Category: Health Care

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STATEMENT: Protect Medicare and Social Security

  By Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, Social Justice, Social Security, Statements

Statement by PBPC director Marc Stier at a press conference with US Representatives Brendan Boyle and Mary Gay Scanlan, and Dan Adcock, policy director of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, held in Philadelphia on January 23, 2023.  If you are a member of the U.S. House of Representatives or a political junkie, you probably found yourself alternately transfixed, astounded, and disgusted earlier this month at the spectacle of the Republican House members trying to pick a speaker of the House. And you were subjected to speech after speech by MAGA Republicans who said that Washington, DC, is broken. They kept saying that something was wrong—but they weren’t very specific about it. I want to tell you today what is broken in Washington, DC. What is broken is that one of our two major political parties is dominated today by MAGA Republicans. It’s not just the 20… Continue reading

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STATEMENT: House Dems Pass Inflation Reduction Act To Lower Drug Prices, Make Health Care & Energy Costs More Affordable

  By Climate Change, Economic Development, Energy, Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements, US

For Immediate Release Date: August 12, 2022 Contact: Kirstin Snow, snow@pennbpc.org   House Democrats Pass Inflation Reduction Act To Lower Drug Prices, Make Health Care and Energy Costs More Affordable   Historic Bill to Curb Big Pharma and Make Corporations Pay What They Owe Moves Towards Passage Harrisburg, PA — Following U.S. House passage of the Inflation Reduction Act—a bill that will enact historic drug pricing reform, reduce health insurance costs, lower energy costs, and reduce the national deficit—Marc Stier, director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center and Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone Research Center, released the following statement:    The U.S. House’s vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act makes historic progress on many fronts. It takes a huge step forward in addressing the threat of climate change by investing $370 billion in a series of incentives to encourage the replacement of fossil fuels with clean,… Continue reading

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STATEMENT: Senate Democrats Pass Inflation Reduction Act To Lower Drug Prices, Make Health Care and Energy Costs More Affordable

  By Climate Change, Drug costs, Energy, Environment, Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements

For Immediate Release: August 7, 2022 Contact: Kirstin Snow, snow@pennbpc.org Senate Democrats Pass Inflation Reduction Act To Lower Drug Prices, Make Health Care and Energy Costs More Affordable Historic Bill to Curb Big Pharma and Make Corporations Pay What They Owe Moves Towards Passage Harrisburg, PA — Following the U.S. Senate’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act—a bill that will enact historic drug pricing reform, reduce health insurance costs, lower energy costs, and reduce the national deficit—Marc Stier, director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, released the following statement:    The U.S. Senate’s vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act makes historic progress on many fronts. It takes a huge step forward in addressing the threat of climate change by investing $370 billion in a series of incentives to encourage the replacement of fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy. This legislation will put the United States on a path… Continue reading

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STATEMENT: On the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 — What it means for PA

  By Climate Change, Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements, US, US Constitution

For Immediate Release Date: July 29, 2022 Contact: Kirstin Snow, snow@pennbpc.org Statement on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 — What it means for PA Stephen Herzenberg and Marc Stier   We are happy to see that a deal has been reached to address growing inflation by reducing prescription health care costs, taxing corporations and the ultra-rich, and combatting climate change and reducing energy costs. We call on the United States Senate and House of Representatives to take immediate action to pass this legislation and send it to President Biden’s desk. This legislation, along with the Infrastructure law and the American Rescue Plan, again shows that Democrats are committed to meeting the needs of everyone in the country, no matter where we live or what we look like or whether we are rich and poor, by using the power of the government. Only by acting together can we ensure that we… Continue reading

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The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 — A Major Step Forward for the US and the World

  By Climate Change, Economic Development, Health Care

with Stephen Herzenberg We are happy to see that a deal has been reached to address growing inflation by reducing prescription health care costs, taxing corporations and the ultra-rich, and combatting climate change and reducing energy costs. We call on the United States Senate and House of Representatives to take immediate action to pass this legislation and send it to President Biden’s desk. This legislation, along with the Infrastructure law and the American Rescue Plan, again shows that Democrats are committed to meeting the needs of everyone in the country, no matter where we live or what we look like or whether we are rich and poor, by using the power of the government. Only by acting together can we ensure that we have the roads and bridges and public transit critical to our economy, affordable health care, and clean energy. And only by acting together can we give our… Continue reading

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STATEMENT: Celebrating the 12th Anniversary of the ACA

  By ACA, Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements

Tomorrow, March 23, 2022, is the 12th anniversary of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act. This is a day worth celebrating because of the enormous advances it made in enabling Americans, including almost a million Pennsylvanians, to secure quality, affordable health insurance.   In just twelve years, the ACA has succeeded in cutting the number of uninsured Pennsylvanians in half. The percentage of Pennsylvanians under 65 who are uninsured has declined from 11.9% in 2010 to 6.6% in 2017. The decline has been particularly striking for Black Pennsylvanians between 18 and 64 for whom the percentage of uninsured has declined from 24% in 2010 to 11.4% in 2017 and Hispanic Pennsylvanians, for whom the rate has declined from 32.2% in 2010 to 18% in 2017. The rates at which Pennsylvanians were uninsured increased by a few tenths of a percentage point after 2017 due to Trump administration restrictions on the… Continue reading

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This Is How (and How Many) Pennsylvanians Are Helped by the Build Back Better Plan

  By Economic Development, Economic Justice, Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Taxation, US

Updated November 18, 2021. President Biden’s Build Back Better plan is an unprecedented and transformative plan to better the lives of all Americans—Black, brown, and white; those with low, moderate, or high incomes; the youngest children and the oldest seniors. We have given an overview of the whole program—but here we want to focus on the many ways Pennsylvanians will be touched by the Build Back Better plan. These preliminary estimates of the numbers of Pennsylvanians who will benefit from Build Back Better are from official government sources. Soon, we will be updating them with additional and more detailed estimates from policy analysts outside government. How the Build Back Better plan helps Pennsylvania’s children and families Provides access to affordable child care. Child care is a huge burden for families in our state. The annual average cost of sending a young child to a child care center in Pennsylvania is… Continue reading

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The Consequences for Pennsylvania of Declaring the ACA Unconstitutional

  By About Penn Action, Health Care, Policy briefs

Originally published by KRC-PBPC at https://krc-pbpc.org/research_publication/the-consequences-for-pennsylvania-of-declaring-the-aca-unconstitutional/ A case coming before the Supreme Court threatens to declare the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. If that happens, the effect on Pennsylvania and Pennsylvanians would be devastating, according to estimates we made in July of 2019, which are undoubtedly lower than a similar study would find today.[1] In Pennsylvania, 27% of adults under the age 65, or 2.1 million people, would be uninsurable in the private insurance market due to pre-existing conditions (assuming that private insurance returns to the rules in force before the ACA was in effect). This does not include the millions of people who would have to pay more for insurance because of their pre-existing conditions. The number of uninsured Pennsylvanians would rise from 644,000 to 1,502,000, an increase from 6.2% to 14.4% of the population. Prescription drug costs would rise by $226 million for 208,000 Pennsylvania seniors on Medicare. One provision of the ACA closes the Medicare… Continue reading

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M4A and the Future of American Politics

  By Health Care, Inequality, Politics, Public Policy, US

Elizabeth Warren’s campaign may be over soon. But before she disappears, let’s learn from what may have doomed her campaign, her stance on health care. Some of my friends who know that I’m a latecomer to Medicare for All might be surprised I’m enthusiastic about it now. And those who believe some of the silly stuff Sanders’s supporters said about Warren’s version of M4A, will be outraged that I think Warren has something to offer on this subject. Going really bold and then pulling it back was not smart politics by any means. Warren pulled off a political self-hat trick. First, she offered a bold M4A plan that scared the centrists. Then she offered an interim health care plan that the left felt was a betrayal. And, ultimately, she made everyone wonder if she knew what she was doing. But for reasons I’m going to explain, both her ultimate goal… Continue reading

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On Today’s Ruling on the Affordable Care Act Individual Health Insurance Mandate

  By Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

Originally published at KRC-PBPC here. Today’s 2-1 decision by a federal appeals court rules the ACA’s requirement that people have health insurance is unconstitutional because Congress has repealed the tax penalty for those who don’t have health insurance. But it steps back from the conclusion reached a year ago by Federal Judge Reed O’Connor that the entire ACA is unconstitutional. Both parts of the decision were expected by reasonable legal scholars. The individual mandate was upheld by the Court in NFIB v. Sibelius in 2012 on the grounds that it was an exercise of Congress’s power to tax individuals. The repeal of the tax undermined this rationale for the individual mandate put forward by Chief Justice Roberts in that case. Judge O’Connor went much further and argued that without the individual mandate, the entire ACA is unconstitutional, even though there was no explicit indication in the law that said the… Continue reading