Health Care Reform

Democrats have owned the debate for two years, while Republicans have had difficulty articulating their side of it.

The federal price tag of Bernie Sanders's proposal is not surprising. But the implications are kind of insane.

The Republican tax overhaul significantly undoes the Affordable Care Act by removing the individual mandate to purchase health insurance. Next, the GOP House has their sights on Medicaid reform.

As Republicans prepare to celebrate their tax reform victory, a potential disaster lurks right around the corner.

Consider this imaginary situation: A new chief of staff can organize President Trump’s harum-scarum White House operation into a crack, disciplined, and loyal team, or he can stop the president from tweeting. eThe catch is he can do one of these but not both. Which should he choose?

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at expanding Americans’ access to health insurance choices, the first official step of his pledge to tackle health-care reform solo after repeated congressional failures to pass legislation repealing Obamacare.

The Graham-Cassidy bill to block-grant Obamacare's spending and provide waivers from Obamacare's regulations to the states seemed to be on death's door Friday afternoon.

The fate of America's latest attempt at comprehensive health care reform may hinge on the opinions of a late night talk show host. I've nothing against Jimmy Kimmel; topical political jokes are the meat and potatoes of late-night comedy. And in fact, Kimmel has a reputation for joking about the…

At the end of July, Kentucky senator Rand Paul advocated and voted for the so-called "skinny repeal" bill of Obamacare. "Skinny repeal is better than no repeal," Paul said on Fox News. "The reason I will advocate and vote for skinny repeal is that it's the best I can get."

The Graham-Cassidy health reform bill is notable for how much its policy caters to governors—no matter their party affiliation. Its private-market provisions are premised on a simple plan: Take the money projected to be spent on four key Obamacare-driven expenditures, including the Medicaid…

On Wednesday, a group of four Republican senators—South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, Louisiana's Bill Cassidy, Nevada's Dean Heller, and Wisconsin's Ron Johnson—revealed the text of their 140-page health-care reform bill.

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy on Wednesday released a last-ditch health-care bill that aims to replace Obamacare’s architecture with a block grant given annually to states to defray individuals’ insurance costs.

Utah Senator Orrin Hatch found himself embroiled in controversy Monday, but unlike most Washington squabbles, this one was solved with a dictionary.

Shortly before 10 p.m. on Thursday, Senate Republicans finally revealed to the public the text of the health-care bill they hope to pass. The so-called "skinny" repeal bill is just 8 pages long. You can read it here. A vote is scheduled shortly after midnight.

Republican senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Ron Johnson, and Bill Cassidy told reporters Thursday afternoon that they despise the idea of a “skinny” Obamacare repeal bill—but that they would vote for it on the condition health reform ends up being negotiated further between the House and…

Pictured above: Three skinny health reform amendments that could stand a chance of passing.

The White House is attempting to revive a repeal and replacement of Obamacare, starting with overtures to one of the Republican senators who expressed his opposition to the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act. President Donald Trump will unveil his plans to the gathering of Senate Republicans…

For many years, starting in elementary school, my mother took me to an ophthamologist for an annual examination. Dr. Itzkovitz was a master in distracting a child just long enough to get a good look at his retina. By the time we arrived, after school, his part-time secretary had left for the day,…

The latest version of the Senate GOP's bill to partially repeal and replace Obamacare died Monday night when GOP senators Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas announced their opposition to legislation. The bill could lose only two GOP votes and still pass, and Lee and Moran brought the grand…

Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, a Republican wildcard in the upper chamber’s health reform discussions, accused majority leader Mitch McConnell Friday of being duplicitous in his struggle to assemble 50 yea votes to pass the Better Care Reconciliation Act.

If Senate Republicans are going to pass a bill to partially repeal and replace Obamacare, it appears they'll need everyone but libertarian Rand Paul and moderate Susan Collins to do it.

Leave sausage out of this. The ever-evolving Republican health care bills demonstrate how rancid legislative livermush gets made: a pudding of policy innards blended and baked with haste because the ingredients were up against their expiration date, or in this case the August recess. The concoction…

The Associated Press reported Sunday some accurate, if incomplete information about Sen. Ted Cruz’s health reform proposal. “Cruz’s plan,” the story reads, “… aims to lower premiums for healthy people.” The article provided no additional details, either specifics or their presumed consequences,…

The rhetoric on the Republican bill in Congress to overhaul Obamacare has been a bit overheated, to say the least. Specifically, the preferred criticism of the bill seems to be that it will kill hundreds of thousands of people.

The legislation faces opposition from both conservatives for not doing enough and from moderates for cutting too much.

The draft health care bill released by Senate Republicans on Thursday contains a number of differences with the House bill. One provision, a holdover from Obamacare, prompted a lawsuit from the House of Representatives in 2014.

Senate Republicans unveiled a 142-page bill to partially repeal and replace Obamacare on Thursday. The bill can only lose two GOP votes and still pass the Senate, but several Republicans expressed opposition or concerns about the bill in its current form. In a joint statement, conservative senators…

The Senate GOP has revealed its closely guarded alternative to the American Health Care Act, which stitches together significant changes to Medicaid intended to unify disparate Republicans and modifies the House approach to Obamacare regulations in a way that still provoked the immediate ire of…

All this time, the national headlines about health care reform in Congress have prioritized the terms “CBO” and “pre-existing conditions.” Not nearly enough attention has been paid to “Medicaid.”

The ball in Times Square hit zero Wednesday evening for the Congressional Budget Office's latest projection of the American Health Care Act. As with the agency's estimate of an earlier version of the bill, the document was immediately put to political use. "The Congressional Budget Office just…

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, executive editor Fred Barnes shares his outlook for President Trump and the GOP's agenda: what's possible, and what isn't.

I leave it to others to sort out who said what to whom about Russia, loyalty oaths, secrets, and other matters now roiling Washington. Instead, here is an attempt to sort out the economic consequences of the doings of our political class.

House Republicans held together just enough on Thursday to pass their partial Obamacare replacement, a surgically repaired bill that a critical mass of conservatives and moderates blocked until they became more comfortable with the final product in recent days.

Republicans are adding another $8 billion over five years to their health bill to help Americans with pre-existing medical conditions pay for insurance, the latest such supplement designed to stop moderates and a few skeptical conservatives from bailing on the legislation.

Ohio governor John Kasich dismissed changes to the American Health Care Act designed to give states flexibility under Obamacare's insurance regulations on Friday, telling reporters that the House amendment process is a "bouncing ball" he hasn't been interested in following.