Roberts’s intellectual complexity does not prevent him from expressing himself pithily, as he did with those words when dissenting in a case from Arizona. Joined by Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., Roberts’s dissent should somewhat mollify conservatives who are dismayed about his interpretive ingenuity four days earlier in writing the opinion that saved the Affordable Care Act. Furthermore, they, including this columnist, may have missed a wrinkle in Roberts’s ACA opinion that will serve conservatives’ long-term interests.
The urge to merge is sweeping managed health care. Aetna announced Friday a $37 billion deal to acquire Humana. Anthem and Cigna are in merger talks and could be next. The national for-profit insurers are on an anxious mission to consolidate. These combinations will sharply reduce competition and consumer choice, as five big insurers shrink, probably, to three.
Oregon’s insurance regulator has approved big premium increases sought by health plans for 2016 under the health law, and in some cases ordered higher raises than insurers requested, signaling that the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own could jump after two years of relatively modest growth.
Convention claims the Supreme Court’s King v. Burwell decision is a loss for conservatives. But Democrats shouldn’t celebrate. Politically, it’s a win for the right, skirting potential harm in terms of legal precedent as well as improving positioning for 2016.
Why is Obamacare still so unpopular? Why aren’t the working class and middle-class signing up for it? Why is the Obamacare population sicker and causing so many big rate increases a year earlier than expected? Is Obamacare financially sustainable in its present form? Is it politically sustainable as it is?
“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act grew out of a long history of failed health insurance reform.” Chief Justice John Roberts, in upholding Obamacare subsidies.
Obamacare is the newest chapter in that long history of failed health insurance reform. Conservatives who hope one day to replace it would do well to learn from its errors and conceits.
Days after the Supreme Court delivered a victory for his health care law for the second time, President Obama flew into mostly Republican territory on Wednesday and began an aggressive push to get states that have resisted parts of the law to expand care to more of their poor residents.
“With the Supreme Court case now behind us, I’m hoping what we can do is focus on how to make it even better,” Mr. Obama said to an audience here that included health care administrators and people who got health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
The Supreme Court has left the ObamaCare demolition job to Republicans, who at least until 2017 will have to chip away at its architecture piecemeal. Last week the House made a good start by voting to kill the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), aka ObamaCare’s rationing board.
The federal government’s release of new data on health-insurer payments under the Affordable Care Act is roiling the industry, including potentially affecting the timing of any deal for Humana Inc., as suitors pore over the detailed information disclosed late Tuesday.
The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds that following the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Burwell, a case challenging the legality of health insurance subsidies in states with federally operated exchanges under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), public attention to the case inched up, though many Americans remain tuned out amid other breaking news stories.