Follow These People on Twitter to Find Out What’s Going on With Your Health
In the beginning there was Obamacare. Since January, we have seen “repeal and replace”, “repeal and amend” the draft American Health Care Act, almost a House vote, two new amendments, an actual House vote, and now we are whispering about it Senate rewrite to go public from day to day.
This is just one of 2017’s little surprises: When we feel overwhelmed and confused, Twitter can be the cure. (I’m still trying to wrap my head around this, but it seems to be true.) If you follow a few knowledgeable people, you can keep track of what’s really going on – not only with the Trumpcare attempts, but also with the ways our current administration sabotaging Obamacare markets to provoke a crisis. Here are my top picks:
Andy Slavitt, @aslavitt
Andy Slavitt knows more than anyone else about how Obamacare works – he was in charge for most of his two years as an administrator for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Since Trump took office, Slavitt has devoted his time to demystifying public health policies . He will speak at the town hall if your Republican congressman does not hold it. And, with our greatest benefit, he’s a great source of inside information on what legislators are talking about right now. He also selects unclear details of health policy and explains what their real implications will be.
Dan Diamond, @ddiamond
Dan Diamond is a reporter for Politico, writes the daily Pulse newsletter on health policy and hosts the Pulse Check podcast. His feed is a good way to keep up with political health news, including, of course, many links from the Politico site. Diamond’s specialty is concise, meaningful statistics, for example:
Topher Spiro, @topherspiro
Topher Spiro was part of the team that drafted the Affordable Care Act. He is now vice president of health policy at the Center for American Progress , a left-wing think tank that publishes a variety of analysts on what’s happening with Obamacare and what could happen to Trumpcare. For example, they believe that people with cancer may end up paying an additional $ 140,000 a year. Spiro keeps us updated on such analyzes and is another great source of streams that explain the details of politics in terms of what will happen in real life.
Sarah Cliff, @sarahkliff
Cliff writes about health care policy for Vox. On Twitter, she gives a general look at health care laws across the country: not just Obamacare and Trumpcare, but what’s happening in state legislatures. She also shares many explanations and maps from Vox and other sources.
Cynthia Cox, @cynthiaccox
Cox is the Deputy Director of the Kaiser Family Foundation , where her job is to figure out how the ACA affects private insurance and its members. If you have insurance at work and think the ACA hasn’t influenced you because you are not “on Obamacare,” you need to read what Cox is talking about. Right now, this is the stability of insurance markets: Anthem could withdraw from many markets, leaving people in many areas without an insurance company because the Trump administration threatened to cut off some of the ACA-approved funding.
Following these people may not diminish your overall consumption of doom and gloom in health care (and that’s a bipartisan statement; everyone hates something about health policy these days), but they help you keep up with important details that tend to be are hiding. new stories.
PS. I’m sure I missed some great subscribers; please share your favorites in the comments so we can learn together.