insurance

We’ve added some new information to TWI’s ever-evolving Senate Public Option Scoreboard. In addition to every senator’s stance on the public option, the Scoreboard now displays the percentage of people in each senator’s home state who lack health insurance, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data. We’ve also included state-by-state polling data on [...]

Yesterday, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) told Fox News that he hopes the town hall outcries will end the Democrats’ push for a public plan option and focus the debate instead on other elements of health care reform, like insuring folks with preexisting conditions.
You’ve heard from the American people these past couple of weeks and [...]

Still recovering from prostate cancer surgery, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) just shot out a statement reaffirming the importance of the public insurance option to the Democrats’ health reform legislation. Dodd had stepped in to replace the ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) as head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee during the July [...]

A day after Kathleen Sebelius, head of the Department of Health and Human Services, said that a public health insurance plan is “not the essential element”of the administration’s strategy to fix the nation’s health care system, Sen. Russ Feingold (D) has made clear that he disagrees. Calling the government-backed option “a fundamental part” of health [...]

On the topic of the government’s role in mandating insurance coverage, there’s an interesting distinction being put forth by some conservatives as they aim to bring down the Democrats’ plans to revamp the nation’s health care system: Namely, they’re arguing that requiring drivers to buy insurance makes sense, but mandating coverage for patients doesn’t.
The issue [...]

House Democrats, who’d hoped to build momentum for health reform by passing a bill before the August vacation, hit a wall in the form of conservative-leaning Democrats who’ve protested the overall costs, low payments to rural health care providers, and the inclusion of a public option.
Yet Yale University political scientist Jacob Hacker makes a good [...]

Federally sponsored single-payer health care might be off the table as Congress debates its health reform strategy this summer, but if some House lawmakers get their way, there would be nothing to prevent states from offering that model.
The House Education & Labor Committee voted today in favor of an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich [...]

Appearing on Fox News yesterday, Rep. Dave Camp (Mich.), senior Republican on the House Ways & Means Committee, reiterated an oft-mentioned, but also misleading, statistic about the effects of a government-backed insurance plan on the private marketplace.
If the Democrats get their way and include the public option, Camp charged, then 114 million Americans would hop [...]

This will shock only those who’ve never had to haggle with an insurance company, but a former employee of an insurance giant gave damning testimony yesterday against his former industry, telling lawmakers that companies like his go out of their way to avoid paying health claims even when they’re legitimate.
“I know from personal experience that [...]

With the financial crisis deepening, the FHA must be revitalized immediately — and there’s no Plan B.