Evaluating the Implementation of Obamacare
The National Association of Black Journalists is currently in the middle of a conference exploring health inequities around the country. Many of these inequities would be resolved by the implementation of the Affordable Care Act which is scheduled for October 1. However, the ACA is not a panacea since general access issues will remain and, even then, the ACA is still under attack, threatened with repeal by republican members of congress and the courts have left it to the states to decide whether they want to expand Medicaid as part of the implementation. We talk to Jamila Bey, host of the Sex, Politics and Religion Hour.
Vermont has published the first proposed health rates in the country to go into effect after the Affordable Care Act goes into effect. Although Vermont may not be the best state to represent the overall impact on individual health insurance costs, those first signs suggest rates that are in line with current rates. My guest Philip Galewitz is a reporter for Kaiser Health News and we have him in studio to talk about this and other things we can expect after the ACA goes into effect October 1.
The Supreme Court as an Issue in Presidential Elections
The Supreme Court often comes up as an election issue. You hear about activist justices or bad Constitutional interpretation. This is not a new phenomenon as the Supreme Court – as well as the lower courts – have become expected to weigh on issues that were once considered political questions rather than legal ones. We saw such decisions become major issues in the last presidential election as they took on the Affordable Care Act, Arizona’s Immigration Law and even same-sex marriage, although that was decided well after the election. How much of a role does the Court play in federal elections now and throughout our Constitutional history? For that, we talk to William Ross, a Professor at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama.
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