- Health Care Law Fails to Lower Prices for Rural Areas, By Reed Abelson, Katie Thomas, and Jo Craven McGinty, October 23, 2013, New York Times: “As technical failures bedevil the rollout of President Obama’s health care law, evidence is emerging that one of the program’s loftiest goals — to encourage competition among insurers in an effort to keep costs low — is falling short for many rural Americans. While competition is intense in many populous regions, rural areas and small towns have far fewer carriers offering plans in the law’s online exchanges. Those places, many of them poor, are being asked to choose from some of the highest-priced plans in the 34 states where the federal government is running the health insurance marketplaces, a review by The New York Times has found…”
- Obama team to clarify health care penalties, By David Jackson, October 24, 2013, USA Today: “The Obama administration is seeking to clarify penalty rules for people who delay signing up for coverage under the new health care law. Simply put: People who wait until the end of the initial enrollment period — March 31 — will not be penalized. The Obama administration is preparing legal guidance to address a confusion of dates in the law, which says people must sign up by the 15th of one month to receive coverage on the first of the next month…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty