With the deadline to get insurance starting January 1 coming up on December 15 the time to act is now. Before the Affordable Care Act (ACA), LGBT people faced significant discrimination in access to healthcare. That all changed with the passage of the law fondly known as Obamacare, and the uninsured rate for LGBT people has reached an all-time low. […]

Leaders from all faith traditions are spreading the word about ACA open enrollment, especially the weekend of December 5-6. For people of faith, their church, mosque, synagogue or other place of worship is central to their community — a vital resource for guidance and support. That’s one reason organizations like Enroll America work closely with faith leaders to help spread […]

Without health insurance, this woman would not have received the treatment she needed to survive. In April 2014, Marion N. Seidel was given the news no one wants to hear: “You have cancer.” She had a cancerous tumor on her tonsils that had already started affecting her lymph glands — a potentially dire situation. Regular readers of Eclectablog or those […]

Affordable insurance means better access to preventive healthcare services for everyone, but especially for women. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) isn’t just about making it easier for Americans to buy health insurance. It guarantees coverage for essential preventive services that can help people stay healthy, like annual check-ups and cancer screenings, and for services such as mental health care and […]

Kathe is one of millions of examples of how the Affordable Care Act delivers better access to healthcare at a lower cost. November 1 marks the beginning of the health insurance open enrollment period — and another chance for Americans to get affordable coverage that gives them access to the essential healthcare services they need. Just ask Kathe Koja of […]

Whether you already have insurance or are a first-time buyer, be a savvy shopper. Buying health insurance is a lot like buying anything else: It pays to shop around. And with open enrollment beginning again on November 1, the time to start thinking about your insurance coverage is now. The beauty of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as […]

The positive stories about the ACA are starting to outnumber the negative ones. It’s about time. Two years ago, it wasn’t easy to find a positive story about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), derisively called Obamacare by its critics. It wasn’t that there wasn’t plenty of good news to share, but the media loves a bad-news story. But now, with […]

Chris already did an excellent job highlighting the significant shortcomings of Sunday’s Detroit News editorial, which essentially asserts that the sky is falling and we’d all better run away from Michigan’s Medicaid expansion program, the Healthy Michigan Plan. If you haven’t read Chris’ piece, you should. But there’s a sobering omission I had to weigh in on, something that’s left […]

“Obamacare savings may be short-lived”! shouts the headline of an editorial in today’s edition of The Detroit News. They are referring to Medicaid expansion in our state, a program that is fully funded by the federal government until 2017 and funded at a level of 90% after that, all while giving an additional 600,000 working poor Michiganders health care coverage […]

Students starting the new school year have one less thing to worry about thanks to the Affordable Care Act. With the announcement this week that Western Michigan University (WMU) will no longer offer student health insurance, there were probably more than a few students wondering, “Now what?” Fortunately, the Affordable Care Act has the answer. Thanks to the ACA (aka […]

Study shows that access to physicians went up, not down — exactly the opposite of what ACA opponents predicted. Once again, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is proving its critics wrong. Opponents of the ACA, or Obamacare, have been falling all over themselves proclaiming that an influx of new patients will overburden the healthcare system, creating a dire doctor shortage. […]