Health coverage is easy to get if you're healthy. The problem is when you're sick or have a history of illness.
Led by its Republican majority, the U.S. House voted Thursday to eliminate from the 2010 health care reform law a proposed advisory board that would recommend how to achieve needed, but as-yet-unreachable Medicare savings.
In the bitter political debate over health care reform two years ago, one of the most contentious issues was a proposed advisory board that would recommend how to achieve needed but as-yet-unreachable Medicare savings.
Rep. Paul Ryan and the GOP unveil their 2013 budget, citing $5.3 trillion in spending cuts.
House GOP leaders unveiled a 2013 budget blueprint Tuesday that has little chance of becoming law but draws a clear contrast with Democrats on taxes, spending, and a host of hot-button political issues -- all of which could play a pivotal role in the 2012 campaign.
Women face shocking disparities when buying health insurance on the individual market: In the vast majority of states, nearly all the best-selling plans charge women more than men for the same coverage, a discriminatory practice known as "gender rating."
This has been a volatile year for the stock market. But one sector has been consistently earning a windfall for investors: health insurers that provide private Medicare plans to seniors.
The Paul Ryan-Ron Wyden Medicare reform plan is a political game-changer. Amidst heated gridlock in Washington, Rep. Paul Ryan, a conservative budget hawk, and Sen. Ron Wyden, a respected liberal senator, have reached consensus on vital entitlement reform. Medicare is on the track to insolvency; this could be the bipartisan solution.
Thanks to Medicare, there's at least one thing you don't have to worry about in retirement: whether you'll have health insurance. How you'll get it, on the other hand, is another matter.
Mitt Romney has pledged to repeal President Obama's universal health care law if he is elected president. Critics find his position rather strange, arguing that the plan he helped develop when he was governor of Massachusetts is quite similar in design to the Obama plan. Romney disputes his critics, saying there are important and fundamental differences between the plans. Who is correct?
CNN's Jim Acosta looks at the most recent allegations about Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health care plan.
This is the second-part of MONEY's ongoing series on Medicare.
This Sunday morning, and for every foreseeable Sunday until at least the 2012 elections, the talking-head news shows will be crowded with members of both parties talking about the need to fix out-of-control "entitlements." Politicians like that word. It's safely nonspecific, and we're all a little suspicious of someone who feels entitled.
Thank you, boss?: While the annual cost for employee family health insurance jumped 9% this year, employers shouldered the bulk of that increase, according to a new industry survey Tuesday.
These are hard times in the United States.
The number of people who lacked health insurance last year climbed to 49.9 million, up from 49 million in 2009, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are three of the government's most popular and relied upon programs.
Hospital and doctor groups warned Monday that the debt ceiling deal could damage seniors' access to health care if it triggers pay cuts to Medicare providers.
The U.S. government will foot the bill for half of all health care costs in the United States by 2020, according to a government report released Thursday.
Social Security payments aren't the only federal lifeline that could grind to a halt if the debt ceiling impasse continues beyond Aug. 2.
For the first time in its history, the nation's largest retailer Wal-Mart is providing free legal support for patients at the Arkansas Children's Hospital, many of whom are from low income families on Medicaid.
CNNMoney guest columnist Joshua Gordon is the policy director at The Concord Coalition.
Any deficit reduction deal with Republicans must bolster job growth and spread the burden equally among the wealthy and other segments of society, congressional Democratic leaders said Thursday after talks with President Barack Obama.
The Obama administration is attempting to block Indiana from enforcing a new law that would keep low-income women from using federal Medicaid benefits to receive any kind of reproductive medical care from Planned Parenthood.
In what amounted to political theater rather than legislative action, the Senate on Wednesday rejected a House budget plan that included a controversial provision to overhaul Medicare and also unanimously voted down President Barack Obama's 2012 budget proposal.
Dems see Congresswoman-elect Kathy Hochul's upset win in New York as an early test of things to come in 2012.
In town hall meetings being held across the country during Congress' two-week recess, American citizens are filling the ears of Republican legislators with objections to the party's budget plan, particularly proposed changes to Medicare that would replace direct coverage with subsidies for private insurance.
Proposed changes to Medicare and Medicaid have future senior citizens concerned. CNN's Sandra Endo reports.
This month, leaders from both parties introduced two major plans to cut the nation's long-term debt. But economists don't like either one. In an exclusive CNNMoney survey, eight out of 18 economists polled said they believed neither President Obama's nor Republican Paul Ryan's plans for deficit reduction are in the best interest of the nation's economy.
House Republicans push through a budget blueprint that would overhaul Medicare and Medicaid. CNN's Dana Bash reports.
When it comes to deciding who pays to reduce runaway Medicare costs, President Obama and House Republicans have very different views.
President Barack Obama unveiled his long-awaited deficit reduction plan Wednesday, calling for a mix of spending reductions and tax hikes that the White House claims would cut federal deficits by $4 trillion over the next 12 years without gutting popular programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
President Obama unveiled a plan Wednesday to cut Medicare and Medicaid costs, but without slashing benefits for seniors and the needy.
In many ways, the debate over taming the nation's spending and deficit beasts can be compared to a family's hand-wringing over what to cut, and what to keep, in tough times. It may be easy to nix "luxuries" like vacations and eating out. But should "essentials" like a car or a home be downsized or gotten rid of to save money?
House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's 2012 budget resolution turned the floodlights on Medicare, the health care program for seniors that is projected to take increasingly bigger bites out of the federal budget in the coming decades.
This week, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan unveiled his "Path to Prosperity" budget proposal and made some bold claims about what it would do. He said it would bring spending and the deficit under control while stimulating the economy to recover from the recession with amazing speed.
Democrats and Republicans are locked in a stalemate over budget.
Republicans have always hated Medicare, but most Americans have always loved it. Now, led by Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republicans are trying to kill it once and for all.
Late last month, the Patient Protection and Affordability Act, better known as "health care reform," quietly celebrated its first birthday. The bill has its supporters, including the millions of previously uninsured Americans who will have access to coverage because of it. But its critics have been more vocal, attacking the landmark legislation for "gutting" Medicare, drastically understating the measure's probable cost, and funding a new entitlement with early premiums from still another entitlement for long-term care that's destined to go broke.
House Republicans propose to trim more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade by reworking and cutting Medicaid, a program of public health care coverage for children, pregnant mothers, disabled and poor.
Good news: The budget proposal unveiled Tuesday by House Republicans would dramatically reduce the country's long-term debt.
House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan said Sunday he will unveil a Republican budget for 2012 this week that proposes dramatic changes to Medicare, Medicaid and other political lightning rods.
Running one of America's largest health insurers was never easy, but now it's a strategic challenge that will be studied in business schools for years. That's because the industry is about to be revolutionized by the new health care reform law. Yet no one is sure exactly how. At least Humana CEO Michael McCallister has the comfort of knowing his company has remade itself before. Launched 50 years ago as a nursing home operator, it later abandoned that business and became America's largest hospital company before bailing out of that industry in 1993 to focus on insurance. Humana's biggest business now is Medicare Advantage insurance -- essentially enhanced Medicare offered through private companies.
You can't turn on the news these days without hearing about our budget crisis. We've also been told, over and over, that it's a problem with spending -- we're doing too much of it.
Come 2012, millions of Americans who get health care coverage through their employer should brace for some big changes.
The Obama administration is giving states more flexibility in implementing the health care reform law, but that won't help governors plug one of their biggest immediate budget problems: Runaway Medicaid costs.
For the first time in 10 years, the U.S. health insurance industry is expected to report a decline in medical expenses, according to a new report by Weiss Ratings.
The government collected a whopping $4 billion last year -- the largest sum ever recovered in a single year -- through its health care fraud prevention and enforcement efforts, according to a new report Monday.
The House of Representatives voted to repeal the Obama administration's signature health-care legislation Wednesday evening, a vote the newly elected Republican majority called a fulfillment of their No. 1 campaign promise.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tells Wolf Blitzer many in Congress will reject efforts to repeal health care reform.
One day after a Virginia federal judge ruled a key part of President Barack Obama's health care reform law was unconstitutional, two members of Obama's administration spoke out publicly defending the law.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli talks about his position on an insurance mandate with CNN's John King.
Indiana Rep. Mike Pence says he's willing to consider cuts to Medicare and Medicaid to help balance the budget.
Fmr. Senate leader Tom Daschle says repeal of health care reform isn't an option, despite big Republican midterm gains.
I'm going to get personal here. On the day that health care reform passed its final vote in the House, I posted on my blog a comment titled "Waterloo."
Fraud experts say health insurance scams are on the rise as criminals quickly exploit consumers' confusion about how the new health care law changes their insurance coverage.
Faced with a divided public over his signature legislative achievement, President Barack Obama on Wednesday hailed the health care reform bill passed in March as important for helping both the government and the American people deal with rising medical costs.
After completing his second year of business classes at Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama, in 2007, Joshua Armstrong decided to take a break from full-time studies.
September 23 marks the six-month anniversary of health reform. It's also the date when several key insurance changes come into effect.
The number of people with health insurance in the United States dropped for the first time in 23 years, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday.
It will be at least five years before health care reform triggers a sustained slowdown in the pace of spending, according to new government estimates released on Thursday.
For more than a year, Democrats in Washington have turned a deaf ear to the American people when it comes to health care.
The newly passed health care law will boost the financial strength of the nation's massive Medicare program, the government said Thursday.
Out-of-pocket costs for the millions of Americans with employer-based health coverage rose again in the past year, although at a slower pace than the year before, according to a new industry report released Tuesday.
Now that health reform is law, many physicians are complaining that while it may help their patients, it doesn't go far enough to help doctors.
With Congress having passed an expensive new health care plan, it is a good time to ask whether our political system is capable of undertaking major entitlement and tax reform to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal path.
President Obama signs the final changes to health care reform into law.
President Obama sealed a final victory on his signature domestic priority Tuesday, signing a sweeping package of changes to the newly enacted health care reform law.
About 32 million Americans who don't have health insurance will get access to coverage when the $940 billion health care plan takes effect.
President Obama is expected to nominate a Massachussetts pediatrician and Harvard University professor to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, a senior administration official told CNN on Saturday.
What? Really? You don't understand the new health care reform legislation? You find yourself confused? If you haven't mastered the minutiae on all 2,309 pages of the health care reform bill signed earlier this week by President Obama, there's nothing wrong with you -- even experts are having a hard time getting a grip on all the details.
President Obama signed sweeping health care reform into law Tuesday. The Senate must now pass a package of changes that will reconcile the differences between Senate and House bills. If those changes are worked out, here is how health care reforms will affect you:
President Obama lays out a timeline for what Americans can expect from the new health care law.
If you're retiring this year, you will need $250,000 in savings to cover your family's medical expenses during your retirement, Fidelity Investments announced on Thursday.
The House's approval of a measure to reform and revamp the nation's health care system was praised Monday by consumer groups, given mixed reviews by doctors and got a thumbs down from insurers.
For decades, health care has sparked controversy in American politics. In the 14 months since President Obama took the oath of office, the issue has been debated passionately and exhaustively. With House passage of a sweeping health care bill, CNN.com asked a variety of political and medical experts to comment.
A kid with a fractured leg highlights the problems Dr. Jaquelin Gotlieb's pediatric practice is having with Georgia's Medicaid system.
President Obama presented a revamped health care reform proposal on Wednesday that may incorporate, according to the White House, a series of Republican ideas that the caucus has advocated in the past.
"Comprehensive health insurance is an idea whose time has come in America. There has long been a need to assure every American financial access to high quality health care. As medical costs go up, that need grows more pressing." -- Republican President Nixon's special message to Congress proposing a "Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan," February 6, 1974
Senate Democrats claimed a major victory this weekend after voting to end debate on their version of the health care bill.
I wanted to support President Obama's health care reforms if I possibly could.
Kerry Burns, financially wiped out after her late son was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, talks about bankruptcy reform.
When 3-year-old Finnegan Burns fell ill with complications from cystic fibrosis, his parents did what any loving parents would do. Kerry and Patrick Burns put their lives on hold to see their son through his medical travails.
President Obama says reforming health care is central to the task of getting the government's long-term financial problems under control. And he's right.
The health care bill that passed a crucial test vote in the Senate on Saturday is proof that getting reform passed and getting it right are two very different things.
Getting health reform passed and getting health reform right are two very different things.
The battle over health care reform reached another milestone Thursday as top House Democrats unveiled sweeping legislation that includes a highly controversial public health insurance option.
Senate Democrats struggled Tuesday to find enough votes to pass a controversial measure intended to ensure that doctors experience no cut in Medicare reimbursement payments over the next 10 years.
Leslie Elder's eyelids fluttered open, and through the fog of pain medication, she saw the emergency room doctors pull back the curtain in her room.
A middle-class family struggles with health insurance and cancer. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports.
Every time a doctor orders an extra test for you, it pushes up your medical costs and -- some experts say -- contributes to the waste in the nation's $2.2 trillion in health care spending.
President Obama insists that requiring Americans to get health insurance does not amount to a tax increase.
CNN Sr. White House Correspondent Ed Henry previews Pres. Obama's Sunday health care blitz.
More coverage. More choice. Better care.
CNN's Jessica Yellin reports on Rep. Allen Boyd's opposition to current health care legislation.
Are you confused by all the back and forth on health care reform? Here's a guide to some of the terms commonly tossed about in the debate.
How big of a deal is cutting the rising cost of health care? Ask Massachusetts.
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