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Obamacare Rollback Bill Would Replace Subsidies With Tax Credits

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Obamacare Rollback Bill Would Replace Subsidies With Tax Credits

"The Feb. 10 document follows the broad policy outline released by Republicans last week just before they went home for a Congressional recess. It proposes cuts to federal payments to states that have expanded Medicaid and offers tax credits for people to buy health insurance."

"This would mean fewer people could afford health insurance and that the health insurance would likely cover less," says Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Why his story still matters today

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Fred Korematsu: Why his story still matters today

"US President Donald Trump's executive order to ban immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries is being compared to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II."

"Barely two months after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, nearly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry residing on the country's western coast were branded a military threat and put inside internment camps across the country."

"But a 23-year-old Japanese-American, Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, defied Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D Roosevelt and went into hiding instead of voluntarily relocating to an internment camp, where conditions were often harsh."

"Korematsu was finally arrested in May 1942 and convicted of defying the government order. He fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court but the top court ruled against him."

"He was released after the end of World War II but the conviction remained on his record until it was overturned in 1983, by a court that said the internment was racially motivated."

Medical Debt Often Leads To Collection Agencies’ Calls

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Medical Debt Often Leads To Collection Agencies’ Calls

The study by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that 59 percent of people who reported they had been contacted by a debt collector said it was for medical services. Telecommunications bills were the second most common type of overdue bill for which debt collectors pursued payment, at 37 percent, and utilities were third, reported by 28 percent.

Unlike other types of debt, people with medical debt were prevalent across a range of income levels, credit scores and ages. A poll conducted in 2015 by NPR, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that many people with health insurance still struggle to pay medical bills. Some 26 percent said health care expenses have taken a serious toll on family finances.