Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Weighing Obamacare's Future: Which Provisions Are In Play? Which Stakeholders Are At Risk?
You鈥檝e seen the headlines and you鈥檝e heard the slogans:聽Obamacare is on the chopping block and President-elect Donald Trump is聽going to replace it with 鈥渟omething terrific.鈥 But what are the new president and Congress really going to do? How much of the current law will really go away? And what could 鈥淭rumpcare鈥 look like? In case it鈥檚 been a while since you read about the Affordable Care Act and the GOP replacement plans, here鈥檚 a refresher on the biggest Obamacare issues. (Levey, 1/5)
Replacing the health-care law, commonly known as Obamacare,聽could take years, potentially destabilizing the nascent system designed to provide insurance to individuals who don't receive it through an聽employer. Several large insurance companies had聽already聽announced plans to pull out of some health-care聽insurance exchanges created by the law because of financial losses, and health policy experts聽fear that repealing the law without immediately replacing it聽could exacerbate聽the exodus聽by adding聽uncertainty. ... But other policy experts predict that Republicans will provide incentives for insurers to stay. (Johnson, 1/5)
Many of the rural hospitals and health centers serving 62 million Americans have operated on a shoestring for years. Since January 2010, 80 rural hospitals and health care facilities that provided treatment to large numbers of elderly and low-income families were forced to close for financial reasons. More than 670 of the remaining 2,078 facilities are vulnerable or 鈥渁t risk鈥 of closure, according to hospital industry experts. (Pianin, 1/5)
Scientists have shown conclusively that treatment not only improves the health of people infected with HIV, it also stops transmission of the virus that causes AIDS. That public health issue is just one of the challenges Republicans face as they attempt to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, a law that brought health insurance coverage to some聽20 million people -- including tens of thousands of Americans living with HIV. (Steenhuysen, 1/5)