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Opponents of the Affordable Care Act tend to suggest expanded coverage resulting from the law’s Medicaid expansion somehow doesn’t really count as success. But the law’s goal is to expand coverage, and the Medicaid expansion is one of the tools it utilizes to accomplish that. And here’s another way the Medicaid expansion could succeed — continuing to grow the built-in constituencies that will benefit from the Affordable Care Act. I’m told that the Department of Health and Human Services has just notified Iowa that it is prepared to grant the state a waiver to pursue much of what it has...

The federal health care exchange is incorrectly determining that some people are eligible for Medicaid when they clearly are not, leaving them with little chance to get the subsidized insurance they are entitled to as the Dec. 23 deadline for enrollment approaches.

Some 1.6 million Americans have registered for Obamacare, but more than nine-out-of-10 of them actually signed up for Medicaid, a trend that could end up slamming federal and state government budgets. Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security already account for 48 percent of federal spending, writes economist Michael Tanner, a senior fellow for the Cato Institute, in an article for The New York Post. But with Obamacare adding to the Medicaid costs, "we are picking up speed on the road to insolvency," Tanner writes. The Medicaid program is already the third-largest government program in the United States, coming in only behind...

The good news, if you want to call it that, is that roughly 1.6 million Americans have enrolled in ObamaCare so far. The not-so-good news is that 1.46 million of them actually signed up for Medicaid. If that trend continues, it could bankrupt both federal and state governments. Medicaid is already America’s third-largest government program, trailing only Social Security and Medicare, as a proportion of the federal budget. Almost 8 cents out of every dollar that the federal government spends goes to Medicaid. That’s more than $265 billion per year. Indeed, already Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for 48%...

The good news, if you want to call it that, is that roughly 1.6 million Americans have enrolled in ObamaCare so far. The not-so-good news is that 1.46 million of them actually signed up for Medicaid. If that trend continues, it could bankrupt both federal and state governments. Medicaid is already America’s third-largest government program, trailing only Social Security and Medicare, as a proportion of the federal budget. Almost 8 cents out of every dollar that the federal government spends goes to Medicaid. That’s more than $265 billion per year.

While Washington’s health exchange website – wahealthplanfinder.org – has fared far better than the federal government’s multi-state site, it has not fully resolved its own nagging performance issues. The site was taken down for repair at about 2 p.m. Tuesday and remains down. The website is not expected to be available until Monday at the earliest. “We are having issues,” acknowledged Curt Kwak, CIO of the Washington Health Benefits Exchange, the public-private company that manages the exchange. Kwak says his staff first noticed performance issues on the site about 2 1/2 weeks ago. “We tried to implement hot fixes before...

U.S. authorities have charged 49 Russian diplomats and their spouses with conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, alleging that they stole $1.5 million from the American government via a years-long Medicaid scam. According to a criminal complaint made public today, the former and current diplomats lied about their income and citizenship status in order to qualify for the health benefits, which they used towards pregnancy care, births, and post-natal medical needs. They were also charged with conspiracy to steal government funds and make false statements relating to health care matters, reports the Associated Press. The complaint notes that medical costs associated...

The Obamacare website is open for business. But the Charlton Memorial Hospital in Folkston, Georgia, is closed. Because Republicans in half the states have blocked the expansion of Medicaid, funds to public hospitals with large uninsured populations have been slashed. Desperate to try to blame everything and the weather on the Affordable Care Act, Republicans have tried to pin the cuts in subsidies to hospitals on the dynamics of the law alone. Purely for ideological reasons, Republicans are creating a health care crisis — in their own states.

Federal law enforcement authorities have charged nearly 50 past or present Russian diplomats and their spouses in a $1.5 million Medicaid fraud scheme, an unusual twist in what has become a familiar criminal story line in New York. An F.B.I. investigation revealed “the systemic fraudulent submission of falsified applications for Medicaid benefits” by the diplomats and their spouses, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday in United States District Court in Manhattan. The diplomats and their spouses obtained the benefits for pregnancies, births and first-year-of-life medical needs, generally applying at the same New York hospital, which was not identified,...

More than 175,000 Washington residents have signed up for health insurance through Washington Healthplanfinder, the state’s online insurance marketplace, according to the latest enrollment figures released Tuesday by the Washington Health Benefit Exchange. The vast majority of enrollees qualified for the state’s Medicaid program, Apple Health, which is expanding eligibility in 2014 to include adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, which is about $16,000 for an individual. A total of 176,468 residents enrolled in coverage through Healthplanfinder in October and November, the first two months of open enrollment for coverage in 2014. That figure...

The latest wound is largely self-inflicted. Medicaid and the new Obamacare exchanges are competing for the same young and healthy customers that Obamacare needs to survive -- and Medicaid's winning. President Obama and the entire Democratic Party have nobody else but themselves to blame. In its hubris, the Democratic Party members assured the country again and again in 2009 and 2010 that it knew enough to be able to forcibly reorganize one-sixth of the American economy without causing millions to lose their current health insurance coverage, without triggering skyrocketing costs and without causing a host of terrible unintended consequences. The...

Good news: President Obama has proclaimed it’s national bicycle day. Everyone whose legal first name begins with a vowel gets a free bicycle. You just have to find a participating bike shop. Can’t find one? No problem! We’re going to expand the offer to include people whose names begin with B, C, D, Q, X and F. You notice something wrong here? It’s the same thing you see in this New York Times graphic:

As the White House touted improvements to the troubled HealthCare.gov website Sunday morning, conservative pundit George Will said the real test might be in six months when employers begin to weigh their options for 2015. "Watch the employers, because if they start dumping people into … Medicaid – and the doctors then say, the burdens are too high and the reimbursement is too low; we're not seeing Medicaid patients – then all hell is going to break loose," Will said on "Fox News Sunday." Former Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., voted for Obamacare, and admitted Sunday it hasn't worked out like...

One wonders what the New York Times has been doing the past few years while conservatives were very vociferously warning about the entirely predictable, pending phenomenon: But now, as California’s Medicaid program is preparing for a major expansion under President Obama’s health care law, Dr. Mazer says he cannot accept additional patients under the government insurance program for a simple reason: It does not pay enough.“It’s a bad situation that is likely to be made worse,” he said.His view is shared by many doctors around the country. Medicaid for years has struggled with a shortage of doctors willing to accept...

It may be the biggest Obamacare lie of all. Not that you can keep your health care plan if you like your plan. Not that you can keep your doctor if you like your doctor. Not all of the phony cost estimates and supposed efficiencies. The biggest lie of all is that 15-30 million additional people who will be enticed or shoved onto Medicaid will receive quality health care. In reality, they will receive health care “insurance,” but there will be few doctors willing to see them because the reimbursement rates are so low. I have mentioned before how, anecdotally,...

Just as states get ready to expand their Medicaid programs under Obamacare, low-income patients may find themselves with a fewer doctors to choose from because it simply doesn't pay enough for a physician to take government-subsidized patients. In California, Dr. Ted Mazer, one of the few ear, nose and throat specialists in the San Diego area who still treats Medicaid patients, says that he won't be able to do so any longer because of the low reimbursement funds from the government, The New York Times reported. "It's a bad situation that is likely to be made worse," Mazer said.

SAN DIEGO — Dr. Ted Mazer is one of the few ear, nose and throat specialists in this region who treat low-income people on Medicaid, so many of his patients travel long distances to see him. But now, as California’s Medicaid program is preparing for a major expansion under President Obama’s health care law, Dr. Mazer says he cannot accept additional patients under the government insurance program for a simple reason: it does not pay enough.

States expanding their Medicaid programs under the healthcare reform law to adults earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level may be surprised by their actual costs for the new enrollees, particularly when it comes to mental health services, according to a new study published in the Medicare & Medicaid Research Review. Researchers from Harvard University and the Urban Institute interviewed high-ranking Medicaid officials in six states that have expanded Medicaid since 2010, including California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, Washington and the District of Columbia. These were voluntary, early state expansions allowed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care...

Long-term care (LTC) for the elderly is already a large risk and expense for private citizens and public programs. The need for and cost of LTC will increase radically with the aging of the baby-boom generation. Most expensive long-term care, including care provided in nursing homes or by professional aides in family homes for more than nominal durations, is paid for by Medicaid, a means-tested public assistance program. Medicaid already strains federal and state budgets, including Virginia’s. Yet major initiatives at the federal level and in Virginia are underway to expand Medicaid coverage in general and to make the program’s...

On the campaign trail, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was still blasting the new health-care law as unsalvageable. At the White House, President Obama was still apologizing for the botched federal Web site. But in a state where the rollout has gone smoothly, and in a county that is one of the poorest and unhealthiest in the country, Courtney Lively has been busy signing people up: cashiers from the IGA grocery, clerks from the dollar store, workers from the lock factory, call-center agents, laid-off coal miners, KFC cooks, Chinese green-card holders in town to teach Appalachian students. … This is...

The latest issue roiling the Republican Party is Medicaid, specifically whether Republican governors should expand Medicaid with federal Affordable Care Act money -- especially if they want to be on the GOP national ticket in 2016. It's a hot issue because Obamacare allows states to expand their pool of eligible Medicaid recipients. For the first three years, Washington promises to pay 100 percent of the freight for new enrollees; later, federal support would shrink to 90 percent. (Washington covers about half the cost of today's pre-ACA enrollees.) It's as free as free money gets in this country -- nearly $1...

Local sheriffs will wait for more clear direction before implementing a Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mandate to sign up all inmates into Medicaid plans via the federal health insurance exchange. Bureau County Sheriff John Thompson said he received notification from 13th Judicial Chief Judge H. Chris Ryan Jr. through his Circuit Judge Marc Bernabei that all sheriffs within the judicial district are “obligated” to enroll inmates into health care plans offered on the federal exchange as mandated by Obamacare. The judicial district includes La Salle, Bureau and Grundy counties. Thompson said he has contacted an ACA specialist but...

One woman’s demoralizing experience with the ObamaCare website, which her daughter documented in an article this week in The Wall Street Journal, is shining a light on how the health care law is forcing people into Medicaid even if they don’t want it. "How has it come to this?" Nicole Hopkins wrote of her mother’s experience. After having had her insurance canceled this fall like so many millions of Americans, her mother Charlene sought a new insurance policy on HeathCare.gov. But it gave her only one choice – Medicaid - which is the government's traditional safety net to cover the...

Californians are flocking to the Obamacare health exchange there, with 10,000 a day registering on the web site last week. More than 360,000 people have created accounts on the Covered California website, through Nov. 19. Nearly 80,000 residents have signed up for a policy, the final step on the exchange before working out payment with the insurance company. That's up from 59,000 in mid-November. One area where the exchange needs improvement is outreach to non-English speaking Californians, advocates at the exchange's board meeting said. Some 85.5% of those signing up are English-speakers, though only 56.1% of the state population is.

she had, until this fall, chosen to pay $276 a month for bare-bones catastrophic coverage. It was a deliberate choice on her part to pay that monthly $276 out of her own pocket. Clearly she had judged that she received a personal benefit from not being on Medicaid. "I just don't expect anything positive out of getting free health care," she said. "I don't see why other people should have to pay for my care, whether it be through taxes or otherwise." In paying for health insurance herself—she won't accept help from her family, either—she was safeguarding her dignity and...

Writing at his New York Times blog, Paul Krugman warned that those banking on Obamacare to collapse are “probably making a very bad bet.” As proof, Krugman points to the record of state-level healthcare exchanges, which by and large have been performing much better than their federal counterpart. He also cites the rising levels of Medicaid enrollment — which is occurring in both states that have and haven’t accepted the Obamacare expansion — and the slow improvement of Healthcare.gov as reasons for optimism. All in all, Krugman says, the law is “probably going to stumble through to the finish line.”...

The pace of enrollment on Washington Healthplanfinder has picked up in November, according to the latest enrollment figures, released Tuesday by the Washington Health Benefit Exchange. ... The new number includes 86,657 people who have enrolled in Medicaid – compared with 48,324 who had enrolled in Medicaid by Oct. 31 – and 11,742 who have purchased a qualified health plan, compared with 7,341 in October. ... An additional 127,375 residents have either started applications or completed applications that still need to be finalized, according to the exchange.

Assets become targets of the states ___ Most people think they’re exempt from the estate tax (often called the “death tax”) because they don’t have $2 million. A lot of people with low incomes do have some assets, however, and if they have used any Medicaid benefits, their heirs may be in for a shock. Depending on state law, the state may have the right to everything, up to the cost of Medicaid benefits received — house, car, bank accounts, tools, annuities, piano, furniture, everything — and not just 50 percent of it. This situation is not exactly new. The...

The Detroit News reported that the State Bureau of Elections began a formal investigation of the Service Employees International Union regarding its financing of a ballot proposal last year. Proposal 4, which would have locked into the state constitution the skimming of millions of dollars each year from the caretakers of disabled people, was defeated by 14 percentage points. Chad Livengood in The News reported: The complaint focuses on a group called Citizens for Affordable Quality Home Care and an East Lansing company called Home Care First Inc. Citizens for Affordable Quality Home Care sponsored the ballot proposal. In campaign...

In a article trying to put a positive spin on Obamacare, the Baltimore Sun reports alarming Obamacare numbers in Maryland where only 1,700 signed up for insurance vs 84,000 who signed up for expanded Medicaid. As part of the Affordable Care Act, eligibility requirements were relaxed for Medicaid causing a mad rush for government paid for healthcare.

His actor parents are well known activists and Stephen Ira Beatty seems determined to follow in their footsteps. The eldest child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, who revealed he was transgender at the age of 14, appears in a new public service announcement (PSA) urging New York to change its Medicaid regulation which excludes transgender people from accessing healthcare. Stephen, 21, appears confident and informed as he speaks about the problem, saying: ‘I grew up outside of New York, but I've always known I've wanted to move here for the city's vibrant artistic community. ‘As a trans person, I...

New questions are being raised about the tax-exempt status of an Obamacare enrollment group tied to Kathleen Sebelius after it was implicated in James O’Keefe’s most recent investigative probe. O’Keefe captured an official for Enroll America, for which Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted to fundraising, being introduced at an event as “the official group for the DNC.” O’Keefe’s work also revealed that Enroll America might be working with the political action committee Battleground Texas, possibly sharing mined data between the two groups. O’Keefe’s footage was enough to prompt the legal advocacy group Cause of Action to...

“So here’s the deal: since 1993 there has been a federal law requiring states to recover at least some of the costs of Medicaid-covered medical care for anyone 55 years old and up, from the estates of those covered. States enforce this law, with their own laws and policies added in, differently in every state. But the general principle is there. Up until now the usual consequence has been things like this: Medicaid puts a lien on the house of someone in a nursing facility who has run out of money, and after they die, the heirs find they have...

Though a sideshow throughout Obamacare’s passage and litigation, Medicaid’s pivotal role in President Obama’s health care reform effort has become apparent following the law’s October 1 implementation. In many states, Medicaid enrollment through the Healthcare.gov portal is dwarfing the number of “private” insurance plan purchases [1].While this development represents a major financial threat to the survival of Obamacare, new regulations established by Obamacare to cover Medicaid enrollment have created a major threat to the United States’ ability to administrate that far larger benefit program.Following is a summary of the problem: Non-citizens are eligible for Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Health...

One of the biggest criticisms of Kentucky’s early returns from the state’s health exchange is that an overwhelming majority have landed on the government’s Medicaid program rather than private insurance. But state officials say that’s to be expected early in the open enrollment period, which began Oct. 1 and ends March 31. The reason the number of Medicaid enrollees is so much higher so far is because if someone’s income qualifies them to be on that program, they’re automatically signed up. It’s like a turning on a light switch. Others who earn more than 138 percent of the poverty rate...

Enrollments nearly tripled between Oct. 14 and Nov. 2. Expectations are for increased enrollment before Dec. 15 deadline. Still, the bulk of the 10,940 plans purchased in the first month are covered through the government-backed health programs of MinnesotaCare and Medical Assistance. Just 1,744 people have signed up for private plans. Sign-ups from small businesses are much lower. Of the small business accounts opened, 17 have completed enrollment and 10 are in process, according to MNsure.

Retired chemist Edward Schokowitz was incredulous when he received a letter from Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey early last month saying his Medicare Advantage Plan, which had no premium, would be eliminated next year.“They took all the senior citizens and threw us out of the plan. They now want to give us the same plan for $153 [per month],” he told the Daily Caller. “The President said you can’t be kicked out of your plan. He lies.”Schokowitz is one of many Medicare beneficiaries now learning that — like Americans who buy insurance on the individual market —...

A lot of people are pronouncing the tea party movement dead after Tuesday’s election results. Goodbye and good riddance. The tea party movement was fun for a while. But before long it was taken over by know-it-alls and knuckleheads. If you doubt that, consider all of those partiers who like to say that the "tea" in "tea party" stands for "Taxed Enough Already." This is what is known as a "backronym." A backronym is formed when someone takes a perfectly good English word and tries to treat it as if it were an acronym. Every time I mention the slang...

As I have discussed here previously, the first state to explicitly ration Medicaid–an integral feature of all single payer systems–tightened the screws against terminal cancer patients a few months ago. Now, the issues is gaining wider discussion in Oregon. From an opinion column published in the Statesman Journal by Peter J. Pitts: In August, Oregon’s Health Evidence Review Commission issued an update to its guidelines for providing cancer treatment to low-income individuals covered by the state Medicaid program. These new guidelines require that Medicaid deny coverage for certain cancer treatments for patients that have been deemed “too” sick, haven’t responded...

My first vanity, likely my last. Finally - someone is fighting back. A new website "Don't Enroll- Alaska" (http://www.dontenrollalaska.org/#)is now up and running. In addition to the website, ads are running on local TeeVee and local cable channels. I've not seen that is is part of a National campaign, but it should be. Check out the site and let your friends know - don't enroll. Std disclaimer - I've had nothing to do with this site, but thought is was on point enough to share here for others to see, it is time to start fighting back....

Health insurance premiums for 2014 are so low in many parts of Minnesota that some consumers aren't qualifying for tax credits through the state's new health insurance exchange. Access to tax credits has been widely cited as a key reason for shopping on MNsure -- the new government-run health insurance website -- so some consumers have been confused by the vanishing subsidies, April Todd-Malmlov, the MNsure executive director, said during a board meeting Wednesday in St. Paul. Paraphrasing a common question asked at MNsure's call center, Todd-Malmlov said: "I think there's something wrong with the system -- I'm supposed to...

Audit reveals half of people enrolled in Illinois Medicaid program not eligible by Craig Cheatham / News 4 KMOV.com Posted on November 4, 2013 at 7:25 PM Updated today at 9:29 AM (KMOV) -- The early findings of an ongoing review of the Illinois Medicaid program revealed that half the people enrolled weren’t even eligible. The state insisted it’s not that bad but Medicaid is on the federal government’s own list of programs at high risk of waste and abuse. Now, a review of the Illinois Medicaid program confirms massive waste and fraud. A review was ordered more than a...

A Medicare official who oversaw HealthCare.gov's botched launch will leave the federal government for the private sector, according to an e-mail sent late Tuesday to Medicare employees. Tony Trenkle is the chief information officer at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that built the Affordable Care Act's online portal. He is in charge of Henry Chao, a deputy chief information officer at Medicare whose name came up in congressional hearings as the source of key HealthCare.gov decisions.

As telegraphed, the president used the appearance to ramp up pressure on Gov. Rick Perry to expand Medicaid. “There’s no state that actually needs this more than Texas,” Obama said. “…Here in just the Dallas area, 133,000 people who don’t currently have health insurance would immediate get health insurance without even having to go through the website” if Texas would just expand Medicaid. He noted that neighboring states have done that because “this is a no-brainer.” Arkansas, alone, he said, cut the number of uninsured by 14 percent in the first month by expanding Medicaid. “Across this state you’ve got...

The Associated Press ran a surprisingly scathing look at the current state of health care in Venezuela, In a word, the whole system, and especially the parts run by the government as part of a 1999 constitutional mandate to provide “free” universal health care, is collapsing: Driving the crisis in health care are the same forces that have left Venezuelans scrambling to find toilet paper, milk and automobile parts. Economists blame government mismanagement and currency controls set by the late President Hugo Chavez for inflation pushing 50 percent annually. The government controls the dollars needed to buy medical supplies and...

Even if healthcare.gov, the web portal for federal health insurance exchange, worked perfectly, more than 5 million poor, uninsured adults, many of them Black, will continue to go without coverage, because they live in states that didn’t expand Medicaid, according to a recent brief by the the Kaiser Family Foundation. Through the Affordable Care Act, the federal government agreed to pay 100 percent of the cost of the Medicaid expansion through 2016 and at least 90 percent through 2020. The Obama administration planned for nationwide expansion of Medicaid, the health insurance program that covers the poor and disabled, setting the...

President Obama will press Republican governors to allow the ObamaCare expansion of Medicaid into their states during a trip to Dallas on Wednesday, according to White House and local officials. The president will call on Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) to "put politics aside" and "not deny people healthcare because of ideology," White House deputy senior advisor David Simas told reporters on Tuesday. When the Affordable Care Act originally passed, states were required to expand Medicaid coverage for all individuals making below the federal poverty level or within 138 percent of it. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year...

Could Virginia Start Forcing MD's to Accept Medicare & Medicaid Patients? by Kerry Picket 3 Nov 2013 Kathleen Murphy, a Democrat who is running for the House of Delegates against Republican incumbent Barbara Comstock, told a forum in Great Falls on Saturday that doctors should be forced to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients: FYI last night at the Great Falls Grange debate, Democrat delegate candidate Kathleen Murphy said that since many doctors are not accepting medicaid and medicare patients, she advocates making it a legal requirement for those people to be accepted.....

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the federal government’s major health-care programs as well as the Obamacare insurance exchange, spent $1,113,178,000,000 in fiscal 2013, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for September, which was released last week. That sets a record for the most money ever spent by a federal agency or department in a single year. It also means CMS spent more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the entire federal government spent in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the legislation creating the Medicaid and Medicare programs. …

SPRINGFIELD — Illinois prison officials say as many as 30,000 newly freed inmates could gain health care coverage as part of the Affordable Care Act. As part of the new federal health insurance law, Illinois is among the states that will offer Medicaid coverage to all nonelderly, low-income adults. That includes prison parolees, who typically leave the Illinois Department of Corrections without any health coverage and must use emergency rooms when they are sick or injured. The agency says the change may not only offer parolees a path to treat chronic ailments and mental health issues but could stop them...