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I am on HB visa and using Medicaid benefits for 12 months. I intend to marry a US citizen and I understand that she will be responsible for paying back the medical services I used. Would it help if my get off the program now before we get married...my wrong-doing? Also does my use of Medicaid prevent my adjustment of status from H1B to green card? Expert Judith answers: The law requires you to be paid at least the prevailing wage. How do you qualify for the means tested benefits?

There were approximately 118,395,000 people in the United States who had “government health insurance” at some time during 2015 and 28,966,000 who were uninsured for the entire year, according to numbers released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. The number on government health insurance was up 10,108,000 from 2013, when 108,287,000 people in the United States had government health insurance, according to the Census Bureau. […] Table 1 in the report shows the numbers that the Census Bureau estimated for each type of health insurance coverage based on its Current Population Survey. A footnote to the Table states: “The estimates...

Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid reduced employment in those states that participated in it by a statistically significant extent, according to a recent study by Georgetown University’s Tomas Wind:“I find a significant negative relationship between Medicaid expansion and labor force participation, in which expanding Medicaid is associated with 1.5 to 3 percentage point drop in labor force participation.”As Wind notes, Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion provided an unusually good test case for the effects of a government program, since it went into effect in some states but not others during the covered period. […] Ironically, despite its enormous cost of billions of dollars...

I was huddled in a Connecticut legislative hearing room on a chilly spring morning three years ago, awaiting my chance to testify about a proposal to over-regulate e-cigarettes. I’m a big fan of innovation, so I’m always eager to speak out against entrenched interests seeking to stifle progress with regulations designed to kill improvements in our health. Proponents of more regulation regularly use scare tactics, shoddy science and false allegations that people like me are against “all regulation.” The Public Health Committee hearing room in Hartford was packed with people on both sides of the divide, waiting to address a...

A government report finds that the cost of expanding Medicaid to millions more low-income people is increasing faster than expected, raising questions about a vital part of President Barack Obama’s health care law. The law provided for the federal government to pay the entire cost of the Medicaid expansion from 2014 through the end of this year. Obama has proposed an extra incentive for states that have not yet expanded Medicaid: three years of full federal financing no matter when they start. But the new cost estimates could complicate things. In a recent report to Congress, the Centers for Medicare...

A recent report by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget raises concerns that proposals by this year’s presidential candidates would further increase the national debt. America’s major entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and Social Security—are driving the nation’s greatest fiscal challenge, and yet Americans have heard very little about how the candidates will address these programs. Autopilot entitlement spending on federal health care programs and Social Security, along with the net interest the nation must pay on the federal debt, are projected to consume all federal tax revenues by 2033.

Last year she was on top of the world, but now Elizabeth Holmes has a net worth of zero. Holmes, who is the founder of blood-testing company Theranos, was at the top of Forbes' list of the richest self-made women in America with a net worth of $4.5billion last year. However, Forbes has lowered their estimate of her net worth to nothing, amid allegations that the blood-testing company she founded in 2003 has inaccurate tests and is being investigated by federal agencies. Theranos Inc was sued on Thursday, accused of endangering customer health through 'massive failures' that misrepresented the accuracy...

The Maryland Health Connection is the state's Obamacare Marketplace. Monday, an agency press release noted that Maryland "has cut by 40 percent the number of Marylanders who were eligible for private insurance coverage when the state marketplace began three years ago." However, the breakdown of that statistic reveals that only 165,000 out of more than one million sign-ups are non-Medicaid enrollments. When the exchange opened three years ago, an estimated 405,000 people were eligible for private coverage. Three years later, that number has fallen to 240,000. But the press release notes that including Medicaid over one million have been enrolled...

Despite bitter resistance in Oklahoma for years to President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, Republican leaders in this conservative state are now confronting something that alarms them even more: a huge $1.3 billion hole in the budget that threatens to do widespread damage to the state’s health care system. So, in what would be the grandest about-face among rightward leaning states, Oklahoma is now moving toward a plan to expand its Medicaid program to bring in billions of federal dollars from Obama’s new health care system. What’s more, GOP leaders are considering a tax hike to cover the state’s share...

On Tuesday, Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey signed into law a budget stripping at least $200,000 in funding from Planned Parenthood, calling the budget “proof the government can live within its means and be responsible with the people’s money.” The budget, which takes effect on July 1, ends abortion providers’ practice of charging the government for more than the cost of medications, which Planned Parenthood is accused of using to obtain “reimbursements” up to ten times the actual cost. The provision was added to the budget by an amendment last week. The language exempts licensed hospitals and outpatient facilities operated...

A major problem with giving money and power to government is that you seldom get either one back. And when state agencies end up with excess budget, there is no end to clever ways bureaucrats find to keep control over your tax dollars. The current move to keep unused funds in Colorado’s Indigent Care Program (CICP) from reverting to the state treasury is a case in point. icon_blog_noteThe ObamaCare Medicaid expansion reduced the number of people eligible for help with acute medical care costs through CICP. The number of people using the program has fallen from 200,000 to 50,000. The...

The Obama administration is once again threatening officials – this time in all 50 states – that cutting off Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding could be a violation of federal law.The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is sending a letter to all state Medicaid offices to warn that terminating specific providers – such as Planned Parenthood – can be done only if those providers fail to cover medical services or cannot bill for those services, reports the Washington Post.Marissa Padilla, a spokeswoman for the federal Health and Human Services department, said: CMS is sending a letter to all states...

President Reagan once opined that “government programs, once launched, never disappear,” calling them “the nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth.” Today, Arkansas is proving why Reagan’s pithy sound bite has matured into a truism. In recent days, officials came as close as any state ever has to throwing in the towel on the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, but parliamentary maneuvers by Governor Asa Hutchison — a Republican — mean he’ll likely muscle through more funding for the program. The Arkansas fight, however, is a leading indicator of what’s to come, as lawmakers around the country...

Two weeks ago we reported that after its November warning that it may exit certain Obamacare markets as a result of substantial losses, the largest U.S. health insurer UnitedHealth, did just that when it announced it would no longer sell plans for next year in Georgia and Arkansas. Then over the weekend, UnitedHealth also added Michigan to the list of states whose Obamacare market it would no longer service. As Bloomberg reported, "the insurer won’t sell policies through Michigan’s ACA exchange for next year, according to Andrea Miller, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Insurance and Financial Services. Georgia...

A retired judge, lawyer and psychologist have been charged in a plot to scam the federal government of $600 million through false disability claims. Various federal agencies, including the Justice Department, Social Security Administration, Health and Human Services, Internal Revenue Services, and FBI, announced late Tuesday the indicment of David Daugherty of Myrtle Beach, S.C., Eric Conn and Alfred Adkins, both of Pikeville, Ky., on 18 charges. "While Social Security disability programs are designed to support the disabled, the defendants allegedly used it to enrich themselves. Today's arrests demonstrate, however, that the Criminal Division will root out greed and corruption...

Nearly a third of people without health insurance, about 10 million, live in families that received a federal earned income tax credit in 2014, according to a new study. But the Internal Revenue Service doesn't tell those tax filers that their low and moderate incomes likely mean their households qualify for Medicaid or subsidies to buy coverage on the insurance exchanges. That's a lost opportunity to identify people who are eligible but not receiving government assistance to gain health coverage, the researchers say. More

We knew this was coming. In fact, anyone who has ever crunched the numbers for Medicaid expansion knows that the government health care program is a budget buster. The Foundation for Government Accountability has noted that on average, a state legislature needs to find two to three dollars in cuts in their receptive budgets just to save one dollar in Medicaid spending.In Virginia, about a quarter of doctors arenÂ’t accepting new Medicaid recipients. In fact, a 2011 University of Virginia Study showed that those without insurance actually fared better than those enrolled in this government program. But alas, those...

The slow-motion implosion of Obamacare continues with the newest report from the Congressional Budget Office foreseeing up to 9 million Americans losing their employer-based insurance coverage over the next decade because of spiking premiums. The Washington Times: Obamacare insurance premiums will leap 6 percent a year over the next decade, and companies will drop millions of employees from their health plans as insurers and employers calibrate their offerings for the new marketplace, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday. The health law will continue to steadily grow in both cost and coverage, working toward President Obama’s goal of expanding those with...

...He was forced to apologize for publicly describing a policeman who had given him a traffic citation as "an idiot." State Republicans have not forgotten how, in 2013, he lectured the Ohio House speaker Bill Batchelder — a Republican legislator who had served over three decades in the House — about his moral duty to support Kasich's Medicaid expansion plan: "When you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he's probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small. But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor....

Let me remind you that Medicare and Medicaid are the entire problem space within our federal budget, and that same issue -- retiree health care costs -- are the entire issue with state and local budgets, along with private pensions. There is only one candidate from either major political party that has put forward any sort of cogent plan of any kind of deal with the Medicare and Medicaid mess -- along with the mess of health care in private industry. This, as I've written about pretty-much since The Market Ticker began publication, is the intermediate and longer-term issue that...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Records have revealed that on its last day in office, Kentucky's Steve Beshear administration awarded a no-bid contract of about $3 million to a technology company that retains the husband of one of Beshear's top officials as a consultant and employs one of Beshear's former officials as a lobbyist. Citing records it obtained under the Kentucky Open Records Act, The Courier-Journal reports that on Dec. 7 the administration awarded a contract to SAS Institute of Cary, North Carolina to extend work that SAS was doing in analyzing data to detect fraud in billings made to Medicaid...

Republican presidential hopeful John Kasich said on Saturday that he will drop out of the race if he doesn't win his home state of Ohio. "I will beat Donald Trump in Ohio, and that will be the beginning of a new day," Kasich told a crowd in Nashville, according to the New York Times. "Some of the other candidates, if they can't win their home state, they got to get out, OK?" he added. "If I don't win my home state, I'll get out. But you know what? I'm going to win Ohio." The remark was a dig at his...

"I believe strongly that we have to deal with systemic racism, and systemic racism is found in our criminal justice system, it's found in housing, in job opportunities, in education," Hillary Clinton told a Democrat town hall in South Carolina Tuesday night. "It's also cultural," she said. "And so there are barriers that people are encountering that I think we need to be honest about." Clinton said one of those barriers is the refusal of some states to expand Medicaid: "In this state, your (Republican) governor, legislature wouldn't extend Medicaid, and so people can't get the health care that they...

Scott Killerud was about to throw away a mailing about the 2016 enrollment period for MNsure last November when something caught his eye. "Just as I was going to drop it in the trash, I was like - wait a second. What did I just read?" the Pine County farmer said.

Between 3,000 and 6,800 immigrants 18 and younger living illegally in Ventura County could receive full government-paid health insurance in May through a controversial California law. . . Estimates from The California Endowment are much higher. They project 300,000 people statewide could be covered by the new law, including 6,700 or more in Ventura County.

A report in The Daily Signal exposed Obamacare's Medicaid expansion as an invitation to fraud and abuse as millions of possibly ineligible residents have enrolled. Now Congress is interested in investigating the fraud as hundreds of millions of dollars may be handed out to millionaires, illegal aliens, and other undeserving enrollees. "This is what happens. You open the door. You don't do your verification. You don't know who is coming into the program, and yes, you're going to see a program like this balloon and get out of control quickly," Blackburn said when asked if Congress should investigate the findings....

An energized John Kasich heads into South Carolina's Republican presidential primary hoping to build on a strong showing in New Hampshire, but he's refusing to tailor or shift his message to fit the state's more conservative electorate. "People told me: 'They're really conservative down there,'" Kasich joked to a crowd Wednesday in Mount Pleasant, his first campaign stop in the state since a debate in mid-January. "And I'm like, 'wait a minute, people are people - we all have the same concerns.'" [...] ... From the Carolinas west to Oklahoma and Texas, none of the GOP-run states has embraced Medicaid...

On Monday the U.S. national debt hit a new record: $19,012,827,698,418. This is the first time the national debt has ever exceeded $19 trillion. That's more than $58,000 for each person who lives in the U.S. today (including children). The main culprit behind the rising deficits and debt is growing federal spending--especially among Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. Traditionally, Congress has set a limit for how much debt the U.S. may take on, known simply as the debt limit. But rather than put a higher limit on the debt, lawmakers and the president have repeatedly suspended the debt limit,...

Some New Hampshire primary voters may be trying to decide between John Kasich and...Bernie Sanders? That's what a story in the Boston Globe claims is happening with independents as New Hampshire's open primary on February 9 approaches:

The government spent $936 billion last year on health programs including Medicare, Medicaid and subsidies related to the Affordable Care Act, a jump of 13 percent from 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Spending on Social Security, in contrast, totaled $882 billion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported.

The fate of a network of alternative “co-op� health plans started under ObamaCare remains uncertain going into 2016, after half of them collapsed amid deep financial problems. The co-ops are government-backed, nonprofit health insurers propped up with over $2 billion in taxpayer loans. Twelve of the 23 co-ops established under the Affordable Care Act, though, have gone or are expected to go under by the end of the year, leaving customers who used them scrambling for coverage and taxpayer money at risk. But, as lawmakers on Capitol Hill demand answers on what’s being done, the Obama administration is offering few...

Governor-elect John Bel Edwards called expanding Medicaid "among the highest priorities" of his new administration, though he said Sunday (Nov. 22) he may not be able to approve an expanded program on Day One. Edwards has said for months that he would accept the expansion of Medicaid, which requires executive approval, in the early days of his administration. But he said new questions have been raised about a funding mechanism the Legislature finished building in the spring. There is "a difference of opinion" in interpretations of how the bill was drafted and passed, Edwards said. But he did not appear...

In short order, Obamacare is evolving into a Medicaid marketplace. Not only in terms of the design and quality of the narrow-network plans that are being offered, but in the actual carriers that sell those policies. Obamacare’s costly regulations mean that the mix of people who sign up are tending to be older and sicker. Many young and otherwise healthy individuals continue to be priced out of the exchanges, even after the benefit of federal subsidies are baked into their costs. Meanwhile, it’s the Medicaid managed care companies that are growing the number of plans they market on the exchanges....

A little-known whistleblower lawsuit accuses Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa of wrongly siphoning millions of American taxpayer dollars with a series of complicated billing schemes aimed at increasing profits. Among other dishonest practices, a former manager of the clinics alleges, Planned Parenthood staffers routinely purchased birth control pills for just under $3, billed Medicaid $35 for the same package of pills, and got reimbursed for $26.

Many concerned Americans are following the battle in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood, spurred by videos released over the summer by the Center for Medical Progress allegedly showing the organization selling the pieces of aborted babies. However, even if the abortion organization loses its funding from the federal budget, many tax payers will still be supporting it with their hard-earned dollars. Because along with the money they get from the from the federal budget, Planned Parenthood receives money from Obamacare and from state coffers. A General Accounting Office Study requested by pro-life members of Congress and released at the end...

A federal judge has ordered Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal to restore state payments to Planned Parenthood, making Louisiana the second state blocked from defunding the group.U.S. District Judge John deGravelles ruled Thursday that Jindal couldn't cancel the state’s Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood over allegations the group is facing related to its fetal tissue donation program, according to The Associated Press.Planned Parenthood clinics in Louisiana do not perform abortions and do not accept fetal tissue donations.DeGravelles, who was appointed by President Obama last year, had previously delivered a temporary ruling in favor of Planned Parenthood. Jindal, who is running for...

**SNIP** Joined by Louisiana and Kansas, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Obama administration Thursday seeking to overturn a fee imposed under the Affordable Care Act. The lawsuit seeks a refund of that amount and an order prohibiting future collections of the fee. Paxton says this is “functionally an unconstitutional tax on the states in order to fund the insolvent Obamacare mandate”. Brownback said, “The federal government is threatening to cut $1.6 billion of federal Medicaid funding affecting more than 400,000 Kansans in need unless Kansas pays millions of dollars in taxes to the federal government to support Obamacare”....

The Obama administration has been bragging that nine million more Americans now have health insurance, thanks to Obamacare. But just like with most numbers cited to support the government takeover of health care in America, that “9 million” figure is deceptive.We were told that 48 million Americans lacked affordable health insurance and something had to be done, but even five years after the passage of Obamacare, 33 million Americans are still uninsured.If you dig deeper into the actual numbers and realize what really happened with those 9 million “newly insured”, there’s little reason to cheer.The number of Americans with...

So far, there are two Republicans I will NOT vote for under any circumstances if they are the nominee in 2016. One is Jeb Bush. The other is this jackass John Kasich. While pandering to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, John Kasich said: Ohio RINO John Kasich compares enemies of ObamaCARE to ISIS I mean, look at Medicaid expansion. You know how many people are yelling at me? I’ve gone to events where people yell at me. You know what? You know what I tell ‘em? I mean, God bless ‘em, I’m telling them a little bit better at...

The White House is promoting the expansion of Medicaid through Obamacare as one way to prevent more gun violence, and urging Republicans to join forces with the president. “For those who say they want to work with the administration in limiting gun violence, we would welcome the support for the Affordable Care Act and expanding Medicaid,” spokesman Josh Earnest explained to reporters during the White House press briefing.

The state approved a 27.3 percent rate hike for Hawaii Medical Service Association members and 34.4 percent increase for Kaiser members in Obamacare plans for 2016. HMSA, the state's largest health insurer, had proposed an average 49.1 percent rate hike -- the highest it has ever requested -- for 20,935 members in Obamacare plans next year. . . .

Health insurance provider Colorado Access is going to cut Medicare coverage for the coming year. As a result of the move around 5,500 senior and disabled customers will have to look for alternatives. Chief operating officer of Colorado Access, Matt Case has said that the Denver-based nonprofit will also let go 83 employees who were a part of Colorado Access Medicare and its subsidiary Access Health Colorado. Besides this, extra 40 openings will remain unfilled. Case said that Colorado Access has also drawn down administrative expenses, cutting down the salaries of its executive teams. Case said, “While it's never easy...

South Dakota may join 30 other states in expanding its Medicaid program if federal officials approve a plan Gov. Dennis Daugaard is set to outline to the nation’s top health and human services administrator in Washington on Tuesday. The Republican governor is meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell to explain the plan, and the federal government has so far been more open to discussions than in the past, said Tony Venhuizen, chief of staff to Daugaard. The proposal, which is in its early stages, would make about 48,500 South Dakota residents newly eligible for the program. It’s...

Powerful and well funded, 1199 SEIU has unprecedented reach into city and state government. ... Medicaid is one of the primary sources of funding for the hospitals employing workers from 1199 SEIU, the powerful hospital and nursing-home employees’ union. ... The union’s clout can be assessed by several measures: the sheer size of its membership, its spending on campaigns and lobbying, and the depth and breadth of its connections with New York’s ruling elite. With well over 300,000 members in Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, Washington, D.C., and New York (where over half of that total resides), 1199SEIU is the largest union...

Kick the federal government out of their State in regards to Planned Parenthood, abortion, any and all health services, health programs, health care, or health insurance intrusions Radio Host Dave Levine, a host on KMET 1490 AM on Monday, wrote on his blog, “Arkansas is the fourth state to terminate such contracts with the Feds—New Hampshire, Alabama and Louisiana are the others. By this time next year, 30-plus states will have stopped funding the baby killer company.” Mr. Levine was referring to Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson’s decision to order his State’s Department of Human Services to terminate the Medicaid contract...

Yes, you read the headline correctly. Michigan’s Medicaid expansion program includes $50 Wal-Mart gift cards for Medicaid enrollees that “follow the doctor’s orders.” It seems that although, “the state doesn’t itself purchase or give out any Wal-Mart gift cards, their cost is baked into the Medicaid managed care contracts.” In essence, the taxpayers of Michigan are paying for $50 Wal-Mart gift cards for people on Medicaid whether they know it or not. And getting one of these gift cards is pretty easy.

Kasich’s decision to expand Medicaid under Obamacare—a move that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled was optional and up to state discretion—is a sore subject for fiscal conservatives and led to him being, not just left out of an event held in his backyard, but attacked by several of the event’s speakers, including former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and AFP President Tim Phillips. Obamacare critics do not like how the law allows Medicaid, originally enacted as a safety net to provide health coverage for poor mothers and children, to be expanded to cover able-bodied, working-age adults. Federal funds cover the costs...

<p>Incredible - after the scathing auditors report, they are able to do this - read the excuses given.</p>

The quickest and surest way to make things more expensive for most of us is for someone in our government to attempt to make such things “free” for some. As I noted earlier this year, the largest “charity” in the U.S. is government (which, of course, brags about it!). Americans gave a total of approximately $3.4 billion (about $2.4 billion from individuals) to private charities in 2013. In the same year, Americans received over $600 billion from means-tested (recipients required to be below a certain income level) government programs (housing, food stamps, WIC, Medicaid, and the like). When non means-tested...

Recently, while most of the media obsessed over the antics of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the nation passed a significant milestone. Medicaid, the federal-state program meant to provide a medical safety net for the poor, turned 50. This anniversary was celebrated by progressives as proof that government-run health care really works. Few of these cheerleaders noted, however, that this once modest program has morphed into a budget-busting behemoth most of whose expenditures go to the middle class. They also neglected to mention the difficulties Medicaid patients face accessing care or that they experience worse health outcomes than the uninsured....