PA Insurance Department Submits plan for High-Risk Pool

PA Insurance Department submitted a plan for a high risk health insurance pool, which is a requirement under the new national health care reform.

Easton Joins with Other PA Cities to Fight Rising Health Care Costs

Easton will join with Bethlehem, Lancaster, Reading, and York to investiage ways to reduce health care costs.

House Passes Historic Health Bill

The biggest transformation of the U.S. health system in decades won approval on Capitol Hill late Sunday, the culmination of efforts by generations of Democrats to achieve near-universal health coverage.

House Passes Health-Care Bill

The Philadelphia Inquirer Reports:
WASHINGTON – Summoned to success by President Obama, the Democratic-controlled Congress approved historic legislation last night extending health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and cracking down on insurance-company abuses, a climactic chapter in the century-long quest for near-universal coverage.
Widely viewed as dead two months ago, the Senate-passed bill cleared [...]

Final push begins on health legislation

Philadelphia Inq Reports:
WASHINGTON – Congressional Democrats and President Obama resumed work yesterday to resolve difficult issues still standing in the way of their national health-care overhaul.
Topping the list: How to help Americans pay for insurance premiums.
Republicans weren’t invited, and they complained that the Democrats intend to deliberate behind closed doors – though lawmakers often do [...]

Progress in Senate Democratic health care talks

Philadelphia Inq reports:
WASHINGTON – After agreeing tentatively to jettison a key liberal priority , a full-blown government-run insurance option , Democrats say they are getting close to pushing President Barack Obama’s health care bill through the Senate.
“We’ve overcome a real problem that we had,” Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in announcing what he called [...]

A Hill pep talk on health care

Philadelphia Inq reports:
WASHINGTON – Casting health-care overhaul as a legacy to benefit the American people and failure as politically unthinkable, President Obama yesterday rallied Senate Democrats to deliver on their party’s half-century quest to expand the social safety net to include access for all.
At the Capitol during a rare Sunday session of the Senate, Obama [...]

GOP’s bid on Medicare fails

Philadelphia Inq reports
WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats closed ranks yesterday behind $460 billion in politically risky cuts in Medicare payments that are crucial to their health-care legislation, thwarting a Republican attempt to doom the overhaul.
The GOP bid to reverse cuts to the popular program drew two Democratic defectors but failed, 58-42.
Approval of the amendment would have [...]

Health care issues: Medical cost inflation

Philadelphia Inq Reports:

A look at key issues in the health care debate:
THE ISSUE: Why do medical costs increase at a rate faster than inflation?
THE POLITICS: Health care spending over the past year increased by 3.2 percent even as overall consumer prices dropped 2.1 percent. That’s not unusual in the United States, where health care spending [...]