Health Care | featured news

Romney insists his plans would help the middle class; Obama criticizes his rival's lack of specifics. After a week in which Democrats repeatedly attacked his economic plan as beneficial to the rich and devastating to the poor, Republican nominee Mitt Romney insisted Sunday that his tax and budget proposals would help rebuild the middle class in America.

“I’m not getting rid of all of health care reform,” Mr. Romney said, while emphasizing that he planned to replace the president’s plan with his own. “There are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place. One is to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get coverage.”

Health insurance companies are developing services, tools and communication strategies to attract and retain customers The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is changing the way insurers do business. A few years from now, you may see your health plan in a different light.

A new report says the U.S. health care system squanders $750 billion a year - roughly 30 cents of every medical dollar... But the counter-intuitive finding from the report is that deep cuts are possible without rationing, and a leaner system may even produce better quality.

The Obama campaign is trying to put a new tag on Republican Medicare plans. "Voucher care." "We are for Medicare, they are for voucher care," said Vice President Biden on Sunday in Green Bay, Wis. "It's basic."

Hospitals in debt-ridden Ireland will send some patients home at weekends after the country’s public health services announced fresh cuts, according to a media report Friday.

Here is what Romney, so far in this campaign, has said. No changes to any entitlement programs for any seniors for the next 10 years. No specifics on how quickly his Medicare vouchers will grow for future seniors. No specifics on which tax breaks he’ll eliminate in order to offset the multi-trillion dollar cost of his tax cuts. No specific plan naming the cuts he’ll make to reach his $7 trillion target. No specifics on how he’ll equalize tax treatment of employer and individual health care. It is a campaign based on the principle of “not us, not now.”

The Republican Party's platform calls for a ban on all abortions, reshaping Medicare and deep cuts to Medicaid if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are elected in November. The New York Times: Platform's Sharp Turn To Right Has Conservatives Cheering
The new platform — with its call to reshape Medicare to give fixed amounts of money to future beneficiaries so they can buy their own coverage, its tough stance on illegal immigration and its many calls to shrink the size and scope of government — shows just how far rightward the party has shifted in both tone and substance in the decades since it adopted the 1980 platform, which was considered a triumph for conservatives at the time (Cooper, 8/28).

On page 177 of the hardcover version of No Apology that’s being given out at the RNC, Romney describes his Massachusetts health care law and writes: “We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country, and it can be done without letting government take over health care.”

Claiming health care bragging rights, Mitt Romney said Thursday his plan to provide health insurance to everyone in Massachusetts was superior to the one it inspired, President Barack Obama's much-debated national law.