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The Politics of Health Care: Democrats

Did you hear about the fracas at the Democratic National Convention Platform Committee meeting regarding Medicare for All? If so, you probably already know they decided against adding it to their platform. Surprising? Not really. Now that we have the Affordable Care Act (ACA), we […]

Racism’s Deadly Toll: Over 80,000 Black Lives Lost Each Year

Day after day, we see black Americans and their children being victimized and shot by police, hunted by vigilantes, suffocated on the sidewalk, and more. According to Mapping Police Violence, in 2015 police killed unarmed black people at 5 times the rate of unarmed white people. […]

The 2016 Presidential Race and the Future of Health Care

The California presidential primary is just around the corner, and our top three presidential candidates have very different ideas about the future of health care. There is general agreement among them that health care needs more work. Where they differ is, though, is in the degree […]

Universal health care? Yes!

Even after billions of dollars have been spent on the Affordable Care Act, some 30 million Americans remain without health insurance. And not by choice, mind you! Most of the uninsured agree that health insurance would be good to have, if only they could afford it. […]

The ACA & Your Income Taxes: Exemptions

Did you go without health insurance for all or part of 2015? Maybe you’re exempt, meaning you don’t have to carry health insurance. If you aren’t sure, here’s an IRS exemption eligibility tool that can help! Not that we want people to go without health […]

The ACA & Your Income Taxes: Minimum Essential Coverage

Even though HEAL California would vastly prefer a Medicare for All-type system, we want to help everyone understand how the Affordable Care Act plays in to their income taxes. We’ve talked about Form 1095 Alphabet Soup which not only proves to the IRS that you had health […]

The ACA & Your Income Taxes: Calculate Your Penalty

So, you didn’t have insurance and none of the exemptions to the individual mandate apply to you? You may be subject to a financial penalty. And the fines keep going up every year. For example, the fines in 2015 are about double what they were in 2014, […]

Medicare for All? Sure, Dude!

Lately the media’s full of talking heads who are busy “curbing our expectations” about what’s possible when it comes to healthcare reform. A lot of folks seem to think we’ve done it all! They say we just have to live with the fact that there […]