Health Care Reform | featured news

With the House scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to repeal the health care law, some Republicans worry that constantly rearguing the issue makes them seem out of touch.

Can the Internal Revenue Service police President Obama's health care mandate while simultaneously collecting all the taxes for running the federal government? The question is being renewed in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision upholding most of the 2010 Affordable Care Act as a tax issue rather than one of interstate commerce.

Health insurer WellPoint Inc will buy rival Amerigroup Corp for $4.46 billion in a major bet on the expansion of the U.S. government's Medicaid health plans for the poor.

Texas Governor Rick Perry said on Monday his state will not implement an expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor or create a health insurance exchange, leaving the state with the highest percentage of people without health insurance outside President Barack Obama's signature law.

So Mitt Romney didn’t personally, single-handedly, destroy the middle-class society we used to have. He was, however, an enthusiastic and very well remunerated participant in the process of destruction; if Bain got involved with your company, one way or another, the odds were pretty good that even if your job survived you ended up with lower pay and diminished benefits.

Mr. Romney's remarks, made in a hastily arranged interview with CBS News on a national holiday, prompted renewed criticisms that he was willing to adjust his views for political expediency. Two days earlier, his chief spokesman and senior strategist had said that Mr. Romney did not believe the mandate should be called a tax.

If governors opt their states out of the health law’s Medicaid expansion — as many are now threatening to do — it’s the poorest Americans who would find themselves getting the rawest deal.

Republican politicians across the country claim that Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, the widely popular program which makes health insurance available for lower-income Americans, will increase costs for states. Ten Republican governors have pledged not to accept the Medicaid expansion funds and 22 other governors are considering turning down the money.

Republican governors like Rick Scott of Florida who say they will defy President Barack Obama and opt out of a planned expansion of Medicaid health coverage for the poor are setting up a fight with the health care providers in their own backyards.

Mitt Romney's campaign is aligning itself with President Barack Obama—and breaking from Republican leaders—by saying the government will be imposing a penalty, not a tax, on people who don't buy insurance as required by the new health-care law. The break from his Republican allies illustrates the difficulty the presumptive GOP presidential nominee faces in criticizing the president for a national health-care law that resembles the one Mr. Romney signed as Massachusetts governor. Both laws include a requirement that most individuals buy insurance coverage.