Tag: Supreme Court

Doctors on call for the Biden campaign

Volume 403, Issue 10448
13 July 2024 

WORLD 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.]…

US Supreme Court protects access to abortion medication

Volume 403, Issue 10445
22 June 2024 

WORLD REPORT  Justices did not address claims that mifepristone endangered patients and that its approval by the FDA was flawed. Opponents vow to continue the legal fight. Susan Jaffe reports [continued here].

 

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Legal battles over abortion heat up in the USA

Volume 393    Number 10184               11 May 2019               
WORLD REPORT   Changes to Title X, several legal challenges, and a change to the Supreme Court composition could mean drastic changes for access to abortion in the USA. Susan Jaffe reports.

“We are the department of life…from conception until natural death, through all of our programmes”, US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Alex Azar said earlier this year…. The government’s anti-abortion efforts have ignited lawsuits from Maine to California. Eventually, one or more of these cases are expected to reach the Supreme Court. With its newest arrival—Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose nomination by Trump was championed by abortion opponents—the Supreme Court’s ideological balance has now shifted towards a conservative majority [raising] opponents’ hopes that a sympathetic court will diminish, if not overturn, Roe v. Wade...

Late last week, lawyers for the HHS appealed decisions by two federal court  judges in Oregon and Washington state to temporarily halt new administration rules that would limit the information about abortion services that federally funded health-care providers can tell their patients.    

“We are fighting back in the courts, we are fighting back in Congress and in state legislatures all across the country”, said Planned Parenthood president Leana Wen, noting that one in four women in the USA will have an abortion in their lifetime. “The public is with us when it comes to defending access to safe legal abortion, which people understand is part of the full spectrum of reproductive health care, which is health care.” [Continuehere.]…

US Supreme Court upholds ACA subsidies

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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)

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 ]

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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]

 

Obama Administration races to meet key ACA deadline

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The US Supreme Court decided last week that most provisions in the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act were constitutional. Susan Jaffe reports from Washington, DC.
Last week’s historic ruling by the US Supreme Court preserving nearly all of President Barack Obama’s landmark health law may have finally settled some legal questions, only to shift a re-energised debate about improving the American health-care system to the political arena.In addition to providing health coverage to some 32 million uninsured Americans, other changes in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will affect nearly every patient as it overhauls the US$2·7 trillion health-care system.  MORE