What a judge’s ruling on healthcare means, and doesn’t mean, for patients. The news started rippling through social media like an earthquake late on Friday evening: A judge in Texas had declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.The whole thing, from health insurance programs that cover millions of people, to protections for people with health problems, to efforts to make health care safer for everyone.
Eight years and nine months after it became the law of the land, six and a half years after it survived a Supreme Court challenge, and more than a year after an attempted repeal in Congress, the ACA was struck down. Well, not exactly.
The ruling doesn’t take effect immediately. So what should people who get their health coverage through the ACA, or pay less for their insurance because of it, or work in health care clinics and hospitals that get paid by ACA insurance plans, know?
Four IHPI experts–a law professor, a primary care doctor, a Medicaid researcher, and a health policy tracker–comment in this story by Kara Gavin, research and policy media relations manager at IHPI and a longtime member of the WHI communications work group.
Read the December newsletter online for this story, and more, including:
- Save the date for 2019 stakeholder: Friday, Feb. 22, 10 a.m. – noon; Monday, May 13, 3 – 5 p.m.; Wednesday, Sept. 25, 3 – 5 p.m.; and Thursday, Nov. 14, 3 – 5 p.m.
- First new member orientations to be held on Friday, Jan. 11.
- Nominate a colleague, your yourself, for open Steering Committee position.
- Read about Mental Health and Public Safety Millage investments and sign up for regular updates from Washtenaw County Community Mental Health.
- Check out new publications from CHRT, backbone organization to the Washtenaw Health Initiative, on the use of health care benefits in Michigan, 2019 Health Insurance Marketplace rates, and more.
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