Health Law

Support for the Massachusetts universal health care law has increased since 2009, according to a poll of the state’s residents — even as the law has become the subject of blistering attacks in national and presidential politics, and health care costs soar. The poll by the Harvard School of Public Health and The Boston Globe found that 63 percent of Massachusetts residents support the 2006 health law, up 10 percentage points in the past two years. Just 21 percent said they were against the law. Yet opposition has grown to one of its central elements — the requirement that people who can...

It is quite possible that Neal Gabler ("Supremely partisan: Election-changing judicial activism has no place in the nation's highest court," Op-ed, May 6) and other critics of the Supreme Court will be embarrassed if, as I believe most likely, the court decides next month to uphold the individual mandate in the health care law. In Gonzales v. Raich in 2005, the court, by a 6-3 majority, sustained the broad power of Congress. Justice Antonin Scalia, concurring, stated: "The relevant question is simply whether the means chosen are ‘reasonably adapted' to the attainment of a...

Attorney General Martha Coakley is heading to Washington to make a case for the national health care law that was modeled after the 2006 Massachusetts health care law. On Thursday, Coakley will defend the constitutionality of the national law at a National Press Club event called "The Affordable Health Care Act: Constitutional or Not?" Coakley will explain why the results in Massachusetts show that Congress had a constitutional basis to enact health care overhaul, including the so-called individual mandate.

The number of people who received inpatient treatment for drug and alcohol abuse at state-contracted facilities in Massachusetts has remained nearly unchanged since 2006, despite the expansion of insurance coverage under the state law passed that year. Authors of a study published Monday in the journal Health Affairs said their results show that increasing coverage, while helpful, is not enough to get people with addictions the care they need. Changing how care is paid for and increasing capacity for treating people with addictions is necessary, too, they...

The Obama administration has quietly told the courts that tossing out the president's health care overhaul would have major unintended consequences for Medicare's payment systems, which handle 100 million monthly claims from hospitals and other providers. In papers filed with the Supreme Court, administration lawyers have warned of "extraordinary disruption" if Medicare is forced to unwind countless transactions based on payment changes required by the Affordable Care Act. Last year, the Justice Department told a lower court that reversing the Medicare payment changes "would...

ATLANTA — Georgia’s insurance commissioner will keep the state out of the first phase of a new federal health care law that would offer subsidized premiums to people with health problems. In a letter the Associated Press obtained yesterday, Republican John Oxendine said Georgia should not take part in creation of an insurance pool, backed by $5 billion in federal money, that would help high-risk people who have been uninsured for at least six months. Federal health officials said they will run a coverage program in the state if Georgia does not...

For Martha F. Davis, a law professor at Northeastern University, the Supreme Court debate on the Affordable Care Act could not have come at a better time: the week before her constitutional law class's annual mock trial. Just like the attorneys who duked it out in the US Supreme Court, four students will stand at the front of the class and debate either side of the health care case. "You've got to respond to what people are reading in the paper," Davis said. "When there's a new Supreme Court decision that relates to what you're talking about, students are going to have...

Attorney General Martha Coakley filed a brief with the US Supreme Court today arguing that the state's experience since passage of the 2006 health law validates the federal law. The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments starting March 26 in a case challenging the constitutionality of the federal law's requirement that most Americans buy health insurance. "Massachusetts is uniquely situated to speak to the actual economic effects of comprehensive reform that includes an individual coverage requirement," the brief says.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Voters will get the chance to decide whether Ohio can opt out of the national health care overhaul after the state's top election official said yesterday that opponents of the federal law have enough signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the Nov. 8 ballot. Secretary of State Jon Husted determined that supporters of the amendment, which would prohibit Ohio from participating in the federal Affordable Care Act, had gathered 427,000 valid signatures. They had submitted more than 546,000 and needed roughly 358,000 validated to make it onto the ballot.

WASHINGTON - Medicare's payment system, the unseen but vital network that handles 100 million monthly claims, could freeze up if President Obama's health care law is summarily overturned, the administration has quietly informed the courts. Although Obama's overhaul made significant cuts to providers and improved prescription and preventive benefits, Medicare was overlooked in Supreme Court arguments that focused on the law's controversial requirement that individuals carry health insurance.

The Obama administration has quietly told the courts that tossing out the president's health care overhaul would have major unintended consequences for Medicare's payment systems, which handle 100 million monthly claims from hospitals and other providers. In papers filed with the Supreme Court, administration lawyers have warned of "extraordinary disruption" if Medicare is forced to unwind countless transactions based on payment changes required by the Affordable Care Act. Last year, the Justice Department told a lower court that reversing the Medicare...

Democrat Elizabeth Warren said Tuesday that "it is wrong" that Senator Scott Brown has voted to block and repeal President Obama's health care overhaul while he continues to insure his nearly 24-year-old daughter through an extended-coverage provision in the law. Warren raised the topic, first reported in Tuesday's Globe, as she addressed the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department in Washington. "We now live in a world in which America's middle class is getting hammered on health care costs," Warren says in a video snippet placed...

Senator Scott Brown, who won office vowing to be the 41st vote to block President Obama's health care law and who has since voted three times to repeal it, acknowledged Monday that he takes advantage of it to keep his elder daughter on his congressional health insurance plan. "Of course I do," the Massachusetts Republican told the Globe. Brown is insuring his daughter Ayla, a professional singer who is 23 years old, under a widely popular provision of the law requiring that family plans cover children up to age 26. Brown said the extended use of his...

Massachusetts health insurance companies will pay $45 million in rebates to health insurance customers and employers after failing last year to devote enough money to claims and quality improvement, according to a study of preliminary filings published Thursday by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Some 38,722 people who are individually insured will get average rebates of $148.61, the foundation estimated. But the bulk of the rebate money will go to to businesses with group health care plans, rather than to individuals, it found.

Insurance companies will have to return more than $1 billion this year to consumers and businesses, thanks to a new requirement in President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, a report released Thursday concludes. That's real money, says Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which analyzed industry filings with state insurance commissioners. The law requires insurers to spend at least 80 percent of the premiums they collect on medical care and quality improvements — or issue rebates to policyholders.