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In September 2009, President Barack Obama released a highly touted report on the state of health insurance prices in the United States, titled The Burden of Health Insurance Premium Increases on American Families. The report, which was published by the Executive Office of the President (EOP), painted a grim picture of health care costs.“Health insurance premiums continue to rise for American families,” wrote the authors of the EOP report. “Premiums are rising in all states and far in excess of wage growth or inflation. If we do nothing, the soaring rise of health insurance premiums will mean that millions of...

Editor's note: This piece was co-authored by NCPA Executive Director Allen West and Veterans Coalition of North Central Texas President Nekima Horton.In 2014, the four year old daughter of a serviceman stationed in Iraq nearly drowned in her family pool. She spent three and a half minutes under water before her mother found her and called an ambulance. After arriving at the hospital on the military post, the doctors realized the little girl needed to be air lifted to the nearest trauma center in Dallas, Texas, where she stayed for the next six weeks. A traumatic event for any family,...

Nearly a third of people without health insurance, about 10 million, live in families that received a federal earned income tax credit in 2014, according to a new study. But the Internal Revenue Service doesn't tell those tax filers that their low and moderate incomes likely mean their households qualify for Medicaid or subsidies to buy coverage on the insurance exchanges. That's a lost opportunity to identify people who are eligible but not receiving government assistance to gain health coverage, the researchers say. More

In August 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama expressed his hope for the growth of socialized medicine in the United States. “[Health care] is a $2 trillion part of our economy, and it is my belief that it’s not just politically, but economically, it is better for us to start getting a system in place—a universal health care system signed into law by the end of my first term as president and build off that system to further to make it more rational … By the way, Canada did not start immediately with a single-payer system. They had a similar transition step.”...

A former NHS director died after waiting for nine months for an operation - at her own hospital. Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex. But her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery. Her devastated husband, Jim, is now demanding answers from Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust - the organisation where his wife had served as a non-executive member of the board of directors.

Primary-care shortage is growing especially acute in rural areas and in parts of some cities. The doctor is disappearing in America. And by most projections, it’s only going to get worse — the U.S. could lose as many as 1 million doctors by 2025, according to a Association of American Medical Colleges report. Primary-care physicians will account for as much as one-third of that shortage, meaning the doctor you likely interact with most often is also becoming much more difficult to see. Tasked with checkups and referring more complicated health problems to specialists, these doctors have the most consistent contact...

New Jersey hospital emergency room becomes first in U.S. to end use of opioid painkillers PATERSON, N.J. -- St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center announced it has become the first hospital in the country to implement a program that will manage patients' pain in the emergency room without the use of opioid painkillers. Painkillers most frequently used in the emergency room in the past were oxycodone, vicodin and percocet, according to Dr. Mark Rosenberg, the Emergency Department chair. “Our job here together is to look at the whole equation and understand how we can stop people from going from a prescription,...

In a moment that seemed to stun even moderator Anderson Cooper, Donald Trump named federal involvement in education and health care as top functions of the federal government, along with national security, at the Milwaukee candidates forum in Milwaukee last night. Apparently unaware that conservatives believe that a federal role in education is unjustified, and that many, including Ted Cruz, want to abolish the Department of Education, and that federal involvement in health care is anathema to his party’s base, Trump spoke of both as among the top three priorities for the feds. Putting on his surprised face, Cooper...

GOP frontrunner Donald Trump said the top three functions of the United States government are security, healthcare, and education. During CNN’s town hall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Tuesday night, an audience member asked Trump, “What are the top three functions of the United States government?”“Security for our nation,” Trump responded. “I would also say healthcare… [and] education.”“The top three are security, security, security,” Trump stressed, saying America needs security “so we can continue to exist as a country.”“Thousands and thousands of people are infiltrating our country,” the real estate mogul explained. “We don’t know who they are.”On top of security,...

For the past several years, Idaho lawmakers have rejected every attempt to bring Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion to the Gem State. Earlier this year, they rejected two expansion plans that were so unpopular, they failed to even earn a committee vote. But with the legislative session winding down, there’s another last-minute, backdoor attempt to expand Medicaid on the horizon. The latest plan, dubbed the “Idaho Accountable Care Waiver Act,” would require the state to “provide for managed Medicaid services” to a new class of able-bodied adults. Although the legislation nominally limits its Medicaid expansion to able-bodied adults below the poverty line,...

Insurance companies in Delaware will be prohibited from limiting health care coverage for transgender individuals. […] Additionally, companies will not be allowed to impose different premiums or rates based on a person’s identity. The policy also applies if a person is undergoing a gender transition. …

Chicago Brown: Navy makes something positive out of Chicago violence Mark Brown This is a good news story, but underlying it is a bleak reality. The volume of gunshot wounds and other trauma cases treated at Stroger Hospital is so high that the U.S. Navy has teamed up the past two years with the hospital’s prestigious trauma unit to keep its medical personnel better prepared for their next deployment. The Navy guys might see as much action in a typical night at Stroger as they would if they were in a combat setting. Let that sink in for a minute....

And from most places South of our border. Donald Trump took a lot of heat for making some statements about illegal immigrants from South of the border. Thank you. It's true, and these are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. WaPo immediately launched into a tirade about "rates" of crimes which is entirely...

The primary component of GOP presidential candidates’ health policy proposals is to repeal Obamacare. Once GOP frontrunner Trump released his plan, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget took notice and did an analysis of the likely fiscal effects from Trump’s plan. Presumably, these fiscal effects would also apply to the other Republican candidates who also support repealing Obamacare. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) is a budget watchdog group that began 35 years ago. For the past few years it has been housed with the neo-Democratic think tank, New America. The two organizations parted ways over the...

Let me remind you that Medicare and Medicaid are the entire problem space within our federal budget, and that same issue -- retiree health care costs -- are the entire issue with state and local budgets, along with private pensions. There is only one candidate from either major political party that has put forward any sort of cogent plan of any kind of deal with the Medicare and Medicaid mess -- along with the mess of health care in private industry. This, as I've written about pretty-much since The Market Ticker began publication, is the intermediate and longer-term issue that...

For years, hospital lobbyists have promised that Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion would kick start states’ economies and produce thousands of new jobs. (Expanding welfare always stimulates the economy, right?) This piece of their Obamacare sales pitch is critical because, according to their calculations, these new jobs will generate the necessary revenue to pay for states’ share of the Obamacare expansion costs. The Arkansas Hospital Association, for example, made a similar guarantee, promising that most of the state’s share would be covered by new tax revenue generated by new jobs. But now that expansion has been up-and-running for more than two years,...

During an event in St. Louis, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked where Bernie Sanders was in the '90s when she was fighting for health care reform. Things got awkward when a member of Sanders campaign tweeted a screenshot of Sanders literally standing right behind her as she spoke at Dartmouth College about health care reform in 1993.

(Comments from the Bernie supporters are better than the article) Hillary Clinton wasn't on the debate stage Saturday when she tried to blast Bernie Sanders for his supposed lack of initiative on healthcare reform. But the principle still applies. During an event in St. Louis, Missouri, Clinton accused the senator from Vermont of being soft on healthcare reform before he made a single-payer system one of his main campaign promises. "Where was he when I was trying to get healthcare in '93 and '94?" she asked a crowd of supporters.

Year 2 of the Affordable Care Act was another financial flop for the Chicago-based parent of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois but hints of a turnaround are emerging. Health Care Service Corp.'s financial losses in its individual business, which includes ACA plans, worsened in 2015. The company, which owns Blue Cross affiliates in Illinois and four other states, said it lost $1.5 billion in its individual business, up from $767 million in 2014, the first year of the health law's state exchanges for buying coverage.

Healthcare Reform to Make America Great Again Since March of 2010, the American people have had to suffer under the incredible economic burden of the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare. This legislation, passed by totally partisan votes in the House and Senate and signed into law by the most divisive and partisan President in American history, has tragically but predictably resulted in runaway costs, websites that don’t work, greater rationing of care, higher premiums, less competition and fewer choices. Obamacare has raised the economic uncertainty of every single person residing in this country. As it appears Obamacare is certain to collapse of...