President Obama has written millions of seniors, working poor, middle class Americans and African Americans a prescription for longer and healthier lives. The Supreme Court has sanctioned the heart of the president’s 2010 Affordable Care Act. But the angry crowd from the right wants to tear it up.

What the naysayers don’t understand is that the Affordable Care Act is not just about politics. It’s about life and death.

The Affordable Care Act expands health-care coverage for low-income Americans. It enables everyone to receive recommended preventive services at no cost and expands community-based primary and preventive care. It prevents insurance companies from refusing to cover those with pre-existing conditions, and it enables young adults to continue receiving health insurance coverage through their parents until age 26.

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David Bositis, senior research director for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, says about 36 percent of African Americans have no health insurance vs. 12 percent of whites. Because blacks suffer from hypertension, diabetes and cancer at virtually double the rates of whites, insurance companies would often “cherry pick,” or exclude those with medical problems.

Bositis asked, “I wonder why those who are fighting this law do not care about the high death rate and high rates of the illnesses of black Americans?”


Read more at The Washington Post.

Thursday's Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act solidified both presidential campaigns' health-care talking points, with President Barack Obama's supporters encouraged by an election-year victory and Mitt Romney's backers more determined than ever to repeal "ObamaCare."

While the decision itself is momentous, it doesn't change what either campaign is likely to say about health care policy in America, some observers said.

"The court's decision today to uphold the Affordable Care Act means that health care will probably remain a secondary issue in the upcoming election," said Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

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"It helps Obama," said David A. Bositis, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank focused on issues affecting people of color.

Bositis said if the Obama campaign is smart, it will use popular provisions of the bill in its political advertising.


Read more at Scripps Howard News Service.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) represents a significant advancement in the effort to repair the deeply broken U.S. healthcare system and promote equitable opportunities for good health for all.  As long as its provisions are fully funded by Congress, the law will improve access to health insurance for more than 32 million Americans, prevent insurance companies from cherry-picking enrollees and denying claims because of pre-existing conditions, and incentivize more health-care providers to work in medically underserved communities.

This week marks the second anniversary of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).  It’s also the week that oral arguments begin before the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of the law.  At minimum, the court will consider whether the law’s requirement that individuals who can afford health insurance coverage should carry it exceeds federal authority to regulate interstate commerce, and whether the law’s provisions to expand the Medicaid program are “coercive” to states.  Years of effort to create legislation that will expand insurance coverage, contain health care costs, and improve the quality of health care hang in the balance, and all Americans will ultimately be affected by how the high court rules.

Maya Rockeymore interviews Brian Smedley and discusses healthcare reform and issues of healthcare disparities among racial and ethnic minority populations. View the video at GlobalPolicy.TV.

When President Barack Obama met with the nation's governors last month and offered to allow states to establish their own plans to reform health care in place of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, he insisted that states meet or exceed the same goals established in the health overhaul to expand insurance coverage, improve the quality of care and contain rapidly escalating healthcare costs.

The president might also insist that states show progress toward eliminating health inequities -- differences in the opportunity to have good health that exist between rich and poor Americans, and whites relative to most non-whites.

These health inequities exist literally from the cradle to the grave, in the form of higher rates of infant mortality; disease and disability; and earlier death for many people of color and the poor relative to whites and higher-income groups.

Read more at Kaiser Health News.

As the nation marks one year since the landmark health reform law was enacted, the law is showing a great deal of promise for improving the health status of African Americans and other people of color, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

“Our research and policy analysis has found that if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is properly implemented and funded, it will reduce the racial and ethnic health inequities that are present among all age groups in our country,” said Ralph B. Everett, the Joint Center’s President and CEO.

This article was previously available at The Washington Informer.

It's well documented that African Americans and other ethnic minorities have disproportionately higher rates of poor health, including infant mortality and most chronic conditions — heart disease, stroke, cancer, HIV/AIDS, asthma and diabetes, among others. Racial differences in health have persisted for so long that they're largely seen as a standard fact of life, even though, truth is, these differences are avoidable. So when President Barack Obama tasked Congress with sending a health care reform bill to his desk in 2009, the Congressional Black Caucus saw a huge opportunity.

"We'd already introduced a bill called the Health Equity and Accountability Act for the past several Congresses, so our work on this issue started long before the health care reform debate started," Virgin Islands Rep. Donna Christensen told The Root. In response to the president's charge, the CBC members promptly accelerated their efforts to tackle health disparities. They conferred with the National Medical Association and other black health groups, developed benchmarks that they wanted to see in the bill, formed a united front with other ethnic congressional caucuses and met on three occasions with President Obama.

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While the health care reform law achieves a number of important steps to start eliminating racial difference in health quality, it also falls short, say policy experts. Brian Smedley, vice president for the Health Policy Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, underscores Christensen's argument that ZIP code determines a person's health more than genetic code. He argues that the law doesn't put enough resources behind community-based prevention to tackle the reasons that African Americans get so sick in the first place.

"Health care coverage and clinical prevention screenings are important, but they're not the root causes of health inequities. When you look across the gamut of diseases that people of color disproportionately suffer from, at their root are inequitable neighborhood conditions," Smedley told The Root, echoing the problems of abundant fast-food retailers, environmental injustice and a lack of access to outdoor recreational facilities in many low-income neighborhoods of color. He proposes that federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, collaborate to make neighborhoods healthier.

Read more at National Public Radio.

Racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care in the United States are persistent and well documented. Communities of color fare far worse than their white counterparts across a range of health indicators: life expectancy, infant mortality, prevalence of chronic diseases, self-rated health status, insurance coverage, and many others. As the nation’s population continues to become increasingly diverse—people of color are projected to comprise 54% of the U.S. population by 2050 and more than half of U.S. children by 2023— these disparities are likely to grow if left unaddressed. Recent health care reform legislation, while not a panacea for eliminating health disparities, offers an important first step and an unprecedented opportunity to improve health equity in the United States.

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The Director of the Joint Center’s Health Policy Institute, Dr. Brian D. Smedley, discusses the health implications of an Obama administration and the challenges to health care reform in trying economic times.