health-care-reform

Hillary Clinton Doesn't Want Your Vote

Alex Pareene · 01/14/16 10:37AM

Hillary Clinton is not going to make it easy for you to come around to supporting her. “You” meaning the good young liberal, who probably voted for Obama, and perhaps even (if you are old enough) supported him over her in 2008.

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Obama on Health Care

Max Read · 06/28/12 09:15AM

The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 in favor of the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act, upholding the constitutionality of the law's individual mandate as a tax. The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined the court's liberal bloc. "The bottom line," SCOTUSBlog writes, is that "the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government's power to terminate states' Medicaid funds is narrowly read. [...] Chief Justice Roberts' vote saved the ACA." CNN initially, and hilariously, reported incorrectly that the mandate had been struck down, briefly turning Twitter into an entertaining website.

Insurers Will Soon Be Required to Cover Birth Control

Jim Newell · 08/01/11 02:39PM

The Obama administration announced on Monday that health insurance plans must cover birth control with no copays, among other reproductive health care services, as preventative care for women. The requirement will apply to health care plans beginning on or after August 1, 2012. The announcement comes just a month after Health and Human Services released a recommendation that sought to expand preventative services for women under Obama's health care law.

Guy Robs Bank So He Can Get Health Care in Prison

Max Read · 06/20/11 08:37PM

James Verone, a 59-year-old former truck driver, was having serious medical problems that he couldn't afford to get checked out or treated. If only North Carolina had a free, state-run health-care system!, he thought. Then he realized it does: in prison.

Bachmann Puts Asterisks on Health Care Vote and the Holocaust

Lauri Apple · 05/01/11 12:47PM

Minnesota's top Tea Party hostess Michele Bachmann skipped Sunday brunch to go on television and discuss how she feels about the Republican party's plan to take away Medicare from America's Olds. Surprisingly, she's not totally down with it, and is using punctuation to let everybody know.

House Republicans' Next Target: The Old Peoples' Lobby

Jim Newell · 03/25/11 02:31PM

The masters of legislative oversight who currently make up America's House Republican majority has another little beef to settle, this time with that most sinister of Washington special interests: The American Association of Retired Persons, a.k.a. the lobby for old people things. If only these geriatrics hadn't endorsed last year's health care reform law, maybe Republicans could've turned a blind eye to such corrupt practices as bribes that ensure Matlock reruns never disappear from daytime television programming. But they did endorse it, so House Republicans are planning hearings.

Will Health Care Reform Be Popular as a Comic Book?

Jim Newell · 02/08/11 02:24PM

Experts who support the new health care law haven't been able to sway public opinion much with the drab language of health economics. So now they'll just make a comic book — sorry, graphic novel — about it and see if that does the trick. You love comic books and movies about comic books, don't you, America? Well just wait until the comic book ethos is applied to such sexy topics as risk pooling and the medical-loss ratio, by an MIT economist author!