Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Federal Reserve Study Finds Link Between Health Law And Lower Consumer Debt Load
Early evidence suggests that the Affordable Care Act is working — at least in one important respect, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Analysts Nicole Dussault, Maxim Pinkovskiy, and Basit Zafar state that the primary purpose of this law "is not to protect our health per se, but to protect our finances." And they've found a big difference between indebtedness trends in states that embraced the Medicaid expansion versus the ones that did not. (Kawa, 6/7)
Republicans controlling the Senate are abandoning an effort to use their power over the federal purse strings to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The more pragmatic approach came Tuesday on a huge $164 billion spending measure and reflects a hope by top Republicans like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to remove veto bait from must-pass spending bills in hopes of advancing them more easily with Democratic support. (Taylor, 6/7)
More than two-thirds of state benchmark plans violate federal requirements to cover treatment for addiction disorders.The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse surveyed addiction treatment benefits offered among 2017 Essential Health Benefits benchmark plans and found none offered a comprehensive array of addiction treatment benefits. (Johnson, 6/7)
