Now that Congress has passed a bill funding the Children’s Health Insurance Program — more than three months after funding expired — the clock is ticking as lawmakers work at putting together a package to stabilize the individual insurance market.
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Several House Republicans said two bipartisan Obamacare stabilization bills need to include more reforms in order to get support in the House.
The comments came the same day that some senators said a deal to end a three-day government shutdown provides a new opportunity to approve the two bills. The comments highlight the same struggle that has plagued the two bills: While the Senate GOP leadership and President Trump are on board with passage, the House is not.
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Congress is apparently not done cutting taxes, even after passing a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul last year.
The deal struck by Democrats and Republicans on Monday to end a brief government shutdown contains $31 billion in tax cuts, including a temporary delay in implementing three health-care-related taxes.
Those delays, which enjoy varying degrees of bipartisan support, are not offset by any spending cuts or tax increases, and thus will add to a federal budget deficit that is already projected to increase rapidly as last year’s mammoth new tax law takes effect.
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War On Drugs: We recently speculated that ObamaCare might have contributed to the nation’s opioid epidemic, which has in turn driven down life expectancy in this country for the past two years. A new Senate report adds further support to this connection.
When Brian Day opened the Cambie Surgery Centre in 1996, he had a simple goal. Dr. Day, an orthopedic surgeon from Vancouver, British Columbia, wanted to provide timely, state-of-the-art medical care to Canadians who were unwilling to wait months—even years—for surgery they needed. Canada’s single-payer health-care system, known as Medicare, is notoriously sluggish. But private clinics like Cambie are prohibited from charging most patients for operations that public hospitals provide free. Dr. Day is challenging that prohibition before the provincial Supreme Court. If it rules in his favor, it could alter the future of Canadian health care.
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Oregon aggressively expanded its Medicaid rolls under the Affordable Care Act, adding enough people to leave only 5 percent of its population uninsured — one of America’s lowest rates.
Now, with the reduction of a federal match that covered those enrollees, the state is calling on voters to decide how to pay for its ballooning Medicaid costs.
A special election on Tuesday asks Oregonians whether they approve of a tax on hospitals, health insurers and managed care companies that would leave Medicaid, as it is now, untouched. More than 1 in 4 residents here rely on it.
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Stepping toward the political center in a difficult election year, Gov. Scott Walker proposed using $200 million in state and federal money to stabilize the state’s Obamacare market and hold down rising insurance premiums.
While Republicans nationally talk about tax cuts, Wisconsin’s GOP governor has mixed in proposals on health care, the overhaul of a troubled youth prison and funding schools at levels proposed by a leading Democratic challenger.
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Congressional Republicans are hoping to pass a temporary funding bill that would keep the government open until mid-February, thus allowing negotiations to continue on immigration and other matters. To attract more support for the stop-gap bill, Republican leaders have proposed combining it with other unrelated and more popular provisions, including a two-year delay of the so-called “Cadillac tax.” Delaying the “Cadillac tax” again — it was already pushed back once — is a bad idea. It would set back the cause of market-driven health care rather than advance it.
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The House on Thursday night approved a stopgap measure to keep the government open less than 36 hours before a possible shutdown, shifting the drama to a Senate where Democrats are threatening to block the GOP bill.
The House measure includes a six-year extension of funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which expired at the end of September. States are at risk of running out of money to cover health care for children in low-income families.
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Because this exemption applies to employer-sponsored insurance but not individual coverage or out-of-pocket spending, it encourages group plans over consumer control. It should not be seen as sacred. However, the cap imposed by the Cadillac tax will become increasingly tight over time, which risks pushing Americans into public entitlements rather than empowering them as consumers. Policymakers should keep the Cadillac tax from biting too deeply — but a better way to end the tax bias toward employer-based plans would be to extend the tax exemption to health care that individuals purchase by themselves.
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