Health Care Reform | featured news

Aetna will buy Coventry Health Care for $5.7 billion as the insurance industry realigns itself to better navigate the massive government health care overhaul....

Escalating the campaign fight over Medicare, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan warned an audience of Florida seniors Saturday that changes to the program made by President Obama's healthcare plan will lead to rationing of care for the elderly.

As campaign debate over Medicare intensifies, former Gov. Mitt Romney and President Obama have been accusing one another of threatening the future of the government health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's new promise to restore the Medicare cuts made by President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law could backfire if he's elected. The reason: Obama's cuts also extended the life of Medicare's giant trust fund. By repealing them, Romney would move the program's insolvency eight years closer, toward the end of what would be his first term in office.

President Obama fought back against Republican criticism over Medicare today, saying he has improved the program by eliminating wasteful spending. "Here's what you need to know -- I have strengthened Medicare," Obama told supporters in Dubuque, Iowa, on the third and final day of his bus tour of the state.

One way or another, Barack Obama, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney all have supported the $700 billion in cuts to Medicare spending now in place under the Affordable Care Act. But you wouldn’t know that by listening to the current debate.

Sandra Pico is poor, but not poor enough... Many working parents like Pico are below the federal poverty line but don't qualify for Medicaid, a decades-old state-federal insurance program. That's especially true in states where conservative governors say they'll reject the Medicaid expansion under Obama's health law.

Republican Paul Ryan's blueprint for Medicare could prove as polarizing in the campaign as President Barack Obama's health care overhaul has been. Even Mitt Romney may not want to go there....

Romney's latest problem with conservatives flowed from a spokeswoman's reflections this week on the benefits of the Massachusetts health care law. That Romney-proposed law remains a touchy topic, since it was a model for President Barack Obama's health care overhaul — which Romney now condemns. In criticizing an outside group's ad linking Romney to the cancer death of a laid-off steelworker's wife, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul told Fox News, "If people had been in Massachusetts under Gov. Romney's health care plan, they would have had health care."