Insights Column

Biographies for Health Action 2020 Health Advocate of the Year Awards

Robyn Merrill, Executive Director of Maine Equal Justice. A 2008 graduate of the University of Maine School of law, Merrill also has a master's degree in social work from the University of New Engl...

Utah’s Work Reporting Requirement: A Burden on State Government

On January 1, 2020, Utah’s Medicaid work reporting requirement went into effect. In addition to being onerous for patients and providers and legally dubious, the work reporting requirement will be c...

Every week, 3,700 children lose their health insurance. It’s time for Congress to act

NOTE: This blog was originally published in Medium on November 5, 2019. Once upon a time, our nation’s leaders worked together across party lines to help America’s children grow up healthy and ...

The Lower Drug Costs Now Act: Landmark Legislation Made Even Stronger Since Its Introduction

Consumers Need Relief from Big Pharma’s High Prices The United States is facing a crisis in prescription drug prices. High drug prices are forcing families and consumers to make impossible choices ...

Medicaid Policy And Partisan Politics: A New Dynamic

NOTE: This blog was originally published in Health Affairs on October 15, 2019. On September 18, 2019, Tennessee announced a long-anticipated proposal to block grant its Medicaid program, TennC...

Uptick in Hospital Mergers: A Doubled-Edged Sword for Consumers

Earlier this month, a federal district court judge in Idaho examined whether a merger between a large hospital system, St. Luke’s, and the state’s largest independent network of doctors would crea...

Alleviating Poverty Doesn’t Come from Slashing Medicaid

Having Medicaid is better than being uninsured—a lot better. But House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s recently released report, War on Poverty: 50 Years Late, claims otherwise. The repo...

The State of Enrollment: Health Coverage Options after March 31

Tonight (by midnight) marks the end of the first open enrollment period to get health insurance in the marketplaces. And although this first open enrollment period was a success—more than 6 million ...

If the Remaining States Expand Medicaid, Who Would Benefit?

Twenty-two states have chosen not to extend Medicaid coverage, leaving hundreds of thousands of their residents in the health coverage gap. These people—who do not qualify for Medicaid in their stat...

Four Reasons the Senate Should Reject the American Health Care Act

In early May, Republicans in the House of Representatives rushed through their repeal bill, called the American Health Care Act (AHCA), without taking the usual step of waiting for the CBO report to...