Summer Recess Over

September 7, 2011

Congress and President back in Washington

The September 6, 2011 Washington Update published by NAHU reports that the summer recess is over and Congress is back in session. The Super Committee has scheduled its first meeting to address the deficit and a recent survey says PPACA is still unpopular according to a Kaiser Family Foundation health tracking poll.

The September 7, 2011, NAHU Newswire has a story that the Obama administration is under increasing pressure to fix a "glitch" under health care reform that could leave millions of families without healthcare. If a family turns down the employers' coverage as "unaffordable" and they are precluded from any subsidies in the state exchange, they could be without access to affordable coverage. The challenge is developing a formula to calculate "affordability".

Another article in the September 7, 2011 NAHU Newswire is the suggesting that the Democrats are considering extending Medicare coverage to everyone should the US Supreme Court strike down the individual mandate. Sally Pipes, president, CEO, and Taube Fellow in Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute says, "the hikes needed to support such an expansion would have to be so astronomical that they'd effectively strangle the economy."

<<- Return to News