"To begin with, the perfect wisdom of the free market had somehow left 50 million Americans with no coverage at all — and the GOP health plan would get us back near that number. Then let's consider pre-existing conditions. Maybe your family has some of them; mine does. Nothing life-threatening — an old injury here, a bothersome condition there — but in the past it was enough to get us denied coverage on the individual market. If it didn't happen to you, it probably happened to someone you know. The ACA outlawed those denials, and while most Republicans claim they want to keep those protections in place, the bill the Senate is considering would eviscerate them. A provision written by Ted Cruz that was recently added to the bill would allow insurers to offer bare-bones plans that provide little if any real coverage, as long as they also offered a plan that was compliant with the ACA's mandate that insurance cover "essential health benefits" like hospitalization, emergency care, preventive care, and prescription medications. Health-care experts warn that it would create a two-tier system in which young and healthy people buy the cheap coverage and those who are sicker and older buy the more comprehensive coverage, quickly leading to a "death spiral" of skyrocketing premiums in the latter."
"WHEN Colin Sandler was in high school in the mid-1980s, her grandparents legally separated after 45 years of marriage. This was not because their marriage was troubled, but because her grandfather had fallen ill and medical bills threatened to consume their entire life savings and all their income, leaving Ms. Sandler’s grandmother penniless."
"The separation, as Ms. Sandler recalls it, allowed her grandfather to qualify for Medicaid and her grandmother to stay solvent. Ms. Sandler, now an elder care consultant in Cortland Manor, N.Y., says that in those years divorcing was a mainstream financial planning move. Tactics to keep elderly people’s assets and income within their family’s control while still qualifying them for Medicaid were common. Loopholes were exploited."
"NPR asked eight health care experts to tell us what they view as the biggest problems with the current health care system. Then we asked: Does the Senate bill fix them? Most of the experts we consulted (backed up by a Congressional Budget Office assessment) said that for the most part, no — the Senate bill won't solve the health care system's problems, and that it in fact could make some of those problems worse."
"Americans broadly disapprove of the Senate GOP's health care bill, and they're unhappy with how Republicans are handling the efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll."
"Just 17 percent of those surveyed say they approve of the Senate's health care plan, the Better Care Reconciliation Act. Fifty-five percent say they disapprove, while about a quarter said they hadn't heard enough about the proposal to have an opinion on it."
"For years, the Kaiser Family Foundation has surveyed Americans about health policy and the ACA, aka Obamacare. Periodically, those surveys have included open-ended questions about why Americans do or don’t support the law. Since the implementation of the law’s main features in 2014, Americans have thought about the ACA much as the Alaskans described by Murkowski have: Those who back it cite increased access, and those who oppose it worry about rising personal costs."
"Consider the tables below, in which I categorized responses along with the share of people falling into each category in Kaiser’s March 2014 and March 2015 surveys. For the law’s opponents, the single biggest issue to emerge from these answers is what I term “personal cost.” Thirteen percent of all respondents — and 23 percent of the law’s detractors — gave responses that fit into this category. This March 2014 response was emblematic: “My insurance has went up 400 percent. I think it rips off the doctors and young people. I can’t believe Congress will pass a law with them not knowing what it’s about.” If the new Senate bill seeks to improve upon the ACA in the public’s eyes, and especially in the eyes of the ACA’s detractors, it will need to keep out-of-pocket health care costs down."
"Wanted: 10,000 New Yorkers interested in advancing science by sharing a trove of personal information, from cellphone locations and credit-card swipes to blood samples and life-changing events. For 20 years."
Researchers are gearing up to start recruiting participants from across the city next year for a study so sweeping it's called "The Human Project." It aims to channel different data streams into a river of insight on health, aging, education and many other aspects of human life."
"That's what we're all about: putting the holistic picture together," says project director Dr. Paul Glimcher, a New York University neural science, economics and psychology professor."
"Q: I just lost my job, and I can either sign up to buy the same coverage through COBRA or go into a marketplace plan. COBRA is really expensive — $800 a month for me — but I'm worried that anything I buy on the marketplace now might disappear or be unaffordable next year. What's the best way to go?"
"You're in a tough spot. Many insurers that offer coverage on the exchanges are still weighing their options, but a number have announced plans to drop out of specific markets or states next year."
"The uncertainty about whether the federal government will continue to make cost-sharing reduction payments to marketplace insurers is a key factor contributing to instability in the marketplaces, according to insurers and analysts."
"The subsidies reduce deductibles, copays and coinsurance payments for some low-income people who buy health coverage on the insurance exchanges. However, the Trump administration has threatened to discontinue the payments to gain leverage in its efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act."