As the New York Times suggested last week, the fate of President Obama's Affordable Care Act in general and its mandate that Americans obtain health insurance in particular may hinge on Justice Anthony Kennedy's notion of "liberty." While Solicitor General Donald Verilli posited "a profound connection" between health care and liberty, his opponent Paul Clement […]

After another bad day for the Affordable Care Act at the Supreme Court, voices across the political spectrum are already pondering life after death for health care reform. Conservative Ross Douthat and liberal James Carville agree that overturning the ACA will help President Obama get reelected. Meanwhile, statements by Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney seemed […]

As the Supreme Court this week begins to consider the fate of the two-year old Affordable Care Act (ACA), ironies abound. For starters, while health care is worst in Republican red states, its improvement will be underwritten by blue state taxpayers. The virtually identical law in Massachusetts has been wildly successful and wildly popular. Meanwhile, […]

This week, GOP White House frontrunner Mitt Romney marked the two year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act by declaring the reform law the "national nightmare" he "always predicted." But leaving aside for the moment that Romney repeatedly touted his virtually identical Massachusetts law as a model for the nation, there's a much bigger problem […]

If the new House GOP budget unveiled Tuesday by Paul Ryan sounds familiar, it should. And not just because Ryan's "Path to Prosperity" is essentially the same scheme he's been pushing for two years. As it turns out, Mitt Romney is offering the same disastrous recipe for America's future. Both Ryan and Romney would deliver […]

For a brief moment on Sunday, John McCain made sense. Lamenting the growing backlash against the GOP's crusade to turn back the clock on contraception and reproductive rights, McCain told Meet the Press, "I think we ought to respect the right of women to make choices in their lives and make that clear." If that […]

As the battle over health care raged in the summer of 2009, President Obama made a very specific promise about what would become the Affordable Care Act. "When I say if you have your plan and you like it," Obama explained that June, "or you have a doctor and you like your doctor, that you […]

The Affordable Care Act is working. 2.5 million more young adults ages 19 to 26 now have health insurance. The shrinking of the Medicare "donut hole" allowed 3.6 million seniors to save $2.1 billion on their prescription drugs last year. And the ban on insurers refusing to cover pre-existing conditions is saving lives (even among […]

Republicans have seen the future and it is in Mississippi. But the GOP's Magnolia State crystal ball has little to do with whether today's primary shows that Mitt Romney's cheesy grit eating sealed his nomination, ends Newt Gingrich's viability as a "credible candidate" or even aborts Rick Santorum's White House dream altogether. Instead, the state's […]

For two decades, Republican opponents of health care reform have turned to a tried if untrue talking point. In 1994, GOP strategist Bill Kristol warned that "the Clinton Plan is damaging to the quality of American medicine and to the relationship between the patient and the doctor." Twelve years later, President George W. Bush proclaimed, […]