Health Care | featured news

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday revived a challenge to President Barack Obama's healthcare reforms, allowing a Christian college to pursue litigation raising First Amendment objections to a law that the court mostly upheld in June.

From the South to the heartland, the once-solid wall of Republican resistance to President Barack Obama's health care law is cracking.

Keith Foreman, like a growing number of disabled Americans on Medicaid, qualified for a personal caregiver to help him with daily activities such as dressing, shaving and preparing meals. Foreman, 57, who has a spinal injury, hired his girlfriend, Sheila McDonald. In 2011, McDonald received almost $5,000 from Medicaid for six months of care she provided to Foreman.

Republican state leaders must decide quickly whether to implement it or have the federal government do so. Obama also faces imminent challenges to carry out the legislation.

After years of political and legal threats kept President Obama’s health care law in a state of uncertainty, his re-election all but assures it will survive. The next hurdle is making it work.

Social Security retirement benefits for nearly 62 million Americans will go up 1.7 percent next year, the Social Security Administration said on Tuesday, a small increase that may not cover rising premiums for the Medicare elderly health insurance program.

Nearly six in 10 Medicare recipients would pay higher premiums under a hypothetical privatized system, with wide regional differences leading to big hikes in some states and counties, a study released Monday finds.

The Republican is well-versed in the issue after passing his landmark law in Massachusetts, but explaining his position has been an ordeal for him. Mitt Romney may know more about healthcare than any other presidential nominee in memory. As governor of Massachusetts, he dove deeply into the subject while creating the most far-reaching state health plan in the country.

Obamacare doesn't violate the religious freedom of employers that don't want to cover contraceptives, a federal judge in Missouri has ruled.

Here's one program candidates aren't likely to mess with: The Medicare prescription drug plan. A new poll sponsored by a health care group shows that 90% of seniors are satisfied with the program known as Medicare Part D, and approval has constantly risen since the plan came on line in 2006.