Last week, we said goodbye to President Barack Obama, and soon we will say goodbye to Obamacare. Eight years ago, when the tumultuous health care reform journey began, we could not have imagined the roller coaster ride it would take. The Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) passing without a single Republican vote, surviving the Supreme […]
What will ‘Trumpcare’ look like? – Commercial Appeal
November 13, 2016 by
Obamacare died on election night, and Trumpcare was born. With a majority of his party in the House and Senate, President-elect Donald Trump has a free hand, much like Barack Obama did eight years earlier, to craft the healthcare roadmap for the nation for decades to come. What will Trump’s health plan look like? First […]
Rising Insurance Premiums and the Future Costs to Health Care – Huffington Post
June 11, 2015 by
Recently, health insurance companies across the nation have petitioned to increase premium rates for customers covered under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In North Carolina, Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) has proposed a 25.7 percent raise in premiums; in New Mexico, BCBS requested a 56.1 percent raise; and, in Georgia, Alliant Health Plans has submitted […]
Making sense of 36% Blue Cross premium increase – Commercial Appeal
June 6, 2015 by
This week, when I read the headlines “Blue Cross proposes premium increases,” I cringed. Health care premiums are a significant burden on many American families, averaging about $1,000 a month, not counting thousands of dollars people pay in deductibles, copayments, medical supplies and medications. So I did some research. Healthcare premiums for private health plans […]
Obamacare’s Upheaval of the Insurance Market – Huffington Post
November 17, 2013 by
Some years ago, driving through an end of town where pawn shops and boarded up homes are common, I saw a small placard sign nailed on a telephone pole. “Buy Health Insurance,” it touted with premiums as low as $25 a month. I was tempted. 2013-11-16-images1.jpeg Health insurance, for me and for most Americans, is […]
Challenges for Sebelius and Obamacare – Huffington Post
November 4, 2013 by
Last Friday, I was among a dozen people who sat privately to talk about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, with the embattled Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius. Dressed in a light green blazer, sitting alongside Memphis Mayor AC Wharton and Congressman Steve Cohen, who had nudged her to visit Memphis, Secretary […]
Closing the Medicaid doughnut hole – Commercial Appeal
October 6, 2013 by
A patient, a burly black man in his 40s who works as a cook, is in the hospital wincing in pain from a staph infection on his leg. He has no health insurance and earns about $15,000 a year. You would think that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, would help him. But no. […]
Judging ‘Obamacare’ depends on your situation Put politics aside and just focus on facts – Commercial Appeal
July 1, 2012 by
On the day the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its historic decision on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, I was rounding on my hospital patients: a man on the ventilator with pneumonia who had private insurance, one elderly woman with abdominal pain going for gall bladder surgery on Medicare, and one middle aged obese […]
