Local Officials Asked to Help on Health Law
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — The White House is recruiting mayors, county commissioners and other local officials to promote and carry out President Obama’s health care lawin states like Florida and Texas, where governors are hostile to it.
The effort comes as the administration is intensifying its campaign to publicize new health insurance options and to persuade consumers, especially healthy young people, to sign up for coverage when open enrollment starts on Oct. 1.
To bring people into the insurance market, the White House is using techniques it used to mobilize voters during Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign, with a particular focus on Hispanics, who are much more likely than other Americans to be uninsured. About 7 in 10 Hispanic voters nationally and 6 in 10 in Florida voted for Mr. Obama last year, according to exit polls by Edison Research.
White House officials say the law will provide 10 million uninsured Hispanics with an opportunity to get affordable insurance. They account for 40 percent of the 25 million uninsured Americans expected to gain coverage in the next three years.
Texas and Florida refused to set up regulated marketplaces, known as exchanges, for the sale of subsidized insurance, leaving the task to the federal government. And they have refused to expand Medicaid to provide insurance for low-income people who do not already qualify.
Florida led legal challenges to the law, which was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a Republican, said that expanding Medicaid would be like “adding a thousand people to the Titanic.” The expansion of Medicaid and the creation of an insurance exchange, he said, “represent brazen intrusions into the sovereignty of our state.”
But many local officials said they would help people take advantage of the law.
Thousands Of Mississippi Consumers May Not Be Offered Insurance Subsidies - Kaiser Health News
Tens of thousands of uninsured residents in the poorest and most rural parts of Mississippi may be unable to get subsidies to buy health coverage when a new online marketplace opens this fall because private insurers are avoiding a wide swath of the state.
No insurer is offering to sell plans through the federal health law’s marketplaces in 36 of the state’s 82 counties, including some of the poorest parts of the Delta region, said Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney.
As a result, 54,000 people who may qualify for subsidized coverage would be unable to get it, estimates the Center for Mississippi Health Policy, a nonpartisan research group.
American Way of Birth, Costliest in the World
LACONIA, N.H. — Seven months pregnant, at a time when most expectant couples are stockpiling diapers and choosing car seats, Renée Martin was struggling with bigger purchases.
At a prenatal class in March, she was told about epidural anesthesia and was given the option of using a birthing tub during labor. To each offer, she had one gnawing question: “How much is that going to cost?”
Though Ms. Martin, 31, and her husband, Mark Willett, are both professionals with health insurance, her current policy does not cover maternity care. So the couple had to approach the nine months that led to the birth of their daughter in May like an extended shopping trip though the American health care bazaar, sorting through an array of maternity services that most often have no clear price and — with no insurer to haggle on their behalf — trying to negotiate discounts from hospitals and doctors.
When she became pregnant, Ms. Martin called her local hospital inquiring about the price of maternity care; the finance office at first said it did not know, and then gave her a range of $4,000 to $45,000. “It was unreal,” Ms. Martin said. “I was like, How could you not know this? You’re a hospital.”
A Label Calls Attention to Obesity
By JANE E. BRODY
Most people know that obesity can result in serious health problems, yet many of us continue to focus on its cosmetic consequences rather than its risks to health.
This distorted view may change now that the American Medical Association has finally labeled obesity a disease, not just a risk factor for other disorders. Last month, the organization recognized that obesity is a verifiable illness that warrants far more attention than physicians, patients and insurers currently give it.
The designation may change how aggressively doctors treat obesity, foster the development of new therapies, and lead to better coverage byinsurers. After all, the price of not treating obesity is now in the stratosphere. Obesity-related health conditions cost the nation more than $150 billion and result in an estimated 300,000 premature deaths each year.
If the population’s weight gain is not soon capped (or better yet, reversed), experts predict that half of adults in America will be obese by 2040. The A.M.A. has said in effect that it is medicine’s responsibility to provide the knowledge and tools needed to curb this runaway epidemic.
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