Affordable Care Act

A statewide coalition of lawmakers, activists and health experts Thursday announced that health care reform will be a top priority heading into the next legislative session.

Coalition leaders at a news conference at the Capitol building said the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent election have become driving factors in reintroducing a plan for a public option health insurance program for Connecticut residents, small businesses and nonprofits. 

Less than a week after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, her vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court has set up what is sure to be a contentious battle among legislators on how to proceed.

However uncertain that process may be, the court is still set to hear arguments beginning a week after the presidential election for a case challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. 

Connecticut advocates for addiction treatment say proposed funding cuts to the federal Medicaid program would leave fewer resources for people with substance use disorders.

The proposed cuts are part of President Donald Trump’s federal budget plan, which was released earlier this month. It includes cuts to Medicaid, a program that provides health coverage for people in poverty, and the Affordable Care Act totaling about $1 trillion in the next decade. 

A multi-state coalition of Democratic state attorney’s general and a governor are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on a recent court decision on the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate in an effort to preserve the federal health care law. 

A federal appeals court in New Orleans dealt another blow to the Affordable Care Act last week, saying the requirement under the law to have health insurance is unconstitutional. But the court sidestepped the question of whether the health law itself is invalid.

Ten years ago around this time, U.S. legislators were in the middle of hashing out one of the biggest ever pieces of health care reform legislation. Democrats narrowly passed it, and President Barack Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March of 2010.

Looking back on the last decade, Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, health policy expert and professor emeritus at Washington and Lee University, said the ACA has accomplished a lot, but it’s also left a fragmented health system divided by private and public sectors.

Open enrollment for health insurance plans on Access Health CT — the state’s Affordable Care Act exchange — begins in November, but before that happens, the state Insurance Department needs to approve new premium prices.

Anthem and ConnectiCare are both seeking increases, and insurance representatives answered to state officials at a public information hearing Wednesday on the reasons why.

Marion Bradley always knew that getting breast cancer was a possibility. After all, she had a family history of the disease, so she wasn’t shocked when she was diagnosed with an early stage of the cancer about five years ago.

But that didn’t make it any less scary.

As oral arguments were being heard Tuesday by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana in a multi-state lawsuit that seeks to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, Connecticut senators at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., were making the case as to why Americans need the federal health care law.

Sen. Chris Murphy said eliminating the ACA without any replacement plan in place would result in a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

State lawmakers revealed details Thursday on how Connecticut could create and run its own public option health care plan, which would compete with private insurers.

Brianne Foley didn’t have time to plan for the birth of her first child. So when she and her husband were having their second child, Foley did extensive research on which ones accepted Medicaid and were within driving distance of her home in Watertown.

That’s when she found a practice run by certified nurse midwives.

The Affordable Care Act’s protection for people with preexisting conditions is one of the most important provisions in the law. But that may be in jeopardy after a decision by the Department of Justice to not defend the ACA in a lawsuit filed by 20 states.

The Affordable Care Act required Americans to carry some form of health insurance. But the new federal tax bill will eliminate what’s called an “individual mandate” for the 2019 tax year.

Republican efforts to change the tax code seem as if they’ll not only hit people’s pocket books, but their health care. 

There’s no doubt about it—health care in the U.S. is complicated.