there will always be some who will NOT take handouts even when eligible
Posted on 10/05/2009 5:34:35 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Hello my FReeper friends,
I am trying to educate myself regarding Medicare and Medicaid to find out the reality of the state of healthcare in the USA.
I went to Wikipedia and typed in MEDICAID and right there in the first paragraph, I read this :
Medicaid is the United States health program for eligible individuals and families with low incomes and resources. It is a means-tested program that is jointly funded by the states and federal government, and is managed by the states.[1] Among the groups of people served by Medicaid are certain eligible U.S. citizens and resident aliens, including low-income adults and their children, and people with certain disabilities. Poverty alone does not necessarily qualify an individual for Medicaid.[2] It is estimated that approximately 60 percent of poor Americans are not covered by Medicaid.[3]
My question is this --- IS THIS TRUE ? I highly doubt the Wikipedia entry because anyone can edit any article and sometimes, inaccurate or misleading information are presented.
Is it correct to say that 60% at the poverty level are NOT COVERED by MEDICAID as stated by Wikipedia ?
Your rebuttals/clarifications/educating me, will be highly appreciated.
Thanks a lot.
If true, probably because they have other coverage.
It all depends on your definition of “poor”.
60% of poor americans equals about 1% or less of the population.
Illegal aliens are the reason why it is bankrupt.
This applies to Arizona. I can’t speak for the other states but they are all pretty much the same. If “the poor” aren’t covered by Medicaid, it’s their own damn fault. They either don’t have a computer on which they can apply or they are too damn lazy to put down the bon bons, get off the sofa and go down to the local welfare office.
I agree, what is the definition of poor?
If true, I would assume that one major reason is that “the poor” are not aware of how to get into the system. If you qualify, you qualify, and you just have to do the paperwork to get in.
People who throw out these “shocking” facts are often only telling part of the truth. If they told the whole truth, it wouldn’t create knee-jerk reactions and outrage.
Well, the first step would be to subtract those who are covered by Medicare.
They have coverage through their work. Just because you are poor doesn’t mean you don’t work or don’t have coverage.
In order to qualify for Medicaid, its not sufficient just to be poor.
Not only are there financial resource requirements- recipients also need to meet age, disability, pregnancy or family requirements.
There are plenty of poor who don’t qualify for Medicaid- although there are other charity care programs which they can qualify for.
When reading Wikipedia it is important to check the tabs at the top of the page. The one called “DISCUSSION” is important. There is more on your question here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Medicaid
There is a large number of those who are not covered who are eligible. They just need to sign up.
How many of those are illegals or foreigners on visas? They do not qualify for government health programs.
Health care, a God given right to work for and achieve as a person.
That's why we have the best health care in the world under the U.S. Constitution.
It's not a right in itself.
It does?
Me thinks a few elitist bass turds in Washington may disagree with that.
Illegal aliens not only get treatment, they get priority treatment.
I have no idea, the link to the information on wikipedia is bad and the site it is hosted on, citizen.org is a radical leftist site (Michael Moore level) known for twisting the facts. I can’t find anything to back it up.
It also doesn’t address why they may not be covered. Maybe it is free choice, maybe it is because they choose a state program over a the federal program.
There are a couple of reasons for this statistic. A lot of people who are eligible don’t bother signing up. If they do have a serious situation, the hospital will sign them up when they go for emergency care.
There are also a lot of Medicaid recipients that tell pollsters that they aren’t in Medicaid. That might be that they aren’t proud of being on public assistance. But more likely, they don’t realize that the program they are in is Medicaid. The states administer the program, and the “insurance card” they get might have a state program name on it. IIRC, in Georgia it was called “PeachCare.” I’m not sure what they call it down here in Florida. So, if you someone in Georgia if they are on Medicaid, the might say “No” because they are on “PeachCare.” If the pollster doesn’t know the state name for the program, they won’t get the right answer.
| From the desk of cc2k: |
But Medicaid federal regs permit anyone up to FOUR TIMES the poverty level to be covered! So “poverty level” is misleading.
You are confusing health care and the financing of it. Almost any county or city hospital in the country will take in anyone (not just emergency room visits) and work out a payment plan with them. There are also a lot of charity hospitals like the Shriner’s and St. Jude’s which provide medical care free of charge.
It isn’t for lack of opportunity.
That is right. They do. Which is a lie. Calling foreign invaders American poor people is deception and manipulation.
Also what constitutes poor to these kooks? I would guess anyone making under 44K per year.
We can appreciate freedom to support our favorite charity to cover for the less fortunate freely instead of worrying about prison for not paying taxes to let an elitist who insists upon thinking for us.
Well, do folks making nearly $80K/year need Medicaid? Use your common sense, SeekandFind (wH)
if they are pooor they are covered by some state program...if not medicaid.
Besides the other good responses (already covered by Medicare, already covered by employer health plan, etc), notice the word game here: they are saying "covered", not "eligible".
I would guess a lot of people ELIGIBLE for Medicaid don't APPLY until they have a medical expense.
Some of the other programs are called things like SCHIP, for example.
there will always be some who will NOT take handouts even when eligible
It may well be true. Being poor doesn’t guarantee medicaid coverage. It is mandated for some, primarily children, the infirm, handicapped, and pregnant women. Other groups are covered voluntarily by the individual states.
I’m not sure how they would arrive at the 60% number, but I wouldn’t be surprised by it.
Everyone is still provided emergency care through the hospitals though.
Here is the SC medicaid breakdown:
The source for that claim is a report by Public Citizen, one of the Nader groups. As I have never been impressed by their work, I would put very little faith in it.
Commonly cited figures on who has health insurance are subject to a phenomenon known as as the “medicaid undercount.” For various reasons when the census inquires as to whether people have Medicaid, serious numbers of those who do say they don’t.
That said, just because a poor person truly lacks Medicaid does not mean he is ineligible. Millions of eligible people dont sign up for programs for which they qualify.
1) Define poor.
2) Consider that “not covered” and “not eligible for coverage” aren’t the same thing — lots of poor people are all-around dysfunctional, and can’t be bothered to fill out a simple form to sign up for a program they’re eligible for.
3) Consider also that there’s a sizeable segment of the “poor” population (by any definition) who are poor as the result of a lifestyle centered around criminal activities — some of these are simply on the run from the law, and others are parked in place, but both groups are unwilling to draw any official scrutiny towards themselves, lest their criminal activities be discovered and land them in prison or in some rehab center where they won’t be allowed access to their alcohol/meth/whatever.
4) Consider also that there’s a sizeable number of poor people in our country who are both profoundly mentally ill and refuse to acknowledge this. My schizophrenic half-sister certainly falls into this category — she’s certainly poor, with assets limited to the discarded cans which will be converted into a few dollars and then into alcohol or marijuana within the next 24 hours. She’s probably counted on the census, due to a church-run meals-for-the-homeless center that she frequents, whose staff is likely to make sure their “clients” get counted one way or another, and due to local leftist activists who knock themselves out making sure every shadow under a bridge gets counted in the census (heck, she’s probably at least double counted). And there’s no way she’s signed up fpr Medicaid or anything else. My father and half-brother managed a few years ago to get a Texas court to haul her in for an involuntary psych exam, figuring if they could just get her a formal diagnosis, they could sign her up for SSI and starting working towards getting her into some sort of treatment and/or housing. Wrong. The Texas government is forbidden by medical privacy laws from giving any information about a patient’s diagnosis to the federal government without the patient’s consent — and of course the patient won’t consent to have Texas tell the feds she’s schizophrenic, because she insists she’s fine and they’re just out to get her.
So yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if 60% of the “poor” Americans in the US aren’t currently registered with the Medicaid program.
It’s similar to when obama says 44 million Americans don’t have insurance. Not everyone wants it or needs it. It’s a numbers game. You can be poor and own property and not be eligible among other reasons. My guess is 60 percent of those eligible don’t necessarily need it right now.
Under any historical standards, we have virtually no “poor” in the US. A poor person living in the US has access to a quality of life that a noble man in the 1800’s would only have dreamed of.
It’s estimated that about ten million of the 45 million in this country who supposedly don’t have healthcare insurance are eligible for Medicaid but haven’t bothered to sign up (there are stories that some of them don’t want to sign up because they find it more convenient to got to an emergency room when they need care than go through the bureaucratic maze needed to get care under the system) - that helps account for a good part of the 60%.....
Adults without children are ineligible for Medicaid coverage, no matter how poor, unless they qualify as disabled individuals. These limits on eligibility categories are one reason that 40 percent of poor and 32 percent of near-poor females and 50 percent of poor and 40 percent of near-poor males are uninsured (Hoffman and Schlobohm, 2000).
States have the ability to use the Medicaid program to extend coverage more broadly to parents and, in some cases, childless adults, but coverage remains limited. Eighteen States now have Federal waivers of Medicaid law 0mown as section 1115 waivers) that allow them to experiment with changes in the scope and structure of their Medicaid programs and to use Federal dollars to cover additional people. With welfare reform, States were also given a new mechanism (section 1931) that allows for expanded coverage of low-income families under Medicaid, but few States (10) have embraced the new option (Ku and Broaddus, 2000).
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0795/is_1_22/ai_74292511/pg_6/?tag=content;col1
Well, I can say that I was at the doctor’s office a few weeks ago... and while waiting, three out of four folks who came in after me were all presenting Medicaid for payment and ... ta ta... none spoke English. Not one.
Of course, those figures refer to people’s official reported income. Before a developer came along and remedied the situation, there was a 4-rowhouse building across the street from my house, which was being used as HUd housing — all certified low-income people for official purposes (most with no legal income at all except welfare checks). But most of them were running very busy drug-selling operations out of their taxpayer-provided homes, and also clearly spending large amounts of money on alcohol. Some of them seriously must have been spending more than $5000 a year on alcohol alone.
Now my lovely neighbors, at least the ones actually on the leases, were “on the books”, and certainly signed up for Medicaid. However, the vast array of “friends” and “uncles” and “baby-daddies” that frequented these homes, and at sometimes illegally co-occupied these homes, were certainly “poor” by official definitions, and were living off the books, and rolling in money from drug sales, prostitution, burglary, and who knows what else. These people show up as “poor” in Census and other federal and state government records. And the fewer of them that have access to Medicaid funding, the better, IMO. I’m GLAD they don’t dare sign up for it.
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (42 U.S.C. § 1395dd, EMTALA) is a United States Act of Congress passed in 1986 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. It requires hospitals and ambulance services to provide care to anyone needing emergency healthcare treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. There are no reimbursement provisions. As a result of the act, patients needing emergency treatment can be discharged only under their own informed consent or when their condition requires transfer to a hospital better equipped to administer the treatment.
EMTALA applies to “participating hospitals”, i.e., those that accept payment from the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) under the Medicare program. However, in practical terms, EMTALA applies to virtually all hospitals in the U.S., with the exception of the Shriners Hospitals for Children, Indian Health Service hospitals, and Veterans Affairs hospitals[citation needed]. The combined payments of Medicare and Medicaid, $602 billion in 2004,[1] or roughly 44% of all medical expenditures in the U.S., make not participating in EMTALA impractical for nearly all hospitals. EMTALA’s provisions apply to all patients, and not just to Medicare patients.[2][3]
The cost of emergency care required by EMTALA is not directly covered by the federal government. Because of this, the law has been criticized by some as an unfunded mandate.[4] Similarly, it has attracted controversy for its impacts on hospitals, and in particular, for its possible contributions to an emergency medical system that is “overburdened, underfunded and highly fragmented.”[5] More than half of all emergency room care in the U.S. now goes uncompensated. Hospitals write off such care as charity or bad debt for tax purposes. Increasing financial pressures on hospitals in the period since EMTALA’s passage have caused consolidations and closures, so the number of emergency rooms is decreasing despite increasing demand for emergency care.[6] There is also debate about the extent to which EMTALA has led to cost-shifting and higher rates for insured or paying hospital patients, thereby contributing to the high overall rate of medical inflation in the U.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act
FWIW, Folks from Mexico, Canada, Cuba etc are all Americans.
A lot of medicaid patients slip in and out of medicaid as they find jobs with insurance coverage or their financial situation improves and they no longer qualify. In California they have a sliding scale of who gets full coverage to who gets coverage with a share of cost or someone who only received pregnancy coverage or coverage for a specific condition like renal failure... there is special coverage for foster children (think drug-addicted babies is huge)and much more, the manual for Medi-Cal alone is over 12 inches thick... and don’t forget Medi-Medi (Medicare-Medi-Caid) for elderly who are too poor to afford secondary insurance or their Medicare deductibles and co-payments..... bottom line, however, in order to benefit they have to work through social services and if they have too much pride to go to social services then, yes, they may fall between the cracks.
not necessarily true.
Yup, it doesn't count section 8 rent paid for them. It doesn't count LIHEAP fuel purchased for them. It doesn't count the medicaid coverage and on and on.
If you have your rent, utilities, health care and food paid for have poor can you be?
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