A NEW REPUBLICAN-CONTROLLED Congress is in place. And for the sixth time, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is facing extinction. Indeed, a gripping narrative history of the ACA/Obamacare could be […]
John E. McDonough
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Five Affordable Care Act questions for the GOP
SO, REPUBLICANS ARE planning a major blitz to repeal and delay/replace/collapse the Affordable Care Act/ACA/ObamaCare. I’ve got five questions to ask leaders of the Grand Old Party. First, if your […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Trump poised to dump Affordable Care Act
PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP has nominated Rep. Tom Price of George, an orthopedic surgeon and the House Budget Committee chairman, to be his first secretary of health and human services. For […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
State gains approval for big Medicaid overhaul
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT today approved a huge infusion of money to Massachusetts and big restructuring of the state’s Medicaid program, known as MassHealth. The five-year $52.4 billion waiver is major […]
Posted inHealth Care
Protected: Humble pie for Massachusetts health
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Baker’s big health care move
FOR THE THIRD time since 1996, the Massachusetts Medicaid program, called MassHealth, is preparing for transformation. After submitting a final proposal in July, state officials are anxiously awaiting a decision […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Obama, Clinton and the new public-option debate
THE ERA OF Democratic silence on strengthening and improving the Affordable Care Act is officially over. President Obama’s tour de force review of the ACA’s successes in the new Journal […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
The art of the non-deal deal
ON MAY 31, Gov. Charlie Baker signed a new law to avert a proposed 2016 state ballot initiative that would have redistributed as much as $450 million annually from Partners […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
House GOP health care plan is an empty backpack
THIS WEEK, US House Speaker Paul Ryan released a long-promised plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. Most of the plan, “A Better Way: Health Care,” developed by a House […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Back to the future with Paul Ryan
THIS PAST WEEK at Georgetown University, House Speaker Paul Ryan proposed scrapping an essential component of the Affordable Care Act that bans health insurance companies from imposing pre-existing condition exclusions […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Mass. health care reform turns 10
APRIL 12TH IS the 10th anniversary of the signing of Chapter 58, Massachusetts’s landmark universal health insurance law (An Act Providing Access to Affordable, Quality, Accountable Health Care) that served […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Behind the Massachusetts Health Connector’s rehab
AT 11:59 PM on October 31, 2015, about 20 nervous state officials and contractors hunched around computer terminals in a non-descript office in the Charles F. Hurley Building near Beacon […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Trump’s health plan folly
ON MARCH 14, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a bipartisan federal budget watchdog group, released an economic analysis of the recent health proposals made by Republican presidential […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Amazing gains in global health – 2015
WE GET SO caught up these days in the Donald and Hillary and Ted and Bernie shows. Yet there is so much else going on in the world about which […]
Posted inOpinion
Sanders vs. Clinton on health care
IT’S FUNNY HOW things turn out on the campaign trail. Since all Republican presidential candidates pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare, they have little to argue about. The fireworks […]
Posted inBallot Questions, Health Care, Opinion
Setting hospital prices by ballot question
A LOOMING 2016 ballot initiative threatens to upend the foundations of hospital finance in Massachusetts, even if the measure never reaches the voters. The clash involves a fractured hospital community, insurers, […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Obamacare repeal would mean 22 million people lose coverage
TWENTY-TWO MILLION – that’s how many Americans would lose their health insurance, according to the US Congressional Budget Office, if the reconciliation legislation approved by the House of Representative on […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Why Republicans hate the Affordable Care Act
THIS WEEK, THE US House of Representatives will take up reconciliation legislation, amended and approved in the US Senate last month, that would drill major, damaging holes in the Affordable […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
An ACA damage assessment
ON ONE THING all Affordable Care Act watchers can agree: This autumn saw important developments and changes relating to the nation’s health reform law. How much and how serious? Any […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
No time to go wobbly on One Care
BACK IN 2008, when I was working in the US Senate on national health reform, a delegation of 20 business leaders from the New England Council visited Capitol Hill to […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Sounds of health-care silence in GOP debate
I HAD ONE mission last night watching the Republican debate among the party’s top 10 presidential contenders: What, if anything, could we learn about the state of play regarding the […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Cake and cupcakes for Medicare and Medicaid’s 50th anniversary
FIFTY YEARS AGO this Thursday, July 30, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law legislation creating two new national health insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaid. Fifty years later, these programs […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Financing the Affordable Care Act
NOW THAT THE the lawsuit challenging federally established health care exchanges, King v. Burwell, has been relegated to history’s dustbin, let’s return for a deeper dive into the June 2015 report from […]
Posted inEconomy, Health Care, Opinion
US Chamber of Commerce’s shameful tobacco work
I RECALL SITTING in my office in the US Senate’s Hart Office Building in Washington, DC, between 2008 and 2010 with my desk TV always turned onto one of the […]