SCOTUS Gave Big Pharma the Right to Kill & Maim

Pennsylvania Protesters Stage A ‘Sick-In’ To Pressure Their Governor To Expand Medicaid

Pennsylvania Protesters Stage A ‘Sick-In’ To Pressure Their Governor To Expand Medicaid: A coalition of health care activists staged a “sick-in” this week outside of Gov. Tom Corbett’s (R-PA) mansion to protest his refusal to extend health care coverage to additional low-income Pennsylvanians. They dropped to the ground and cried out for help from their governor, who has declined to expand Medicaid to cover an additional 700,000 [...]/p

Man Chalks Pro-Health Care Message On Sidewalk, Gets Arrested For Writing ‘Derogatory Remark’

Man Chalks Pro-Health Care Message On Sidewalk, Gets Arrested For Writing ‘Derogatory Remark’: A health care activist in Pennsylvania was arrested Wednesday night for writing a message in sidewalk chalk protesting the governor’s decision to block health care for 700,000 residents in the state. Like many Republican governors around the country, Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA) has opposed expanding Medicaid in Pennsylvania, even though the federal government would fully [...]/p

Under Obamacare, Montana Residents Will Get Better Benefits For Less Money Than They’re Paying Now

Under Obamacare, Montana Residents Will Get Better Benefits For Less Money Than They’re Paying Now: Individual and small group health plans sold on Montana’s Obamacare marketplace in 2014 will be cheaper than what current plans would have cost without the health law — even though the new marketplace plans will offer significantly better benefits than the status quo, according to a new Montana actuary report. Without the health law, insurance [...]/p

Under Obamacare, You Might Be Eating Better Hospital Food

Under Obamacare, You Might Be Eating Better Hospital Food: Obamacare will change huge aspects of the health care industry for Americans: Women won’t be charged more for the same care just because of their gender, insurance companies won’t be able to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, young adults will be able to remain on their parents’ health plans up to the age of [...]/p

PERRspectives: Health Insurers to Skip Half of Mississippi Counties

PERRspectives: Health Insurers to Skip Half of Mississippi Counties
"Not that Mississippians had much luck to begin with. Ranked dead last in the Commonwealth Fund's ranking of state health care systems, the Magnolia state has almost 500,000 people without health insurance, nearly 20 percent of its adult population ages 18 to 64. And in January, Republican Governor Phil Bryant declared that despite having the most meager Medicaid program in the nation, he would refuse the federal Medicaid expansion under Obamacare that could bring coverage to 160,000 of his residents, including those with cancer, diabetes and so many other conditions"

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Launches A New Attempt To Kill Social Security

www.politicususa.com/2013/06/21/u-s-chamber-commerce-launches-attempt-kill-social-security.html
"It is a sad commentary indeed, that the people who built America and contributed to the obscene wealth Wall Street, banks, and corporate giants conceal offshore are facing a prospect of working until they drop dead. Republicans are attempting to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and any program for the people at the behest of America’s real leaders; ALEC, Wall Street, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and to ensure the government lacks funds to maintain, let alone strengthen, those programs, they are keeping wages low, jobs scarce, and given the opportunity, will raise taxes on those least able to subsist in the Republican economy."

Insurers To Rebate Consumers $500 Million As A Result Of Obamacare

Insurers To Rebate Consumers $500 Million As A Result Of Obamacare: This summer, over 8.5 million Americans will get back $500 million in rebates from insurance companies that charged them too much thanks to an Obamacare consumer protection that limits how much insurers can profit off of premiums, according to new government data. But the size of Americans’ rebate checks varies wildly by geographic region, highlighting [...]/p

Health Care Plans Under Obamacare Will Cost Even Less Than Expected

Health Care Plans Under Obamacare Will Cost Even Less Than Expected: A new analysis of health care premiums proposed under the Affordable Care Act concludes that health plans will cost even less than originally expected. That’s likely because the insurance marketplaces will encourage more competition between insurers. Avalere Health looked at insurers’ proposed rates for Obamacare’s statewide insurance marketplaces in nine different states, and found that [...]/p

Celebrate the Defeat of the Granny Bashers! Billionaire-backed Campaign Fails to Cut Social Security and Medicare | Alternet

Celebrate the Defeat of the Granny Bashers! Billionaire-backed Campaign Fails to Cut Social Security and Medicare | Alternet
"Just to remind everyone, the Campaign to Fix the Debt (CFD) is yet another Peter Peterson-inspired initiative that has as its main goal cutting and/or privatizing Social Security and Medicare. Peterson has used the billions of dollars he earned as a Wall Street investment banker and private equity fund manager to finance a whole slew of Washington-based outfits for this purpose over the last two decades."

How Three Conservative Justices Voted To Jack Up Your Prescription Drug Costs

How Three Conservative Justices Voted To Jack Up Your Prescription Drug Costs: In 2000, a pharmaceutical company named Solvay obtained a patent for a drug called “AndroGel,” which is used to treat men with low testosterone levels. Shortly thereafter, several of Solvay’s competitors sought to market generic versions of the same drug, claiming that Solvay’s patent for the testosterone replacement gel was invalid. These claims were never [...]/p

The Health Care Cost Slowdown Could Be Here To Stay, Saving Companies And The Government Billions

The Health Care Cost Slowdown Could Be Here To Stay, Saving Companies And The Government Billions: U.S. health costs have been slowing down — and will continue to do so thanks to changes in the health care industry spurred by Obamacare, according to a new analysis by consulting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). PwC’s report finds that a combination of factors — including Americans’ increasing use of inexpensive retail clinics for basic medical [...]/p

Chicago Hospital 'Accused of Cutting Throats for $160,000'

Chicago Hospital 'Accused of Cutting Throats for $160,000'
"Based in part on surreptitious tape recordings, an FBI affidavit lays out allegations that a Sacred Heart pulmonologist kept patients too sedated to breathe on their own, then ordered unneeded tracheotomies for them -- enabling the for-profit hospital to reap revenue of as much as $160,000 per case."

Arizona Legislature Advances Medicaid Expansion, Extending Health Coverage To 50,000 Poor Americans

Arizona Legislature Advances Medicaid Expansion, Extending Health Coverage To 50,000 Poor Americans: Faced with enormous political pressure from Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ), the Arizona House passed a budget and Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in a rare 3:40 a.m. vote on Thursday. The bills now go back to the state Senate — where they are expected to pass easily later this morning — for final approval before heading to [...]/p

The Obamacare Experiment That’s Already Improving Seniors’ Care And Saving Hospitals Millions

The Obamacare Experiment That’s Already Improving Seniors’ Care And Saving Hospitals Millions: Hospitals and physicians across the country are teaming up to more effectively coordinate all aspects of Americans’ care, leading to millions of dollars in savings for both providers and the federal government, Bloomberg reports. That’s because of an Obamacare experiment that incentivizes hospitals, providers, and medical professionals to coordinate with each other on patient care [...]/p

The GOP Talking Point On Obamacare’s Medicare ‘Cuts’ Bites The Dust

The GOP Talking Point On Obamacare’s Medicare ‘Cuts’ Bites The Dust: Conservatives regularly claim that Obamacare “cuts” Medicare, and will cause less seniors to enroll in private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans while forcing insurers to cut benefits. Now, the exact opposite of those dire predictions is occurring, as record numbers of seniors have enrolled in Medicare Advantage, according to a new analysis by the Kaiser Family [...]/p

A Political Brawl Over Medicaid Could Leave Mississippi’s Poor Without Any Health Coverage At All

A Political Brawl Over Medicaid Could Leave Mississippi’s Poor Without Any Health Coverage At All: Mississippi lawmakers are at such a political impasse over Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion that they may fail to reauthorize the main program itself, let alone expand it to cover more low-income Americans. That would leave close to 700,000 poor Mississippians without basic health coverage for doctor’s visits, checkups, or prescription drugs for chronic diseases like diabetes. [...]/p

How Big Pharma Drives Up Medicare Spending Without Improving Seniors’ Health

How Big Pharma Drives Up Medicare Spending Without Improving Seniors’ Health: The Medicare Part D prescription drug program for seniors wasted $1.4 billion paying for brand name drugs that were no more effective than their cheaper, generic counterparts, according to a new study by the Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System. That excess spending was driven in large part by pharmaceutical companies’ efforts to delay generic drug [...]/p

Revealed: Letters From Republicans Seeking Obamacare Money | The Nation

Revealed: Letters From Republicans Seeking Obamacare Money | The Nation
"Now letters produced by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that many of these same anti-Obamacare Republicans have solicited grants from the very program they claim to despise. This is evidence not merely of shameless hypocrisy but of the fact that the ACA bestows tangible benefits that even Congress’s most extreme right-wing ideologues are hard-pressed to deny to their constituents."

PERRspectives: The Red-Blue Health Care Gap After Obamacare

PERRspectives: The Red-Blue Health Care Gap After Obamacare
"From the beginning, the defining irony of the never-ending debate over Obamacare has been this: health care is worst in those states where Republicans poll best. That is, the map of the states with the worst health care systems largely mirrors GOP strongholds in the Electoral College. Red state residents are generally the unhealthiest and more likely than their blue state cousins to be uninsured. The sad corollary is that the red states rejecting the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid are the ones that need it most. Now, a new analysis has a state-by-state body count of the millions of Americans Republican governors and state legislatures will leave without health insurance."

The Other Reason Medicare Is Getting Stronger

The Other Reason Medicare Is Getting Stronger: The federal government banned almost 15,000 fraudsters from billing Medicare in just the last two years, new data from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finds — over a two-fold increase from the two years before that. The crackdown is a consequence of Obamacare anti-fraud provisions and may be part of the reason [...]/p

Insurers Aren’t Just Giving Out Rebate Checks Because Of Obamacare — They’re Lowering Premiums, Too

Insurers Aren’t Just Giving Out Rebate Checks Because Of Obamacare — They’re Lowering Premiums, Too: Americans who bought individual health plans in 2012 saved $2.1 billion thanks to Obamacare consumer protections that limit how much insurers can profit off of Americans’ premiums, according to a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). The vast majority of those savings stem from individual health plan providers lowering the premiums they charge [...]/p

Financial Security of Elderly Americans at Risk: Proposed changes to Social Security and Medicare could make a majority of seniors ‘economically vulnerable’ | Economic Policy Institute

Financial Security of Elderly Americans at Risk: Proposed changes to Social Security and Medicare could make a majority of seniors ‘economically vulnerable’ | Economic Policy Institute
"Policymakers considering changes to social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare must consider the economic realities confronting elderly Americans. Many of America’s 41 million seniors are just one bad economic shock away from significant material hardship. Most seniors live on modest retirement incomes, which often are barely adequate—and sometimes inadequate—to cover the costs of basic necessities and support a simple, yet dignified, quality of life. For these seniors, and even for those with greater means, Social Security and Medicare are the bedrock of their financial security. Any proposed changes to these programs must be evaluated not just for their impact on future budget deficits, but for their impact on living standards of the elderly."

Meals on Wheels wait lists grow as sequester cuts millions of meals

www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/07/1214402/-Meals-on-Wheels-wait-lists-grow-as-sequester-cuts-millions-of-meals
"Over all, nutrition programs for seniors are losing $41 million in funding, as much as 19 million meals. All because Republicans preferred to cut nearly everything rather than raising some revenue from big corporations and the wealthiest people."

Hypocritical Republicans Have An Obamacare Problem

Hypocritical Republicans Have An Obamacare Problem
"But Cornyn, like other colleagues, is a secret admirer of Obamacare. Lee Fang has unearthed their appeals for grants to bolster health care services in their states, and there are many, from all those loyal GOP Obamacare haters."

GOP Governor Urges His Party To Expand Medicaid: ‘What Would Ronald Reagan Do?’

GOP Governor Urges His Party To Expand Medicaid: ‘What Would Ronald Reagan Do?’: Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) has a simple question for Republican lawmakers reticent to take part in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion: “What would Reagan do?” The answer, according to Kasich, is also simple — expand Medicaid. In an editorial for USA Today, Kasich — who became the fifth Republican governor to endorse expansion in February — noted [...]/p

Meals On Wheels Slashes Services And Adds Waiting Lists Thanks To Sequestration

Meals On Wheels Slashes Services And Adds Waiting Lists Thanks To Sequestration: Meals on Wheels, the program that brings hot food to home-bound seniors, is facing big budget cuts thanks to sequestration, and the Meals on Wheels Association of America just released a new survey of 640 of its members to find out what choices they’re making with fewer dollars. It found that nearly 70 percent have [...]/p

Five Essential Facts About Food Stamps

Five Essential Facts About Food Stamps: The majority of SNAP recipients are children or elderly–and many work. A report released in November 2012 by the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service shows that45 percent of SNAP recipients were under 18 years of age and nearly 9 percent were age 60 or older. What’s more, more than 40 percent of SNAP recipients lived in a household with earnings.

Gov. Scott Walker Cutting Medicaid To Fund Tax Cut For Rich

Gov. Scott Walker Cutting Medicaid To Fund Tax Cut For Rich
"I know a couple of people for whom Badgercare is a lifesaver, keeping a mother and child alive and functional. Gov. Scott Walker, who long ago sold the tattered remnants of his soul to the Kochs and their friends, is using Obamacare as an excuse to slash the state's very successful Medicaid program."

Showdown In South Carolina Senate Could Rob Thousands Of Their Health Insurance

Showdown In South Carolina Senate Could Rob Thousands Of Their Health Insurance: A South Carolina bill intended to stick a finger in the eye of Obamacare is riddled with unconstitutional provisions that are likely to be struck down. In the mean time, however, it could massively disrupt the state’s insurance market, potentially stripping thousands of people of health insurance. We will know within 48 hours whether South [...]/p

Thanks To Obamacare, Major Insurers Have To Give Back $36 Million To California Small Businesses

Thanks To Obamacare, Major Insurers Have To Give Back $36 Million To California Small Businesses: On Tuesday, Golden State small businesses and their employees got some great news: two of the state’s largest insurers will have to give them over $36 million in insurance rebates because of an Obamacare consumer protection. The health law forces insurers to spend at least 80 percent of the premiums they charge on paying for [...]/p

GOP Governors Cost Their States Billions To Deny Poor People Health Care

GOP Governors Cost Their States Billions To Deny Poor People Health Care
"Now Rick Perry and the other states rejecting that Medicaid expansion on pure ideological grounds without thinking about the consequences are about to find themselves explaining to constituents, and possibly each other, how their budgets just found themselves in serious deficit status."

Doctors Warn That National Drug Shortages Are Threatening Cancer Patients’ Lives

Doctors Warn That National Drug Shortages Are Threatening Cancer Patients’ Lives: Millions of Americans battling cancer are facing obstacles to recovery that have nothing to do with the disease’s toll on their bodies. According to a new study, national shortages of cancer drugs are threatening the health of the people who rely on them to stay alive. According to the survey, presented at an oncology conference [...]/p