Tagged: Affordable Care Act

If the price tag for health insurance goes up under Obamacare, it’s likely to hit some policy holders in their 20s, economists have warned. Now that the first round of numbers are available in Washington state, we can see whether that’s the case.

If the price tag for health insurance goes up under Obamacare, it’s likely to hit some policy holders in their 20s, economists have warned. Now that the first round of numbers is available in Washington state, we can see whether that’s the case.

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Health care is probably taking a bigger chunk out of your paycheck than it was a decade ago. The rising cost of insurance and deductibles has been dramatic whether you work for a small business or a large one.

The White House has released a picture of President Obama on the phone with Solicitor General Donald Verrilli in the Oval Office after hearing the health care news. Verrilli was the one who argued the case in front of the Supreme Court.

Here's the picture:

Obama looks rather relaxed. But both The New York Times and NBC News report that Obama, who received the news like most Americans, first thought his signature legislation had been declared unconstitutional.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, one of the burning questions is how will the decision play out politically?

President Obama even acknowledged the inevitability of the political maneuvering and handicapping in his comments from the White House soon after the high court delivered its decision. But he did stress that politics wasn't what really mattered in the end.

Washington state is on a fast-track to providing discounted insurance for thousands of uninsured people by January 2014.

The Supreme Court has upheld the individual insurance requirement at the heart of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

The court on Thursday handed Obama a campaign-season victory in rejecting arguments that Congress went too far in requiring most Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty.

The court found problems with the law's expansion of Medicaid. But even there, it said the expansion could proceed as long as the federal government does not threaten to withhold the entire Medicaid allotment to states if they don't take part in the extension.

The court's four liberal justices, Stephen Bryer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, joined Roberts in the outcome.

“We are in a very good position, because we have already received the federal funds to not only build our health-care exchange, or marketplace, but to operate it for the first year,” says State Sen. Karen Keiser (D), Kent, who chairs a key senate health committee.

As potentially millions of people collectively held their breath, again, Monday morning waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the fate of Obama’s health care reform, one of the many questions lingering in the air is will the justices keep their politics out of the decision? (Update: The court did not issue its ruling Monday and will likely do so on Thursday.)

And, we must also wonder: Will Americans keep their politics out of their assessments of whatever the court decides, when it does? (Warning, this is a “Take our survey” story … see below.)