Census report: More Americans relying on Medicare, Medicaid (VIDEO) (The Christian Science Monitor)

By Daniel B. Wood Daniel B. Wood – Tue?Sep?13, 9:01?pm?ET

More people relied on state and federal health insurance programs as employer-based plans became more expensive and as US unemployment levels remained high, according to the US Census Bureau's annual report on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage.

About 1.5 million fewer Americans had health insurance plans covered by their employers in 2010 than in 2009 – while 1.8 million more joined government insurance plans.

The number of people covered by Medicaid, the government program for the poor, increased 1.5 percent to 48.6 million. Those covered by Medicare, the government program for the elderly, rose 2.1 percent to 44.3 million.

RECOMMENDED: Health care law's future - four scenarios

Already, Republican presidential candidates are attacking President Obama's new health-care law for growing the size of the federal government. So what do these numbers say about his health-care reform?

Some say the report demonstrates a weakness in the Obama health-care law a€“ and is a clear admonition for voters.

Watch video showing the latest Census figures here:

newslook

“As federal lawmakers and the Obama administration grapple with significant budget cuts, the increase in the number of Americans who lack job-based health insurance very well could put more strain on federally funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid,” says John Egan, managing editor of InsuranceQuotes.com. “In other words, taxpayers could end up footing a bigger chunk of the health-care bill for Americans who do not have employer-sponsored health insurance.”

Passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress and signed into law last year, the Affordable Health Care Act was designed to expand insurance coverage to some 32 million uninsured by the time it goes into full effect in 2014.

Tuesday's Census report showed that almost 50 million Americans are uninsured, or 1 million more than in 2009. It also showed that there were 46.2 million people living in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009 a”€ the third consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published. That represents 15.1 percent of people in the US.

The growing ranks of poor Americans demonstrate the need for federal safety-net programs, argues Ron Pollack, founding executive director of Families USA, a national organization for health care consumers. “This, to me, tells Washington it’s very important to protect Medicaid, because to do otherwise would fray the lifeline that people who have lost employer-sponsored healthcare need to stay insured.”

Only a few provisions of the 2010 healthcare reform law have gone into effect so far, so it may be too early to declare the law a failure or a success, some analysts say.

Moreover, the Census report may overstate the number of uninsured, says Devon Herrick, from the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas. He cautions that the Census numbers overrely on self-reporting by those whose circumstances may be very different from the prior 12 months.

“Most experts agree the Census Bureau is not actually measuring the uninsured for the full year. Rather, people on surveys tend to answer the Census Bureau question based on whether they have coverage at that point in time.”

The report shows that a clear and worrisome trend was afoot even before the world economic downturn hit in 2007. The number Americans lacking health insurance rose from 13.7 percent to 16.7 percent from 2000 to 2009.

“The implications of this, for me, is that it wasn’t the policy of any one time that created this problem of health-insurance affordability, and therefore to blame or applaud the current administration is way too simplistic,” says Kaveh Safavi, a health industry analyst for Accenture, a global management consulting firm. “This is not a political issue but rather a fundamental economic national issue that needs to be discussed that way.”

RECOMMENDED: Health care law's future - four scenarios

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Yemen's president addresses nation in video (AP)

SANAA, Yemen – Yemen's embattled president has appeared publicly for the first time since he was in injured in a blast at his palace compound early last month.

In a brief video aired on Yemen state TV, Ali Abdullah Saleh lashed out Thursday at those who have sought to drive him from power, saying they have an "incorrect understanding of democracy."

More than four months of popular uprising seeking to push the longtime ruler from power have shaken the impoverished corner of the Arabian Peninsula.

Saleh has been in treatment in Saudi Arabia since June 5.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Suspected al-Qaida militants killed 10 Yemeni soldiers after stopping them at a fake checkpoint in the country's restive south, security officials said Thursday.

The militants ordered the soldiers off a bus as they returned from leave to rejoin their units and shot them execution style, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.

The Wednesday killings show the growing strength of Islamic militants across Yemen, where security has largely collapsed during more than four months of mass protests seeking to oust President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Islamists have seized control of two towns in the southern province of Abyan, where Wednesday's attacks occurred. For weeks, Yemeni forces have fought unsuccessfully to push them out of Zinjibar and Jaar, leading to regular casualties on both sides.

Yemen state TV said it would broadcast a recorded message later Thursday from Saleh, who left the country for treatment in neighboring Saudi Arabia after he was injured in a rocket attack on his palace in early June.

Saleh has not been seen publicly since the attack, sparking widespread speculation about the severity of his wounds. He last address the nation in an audio recording on Yemen state TV shortly before he flew to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment June 5.

Yemeni officials said last week that Saleh remains bedridden and has difficulty breathing and talking. Still, his aides insist he will soon return to Yemen.

On Tuesday, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said Saleh's health is "generally good."

A ruling party leader close to Saleh said the new message was recorded Thursday in a Saudi hospital. Yasser Yemani said he had seen the video and that Saleh uses it to "reassure the people about his health."

Yemani said Saleh also uses to the video to support a U.S.-backed peace initiative proposed by Yemeni's Gulf Arab neighbors as the only way to end the country's political crisis.

Before leaving the country, Saleh repeatedly refused to sign the proposal after saying he would.

Yemani said it had not yet been decided if both the audio and video of the message would be aired, or just coothe audio.

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Court overturns ban on video game sales to kids (AP)

By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press – 6?mins?ago

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday refused to let California clamp down on the sale or rental of violent video games to children, saying governments lack authority to "restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed" despite complaints that the popular and fast-changing technology allows the young to simulate acts of brutality.

On a 7-2 vote, the high court upheld a federal appeals court decision to throw out California's ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Sacramento had ruled that the law violated minors' rights under the First Amendment, and the high court agreed.

"No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm," said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion. "But that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."

Video game makers and sellers celebrated their victory, saying the decision puts them on the same legal footing as other forms of entertainment. "There now can be no argument whether video games are entitled to the same protection as books, movies, music, and other expressive entertainment," said Bo Andersen, president and CEO of the Entertainment Merchants Association.

More than 46 million American households have at least one video-game system, with the industry bringing in at least $18 billion in 2010. The video game industry has its own rating labeling system intended to warn parents, with the rating "M" placed on games that are considered to be especially violent.

But at least two justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, indicated they would be willing to reconsider his vote throwing out the law, taking issue with the sweep of the court's holding.

"I would not squelch legislative efforts to deal with what is perceived by some to be a significant and developing social problem," Alito said, suggesting that a narrower state law might be upheld.

And an unlikely duo, conservative-leaning Clarence Thomas and liberal-leaning Stephen Breyer, agreed that the California video game ban should have been upheld, but for different reasons.

Breyer said the court's decision creates an insurmountable conflict in the First Amendment, especially considering that justices have upheld bans on the sale of pornography to children.

"What sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting the sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?" Breyer said. "What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restricting sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman — bound, gagged, tortured and killed — is also topless."

And Thomas said the majority read something into the First Amendment that isn't there.

"The practices and beliefs of the founding generation establish that "the freedom of speech," as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors' parents or guardians," Thomas wrote.

Leland Yee, a child psychologist and California state senator who wrote the video game ban, told The Associated Press Monday that he was reading the dissents in hope of finding a way to reintroduce the law in a way it would be constitutional.

"It's disappointing the court didn't understand just how violent these games are," Yee told The AP.

California's 2005 law would have prohibited anyone under 18 from buying or renting games that give players the option of "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being." Parents would have been able to buy the games for their children, but retailers who sell directly to minors would have faced fines of up to $1,000 for each game sold.

That means that children would have needed an adult to get games like "Postal 2," the first-person shooter by developer Running With Scissors that features the ability to light unarmed bystanders on fire. It would also apply to the popular "Grand Theft Auto IV," a third-person shoot-'em-up from Rockstar Games that allows gamers to portray carjacking, gun-toting gangsters.

The California law never took effect. Lower courts have said the law violates minors' constitutional rights, and that California lacked enough evidence to prove that violent games cause physical and psychological harm to minors. Courts in six other states, including Michigan and Illinois, reached similar conclusions, striking down similar bans.

Unlike depictions of "sexual conduct," Scalia said, there is no tradition in the United States of restricting children's access to depictions of violence, pointing out the violence in the original depiction of many popular children's fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White.

Hansel and Gretel kill their captor by baking her in an oven, Cinderella's evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves and the evil queen in Snow White is forced to wear red hot slippers and dance until she is dead, Scalia said.

"Certainly the books we give children to read — or read to them when they are younger — contain no shortage of gore," Scalia added.

And there is no definitive proof that violent video games cause harm to children, or any more harm than another other form of entertainment, he said.

One doctor "admits that the same effects have been found when children watch cartoons starring Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner or when they play video games like Sonic the Hedgehog that are rated `E' or even when they `view a picture of a gun," Scalia said. "Of course, California has (wisely) declined to restrict Saturday morning cartoon, the sale of games rated for young children, or the distribution of pictures of guns."

The case is Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 08-1448.

___

Associated Press Writer Paul Elias contributed to this story.

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Supreme Court strikes down California video game law (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The government cannot ban the sale or rental of violent video games to minors as this would violate free-speech rights, the Supreme Court said on Monday in its first ruling in a video game case.

By a 7-2 vote, the high court struck down a California law, which also imposed strict video game labeling requirements, as unconstitutional. It said video games, like books, plays and movies, deserve free-speech protection.

The ruling was a victory for video game publishers, distributors and sellers, including the Entertainment Software Association. Its members include Disney Interactive Studios, Electronic Arts, Microsoft Corp and Sony Computer Entertainment America.

The trade association hailed the ruling as a "historic and complete win" for free-speech rights and "the creative freedom of artists and storytellers everywhere."

"Today, the Supreme Court affirmed what we have always known -- that free speech protections apply every bit as much to video games as they do to other forms of creative expression like books, movies and music," said Michael Gallagher, the association's president.

The law, adopted in 2005, has never taken effect because of the legal challenge.

It defines a violent video game as one that depicts "killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being." Retailers who sell or rent a violent video game to a minor could be fined as much as $1,000.

The U.S. video game industry makes about $10.5 billion in annual sales. More than two-thirds of U.S. households include at least one person who plays video games, according to industry statistics.

Six other states have adopted similar laws, and all had previously been struck down in court.

The Supreme Court's majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, said there was no tradition in the United States of restricting children's access to depictions of violence.

SCALIA CITES HOMER, GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES

He cited a number of books for children that depict violence.

"Grimm's Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed. As her just desserts for trying to poison Snow White, the wicked queen is made to dance in red hot slippers 'til she fell dead on the floor,'" Scalia said.

"In truth, the California Act is the latest in a long series of failed attempts to censor violent entertainment for minors," he said in summarizing part of the ruling from the bench on the last day of the court's 2010-11 term.

"Before video games came cheap novels depicting crime ... motion pictures, comic books, television and music lyrics -- all of which were blamed by some for juvenile delinquency," he said.

The ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court has considered whether violent video games sold to children can be treated the same as sexually explicit material.

Scalia agreed with opponents of the law who said parents, not government, should decide what games their children can buy and play.

He rejected the argument by California lawmakers who cited several studies that suggested violent video games can be linked to aggressive and anti-social behavior in children.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer dissented, and Parents Television Council president Tim Winter denounced the decision.

"This ruling replaces the authority of parents with the economic interests of the video game industry," he said, adding: "Retailers can now openly, brazenly sell games with unspeakable violence and adult content even to the youngest of children."

But John Riccitello, CEO of Electronic Arts, a major video game publisher, said, "Everybody wins on this decision -- the court has affirmed the constitutional rights of game developers; adults keep the right to decide what's appropriate in their houses; and store owners can sell games without fear of criminal prosecution," he said.

The Supreme Court case is Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, No. 08-1448.

(Additional reporting by Liana Baker in New York and Jill Serjeant in Los Angeles; Editing by Will Dunham and Vicki Allen)

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