Today, for nearly the 40th time since it's been the law of the land, House Republicans staged yet another repeal vote in their latest attempt to turn back the clock on progress and deny Americans health insurance coverage they can count on.

The ACA is raising the quality of care, halting skyrocketing health costs, providing preventive care without co-pays, and eliminating the worst insurance company abuses. Instead of improving health care, the Republican repeal plan would take it away.

Immigrants contribute to, not take, from our economy. Economic data conclusively shows that immigrants boost our nation fiscally and add to our labor force.

Speaker Boehner said it himself -- the vote to repeal Obamacare is not about health care, it's about politics. It's also another day wasted doing nothing instead of something for our nation's seniors and for the middle class and those working their way into it.

I'd like to introduce you to Abby Schanfield, who has an important and inspiring story to tell about how the Affordable Care Act has changed her life. She recently attended the State of the Union address as a guest of the First Lady.

Consumers need protections only when they are turned into consumers. And that is what Congressman Paul Ryan's budget seeks to do for -- or do to, depending on your feelings about medical capitalism -- future Medicare beneficiaries.

Health reform may be a political football for politicians, but for those whose start in life will be rough enough, it is not a game, and the next baby may not be so lucky.

A seasoned colleague recently told me that some PowerPoint presentations have no power and make no point. But sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

As the health reform law moves off the drawing board into the real world, its opponents are doing their best to make it not work -- by shifting their energies from fulminations about the boogeymen they imagine in the law to hampering, complicating or outright obstructing its implementation.

If you're an uninsured New Yorker shopping for a hip replacement, the going rate in Manhattan is $18,260. If that sounds steep and you're willing to try medical tourism, the rate drops to $7,500 in Boston, $7,099 in Baltimore or $6,399 in Washington.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama outlined his vision for a growing American economy driven by a rising, thriving middle class. It's a bold plan that builds on the achievements of his first term to promote opportunity for every American.

This is exactly how it works with many of the hundreds of mini-IPABs operating today across the health insurance industry, in secret. No drug reps, no boondoggles, no contact with industry. Huh?

It is morally abhorrent to cut benefits to any current or future seniors before much greater efforts are made to stop large scale raids on the Medicare coffers by nefarious corporations.

Health care is the act of caring for the health and well-being of people, be they elderly, poor, disabled, veterans, you name it. Everything costs money but I would think people would see spending money for the well-being of people as a good thing.