Health Care, Universal Health Care | featured news

As the Supreme Court decides whether to take up the case against President Obama's health care law, a new poll indicates that the landmark legislation is losing support among the general population, including Democrats.

A legal move Monday by the Obama administration greatly increases the odds that the US Supreme Court will take up the contentious issue of the new health care law during the court term that starts next week. And if it does, that would mean a ruling from the Supreme Court by next spring -- as the presidential campaign is well underway.

Young adults, long the group most likely to be uninsured, are gaining health coverage faster than expected since the 2010 health law began allowing parents to cover them as dependents on family policies. Three new surveys, including two released on Wednesday, show that adults under 26 made significant and unique gains in insurance coverage in 2010 and the first half of 2011. One of them, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates that in the first quarter of 2011 there were 900,000 fewer uninsured adults in the 19-to-25 age bracket than in 2010.

Despite President Obama’s promises to rein in health care costs as part of his reform bill, health spending nationwide is expected to rise more than if the sweeping legislation had never become law.

Recent data provided by the nation’s largest health insurance companies reveals that a provision of the Affordable Care Act – or Obamacare – is bringing big numbers of the uninsured into the health care insurance system.

Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller says his family benefited from Medicaid and a state-run health care program for low-income children and pregnant women.Miller previously acknowledged receiving federal farm subsidies for land he owned in Kansas in the 1990s, as well as low-income hunting and fishing licenses for him and his wife in Alaska.As a conservative candidate, he's criticized certain entitlement programs. Sitting Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who's running for re-election as a write-in candidate against him, called Miller a hypocrite.

A federal judge on Thursday rejected an attempt to stop some key provisions of the new national health-care law, saying Congress has the authority to require people to get insurance by 2014.

As a number of the law’s central provisions take effect, The Times talked to three families about the changes.

Government economic forecasters say President Obama's healthcare overhaul will increase the nation's healthcare tab instead of bringing costs down. The report by economic experts at the Department of Health and Human Services, released late Thursday, says the healthcare remake will achieve Obama's aim of expanding coverage.

A nurse may soon be your doctor. With a looming shortage of primary care doctors, 28 states are considering expanding the authority of nurse practitioners. These nurses with advanced degrees want the right to practice without a doctor's watchful eye and to prescribe narcotics. And if they hold a doctorate, they want to be called "Doctor."...