Health Care | featured news

Washington Post is buying a major stake in home health-care and hospice-services company Celtic Healthcare, branching out beyond its core media and education businesses.

The ads have hit hard: In one, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown is slammed as an out-of-touch politician who saddled his state's manufacturers with higher taxes by voting for President Obama's health care law. In another, he is savaged for his "failed record on energy."

Under Romney’s proposed health care plan, American families buying non-group health insurance would pay nearly double what they pay under Obamacare, according to a new study by Families USA entitled "ObamaCare versus RomneyCare versus RomneyCandidateCare." That includes both comparative insurance premium payments as well as out-of-pocket expenses.

New polling by Reuters/Ipsos indicates that during the past two weeks - since just after the Democratic National Convention - support for Romney among Americans age 60 and older has crumbled, from a 20-point lead over Democratic President Barack Obama to less than 4 points.

When asked whether the nation has a responsibility to provide health care to the 50 million Americans who do not currently have coverage, the Governor responded: “... If someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care...”

...So Massachusetts used not just federal Medicaid money but federal dollars above and beyond that Medicaid money to finance their health reforms. It is difficult to see how Romney’s proposal to cut Medicaid spending and hand that reduced share over to the states would allow other states to follow Massachusetts’ example. It might not even permit Massachusetts to continue following Massachusetts’ example.

Nearly 6 million Americans - significantly more than first estimated- will face a tax penalty under President Barack Obama's health overhaul for not getting insurance, congressional analysts said Wednesday. Most would be in the middle class....

It has been a central campaign promise from Mitt Romney: His Medicare overhaul plan would not touch benefits for anyone older than 55. That may not, however, be the case with the Republican presidential nominee’s other health-care proposals. A growing body of research suggests that his plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act and cut Medicaid funding would have a direct impact on the health care that seniors receive.

More Americans got health insurance coverage in 2011, as young adults jumped onto their parent’s health insurance plans, the U.S. government said Wednesday. More also got public health insurance under the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

It sounds like good news: Annual premiums for job-based family health plans went up only 4 percent this year.