Countdown to Affordable Health Insurance

Note: This post was originally published on the HealthCare.gov blog. To see the original post, please click here.

January is the perfect month for looking forward to new and great things around the corner.

I’m feeling that way about the new Health Insurance Marketplace. Anticipation is building, and this month we start an important countdown, first to October 1, 2013, when open enrollment begins, and continuing on to January 1, 2014, the start of new health insurance coverage for millions of Americans. In October, many of you’ll be able to shop for health insurance that meets your needs at the new Marketplace at HealthCare.gov.

This is an historic time for those Americans who never had health insurance, who had to go without insurance after losing a job or becoming sick, or who had been turned down because of a pre-existing condition. Because of these new marketplaces established under the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans will have new access to affordable health insurance coverage.

Over the last two years we’ve worked closely with states to begin building their health insurance marketplaces, also known as Exchanges, so that families and small-business owners will be able to get accurate information to make apples-to-apples comparisons of private insurance plans and, get financial help to make coverage more affordable if they’re eligible.

That is why we are so excited about launching the newly rebuilt HealthCare.gov website, where you’ll be able to buy insurance from qualified private health plans and check if you are eligible for financial assistance — all in one place, with a single application. Many individuals and families will be eligible for a new kind of tax credit to help lower their premium costs. If your state is running its own Marketplace, HealthCare.gov will make sure you get to the right place.

Delivering Results and Saving Lives with New Vaccines

Sometimes small things indicate big changes. This week, Tanzania is rolling out two new vaccines that protect against the world’s biggest childhood killers - pneumonia and diarrhea. Together these diseases account for nearly one third of child deaths in low-income countries. Tanzania joins Ghana as only the second developing country to simultaneously introduce these new vaccines. 

This was possible because of U.S. investments with the United Kingdom, the Gates Foundation and others in the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, or GAVI. Since 2000, GAVI has helped immunize 370 million children against the leading vaccine-preventable diseases in the world’s poorest countries and prevented more than 5.5 million deaths. Over the next 5 years, GAVI will immunize 250 million children with new vaccines, and save 4 million more children’s lives. 

Vaccines are some of the most powerful life-saving interventions the world has ever seen, and we’re working together to roll them out where they are most needed.

The big change is how quickly this is unfolding. It took 184 years from the time Edward Jenner developed the first smallpox vaccine until the world was able to deliver it to every person in need and ultimately eradicate the disease in 1980. It’s been almost 60 years since the development of the first polio vaccine, and we’re still working to reach every person in need in an extraordinary effort to eradicate that disease from the planet. But this week, we are simultaneously vaccinating children in rich and poor countries at the same time with two new vaccines developed within the last few years. This means we’re rapidly closing the gap in time between when a vaccine is developed and when it actually reaches those most in need and starts saves lives!  While we can do even better, this is an encouraging sign of progress worth celebrating.