The Affordable Care Act is on solid legal ground, having passed six sets of government legal reviews, Marquette University Law School students were told today by Assistant Secretary of Labor Phyllis Borzi, who contributed to earlier health reform attempts under President Bill Clinton, became an expert on the ERISA employee benefit system and helped draft the COBRA provision for federal employees.
Following negative headlines and protests by women’s health advocates, the Walker administration, already under fire over a hasty, end-of-session GOP bill limiting oral chemotherapy insurance payments, backs down for the second time in a month over a cancer-related issue: The Well Woman Program is saved, for the time-being, although new details are sparse.
I broke this story in WisPolitics that the Scott Walker administration had quietly moved to end a Wisconsin program that offers cancer and multiple sclerosis screenings for low-income or uninsured women. Following my story in WisPolitics, national media picked up on it and the Walker administration back-pedaled.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today urged Gov. Scott Walker to reverse his decision to turn down federal money to expand Medicaid, even as she praised him for his move to extend BadgerCare coverage by three months.
GOP Congressman Paul Ryan chooses Tea Party event where attendees call President Obama a “lyin’ African” for one of his first public speeches since losing the vice presidential election in November. Ryan announced that he was still intent on repealing Obamacare. Other media didn’t cover this much, but sure enough, Ryan’s new budget proposal a month later made national headlines.
Tommy Thompson lost to Tammy Baldwin in the U.S. Senate race becausevoters perceived her as being for them, while the former guv was thought to be in it for himself, according to strategists for both campaigns.
“Tonight we tell Wisconsin, we tell our country and we tell people all across the globe that voters really do want leaders who stand up and make the tough decisions,” he said to thundering applause at a packed exposition building on the Waukesha County fairgrounds.
Speaking today at an event where he received the endorsement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tommy Thompson said he does not think his son needs to apologize publicly or to the president for joking about sending Barack Obama “back to Kenya” at a GOP fundraiser. “He has already apologized, and that’s enough,” Thompson said at a Milwaukee news conference this afternoon. “It was an offhanded remark that somebody mentioned in the audience. If you look at the movie, he didn’t say it.
Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan criticized President Barack Obama’s economic record during a town hall meeting this morning at Carroll University in Waukesha. Ryan said the nation’s debt was $5 trillion lower before Obama took office. Not only is that debt hurting today’s economy, it jeopardizes the future, he said. “We have never knowingly given our children an inferior standard of living,” he said.
In a fiery half-hour speech in Milwaukee, First Lady Michelle Obama told a crowd of about 2,000 people packed into the gym at Bradley Tech High School to “help us finish what we started” as she detailed President Barack Obama’s accomplishments since taking office. Thanks to Obama, she said, millions of people are now working and able to pay their bills, and “millions of people in this country can finally see a doctor when they’re sick.”