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The release of the House GOP health-care plan last month was a milestone event in the long-running debate over the future of health care in the United States. Republican leaders had been promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — a.k.a. Obamacare — since it was enacted in 2010. But this is the…

The battle between congressional Republicans and the White House over the Affordable Care Act is again escalating—in court and on Capitol Hill. The administration on Wednesday appealed a federal trial judge’s ruling that the government is improperly reimbursing insurers under a program to cover discounts for low-income consumers. And House Republicans on Thursday began two…

An investigation by House Republicans argues that the Obama administration is illegally making certain payments under ObamaCare and that officials initially recognized they did not have authority to do so before reversing course. House Republicans argue that the administration is unconstitutionally making ObamaCare’s “cost sharing reduction” payments to insurers — which help lower out-of-pocket healthcare…

Obamacare enrollment has a smoking problem. A new study from the Yale School of Public Health finds that an anti-smoking provision in the health law is discouraging people from signing up for insurance while simultaneously failing to get them to kick the habit. Under the Affordable Care Act, individual health insurance plans sold on statewide…

House Republicans on Thursday released an investigative report and held the first of two hearings questioning the legality of Obamacare’s cost-sharing reduction program. That program is also the subject of a House lawsuit against the administration. At issue is whether the cost-sharing program is legally funded. House Republicans, through an investigation conducted by the Ways…

It’s policymaking 101: When a policy delivers benefits to people, support for the policy grows. Political scientists call situations like these “policy feedback loops,” and they are a big part of the story of how Social Security and Medicare became so entrenched in American life. But what happens if hyper-partisanship stops the loop? Consider the…

Oregon’s nonprofit ObamaCare health insurance co-op is winding down operations due to financial problems, the second such announcement this week for the troubled co-op program. The announcement is just the latest in a long string of failures of ObamaCare’s co-ops, non-profit health insurers set up to increase competition with established insurers. Before this week, just…

Republicans and Democrats continued to talk at each other Friday about Obamacare’s cost-sharing reduction program in an Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee hearing. The hearing was the second in two days following the release of a GOP report claiming that payments to the administration’s program were made illegally. Republicans suggested that the way the payments…

Employees contribute far below the maximum amount allowed to an individual-coverage or family-coverage health savings account (HSA), a sign consumers aren’t taking full advantage of the account’s tax benefits, according to a new analysis of consumer records. Managing health costs, particularly for consumers in or approaching retirement, is considered a growth area for insurance agents…

During the first year of Obamacare’s implementation, the individual insurance market became less healthy while the uninsured and Medicaid populations became healthier, according to a new analysis. A Health Affairs data analysis released Wednesday underscores the often stated observation that the Affordable Care Act has brought sicker, more expensive enrollees into the individual marketplace while…