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Sen. Lamar Alexander says he’s more than happy to strike deals with Democrats — even on Obamacare. “Whoever the president is in January, we’re going to have to take a good, hard look at Obamacare,” the powerful chairman of the Senate HELP committee told POLITICO’s “Pulse Check” podcast. “It can’t continue the way it is.”…

A new poll of voters in battleground states finds a rare opportunity for bipartisan agreement on healthcare, with Americans strongly favoring action on public policies that support medical discovery into new treatments and cures. The poll was jointly commissioned by the Galen Institute and Center Forward, center-right and center-left think tanks. Purple Insights interviewed 800 registered…

Ryan’s plan embraces the idea that refundable tax credits can be used to give people universal access to “quality, affordable health care.” It recognizes that we can’t return to the pre-Obamacare status quo, which was too arbitrary, too expensive, and too bureaucratic. It concedes that reforming Medicaid—including Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion—will be a gradual process, requiring…

Insurers from Oregon to Pennsylvania, including a failed health-care co-operative and two long-established Blues plans have lost billions of dollars selling Obamacare policies. Now they are suing the federal government to recoup their losses. In a testament to industry desperation, insurers are asking federal judges to simply ignore a congressional ban on the payment of…

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) placed numerous requirements on insurance offered in both the individual and small group markets. This study presents data from the 174 insurers that offered qualified health plans (QHPs)—plans that satisfy the ACA requirements and are certified to be sold on exchanges—in both the individual and small group markets in 2014.…

Rather than stabilizing in 2016 as many experts predicted, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is leading to large premium hikes and less choice and competition in the individual insurance market as plans prove unattractive to relatively young, healthy, and middle-class people. In order to achieve a better understanding of the ACA’s impact, a new Mercatus…

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota is cutting back its participation in the state’s Affordable Care Act insurance exchange next year after losing nearly $300 million in the individual market in 2015. However, the large Blues insurer is not completely exiting the state-based marketplace. Fully withdrawing has its consequences: Federal law bars insurers from…

This is a story about how the Obama administration simultaneously stretched the Affordable Care Act possibly beyond its limits and diminished the prospects of that law achieving a sustainable health insurance market. It’s a case of regulators gone wild in a fit of pique. Basically, the Obama administration needlessly eliminated any pressure on individuals, most…

The billboards went up quickly. The customers came in droves. Then, in October, Arches collapsed as suddenly as it went up. Now eight months after it was announced that the state’s only nonprofit insurance co-op would be dissolved, Utah hospitals are still waiting on about $33 million in outstanding claims that the Utah Department of…

The results of a recent poll conducted by the University of Southern California (USC) and the LA Times make it clear there is far from a consensus on the quality and affordability of healthcare in the Golden State. Less than half of those surveyed (44%) felt that healthcare in California was good or excellent, while a…