Health Care, States | featured news

Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a leading Republican critic of President Obama’s health care law, said he now supported a three-year expansion of Medicaid to cover more poor people.

Republican governors who long opposed President Barack Obama's remake of the health insurance market are struggling to square their opposition with the new law's requirements as it starts to take effect.

A new report says states can receive more than $9 in federal money for every dollar they spend to cover low-income residents under President Barack Obama's health care law.

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

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.

"You are still paying for that coverage expansion but not getting the benefit of it," said Herb Kuhn, president of the Missouri Hospital Association. "So you as a state are exporting your dollars to another state. If you have some adjoining state that accepts (the Medicaid expansion) then you are basically sending your dollars to your neighbor."

Seven states filed a lawsuit Thursday against the federal government requirement that religious employers offer health insurance coverage that includes contraceptives and other birth control services.

State lawmakers deadlocked Thursday over a controversial measure that would provide universal healthcare in California.

U.S. health officials will allow states to select the basic set of medical benefits that must be offered by insurance plans participating in new exchanges mandated by the federal healthcare overhaul, the U.S. government said on Friday.

As healthcare costs for the poor soar across the United States, perhaps no state will feel the loss of federal stimulus money more than Florida.