnesota campaigns are exploiting voters’ anxiety over health care

Credit: Getty/Sebastian Rose

The battle over health care — something that has become a defining feature of the 2018 midterm elections — has, in the final stretch of the campaign, come down to Republicans and Democrats making two different but equally emphatic assurances to voters.

Democrats are running on the argument that Republicans, if they retain majorities in Congress, would take another stab at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, and would aim to kill some of the law’s most popular planks — including its protections for individuals with pre-existing health conditions.

Republicans, meanwhile, insist that they have never, and would not ever, attempt to undermine the Obamacare provision that helped people with pre-existing conditions access more affordable health coverage. They’re issuing a warning of their own: if Democrats take control on Capitol Hill, they will push plans that would dramatically expand government health care programs — paving the way to ruin them at the expense of the seniors and families who need them most.

View the complete October 19 article by Sam Brody on the MinnPost website here.

GOP health care bill would make rural America’s distress much worse

The following article by Claire Snell-Rood and Cathleen Willging was posted on the Conversation website June 26, 2017:

A protester is escorted away by police as they arrested 43 health care and disability activists at a demonstration outside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s constituent office in Washington. Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Much has been made of the distress and discontent in rural areas during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Few realize, however, this is also felt through unequal health.

Researchers call it the “rural mortality penalty.” While rates of mortality have steadily fallen in the nation’s urban areas, they have actually climbed for rural Americans. And the picture is even bleaker for specific groups, such as rural white women and people of color, who face persistent disparities in health outcomes. In every category, from suicide to unintentional injury to heart disease, rural residents’ health has been declining since the 1990s.

While some have blamed these gaping disparities on “culture” or “lifestyle” factors – such as a supposed fatalism or overconsumption of unhealthy products like Mountain Dew – the truth is that the biggest culprit is limited access to health care and challenging economic circumstances. Continue reading “GOP health care bill would make rural America’s distress much worse”