Tag: health care

A Fatal Flaw as Trump Tries to Remake Health Care: Shortcuts

The following article by Robert Pear was posted on the New York Times website July 7, 2018:

A Planned Parenthood clinic in Arizona. While the Trump administration has suffered a series of court setbacks on health care, that does not mean its efforts have reached a dead end. On the hot-button topic of Planned Parenthood, the lower courts are divided. Credit: Laura Segall, Agence France-Presse, Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is on a losing streak in court cases challenging its efforts to abruptly change health care policy, but the naming of a new Supreme Court justice could alter the trajectory on some of the most controversial cases, from funding Planned Parenthood to mandating contraceptive coverage.

The cases that the administration has lost have had a common theme: Federal judges have found that the administration cut corners in trying to advance its political priorities.

Most recently, a federal district judge said the administration had acted unlawfully in approving work requirements for the state Medicaid program in Kentucky.

View the complete post on the New York Times website here.

Dean Phillips believes in health care for all

To the editor:

President Donald Trump and our own Rep. Erik Paulsen have tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act several times.  Failing that, they weaken and impair it through executive actions and bill amendments.  While the Affordable Care Act is an imperfect bill, it has still provided millions of Americans with access to healthcare.

The Republican Party is risking the heathcare of millions with pre-existing conditions, low income or limited options.  This goes beyond policy disputes — for many, it’s a matter of choosing between dinner and medicine.  Last year, 45,000 people in the U.S. died due to lack of healthcare. Continue reading “Dean Phillips believes in health care for all”

Dayton’s health care proposal is a no-brainer

As I travel around Minnesota, I hear about many concerns facing communities throughout the state. But there is one issue at the top of list—an issue that weighs heavily on families in every corner of Minnesota—and that issue is health care.

Health care should be a right, not a privilege. Yet many Minnesotans do not have health coverage or struggle to afford their premiums. A recent report from the Minnesota Department of Health showed that limited options and rising costs have forced over 116,000 Minnesotans to drop their health care over the last two years. We must take action to ease the burden of rising health care costs on Minnesota families and make health care more accessible, so no person has to risk going without health care coverage. Continue reading “Dayton’s health care proposal is a no-brainer”

Trump’s Medicaid Work Requirements Could Put At Least 6.3 Million Americans at Risk of Losing Health Care

The following article by Katherine Gallagher Robbins and Rachel West was posted on the Center for American Progress website January 12, 2018:

Participants hold signs during the Senate Democrats’ rally against Medicaid cuts in front of the U.S. Capitol, June 2017. Credit: Getty/Bill Clark

This week, the Trump administration issued policy guidance that effectively ends Medicaid as we know it, allowing states to place punitive work requirements on certain Medicaid recipients—more than 7 in 10 of whom are caregivers or in school. Although these so-called work requirement policies may seem reasonable at first glance, in practice, they’re a way to strip away health insurance from struggling unemployed and underemployed workers. President Donald Trump’s actions are just the latest shoe to drop in his party’s deeply unpopular crusade to undermine Americans’ health care—including the highly popular Medicaid program—and come on the heels of a tax cut that rewards the massively wealthy over working Americans. Continue reading “Trump’s Medicaid Work Requirements Could Put At Least 6.3 Million Americans at Risk of Losing Health Care”

The striking new evidence that expanding health coverage reduces crime

The following article by Dylan Scott was posted on the Vox website October 10, 2017:

Credit: Oscar Gronner

It seems like we spend all of our time debating whether health insurance actually improves people’s health and, to a lesser extent, how much financial security it provides them.

Those things are important! But health coverage also changes our society in ways that aren’t so obvious.

For instance: Health insurance seems to help fight crime.

This concept has been floating out there for a while: Friend of VoxCare Adrianna McIntyre wrote about “Obamacare’s secret crime-fighting potential” back in 2014. Continue reading “The striking new evidence that expanding health coverage reduces crime”

Sen. Klobuchar steers national health care debate to middle ground

The following article by Jennifer Brooks was posted on the StarTribune website September 26, 2017:

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar had 90 minutes on the national stage Monday to make her best case for protecting the Affordable Care Act.

She started with her own first serious encounter with a health crisis, as the new mother of a desperately ill baby. Continue reading “Sen. Klobuchar steers national health care debate to middle ground”

Maternity Care Under ACA Repeal

NOTE:  Rep. Erik Paulsen (MN-03) voted to make maternity care optional in coverage offered with his vote for the ACHA act.

The following article by Christy M. Gamble and Jamila Taylor was posted on the Center for American Progress website August 7, 2017:

Implications for Black Women’s Maternal Health

A woman holds her newborn daughter in her hospital room at Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago, June 7, 2013. Credit:  AP/Scott Eisen

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been instrumental in providing affordable, quality health care to millions of American women. In fact, since the implementation of the ACA, about 13 million women have gained access to maternity services.1 Access to these services has been especially important for black women, who are more likely to be uninsured and experience poorer maternal health outcomes than their white counterparts. Unfortunately, racial and gender disparities in health care access persist: Black women are more likely to experience unintended pregnancies as compared to women of other races; die at a rate that is three to four times the rate of white mothers; suffer from severe maternal morbidity; and have the lowest rate of prenatal care utilization.2 Many health care experts agree that maternal death and morbidity can be avoided by ensuring that mothers have access to adequate prenatal care, skilled attendants during birth, and proper postnatal care, all of which are available through maternity care coverage.3 Continue reading “Maternity Care Under ACA Repeal”

Paulsen follows President Trump

To the Editor:

Congressman Erik Paulsen has made it clear to his constituents in the Minnesota 3rd District that he is little more than a follower of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

His recent votes, especially on the American Health Care Act, have shown that he is willing to put party over the good of the Minnesotan 3rd. While he attempted to explain his vote in his May Star Tribune op-ed, Paulsen fails to convincingly address the issues. Continue reading “Paulsen follows President Trump”

An Obligation to Provide Care

There is a key concept often left out of the health care debate and something that politicians seem to continually misunderstand or refuse to acknowledge: that we have an obligation to provide care. This does not necessarily translate to “we as a nation” but “we as clinicians,” who have a moral obligation and, in the case of hospitals, a legal obligation to provide emergency care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. There is a need to acknowledge the moral and deontological sentiment that exists here. This was borne out of many failures and Supreme Court decisions resulting from a refusal to treat people, who then died or had bad outcomes. Patient dumping led to overcrowding of emergency rooms in county hospitals, where turning people away may have been legal but was ethically reprehensible.

The continuing frame of thought that health care is a market-based product is doomed. We may continue on this path for some time, but the end is inevitable; either we finally recognize an obligation to providing care or we allow hospitals to turn people away. It is all well and good to be a congressperson and treat health care as a free-market product, but when you are face to face with the bad effects of this mind-set, you may think differently. When the major groups representing clinicians in the trenches are against what you are doing, you ought to take some time to contemplate this.

Ian Wolfe, Minneapolis
Star Tribune, May 5, 2017