Obamacare’s 19 New Californias

Don’t Try To Understand the National Legislation. Just Try to Understand Your Own Insurance Market.

If you try to understand Obamacare, you’re guaranteed to get a nation-sized headache. (I tried, and I did.) Federal and state government officials have a mess on their hands, and nearly every statement you can make about the law comes with 17 qualifications. But here’s some health advice for Californians: take two aspirin—and stop thinking of Obamacare as a national story.

The Affordable Care Act created a lot of new health insurance marketplaces, and the secret is that they’re not really federal or state entities. They’re regional.

For the purposes …

Building a Healthcare System and Breaking the Web

Talking Obamacare with Atul Gawande and Pondering the Possibility of a Balkanized Internet

Surgeon and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande shares with Anne-Marie Slaughter his predictions about the future of the Affordable Care Act and American healthcare. Open Technology Institute Director Sascha Meinrath, …

For Snafus, Obamacare Has a Role Model

If You Want Horrible Healthcare Bureaucracy, the Private Sector Is Still the Reigning Champion

The nation’s new health insurance exchanges, the online marketplaces for medical coverage that are an integral part of Obamacare, opened for business last week. Immediately the trouble began. Web pages …

My Family’s Obamacare

Forget the Talking Points. Health Reform’s Impact Will Be as Varied as We Are.

How will the Affordable Care Act affect my family and me? The answer, like the law itself, is complicated. There will be as many stories about health reform as there …

Where’d You Go, Doc?

With Obamacare, More People Will Get Healthcare—If They Can Find It

The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is scheduled to take full effect in early 2014. The legislation is supposed to increase the number of people with health insurance, …

The Not-So-Great War

Healthcare Policy Battles Have Been Waged For a Century Now—And They Still Rage

Sociologist and healthcare policy expert Paul Starr, author of Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform, opened his talk on America’s seemingly endless healthcare war on …