Holiday snowstorm comes amid historic vote on ACA…

By Dennis Archambault

As Christmas holiday stories go, this offers one of the best political spins of all. What’s more appropriate than a snowstorm and a critical deadline vote in Congress on the eve of a major holiday? Aside from the political intrigue, it is perhaps the most important vote on health policy since Medicaid and Medicare were enacted in 1965. It was 10 years ago, and access to health care was dramatically improved.

A decade later, as the opponents of the Affordable Care Act attempt to dismantle it, one legal motion at a time, it remains a symbol of complex politics, presided over by President Obama: “Obamacare.”

https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20191220.858191/full/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Hospitals+And+The+Opioid+Epidemic%3B+How+The+Senate+Got+To+Sixty+On+Christmas+Eve+2009%3B+Narrative+Matters%3A+Unintended+Consequences+Of+Opioid+Policy&utm_campaign=HAT+12-20-19

 

Dennis Archambault is vice president for Public Affairs at Authority Health.