Safety-net hospitals benefiting from ACA insurance expansion

May 27, 2014 By Leave a Comment

May 27, 2014
health care reformUSA Today (5/27, Galewitz) carries a Kaiser Health News report on how the Affordable Care Act is helping safety-net hospitals, which currently “treat a disproportionate share of poor and uninsured people and therefore face billions of dollars in unpaid bills.” The article explains that these hospitals “had expected to see a drop in uninsured patients seeking treatment, but the change has been faster and deeper than most anticipated.”

However, the Athens (GA) Banner-Herald (5/26, Burkhart) reports that local free-clinics are seeing more patients without insurance “despite [the] promise of ACA.”
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California declines to implement Obama fix for those losing health insurance

November 22, 2013 By

November 22, 2013
Scott Pelley, on the CBS Evening News, said that on Thursday, California officials announced that they “will not let President Obama make good on [his] broken promise” that anyone who liked their health insurance could keep it “even if that policy does not meet new higher standards.” According to Pelley, California officials contend that “reinstating those policies after they’ve already been canceled would only make matters worse,” and “so hundreds of thousands of Californians will lose their substandard health policies.” USA Today(11/22, Kennedy, Welch) reports that “only 12 states have agreed with Obama’s recent proposal.”

Bloomberg News (11/22, Vekshin) reports that Covered California “weighed extending the canceled plans through March 31 or through Dec. 31, 2014, or allowing them to expire at the end of next month.” Bloomberg notes that California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones “said last week he opposed the cancellations and agreed with Obama’s call to allow people to stay in existing plans for an extra year.”
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