USA-Obamacare: Judge rules Obamacare unconstitutional, endangering coverage for 20 million people - by Adam Cancryn and Paul Demko

A federal judge in Texas threw the health coverage of some 20 million Americans in limbo by ruling Obamacare must be scrapped because Congress struck the penalty for failing to obtain insurance coverage.

The invalidation of the landmark 2010 law is certain to send shock waves through the U.S. health system and Washington after a midterm election seen in part as a rebuke to Republican efforts to tear down Obamacare.

“Wow, but not surprisingly, ObamaCare was just ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL by a highly respected judge in Texas,” President Donald Trump wrote in a tweet celebrating the verdict. “Great news for America!”

The decision will be immediately appealed, said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who led several blue states in intervening to defend the ACA. It could ultimately become the third major Obamacare case to be taken up by the Supreme Court, which has twice voted to uphold the law.

Democrats late Friday decried the decision as reckless and urged an appeals court to overturn it, while also tying it to the GOP’s broader efforts to eliminate the ACA.

Read more: Judge rules Obamacare unconstitutional, endangering coverage for 20 million

USA: Republican effort to gut Obamacare ends in defeat for Trump - by Y.Abutaleb, A.Becker and D.Morgan

In a stinging blow to President Donald Trump, U.S. Senate Republicans failed on Friday to dismantle Obamacare, falling short on a major campaign promise and perhaps ending a seven-year quest by their party to gut the healthcare law.

Voting in the early hours, three Republican senators, John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, crossed party lines to join Democrats in a dramatic 49-to-51 vote to reject a "skinny repeal" bill that would have eliminated some parts of Obamacare.

"This is clearly a disappointing moment," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told the Senate floor right after the vote. "The American people are going to regret that we couldn't find a better way forward."

The setback leaves Trump without a major legislative win after more than six months in power, even though Republicans control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives. He had been expected to make rapid changes to healthcare, taxes and infrastructure spending. 


Read more: Republican effort to gut Obamacare ends in defeat for Trump

US Healthcare: 2,000 US Doctors Call for Universal Healthcare- by Olga Oksman

group of more than 2,000 physicians is calling for the establishment of a universal government-run health system in the US, in a paper in the American Journal of Public Health.
According to the proposal released Thursday, the Affordable Care Act did not go far enough in removing barriers to healthcare access. The physicians’ bold plan calls for implementing a single-payer system similar to Canada’s, called the National Health Program, that would guarantee all residents healthcare.
The new single-payer system would be funded mostly by existing US government funding. The physicians point out that the US government already pays for two-thirds of all healthcare spending in the US, and a single-payer system would cut down on administrative costs, so a transition to a single-payer system would not require significant additional spending.
“Our patients can’t afford care and don’t have access to the care they need, while the system is ever more wasteful, throwing away money on bureaucratic expenses and absurd prices from the drug companies,” said David Himmelstein, a professor in the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College and lecturer on medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Himmelstein, one of the authors of the plan, said the proposal is meant as a rallying cry for physicians and other healthcare professionals around the cause of a single-payer model. According to the paper, even with the passage of the Affordable Care Act many patients “face rising co-payments and deductibles that compromise access to care and leave them vulnerable to ruinous medical bills”. Despite the current high healthcare spending levels in the US, healthcare outcomes are worse than in comparable well-funded countries.
- See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/us-doctors-call-universal-healthcare-abolish-insurance-companies#sthash.i2UiFMWw.2VUdz3RY.dpuf

group of more than 2,000 physicians is calling for the establishment of a universal government-run health system in the US, in a paper in the American Journal of Public Health.
According to the proposal released Thursday, the Affordable Care Act did not go far enough in removing barriers to healthcare access. The physicians’ bold plan calls for implementing a single-payer system similar to Canada’s, called the National Health Program, that would guarantee all residents healthcare.
The new single-payer system would be funded mostly by existing US government funding. The physicians point out that the US government already pays for two-thirds of all healthcare spending in the US, and a single-payer system would cut down on administrative costs, so a transition to a single-payer system would not require significant additional spending.
“Our patients can’t afford care and don’t have access to the care they need, while the system is ever more wasteful, throwing away money on bureaucratic expenses and absurd prices from the drug companies,” said David Himmelstein, a professor in the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College and lecturer on medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Himmelstein, one of the authors of the plan, said the proposal is meant as a rallying cry for physicians and other healthcare professionals around the cause of a single-payer model. According to the paper, even with the passage of the Affordable Care Act many patients “face rising co-payments and deductibles that compromise access to care and leave them vulnerable to ruinous medical bills”. Despite the current high healthcare spending levels in the US, healthcare outcomes are worse than in comparable well-funded countries.
- See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/us-doctors-call-universal-healthcare-abolish-insurance-companies#sthash.i2UiFMWw.2VUdz3RY.dpuf

group of more than 2,000 physicians is calling for the establishment of a universal government-run health system in the US, in a paper in the American Journal of Public Health.
According to the proposal released Thursday, the Affordable Care Act did not go far enough in removing barriers to healthcare access. The physicians’ bold plan calls for implementing a single-payer system similar to Canada’s, called the National Health Program, that would guarantee all residents healthcare.
The new single-payer system would be funded mostly by existing US government funding. The physicians point out that the US government already pays for two-thirds of all healthcare spending in the US, and a single-payer system would cut down on administrative costs, so a transition to a single-payer system would not require significant additional spending.
“Our patients can’t afford care and don’t have access to the care they need, while the system is ever more wasteful, throwing away money on bureaucratic expenses and absurd prices from the drug companies,” said David Himmelstein, a professor in the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College and lecturer on medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Himmelstein, one of the authors of the plan, said the proposal is meant as a rallying cry for physicians and other healthcare professionals around the cause of a single-payer model. According to the paper, even with the passage of the Affordable Care Act many patients “face rising co-payments and deductibles that compromise access to care and leave them vulnerable to ruinous medical bills”. Despite the current high healthcare spending levels in the US, healthcare outcomes are worse than in comparable well-funded countries.
- See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/us-doctors-call-universal-healthcare-abolish-insurance-companies#sthash.i2UiFMWw.2VUdz3RY.dpuf

A group of more than 2,000 physicians is calling for the establishment of a universal government-run health system in the US, in a paper in the American Journal of Public Health.

According to the proposal released Thursday, the Affordable Care Act did not go far enough in removing barriers to healthcare access. The physicians’ bold plan calls for implementing a single-payer system similar to Canada’s, called the National Health Program, that would guarantee all residents healthcare.

The new single-payer system would be funded mostly by existing US government funding. The physicians point out that the US government already pays for two-thirds of all healthcare spending in the US, and a single-payer system would cut down on administrative costs, so a transition to a single-payer system would not require significant additional spending.

“Our patients can’t afford care and don’t have access to the care they need, while the system is ever more wasteful, throwing away money on bureaucratic expenses and absurd prices from the drug companies,” said David Himmelstein, a professor in the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College and lecturer on medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Himmelstein, one of the authors of the plan, said the proposal is meant as a rallying cry for physicians and other healthcare professionals around the cause of a single-payer model. According to the paper, even with the passage of the Affordable Care Act many patients “face rising co-payments and deductibles that compromise access to care and leave them vulnerable to ruinous medical bills”. Despite the current high healthcare spending levels in the US, healthcare outcomes are worse than in comparable well-funded countries.

group of more than 2,000 physicians is calling for the establishment of a universal government-run health system in the US, in a paper in the American Journal of Public Health.
According to the proposal released Thursday, the Affordable Care Act did not go far enough in removing barriers to healthcare access. The physicians’ bold plan calls for implementing a single-payer system similar to Canada’s, called the National Health Program, that would guarantee all residents healthcare.
The new single-payer system would be funded mostly by existing US government funding. The physicians point out that the US government already pays for two-thirds of all healthcare spending in the US, and a single-payer system would cut down on administrative costs, so a transition to a single-payer system would not require significant additional spending.
“Our patients can’t afford care and don’t have access to the care they need, while the system is ever more wasteful, throwing away money on bureaucratic expenses and absurd prices from the drug companies,” said David Himmelstein, a professor in the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College and lecturer on medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Himmelstein, one of the authors of the plan, said the proposal is meant as a rallying cry for physicians and other healthcare professionals around the cause of a single-payer model. According to the paper, even with the passage of the Affordable Care Act many patients “face rising co-payments and deductibles that compromise access to care and leave them vulnerable to ruinous medical bills”. Despite the current high healthcare spending levels in the US, healthcare outcomes are worse than in comparable well-funded countries.
- See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/us-doctors-call-universal-healthcare-abolish-insurance-companies#sthash.i2UiFMWw.2VUdz3RY.dpuf

Read more: 2,000 US Doctors Call for Universal Healthcare

US Healthcare More Americans Want Socialist Healthcare Than You Think

The passage of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, shows what it takes to create a new government benefit in 21st-century America. The debate over the bill during Obama's first term was a nationwide shoutfest that turned violent at times; since Obamacare became law in 2010, the Republican-controlled House has continuously voted to defund it, conservatives have challenged it in multiple court battles (at least one of which is still being fought), many GOP-run states have stalled the expansion of Medicaid that was supposed to come with the law, and every Republican candidate for president has promised to make repealing Obamacare a priority.

So it's no surprise that Republicans really, really hate the ACA, and most polls over the years have shown that more Americans disapprove of Obamacare than approve of it. But according to a new survey from Gallup, what they want to replace it with is the sort of socialist-style system Bernie Sanders and others have been backing for years.

In Gallup's poll, Democrat-leaning voters mostly supported Obamacare, but 72 percent of all respondents who approve of it said they'd like to replace it with a "federally funded healthcare program providing insurance for all Americans," or what's commonly known as a "single-payer" system. And even 41 percent of Republican-leaning respondents, who mostly dislike the ACA, told Gallup they'd rather have single-payer than Obamacare—a position that, as far as I can figure out, not a single Republican officeholder has ever endorsed. But if socialized medicine is actually so popular, why can't we have it? In other words, why has the healthcare debate been so out of touch with what people say they want?

Health insurance is a fairly complicated topic, and not top-of-mind for most voters during a campaign cycle that has focused on the economy and immigration. According to recent Pew polls, Republicans generally don't think the government should get involved in healthcare. But there's a not-insignificant amount of evidence that when you strip out the names of parties and candidates, support for government-run insurance cuts across partisan lines.

The new Gallup poll, notably, didn't remind participants that federal health insurance was opposed by the right; one 2015 Huffington Post/YouGov poll found that if you told people single-payer was Donald Trump's idea a lot more Republicans were suddenly onboard (and a lot more Democrats suddenly opposed universal healthcare).

Opposition to Obamacare is often synonymous with the right-wing effort to block the expansion of the federal government into citizens' lives. On the angrier corners of the fringe, this means Sarah Palin–esque denouncements of rationing care and "death panels," but more respectable right-wingers will tell you that the problem is the government shouldn't be able to force you to buy something you don't want to. An anti-ACA lawyer even admitted, during the famous 2012 Supreme Court battle over the law, that a single-payer program would be more constitutional than the current method of requiring people to become private health insurance customers or face tax penalties.

Less talked about is the significant number of people who thought that Obamacare didn't go far enough. Sanders has been the most prominent supporter of a government-run system since he introduced an obviously doomed amendment to adopt single-payer during the original ACA debate in the Senate. Beyond single-payer, though, there's something called the "public option," a scheme that would give people the choice of buying government-provided insurance or going to the private market.

Read more: More Americans Want Socialist Healthcare Than You Think | VICE | United States

Health Insurance Industry: 2015 was the first year 90 percent of Americans had health insurance. Thanks, Obama - by Sarah Kliff

On Tuesday, May 17,  the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its annual look at health insurance coverage in the United States. It shows that coverage rates have gone up this decade, particularly after Obamacare's health insurance expansion took effect.

In 2015, 9.1 percent of people lacked health insurance — a 2.4 percentage point decrease from 2014. That works out to 7.4 million fewer people lacking coverage.

You can see that health coverage was on the rise in the early 2010s, before Obamacare's health insurance expansion kicked in. But the really big drop in the uninsured rate happened in 2014 and has continued into 2015, as millions of Americans have gained coverage through Medicaid and the Obamacare marketplaces.

Read more: 2015 was the first year 90 percent of Americans had health insurance. Thanks, Obama. - Vox

US Healthcare: Conservative Pundit: Obamacare May Destroy GOP -- by Jonathan Chait

Conservatives who loathe or fear Donald Trump have a tendency to depict the Republican front-runner as a reflection not of the party whose heart he is winning but the party that loathes him uniformly. To the burgeoning genre of conservative analyses attributing Trump’s rise to things conservatives already hate, National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar adds the passage of Obamacare:

Ima­gine, for a mo­ment, the state of the 2010 midterms without Obama­care in the equa­tion. Re­pub­lic­ans would have run against the stag­nant state of the eco­nomy with some suc­cess.

But without the gal­van­iz­ing op­pos­i­tion to Obama’s health care law—Re­pub­lic­ans net­ted a whop­ping 63 House seats that year—Demo­crats would likely have nar­rowly kept con­trol of Con­gress, and con­tin­ued to press for­ward with Obama’s agenda.

There would be tea-party-aligned Re­pub­lic­ans elec­ted, but ab­sent the wave, not enough to form the con­cer­ted op­pos­i­tion that emerged.  …

With in­tensi­fy­ing en­ergy on the Right, the biggest polit­ic­al threat to mem­bers emerged from with­in their own party, and they ad­ap­ted ac­cord­ingly.

Long story short, by shepherding a major social reform that has cut the uninsured rate in half while coming in well below its projected costs and bringing health-care inflation down to its lowest rate in recorded history, Obama angered Republicans, forcing them to nominate an ignorant, bigoted clown.

Read more: Conservative Pundit: Obamacare May Destroy GOP -- NYMag

Obamacare: Let’s face it… the only winners from Obamacare were the insurance companies - by Jazz Shaw

Meanwhile, as Americans are suffering from rising costs and less access to quality health care, the biggest winners from the passage of Obamacare are the insurance giants. In the aftermath of the government health care takeover, there has been an explosion of health insurance company profits, windfalls and megamergers. As “stock market darlings,” health insurance company profits have skyrocketed to all-time highs and stocks have split even thanks to the health care law.

Reports show the so-called “Big Five” health insurers – UnitedHealth, Aetna, Cigna, Humana, and Anthem – have all outperformed the broader stock market by a wide margin since Obamacare was signed into law in March 2010.

 That’s why America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s main trade group, filed an amicus brief to defend the Obama administration in the recent Supreme Court case, King v. Burwell. And when the law was upheld, it was no surprise that there was a boost in health insurance company stocks.

Read more: Let’s face it… the only winners from Obamacare were the insurance companies « Hot Ai

Healtcare USA on the ropes: Senate GOP prepared to replace Obamacare subsidies - Jennifer Haberkorn and Rachael Bade

Preparing for a Supreme Court decision that could strike down Obamacare’s subsidies for nearly 7.5 million people this summer, Senate Republicans are coalescing around a plan to resurrect them — at a steep price for the White House.

With several Senate Republicans facing tough reelections, and control of the chamber up for grabs, 31 senators have signed on to a bill written by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) that would restore the subsidies for current Obamacare enrollees through September 2017. But the administration would have to pay a heavy price — the bill would also repeal Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates and insurance coverage requirements.

“In that moment of what could be political chaos, we’re offering such a reasonable proposal that solves a mess,” Johnson said. “It fixes a mess caused by a sloppily written law, unlawfully implemented. All we’re asking for is a little bit of freedom back, which would be, I think, pretty popular,” Johnson said. Even Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is backing Johnson’s measure, along with the rest of the chamber’s GOP leaders.

Johnson, who’s got a tight race in 2016, says the legislation would be a bridge to ensure that consumers can keep the insurance they have — a promise that President Barack Obama was widely criticized for breaking in 2014.

But even if Johnson could somehow persuade Obama and Senate Democrats to accept his plan — a herculean task — the bigger problem will be his Republican colleagues in the House.

The growing divide between the two chambers leaves the GOP in an awkward spot. The court could gut Obamacare in June, handing Republicans a long-sought victory they couldn’t achieve legislatively. But without a backup plan that the whole party supports, the GOP has no way to blunt the political damage if millions of Americans lose the ability to pay for their health insurance.

Note EU-Digest; It seems like the Republican's opposition against just about everything the present Administration proposes or has proposed has reached a level now which can be earmarked as purely destructive.

Read more: Senate GOP prepared to replace Obamacare subsidies - Jennifer Haberkorn and Rachael Bade - POLITICO

US Health care Poll: Obamacare in positive territory

There's more evidence that President Obama's health care law is gaining in popularity.

According to the monthly Kaiser Health Tracking Poll released Tuesday, 43% have a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act and 42% have an unfavorable view -- the first time the law has been in positive territory since November of 2012, the month President Obama won re-election.

Of course, the poll points out that the margin is "one percentage point, and the difference is within the

But the law's popularity appears to be rising. As National Journal points out: "Last month, 43% of Americans viewed the law unfavorably and 41% favorably. In April of last year, the gap was larger; 46% viewed Obamacare unfavorably, 38% favorably."

Obama's health care law -- signed in 2010 -- figures to play a major role in the 2016 presidential and congressional elections, as many Republicans call for repeal of Obamacare.

One thing that hasn't changed in the polls: Opinions of the health care law fall largely along party lines.

Read more: Poll: Obamacare in positive territory (by one point)

USA - Health Care: Five years in, Obama taunts GOP over Obamacare's success

President Obama declared victory on the five-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, saying the law has lived up to its promises, and he poked at Republicans for the doom and gloom predictions he says have failed to live up to the hype.

"The bottom line is this for the American people: the Affordable Care Act, this law, is saving money for families and for businesses. This law is also saving lives," the president said. "It's working, despite countless attempts to repeal, undermine, defund and defame this law...it's not the fiscal disaster critics warned about for five years."

Mr. Obama spoke at the kickoff meeting of the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network, a group that brings the public and private sector together to continue making improvements to the health care system that build upon the law.

The president ticked off a list of statistics he says prove the law's success: a reduction in hospital admission rates and preventable patient deaths, insurance for 16 million Americans who did not have it before and a slowdown in the growth of healthcare spending.

But for the president, one of the biggest successes has been Republicans' failure to undo the law despite dozens of attempts to challenge it in both Congress and the courts.

Read more: Five years in, Obama taunts GOP over Obamacare's success - CBS News

Iranian nuclear deal: Barack Obama hails tentative agreement

U.S. President Barack Obama heralded a framework
nuclear understanding with Iran as an "historic" agreement that could pave the way for a final deal that would leave the U.S., its allies and the world safer.

"The issues at stake here are bigger than politics," Obama said during remarks in the White House Rose Garden. "These are matters of war and peace, and they should be evaluated based on the facts."

Obama's statement came as the United States, Iran and five other world powers on Thursday announced an understanding outlining limits on Iran's nuclear program so it cannot lead to atomic weapons, directing negotiators toward achieving a comprehensive agreement within three months.

Note EU-Digest: whatever way one wants to look at the Obama administration, one will have to agree,  that it has had some HISTORIC AND DRAMATIC SUCCESSES, INCLUDING; OBAMACARE; THE CAPURE OF BIN LADEN;  RESTORATION OF THE US ECONOMY; RE-OPENENING OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS BETWEEN CUBA AND THE US; AND THE IRAN NUCLEAR AGREEMENT.  GOOD JOB MR.PRESIDENT.

Read more: Iranian nuclear deal: Barack Obama hails tentative agreement - World - CBC News

US Mid Term Elections: Radical right going full bore for big gains in mid-terms - by Stephen Goldstein

Take your blinders off: This is why the Koch Brothers and Radical Right groups will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the 2014 mid-term elections, why Florida Gov. Rick Scott wants to raise $100 million to get re-elected — and how you can defeat them.

The Koch Brothers - Right Wing Power

If the tea party-GOP gains control of the U.S. Senate, Sen. Rand Paul, who's against all foreign aid (including any to Israel), could become chair of the Foreign Relations Committee; "Bomb, Bomb Iran" Sen. John McCain, who's itching to send U.S. soldiers into the Middle East, could head the Armed Services Committee. And how does Sen. Ted Cruz becoming chair of the Judiciary Committee grab you, so we get more Supreme Court justices like Scalia, Roberts, and Alito?

In addition, if Republicans control both houses of Congress, expect a flurry of its priority legislation to emerge: turning Medicare into a voucher program so enrollees are thrown on the open insurance market; privatizing Social Security so participants' funds are subject to the insecurity of the stock market; repealing Obamacare, including key benefits, like not being able to be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition; reducing or ending corporate taxes; increasing taxes on the middle class; proposing Constitutional Amendments banning abortion and same-sex marriage.

And, of course, with Republicans gaining control of the Senate and keeping its majority in the House, it's guaranteed they will impeach President Obama and hold a trial in the Senate. They won't get enough votes to convict him, but they will destroy him politically.

If Republicans maintain or increase their power in state governments nationwide, things will be as bad, or worse, than they'll be in Washington, D.C. Think Rick Scott's disastrous years in office multiplied. And, ask yourself, if he raises $100 million to get re-elected, what payback will his contributors expect — and dollarwise what's in it for him?

In fact, November 2014 is just a dress rehearsal for the 2016 Presidential election. If the GOP radicals win both houses of Congress, they will use Democrats' thwarting their agenda to fire up their base to retake the White House and spend even more money in two years.

If enough voters take their blinders off, turn-out can trump billionaire's dollars; otherwise, prepare to pledge allegiance to the Kochs.

Read more: Stephen Goldstein: Radical right going full bore for big gains in mid-terms - Sun Sentinel

USA - Obamacare: Marco Rubio endorsed Obamacare for his family, Charlie Crist says

Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, now a Democrat and a 2014 candidate for governor, wrote an op-ed thanking U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a one-time Senate race opponent of his.
Sound nice? It isn’t. It’s a thinly veiled dig at Rubio.

"Senator Marco Rubio’s endorsement of Obamacare for his own family should end the rhetoric coming from Governor Rick Scott and other tea party groups," Crist wrote, adding, "The rollout of the Affordable Health Care Act has clearly been flawed, but that doesn’t mean that our work towards affordable health care should end. It should continue."

We wanted to sort through the rhetoric and clarify Rubio’s stance on President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

First things first: Rubio did purchase insurance for his family on the Washington marketplace. Rubio and others are signing up for insurance on the Obamacare marketplaces to comply with the law’s individual mandate.

Federal lawmakers will stop getting government-provided coverage. Instead, they’ll purchase insurance alongside small businesses and the uninsured. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced that rule in an amendment to the law so that legislators would see firsthand what average Americans would experience on the marketplaces.

Federal legislators make up the only group of people to get kicked off employer-provided insurance. When they sign up on the marketplaces, they’ll get a subsidy that covers up to 75 percent of their premium costs. That subsidy they get is similar to the deal many Americans get through employer-provided benefits.

Read more: Marco Rubio endorsed Obamacare for his family, Charlie Crist says | PolitiFact

US Healthcare Program: Obamacare website now working smoothly

There is a "night and day" difference between HealthCare.gov on October 1 and the same site on December 1, Jeff Zients, the top administration official responsible for improving the problem-plagued Obamacare enrollment site, said Sunday on a conference call with reporters.

Zients and Julie Bataille, spokeswoman for the federal agency charged with developing and operating HealthCare.gov, said the website now works "smoothly for the vast majority of users." The administration said the site can now handle 50,000 concurrent users and 800,000 consumer visits a day -- two capacity goals for the portal that date back to its launch two months ago. And Bataille said the site was now allowing "in the zone of 80%" of users to successfully complete a health care enrollment.

In short, after a concerted effort to improve HealthCare.gov, the administration said Sunday that the online Obamacare enrollment portal now essentially meets all of the previously stated goals for the website.

Read more: Administration: Obamacare website working smoothly - CNN.com

Health Care USA: Best health care system? Really, John Boehner? - by Maggie Fox

House Speaker John Boehner trashed president Obama’s health care plan again Thursday, accusing him of wrecking the world’s best health care system.

“This is going to destroy the best health care delivery system in the world,” Boehner said Thursday morning before President Obama announced a plan to fix the fallout over canceled health insurance policies.
But is it really?

Two studies out this week — and studies going back 15 years or longer — show quite the opposite. Americans pay more per capita for health care than people in any other industrialized country. In return, we are sicker, die younger and are unhappier with the system.

The Commonwealth Fund, which does research on health care and health reform, has shown year after year in its regular surveys that Americans spend a lot more on health care than anyone else. Right now it’s $2.7 trillion a year — that’s $8,508 a head, compared to $5,669 per person in Norway and $5,643 in Switzerland, the next-highest-spending countries. New Zealanders spend just $3,182 per person.

And Americans aren't getting more or better care for that money. The U.S. has the eighth-lowest life expectancy in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which groups developed nations.

In the latest survey of more than 20,000 people from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain and the U.S., Commonwealth researchers found that 37 percent of Americans went without recommended care, did not see a doctor when sick, or failed to fill prescriptions because of costs, compared to as few as 4 percent to 6 percent in Britain and Sweden.

And 23 percent of U.S. adults either had serious problems paying medical bills or were unable to pay them, compared to fewer than 13 percent of adults in France and 6 percent or fewer in Britain, Sweden, and Norway, Commonwealth reported Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs.

More than 40 percent of U.S. adults said they spent $1,000 or more out-of-pocket for care in the past year, by far the highest rate of any country surveyed.

Most — 75 percent —of the 2,000 or so U.S. adults surveyed said the health system needs fundamental changes or to be rebuilt. Just half of Dutch and Swedish people did, while 63 percent of Britons said their system works well and only needs minor changes.

“The U.S. spends more on health care than any other country, but what we get for these significant resources falls short in terms of access to care, affordability, and quality,” said Dr. David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund,

Americans also wait longer to see primary care doctors; 76 percent in Germany said they could get a same or next-day appointment, and 63 percent in the Netherlands, compared to 48 percent in the U.S. Only Canada scored worse, with 41 percent saying they could.

And the U.S. has more patients than anywhere else using the emergency room. A full 48 percent of Americans said they had used the ER in the past two years, compared to 31 percent in France and 22 percent in Germany and Australia.

Even the U.S. Institute of Medicine says U.S. health care is a mess, with tens of thousands of Americans dying from medical errors and drug overdoses, and with the system wasting $750 billion in 2009.

And on Tuesday, a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at improvements in the U.S. health care system. The upshot? They’re not really keeping up with the rest of the world.

Best health care system? Really, John Boehner? - NBC News.com

USA: Obama Adviser Compares Republicans To Terrorists - Clinton: "GOP 'Begging For America To Fail' - by Zeke J Miller

In the latest escalation in the Obama administration’s war of words with congressional Republicans, White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer compared the GOP to terrorists in an interview on CNN Thursday. ”We are for cutting spending. We are for reforming out tax codes, reforming out entitlements,” Pfeiffer told Jake Tapper.

“What we’re not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest. We’re not going to do that.”

President Barack Obama and aides have repeatedly called out Republicans for attempt to “extort” and “blackmail” the administration into cutting funding for the Affordable Care Act as part of a deal to keep the government funded into October. But the metaphors have rarely broached the boundaries of terrorism.

Huff Post wrote:  Former President Bill Clinton weighed in on an increasingly likely government shutdown in an interview with ABC's 'This Week'. Clinton criticized Republican demands, as well as their obsession with Obamacare.

"I've never seen a time-- can you remember a time in your lifetime when a major political party was just sitting around, begging for America to fail?" said Clinton

Read more: Obama Senior Adviser Compares Republicans To Terrorists | TIME.com

US Politcs: The Fall of the Heritage Foundation and the Death of Republican Ideas - by Molly Ball

During the 1980 election, an up-and-coming Washington think tank called the Heritage Foundation undertook a massive task: to examine the federal government from top to bottom and produce a detailed, practical conservative policy vision.

The result, called Mandate for Leadership, epitomized the intellectual ambition of the then-rising conservative movement. Its 20 volumes, totaling more than 3,000 pages, included such proposals as income-tax cuts, inner-city “enterprise zones,” a presidential line-item veto, and a new Air Force bomber.

Despite the publication's academic prose and mind-boggling level of detail, it caused a sensation.

A condensed version -- still more than 1,000 pages -- became a paperback bestseller in Washington. The newly elected Ronald Reagan passed out copies at his first Cabinet meeting, and it quickly became his administration’s blueprint. By the end of Reagan’s first year in office, 60 percent of the Mandate’s 2,000 ideas were being implemented, and the Republican Party’s status as a hotbed of intellectual energy was ratified. It was a Democrat, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who would declare in 1981, “Of a sudden, the GOP has become a party of ideas.”

The story of the conservative movement that has come to dominate the Republican Party over the last four decades is inextricably intertwined with the story of the Heritage Foundation. In that time, it became more than just another think tank. It came to occupy a place of special privilege -- a quasi-official arm of GOP administrations and Congresses; a sponsor of scholarship and supplier of legislation; a policy base for the party when out of power. Heritage has shaped American public policy in major ways, from Reagan’s missile-defense initiative to Clinton’s welfare reform: Both originated as Heritage proposals. So, too, did the idea of a universal health-care system based on a mandate that individuals buy insurance. 

Though Heritage subsequently abandoned it, the individual mandate famously became the basis of health-care reforms proposed by Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama.

ehind the scenes, GOP staffers complained that the organization they once looked to for intellectual ammunition had become a thorn in their side. Brian Walsh’s first Washington internship was with Heritage in 1996. He rose in Republican politics to serve as communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In a scathing op-ed for U.S. News headlined “Conservatives Eat Their Own for Profit,” Walsh accused Heritage of taking extreme stands to generate fundraising dollars. 

“In our great democracy, you affect public policy by offering a vision, influencing a majority of public opinion and winning elections, not by burning down the House, attacking your allies, and falling on your sword,” he wrote.

 

Heritage officials dismiss these gripes as the eternal price of disruptive thinking. “Exposing folks, it certainly makes them angry,” DeMint observed to Politico. “Heritage and Heritage Action has gotten in the way of business as usual. And it’s made people mad.”

But there is more at stake in Heritage’s transformation from august policy shop to political hit squad than the reputation of a D.C. think tank or even the careers of a few squishy GOP politicians. It is the intellectual project of the conservative movement itself. Without Heritage, the GOP’s intellectual backbone is severely weakened, and the party’s chance to retake its place as a substantive voice in American policy is in jeopardy.

Today, prominent Republicans publicly worry they're becoming the "stupid party." In its prime, Heritage rose to rival the power and capacity of the liberal academic establishment, giving conservatives a reputation as serious thinkers. “There was a time when leftist intellectuals dismissed conservatives as the party without intellect. Heritage undid that,” Edwards said. “The Republican Party for a while had the high ground. Everyone said that’s where the ideas are, that’s where the intellectual ferment is. When your intellectual ferment is nothing more than a political platform, that [reputation] is undercut. That hurts the conservative movement in general.”

Read more: The Fall of the Heritage Foundation and the Death of Republican Ideas - Molly Ball - The Atlantic