Obamacare lives. After hundreds of votes by the then-Republican U.S. House of Representatives; after a narrow win in the then-Republican U.S. Senate, courtesy of now-deceased Senator John McCain; after four years of failed promises by President Trump; and now, most recently, after a vote by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of Obamacare — the third overall, Obamacare remains the law of the land and appears to be now unhappily accepted by Republicans as the status quo. Continue reading
Category Archives: elections
Health Reform and a Political Commercial
This is a proposed political ad for our upcoming election to be paid for by a proposed political action committee named Pre-Existing Conditions Political Action Committee (PEC PAC).
PEC PAC commercial — Take One. Continue reading
Health Reform and Why Joe Biden Should Be President
I like Pete Buttigieg. I like Elizabeth Warren. I may even like Andrew Yang.
But I shall caucus for Joe Biden.
Health Reform and the Role of Private Insurance
As a family physician and health-care advocate, I have fought for universal health-care access for more than 25 years.
In 1997, I advocated for the proposed Healthy and Well Kids in Iowa (HAWK-I) program by writing in an op-ed that a “child with a laceration on the arm goes to the school three days after the injury happened. The wound is held together with a bandage of rags and electrical tape. The child has no insurance.”
Health Reform and a Primer for Democratic Presidential Candidates in Iowa
What every presidential Democratic candidate — many of whom will be speaking at the Iowa State Fair this week — should know about Iowa health reform:
1. Iowa suffered greatly by having a Republican-dominated state government (governor, Senate, and House) during the aftermath of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). With a Republican governor and most recently a Republican Senate and House in Iowa, we had a miserable attempt at a Marketplace/Exchange; no support for our attempt at a health-care Co-Op (Co-Oportunity Health, which had 120,000 members in one year of operation); passage of association health plans, which allow for discrimination against persons with co-existing conditions; and, overall, an unbelievably negative atmosphere in general regarding anything that concerned the ACA.
Medicare for All and the Elimination of Private Insurance
An Iowan’s Plea for Honesty to Democratic Presidential Candidates
I last wrote to you regarding health care in Cuba after a cruise there earlier this year. Interestingly, that cruise has now been banned by our president. Now, six years to the month since I started this blog regarding health-care reform in Iowa, we have 24 Democratic presidential candidates crisscrossing the state and most of them on a national debate stage raising their hands regarding whether the country should eliminate private insurance in lieu of a Medicare for All proposal.
Health Reform and Cuba
After four days in Cuba, seeing much countryside and touring three cities – Cienfuegos, Havana, and Santiago de Cuba, I have some reflections regarding health care, there and here in the United States.
Health Reform: 2019 and Representative Cindy Axne
As my Health Reform blog returns in a new format, I wish to comment on two more significant startups — a new year and a new 3rd District congresswoman from Iowa. In relationship to health reform, by which I mean improving health-care coverage for Americans and especially Iowans, I think these new developments have meaning.
In Iowa, a new year will start with health costs continuing to go up, the individual insurance market pricing people out of the ability to have health insurance, a state-legislated health-association insurance plan that legally allows for the discrimination of individuals with pre-existing conditions (further perverting the individual insurance market), and a besieged Medicaid for-profit managed-care scheme that will continue to reward these companies’ shareholders at the expense of Iowa patients.
Health Reform and Iowa’s Next Governor
(These are remarks I gave to an audience of 50 Iowans introducing Fred Hubbell, Iowa’s Democratic candidate for governor, at my home on Saturday, June 30. This is belatedly posted here because of technical difficulties with the blog site earlier in the year when these remarks were more timely.)
My wife and I welcome you to our home and are very happy you are here today to meet, greet, and support Fred.
Health Reform and “We the Middling People”
I have just read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, and was struck by Franklin’s “great rallying cry for the new American middle class,” according to the author, or, as Franklin in his pamphlet, Plain Truth, said, “We the middling class people. The tradesmen, shopkeepers, and farmers of the province and city!” I contrast this emphasis with the recent Iowa Democratic gubernatorial debate and the five candidates running in next Tuesday’s primary and separately this past Wednesday, when Governor Kim Reynolds signed Iowa’s new tax-reform law.