Volume 403, Issue 10448WORLD REPORT Health-care workers are urging Americans to support the Democratic candidates for president and vice president, emphasising the health issues at stake. Susan Jaffe reports. [Continued here.]…
Volume 396, Number 10260 31 October 2020
24 October 2015
t been easy—surviving two Supreme Court challenges, nearly done-in by embarrassing technical glitches, and more than 50 congressional votes attempting to dismantle it. But its troubles are not yet over: enrolling new beneficiaries “is going to be tougher than last year”, warned Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell.
Volume 385, Issue 9988, 4 July 2015
WORLD REPORT Officials expect to launch the US President’s new health project later this year. But Congress has yet to decide whether to fully fund it. The Lancet’s Washington correspondent, Susan Jaffe, reports.
ACA supporters celebrate outside the Supreme Court following the judgment on June 25 (Bloomberg)
Although critics still deride it as Obamacare, President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court victory last week
enshrined the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as one of his greatest domestic accomplishments. The court might have also effectively disarmed the opposition, shifting the debate to next year’s campaign for the presidency as the next chance for critics to try to dismantle the law.
But for 6·4 million Americans who could have lost the health law’s insurance subsidies—the key issue before the court—the historic ruling has a different meaning. “Thank God, I can still get my medical care”, said Jacqueline Clay, a New Jersey woman receiving treatment for breast cancer who turned 61 years of age the day the court upheld the subsidies. “I am not going to die.” [Continued in full text or PDF ]…
Volume 384, Issue 9956, 15 November 2014
WORLD REPORT Ahead of the next phase of enrolment for insurance plans, Republicans vowed to target the health law following their election win. Susan Jaffe, Washington correspondent, reports.
Federal health officials promise that last year’s embarrassing enrolment problems will not be repeated when the sign-up season begins on Nov 15 for 2015 health insurance policies offered under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But even as more insurance companies and millions more Americans enter the second year of the health insurance programme, the opportunity for critics to chip away at it will never be better when Republicans regain control of Congress in January.
…Under the law, all adults are required to have health insurance and, with some exceptions, those without it are penalised. People who don’t get health coverage through their jobs can buy policies through the online state or federal insurance exchanges from Nov 15 to Feb 15. To minimise the delays many experienced last year, federal officials who run the exchanges in 37 states have shortened the application and no longer require shoppers to spend time setting up accounts before they can review the plans.
Although this month marks the second enrolment period, US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell has been eager to stress that it won’t be a rerun of last year. “It’s not year two”, she told reporters recently, because this is the first time the exchanges will be renewing current policies while also handling first-time applications. [MORE full text or PDF ] …
Volume 382, Issue 9892, 17 August 2013
WORLD REPORT Despite delaying some provisions of the Affordable Care Act, the US Government says it is on target to begin enrolling millions of Americans in the law’s new health coverage. Susan Jaffe reports.
Less than 7 weeks before millions of Americans begin enrolling in the new health insurance plans offered under President Barack Obama’s landmark Affordable Care Act (ACA), critics claim that his Administration isn’t ready and will preside over a monumental failure and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
…While federal officials continue to fend off Republican attacks on the law (unabated despite Obama’s re-election and the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding most of the law) they are also trying to complete work on the system needed to help Americans choose and enroll in an insurance plan and to determine their subsidy eligibility. …“Let me be clear”, US Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters on Aug 5. “We are on target and ready to flip the switch on Oct 1.” [MORE] [PDF]