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Confidence in health insurance coverage and the ability to access health care increased among American consumers in October, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The RWJF Index rose to 104.4 points in October, up from 96.6 points in September.
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The Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship recently held a hearing on health care reform and small business entitled, “Reform Done Right: Sensible Health Care Solutions for America’s Small Businesses.”
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According to recently released Census data, state laws, population makeup and jobs can mean that Americans in some geographic areas are many times more likely to be uninsured than others. Americans in large areas of the Southwest are much more likely to lack health insurance than those in areas of the Northeast and upper Midwest.
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The House Committee on Small Business recently held a hearing to explore the potential impact of the H1N1 influenza on small businesses and investigate the resources available to small firms.
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Vice President Joe Biden recently announced that nearly $1.2 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will be allocated as grants to help hospitals and health care providers transition to electronic medical records.
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The heads of three federal agencies, Department of Commerce (DOC) Secretary Gary Locke, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano, recently announced new recommendations to help business owners plan for the upcoming flu season.
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The Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI) recently hosted a briefing to discuss consumer driven health care. A consumer driven health plan is generally defined as a high-deductible health plan (HDHP) offered in combination with a savings fund such as a health reimbursement arrangement (HRA) or a health savings account (HSA).
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The Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship recently held a roundtable to discuss the impact of various health reform proposals on small businesses. Kristie Arslan, Executive Director of the Legislative Office for the National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE), participated in the roundtable along with Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and other small business owners and advocates.
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The House Committee on Ways and Means recently joined the long list of congressional committees talking about health care reform, holding a hearing entitled “Health Reform in the 21st Century: Proposals to Reform the Health System.”
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President Obama addresses the concerns of a self-employed body shop owner during an interview on health care reform.
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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released a preliminary analysis of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s draft health care reform bill, finding that the proposal would provide insurance coverage to 39 million people who were not previously insured.
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A Small Business Majority found that health care reform would offer a significant economic benefit to small businesses.
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Witnesses from across the health care sector expressed a wide variety of opinions about health care reform while testifying before the Senate HELP Committee at a recent hearing.
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The HELP Subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee recently held a hearing to examine the option of a single payer health care system.
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Small business owners testified at a recent House Small Business Committee hearing to ask Congress to quickly enact health care reform.
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The President's Council of Economic Advisers recently released a report projecting that a failure to enact federal health care reform could negatively impact the economy.
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According to a study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the number of Americans without health insurance could double over the next decade if federal health care reform is not enacted.
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Despite the economic downturn, some states were able to enact laws that extended health coverage for children and promoted cost and quality transparency in 2008, according to a recent BlueCross BlueShield Association (BCBSA) report.
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Members of both houses of Congress are busy putting together legislation that the President and congressional Democrats hope will lead the economy out of a recession. The bills in both the House and Senate (H.R. 1, S. 1) contain many health provisions.
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Congressional Democrats have been working on enactment of a children’s health insurance bill that President Bush vetoed twice in the 110th Congress. The legislation would reauthorize and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).