Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Look No Further Than Idaho To See How Difficult It Is To Come Up With An ACA Alternative
Jamie Gluch lumbered into the kitchen and pulled from the freezer a bag of corn, the only affordable analgesic he had for his swollen face. ... Gluch鈥檚 tooth had rotted weeks before, but seeing a dentist was an unthinkable expense after car trouble sucked up the family鈥檚 savings. The Gluchs had hoped it wouldn鈥檛 come to this 鈥 a car or a tooth 鈥 when former president Barack Obama announced his health-care plan years ago. But then Idaho chose not to expand Medicaid, as the law allowed, and then Idahoans chose not to come up with their own plan, even though state leaders keep trying. (Samuels, 2/9)
Ask anyone about their health care and you are likely to hear about ailments, doctors, maybe costs and insurance hassles. Most people don鈥檛 go straight from 鈥渕y health鈥 to a political debate, and yet that is what our country has been embroiled in for almost a decade. A聽study聽out Thursday tries to set aside the politics to examine how the insurance markets function and what makes or breaks them in five specific states. (O'Neill, 2/10)
California earns top marks as a model of how health care insurance exchanges can be run, according to a Brookings Institution analysis released Thursday. The report compared California鈥檚 state-run marketplace, Covered California, with health care exchanges under the Affordable Care Act in four other states: Florida, Michigan, North Carolina and Texas. Some states, like California, embraced the mandatory health program, while Texas and Florida actively opposed it, the study noted. (Buck, 2/9)
And in other news聽鈥
Last April, doctors told David Ponder, a 57-year-old gospel musician聽living near San Diego, that his heart was going to聽fail. He had already had聽quadruple bypass surgery; without a full transplant聽he and his music would likely die within months. Three months later, with the help of聽the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences鈥 MusiCares charity, he had聽a聽new heart.聽With it came a renewed faith in his music, his beliefs 鈥 and the necessity of the Affordable Care Act. (Brown, 2/9)
A hospital trade group is warning that if ObamaCare is repealed without a replacement, hospitals across the country would lose billions of dollars in funding. America鈥檚 Essential Hospitals (AEH), a trade group that represents hospitals serving low-income communities, released a report Thursday detailing $40.5 billion in potential losses from 2018 through 2026 if congressional Republicans repeal ObamaCare without a comparable replacement. (Hellmann, 2/9)
