Because You Haven’t Heard Enough About Healthcare Already
So our in-depth discussion of the revised Senate healthcare bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, wasn’t deep enough for you eh? Well here are some of the articles we used to put it together, plus some articles that dig into specific issues with much more expertise than we have, plus a few people you can learn a lot from on Twitter. I know, I know — twitter is for jokes! But check it out anyway.
The LA Times provided a lot of the information for our healthcare deep dive (found here) but you should read the original article because it’s got a lot of really good info we had to summarize so we could save room for ranting.
Vox’s healthcare coverage has been incredible across the board, but this article in particular is key for understanding the mechanisms of the bill, how they will impact markets and individuals, and links to a lot of resources and other helpful Vox articles.
Much of the current healthcare discussion is centered on the idea that healthcare is a right, and not a privilege. That idea isn’t new — rather it was a central tenet of the Civil Rights movement. This article details how the fight against segregation and the fight for universal healthcare were inextricably linked, and provides really important insight into how our current fight to save healthcare is vital to the fight for racial equity.
To read more about how the BCRA will impact the disabled community, particularly families raising disabled children, read this Time article. It gives some good insight into how Medicaid allows children and adults with disabilities to live at home rather than in institutions, help parents take care of children, and help people with disabilities live full lives in a world that is often designed to exclude them.
Want to know more about why the state specific handouts included in the new BCRA won’t work for Nevada? Check out this post from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It explains how the gaps in coverage Nevadans would experience if BCRA passed can’t be accounted for by a bill passed through the budget reconciliation process if the cuts to Medicaid and the tax cuts for the wealthy remain the same.
What about Arkansas, you say? A Republican governor who isn’t sure about this new bill, but knows that it would cause a “$500 million hit” to the Arkansas economy. This article also gives a pretty good look at some of the ways governors and Senators are communicating about this bill and why there is so much pressure from state governments one way or the other.
Governors across the board have reservations, actually, and the New York Times gives a little insight into their concerns, their relationships with Senators, and what they are looking for from a Senate healthcare bill.
Want to read the letter sent by insurers to the Senate asking them not to include the Cruz amendment in the final bill? You can read it and get a little more information on their concerns here.
If you’re looking for up to the minute healthcare updates and advocacy action items, I’m sorry, but you really need to get Twitter so that you can follow Andy Slavitt. He ran Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act implementation for President Obama and he is about as tapped into this fight as one can be. Topher Spiro is another important Twitter follow for healthcare updates. He’s the VP for Health Policy for the Center for American Progress and he and Ben Wikler, the Washington Director for Move On, are key follows for advocacy updates as well. I’d also recommend following Aditi Juneja who wrote a really important op-ed piece on how important it is to center disabled voices in any discussion of healthcare.
Obviously there is new information coming out all the time, and this is only a surface level overview of some of the really great writing out there on the subject. Let us know what you’re reading — an informed fight is a more powerful one, and we’ll take all the help we can get!
