Republicans May Want To Erase Health Law But First They Have To Save It From Collapsing
With all the uncertainty swirling around the future of the health law, Republicans are caught in the position of having to stabilize a marketplace that they never wanted in the first place.
The New York Times:
Republicans, Aiming To Kill Health Law, Also Work To Shore It Up
After denouncing the Affordable Care Act as an abomination for seven years, Republicans in Congress, working with the Trump administration, are urgently seeking ways to shore up health insurance marketplaces created by the law. While President Trump said as a candidate that “Obamacare is certain to collapse of its own weight,” Republicans fear such an outcome because, now that the fate of the health law is in their hands, they could be blamed by consumers and Democrats. (Pear, 2/10)
In other national health care news —
The Wall Street Journal:
Employers Balk At Curbs On Generous Health Plans
The Affordable Care Act’s tax on high-cost employer health plans faced sharp opposition from employers and unions. Now, Republicans are drawing equal fire for ACA replacement proposals that those groups say would have some of the same effects. The ACA’s so-called Cadillac tax is levied on the value of employer health plans above a certain threshold, in part to discourage what backers argue are overly generous plans and high usage of costly care. It is one of the few aspects of the law that Congress has tweaked, delaying its impact until 2020. (Wilde Mathews, 2/13)
The Associated Press:
GOP Must Decide What To Do With Health Law Taxes
Republicans love cutting taxes, especially if they were authored by a president named Barack Obama. But as they push their wobbly effort to erase his health care overhaul, they're divided over whether to repeal the levies the law imposed to finance its expanded coverage for millions of Americans. (2/13)
Newsday:
Sen. Schumer: Medicare In Grave Danger With New HHS Secretary
Sen. Chuck Schumer said that Medicare as we know it is in grave danger, just two days after Tom Price’s confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary. At a Sunday news conference, Schumer pledged to use his new role as Senate Democratic Leader to block “efforts to weaken, wound and destroy Medicare.” ... Price’s Friday confirmation testimony suggests that under his administration, Medicare might be converted to a fixed amount voucher-based program, instead of the more flexible “modest, earned benefits for dignity and health security” that these seniors currently collect, Schumer said. (Chung, 2/12)
NPR:
Foreign-Born Doctors Provide Care In Underserved Area
[Dr. Muhammad] Tauseef was born and raised in Pakistan. After going to medical school there, he applied to come to the U.S. to train as a pediatrician. It's a path thousands of foreign-born medical students follow every year — a path that's been around for more than half a century. And, like most foreign-born physicians, Tauseef came on a J1 visa. That meant after training he had two options: return to Pakistan or work for three years in an area the U.S. government has identified as having a provider shortage. (Silverman, 2/11)
The Wall Street Journal:
Drug Industry Goes Boldly Into New Minefield
Last month, the pharmaceutical industry, under pressure from the president among others for persistent price hikes, launched an ad campaign to highlight its drug research. Called “Go Boldly,” an allusion to poet Dylan Thomas, the campaign was intended to bolster the industry’s reputation after pricing scandals involving companies such as Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and Turing Pharmaceuticals. It took just a few weeks for another pharma company to ignite a controversy and set off the requisite tales of patients unable to afford the treatment. (Grant, 2/10)
Stat:
'We Never Talked About It': As Opioid Deaths Rise, Families Of Color Stay Silent
There’s a new honesty these days about drug abuse. In obituaries, media interviews, and letters to lawmakers, families that have lost loved ones to overdoses are naming the drugs that killed them. As more and more people emerge from the shadows to put a face on the nation’s opioid epidemic, however, faces of color are notably absent. In part that reflects the makeup of the epidemic itself: While deaths among white Americans have soared, those among blacks and Latinos have stayed relatively steady. (Samuel, 2/13)