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Friday Nite Videos -- January 20, 2017

Portside
The WERD: Thanks, Obama.Talkin' Bout A Revolution. How to Trump-Proof Your Life. Obamacare in Trump Country. Erosion – Donald Trump vs Global Warming.

Obamacare in Trump Country

We travel to Whitley County in Kentucky to find out why people who benefited most from Obamacare would vote for Donald Trump. 

Republicans Move to Spend Billions on Obamacare -- Before They Kill It

Jennifer Haberkorn Politico
Rep. Greg Walden speaks in 2014 alongside those who said they had been negatively affected by the Affordable Care Act. Today, with Obamacare on the chopping block, Walden says he wants to see the program funded “one way or another.” “If you don’t,” he said, “the plans have the ability to cancel midyear and we said we wouldn’t pull the rug out from under people — and we shouldn’t.”

Repealing Health Reform's Medicaid Expansion Would Cause Millions to Lose Coverage, Harm State Budgets

Jesse Cross-Call Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Without the Medicaid expansion, low-income people across the country would be left with no pathway to affordable health coverage. Repealing the Medicaid expansion would eliminate health coverage for up to, and quite possibly more than, 11 million low-income Americans in the 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have taken up this option.

The End of Obamacare?

Olga Khazan The Atlantic
Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in King v. Burwell, a case that threatens to yank the tax credit away from millions of people.If the Court goes for King, Obamacare as we know it might end. Most people who will be affected by this case do not realize they will be.

Employers Keep Shifting Costs under Affordable Care Act

Mark Dudzic Labor Notes
Last year the Labor Campaign for Single Payer posted our Briefing Paper, ”10 Things Unions Need to Look Out for When Bargaining Under Obamacare.” We asserted that, “because it relies on employment-based coverage to provide the lion’s share of healthcare insurance while, perversely, undermining key aspects of that coverage, we have concluded that the ACA will place new stresses and pressures on collective bargaining.”

Health Insurers Are Spending Millions to Defeat California’s Proposition 45

Bill Boyarsky truthdig
It’s no surprise that WellPoint and its affiliated Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies are the biggest contributors in a $37.5 million campaign to stop Proposition 45, which would require the insurers to get state approval to raise rates. The measure would require approval by the elected state insurance commissioner for changes in health insurance rates or anything else that’s part of a policy.

Docs, Drug Companies, Insurers Drive Up Medicare Costs

Wendell Potter Center for Public Integrity
The Hospital Trust Fund accounts for only about half of total Medicare spending. Most of the rest goes to cover physician fees, prescription drugs and to provide incentives for health insurance companies to participate in the Medicare Advantage program and administer the Medicare drug program. The Affordable Care Act could have done much more than it does to curb spending in those areas.

Obama Administration Calls the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby Bluff

Ian Millhiser Think Progress
The Obama Administration’s new rules will likely put an end to the Supreme Court’s ability to move the goalposts every time someone raises a new objection to the administration’s policy. Now, the country will have to wait to find out whether Hobby Lobby actually permits this latest set of rules — or whether the language in the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision was simply Lucy pulling away the football one more time
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