Elections

Insurance Healthcare: Down to the Wire?

Laurie Kelley November 5, 2012

Well, not really. Yes, elections are Tuesday, and they are a nail biter. It’s too simple to say that if Romney wins, the Affordable Care Act will be repealed. And if Obama wins, the ACA and healthcare reform will continue. As Jim Romano of Patient Services, Inc. pointed out Saturday in Springfield, Massachusetts at our final Pulse on the Road symposia for 2012, no matter which candidate gets in office on Tuesday night, they will still need to contend with Congress.

Both men might face obstacles: Romney needs a majority in Congress and Obama faces a strong public undercurrent to revamp or repeal the Act. If Romney wins without a Republican majority in Congress, then the ACA and its Medicare provisions may continue to evolve.

Lisa Schmitt of New England Hemophilia Association with Laurie Kelley

But should Romney win on Tuesday with a GOP majority, he would have the political initiative and power to repeal the ACA. It’s possible Romney (and Paul Ryan) might push through Congress a structural overhaul of Medicare. With Obama, probably Medicare would be left as is.

Jim pointed out that the ACA was modeled after Mass. Governor Romney’s state heath care plan of 2006, which mandates that everyone in the Bay State have healthcare insurance, much as everyone must have car insurance to drive a car. The uninsured rate in Massachusetts dropped to 2%! But the jury is still weighing: In June 2011, the Boston Globe concluded that the healthcare overhaul “has, after five years, worked as well as or better than expected.” A study by the Beacon Hill Institute reported that the mandate was “responsible for a dramatic increase in health care spending.”

What will happen on Tuesday and its aftermath? Hard to say.
Just keep reading, review your own insurance policy carefully, stay in touch with your local
hemophilia organization and above all, VOTE on Tuesday! No matter what happens, we will
always need to keep advocating for our bleeding disorders community.

No Wonder There’s No Money for Factor

Laurie Kelley February 11, 2007

Just some food for thought, while we all contemplate our diminishing choices over healthcare. I read this in the latest Time magazine:

$100 billion: Amount that the new budget proposed by President Bush would save over five years by trimming Medicaid and Medicare costs…

$100 billion: Additional funding Bush is seeking for Iraq and Afghanistan for fiscal 2008, on top of $70 billion already requested this year.

Very slick of Time magazine: juxtaposing the two figures makes you naturally ask, why is Medicaid being targeted for cost cuts and limited choice? To fund this war? The answers are never so clear cut. This is sensationlism journalism, of course.

And yet I can think of 12 families with hemophilia off the top of my head who are suffering due to increasingly limited healthcare coverage in their states. We have elections coming up in November 2008; candidates are already announcing their entry into the race. It will be great to get a dialogue going now on how our federal and state budgets are being used, and use our right and power to vote, to protect our healthcare dollars. Be ready for 2008, and read up on the candidates now. Will their decisions about how to end his war in turn impact health care budgets?

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