Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Obama's Health Law Victory Tour Goes To Tennessee
Days after the Supreme Court delivered a victory for his health care law for the second time, President Obama flew into mostly Republican territory on Wednesday and began an aggressive push to get states that have resisted parts of the law to expand care to more of their poor residents. (Harris and Goodnough, 7/1)
President Obama, fresh from a victory before the U.S. Supreme Court last week that preserved the Affordable Care Act, called for an end to the political fighting over the health law and for more effort to improve it. 鈥淭his is about people. This is not about politics, it's not about Washington,鈥 Obama said at a town-hall-style meeting at a Nashville elementary school. (Levey, 7/1)
Obamacare, as the president's law is known, envisions a major expansion of the program, but nearly half of all U.S. states, mostly Republican-controlled, have rejected that part of the law and opted out of a Medicaid expansion. (Edwards, 7/1)
Fresh off a Supreme Court victory, President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he鈥檚 鈥渇eeling pretty good鈥 about the state of his health care law and pleaded for bipartisan cooperation on ways to make it work even better. Obama said he wants to refocus the debate on improving health care quality, expanding access and eliminating waste now that the high court has upheld a key element of the Affordable Care Act. (Superville, 7/1)
The town hall meeting on health care came one week after the Supreme Court shot down a major challenge to the massive government program that would have denied health-care subsidies to millions of Americans participating in the program through a federal marketplace. ... In Nashville, Obama touted the 166,000 Tennesseans 鈥 and 16 million people across the country 鈥 who have health care because of the Affordable Care Act. Health-care inflation has been trending down, the president said. (Jaffe, 7/1)
Largely absent in Mr. Obama鈥檚 remarks were the words 鈥淢edicaid鈥 and 鈥淭ennCare,鈥 the name of the program in the state. Instead, he talked repeatedly about 鈥渙ptions鈥 for states, and said he hoped 鈥渁 uniquely Tennessee solution鈥 to the standoff could still be found. (Tau and Radnofsky, 7/1)
President Barack Obama called on Republicans Wednesday to find a bipartisan way to fix problems in the nation鈥檚 health care system rather than continue to fight over the health law. "Part of what I鈥檓 hoping is with the Supreme Court case now behind us what we can do is 鈥 focus on how we can make it even better because it鈥檚 not as if we鈥檝e solved all the problems in our health care system," Obama said in remarks at an elementary school in Nashville, Tenn. "America still spends more on health care than any other advanced nation and our outcomes aren鈥檛 particularly better." (Carey, 7/1)
The president rattled off 鈥渁 whole host鈥 of benefits of the law, ranging from free preventative services such as mammograms to the ability of young people to stay on their parents insurance until they are 26. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 always notice that until you need it,鈥 he said of the benefits. He also made the case for the economics of the law, citing lower healthcare inflation. (Ferris, 7/1)
For a brief time on Wednesday, Davy Crockett became the face of President Barack Obama鈥檚 push to get more states to expand Medicaid. Mr. Crockett, who described himself as a fifth-generation great-grandson of Davy Crockett, the American folk hero, attended the president鈥檚 speech in Nashville, Tenn., and got the opportunity to ask a question. He expressed frustration about denials of his application for Social Security benefits. Mr. Obama promised to look into it. (Armour, 7/1)