Free Republic

Republicans “still can’t bring themselves to admit that the Affordable Care Act is working,” President Obama told a news conference on Thursday. He also took aim at states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs:“This does frustrate me—states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid for no other reason than political spite. You got 5 million people who could be having health insurance right now at no cost to these states—zero cost to these states—other than ideological reasons they have chosen not to provide health insurance for their citizens.”But some governors, pointing to President Obama’s own broken promises, simply don't...

Washington state has blown past its targets for signing up new Medicaid participants under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The program’s ranks have grown roughly 25 percent in the past six months, helping fulfill one of the act’s key goals to provide health care to nearly all Americans. But with enrollment success comes the challenge of serving more people in a $10 billion program that’s already stretched thin in places. Some of the new enrollees haven’t seen a doctor in years and need help navigating the health-care morass. Medicaid patients already struggle to get care in parts of the state...

Four years after Obamacare became law, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is notifying Medicare providers and suppliers of new fingerprint-based background checks. Eventually, all individuals who hold a five percent or greater stake in a Medicare supplier or provider that is categorized as "high risk" will be subject to the requirement. The provision is part of the Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP Program Integrity Provisions (Title E) of the Affordable Care Act, and gives the HHS secretary broad discretion in applying the background check requirements depending on the potential for abuse, fraud, and/or waste. The new requirements are...

Lost in the overall shuffle concerning the many problems with Obamacare’s exchanges is the central problem of enforcement of those aspects of the law the president hasn’t waived or delayed yet – including the particular challenge when it comes to verifying the immigration status of those applying for taxpayer subsidized insurance. On April 1st, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a new guidance document to health insurers. The CMS guidance says that people whose immigration status is uncertain will be presumed eligible for subsidized coverage in Obamacare’s marketplaces while a further review is pending. Emphasis mine: If there...

It may be water over the dam, but one report on the potential impact to employers if Michigan did not adopt the Obamacare Medicaid expansion has been exposed as being essentially bunk due to flagrant misuse or misrepresentation of the data it cited. This is worth noting because the claims from Jackson Hewitt were widely cited by Republican lawmakers here who supported the expansion, and probably tilted others into that camp. Its conclusion was that "employers may pay substantially higher federal tax penalties under the ACA (Affordable Care Act) in states that do not expand Medicaid." Jackson Hewitt estimated Michigan...

Millions of Americans who didn't have health insurance last year now do, as a result of the Affordable Care Act. In Lane County, Oregon, Trillium Community Health Plan is struggling to deal with a huge influx of new patients. CEO Terry Coplin says they expected 26,000 people to sign up in the first few years. Instead, about that many signed up in the first few months. "We weren't expecting to get such a large assignment of patients in the first two months," says Coplin. "These patients who are coming onto the program, many have not seen a physician for years....

Sally Kohn, a “progressive” homosexual activist and writer at the Daily Beast, makes some mighty tall claims in her column from Tuesday, “New Poll Shows Voters in Red States Want to Expand Medicaid.” Citing several polls, including one from NPR and one commissioned by MoveOn from Public Policy Polling, she claims that the popularity of Medicaid expansion in conservative states is now soaring. The leftist polling also indicates that 75 percent of Americans nationwide support the expansion of Medicaid, and the claim is that the “overall” popularity of Obamacare is rising. But, Kohn insists that Republicans are desperate to create...

Vance McAllister, the Louisiana Republican who got elected to Congress on Saturday after being endorsed by Duck Dynasty's Willie Robertson, supports amnesty for all of the country's illegal immigrants. “We have to secure the borders, but (citizenship) has to be attainable for those people already here,” he told Thetowntalk.com before the election. “It has to be a tough path, but it has to be attainable.”

The number of Americans who were enrolled in Medicaid at any time during fiscal 2013 exceeded the entire population of the United Kingdom, according to new data published by the federal government’s Medicaid and CHIP Payment Access Commission (MACPAC). Were Medicaid a nation instead of a U.S. entitlement program it would be the 20th most populous country on earth. …

And here I bet some of you thought the 2013 elections were over, didn’t you? Well, they were for the most part, but given the variations in election laws and special circumstances from state to state, there’s always some action brewing someplace. In this case, the congressional seat in Louisiana’s 5th district was open due to Republican Rodney Alexander’s resignation earlier this year to take a job with the Jindal administration. That required a special election, which began earlier this fall. Because of Louisiana’s somewhat unique election structure and the fact that nobody got more than 50% of the vote,...

Mr. McAuliffe stated,point blank,he would not engage in partisan skullduggery to affect the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare at the expense of the Virginia State budget, yet that is exactly what he is doing. Less than six months after taking office, Mr. McAuliffe is not only doing “a 180” on his campaign promise not to hold the budget hostage to his whim, but doing so at the expense of the State budget and the well-being of State government. So what does it mean when we say Gov. McAuliffe and his Progressive and Democrat stooges will hold the budget hostage in...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration often touts that people with pre-existing conditions and countless others can now get covered under ObamaCare. But there's another group that's starting to benefit from the law -- prison inmates. Cash-strapped state and local prisons increasingly are using the Affordable Care Act to pay for their inmates' medical costs, taking advantage of a little-known provision that lets them shift some of those expenses to the federal government. Ohio, Illinois and Iowa are among the states trying to offload the rising costs of health care – which include mental health programs – by enrolling inmates into...

(Reuters) - Three million lower-income Americans have enrolled in the Medicaid program for the poor so far during the rollout of U.S. President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law, the administration announced on Friday. That brings to more than 10 million the number of people who have signed up for both public and private health coverage since the October 1 launch of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. This week, the White House announced there were 7.1 million sign-ups as of March 31 for private health plans through new electronic insurance marketplaces now operating in all 50...

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan unveiled an updated Republican budget plan Tuesday that would slash $5.1 trillion in federal spending over coming decade and promises to balance the government's books with wide-ranging cuts in programs like food stamps and government-paid health care for the poor and working class. Ryan's plan would also cut Pell Grants for low-income students and pensions for federal workers, while steering away from cuts to benefits for senior citizens, at least in the short term. The proposal would reprise a voucher-like Medicare program for future retirees that would be the basis for...

LECLAIR: “We’ve heard from a lot of WHEC Facebook friends complaining that they will face a fine if they don’t sign up for health insurance. But many say they can’t afford the premiums or deductibles, and it would be cheaper to stay uninsured and pay the penalty. This free clinic at St. Josephs’ Neighborhood Center always has a steady stream of patients. The director says the Affordable Care Act will never put them out of business. Even though everyone is supposed to have insurance now and their own doctor, there will always be people who need care but can’t afford...

It's almost become a cliché: If the new health care law makes it here, it can make it anywhere. As thousands of California procrastinators try to beat Monday's midnight deadline to apply for a health care plan, they'll be joining more than 1 million others in the Bellwether State who already have enrolled through California's health insurance exchange. And another 2 million have been determined eligible for Medi-Cal, the state's program for the poor.

A federal data-sharing system meant to prevent healthcare providers banned from one state's Medicaid program from billing another state's program isn't working as intended, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General. Two years after its creation, the data-sharing system contained no records from 17 states or the District of Columbia of doctors, nurses or other healthcare providers who had been "terminated," or banned from billing Medicaid, for fraud or other offenses, the independent auditor said in a report to be released Thursday. Reuters reviewed a copy of the report in advance of...

February 24, 2014 9:33 am • By Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services 17 PHOENIX — Arizona cannot cut off family planning funding to Planned Parenthood simply because the organization also provides abortions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this morning. Without comment the justices rejected... privately financed anti-abortion group to overturn lower court rulings ... Both Arizona and federal laws already bar.... But the state,... participation in the federal Medicaid program, ... federal government pays 90 percent.... Medicaid law ... has included Planned Parenthood. ... Rep. Justin Olson, R-Mesa, who sponsored the legislation, ... ... Appellate Judge Marsha Berzon said .........

The Republican Party is currently trying to sort out an internal battle between its dwindling stock of moderates who are occasionally willing to work with Democrats, and its hard-right base, which views compromise with Democrats in general, and President Obama in particular, as heresy. But in a speech Monday, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the second-ranking Democrat in the House showed that there are significant fissures in the Democratic Party as well. Hoyer, though nominally Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s second-in-command, is starkly different from Pelosi and many others on the party’s left wing when it comes to economic and fiscal issues....

The White House and congressional Democrats are ramping up a coordinated effort to celebrate ObamaCare’s fourth anniversary this weekend, looking to go “on offense” ahead of the final week of open enrollment. The effort includes a social media campaign by members of Congress and administration officials, enrollment events featuring lawmakers and Senate floor speeches marking the four-year anniversary. The tightly coordinated final push was the result of work between the White House and House and Senate “healthcare strike teams,” which were created in the aftermath of the botched ObamaCare rollout to push back against a flood of bad headlines. The...

Three high-level veterans of former governor Bob McDonnell's administration, two with South Hampton Roads ties, have newly registered as lobbyists for the pro-Medicaid expansion Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association. They are Janet Vestal Kelly, a past secretary of the commonwealth who attended Regent University, and her husband, Ryan; former U.S. Rep. Thelma Drake of Norfolk, who was McDonnell's public transit director; and Matt Cobb, a deputy health secretary under McDonnell.(snip) The hospitals are leading a push to expand Medicaid, a government subsidized health care program, to as many as 400,000 uninsured low-income, Virginians newly eligible under the federal Affordable Care...

Senator Bill Kintner Medicaid expansion has been stopped when the proponents failed to get the necessary 33 votes to invoke cloture. The vote was 27-21 -1. Krist was a not voting. This is a huge win for the citizens of Nebraska for all the reasons I have previously covered. Thank you to all the people that called and wrote the senators.

Louisiana and a national left-leaning political group may be headed to court over a Baton Rouge area billboard that criticizes Gov. Bobby Jindal. Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne sent a cease-and-desist order to MoveOn on Thursday, asking the advocacy organization to take down a billboard along Interstate 10 that parodies Louisiana’s “Pick your Passion” tourism slogan. The billboard, which mentions Jindal by name, is critical of the governor and legislators’ decision not to expand the state Medicaid program under federal health care reform. “LOU!SIANA Pick your passion! But hope you don’t love your health. Gov. Jindal’s denying Medicaid to 242,000 people,”...

Hillary Clinton showed more signs of flexibility Wednesday on how Obamacare is implemented, but she insisted the law is too important to “turn the clock back.” In a question-and-answer session following a lecture at UCLA, Clinton suggested she’s open to different ways of achieving the health law’s goals. She praised Arkansas — the state where she and her husband rose to political fame — for carrying out a new approach to expanding Medicaid coverage, by using the federal money to buy private health insurance for more than 100,000 low-income residents. Clinton called the move, spearheaded by Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe...

A northern-Michigan hospital is cutting 43 positions in part because of costs related to the Affordable Care Act, its CEO says. David Zechman of McLaren Northern Michigan told a local television station the layoffs were “something that we had no choice in doing.” Zechman cited the changes to Medicaid and Medicare under the health-care law that cut reimbursement rates for the hospital’s services. “We still have the same costs of taking care of patients, but it’s hard to keep doing the same things you’re doing if you’re paid less for the same amount of costs and services you provide —...

Statement from RPV Chairman Pat Mullins: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Garren Shipley (540) 686-1138 Statement of RPV Chairman Pat Mullins on Delegate-elect Rob Bloxom's Win RPV Chairman Pat Mullins gave the following statement: "Let me be among the first to congratulate Delegate-elect Rob Bloxom on his overwhelming win tonight in House District 100. Rob is going to make a great addition to Speaker Howell's growing caucus, and I look forward to working with him to advance our shared conservative values in the General Assembly." "But tonight's win is about so much more than just who holds this House of Delegates...

I could have sworn Obama promised this wouldn’t happen. Via Weasel Zippers, the LA Times writes: A new report shows that as many as 125,000 young California immigrants may qualify for an expansion of Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. The Affordable Care Act bars insurance subsidies and enrollment in the Medicaid expansion for undocumented immigrants, but a wrinkle in California rules does offer coverage for those with “deferred action status.� The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was created by President Obama in 2012 to grant immigrants who came to the country illegally as children — sometimes called Dreamers —...

Rep. Joe Wilson was right. The South Carolina Congressman screamed, “You lie!” when Barack Obama told Americans the Affordable Care Act would not cover abortions or illegal immigrants. [video] Now we know – Obamacare covers illegal immigrants. 125,000 illegal immigrants will be eligible for free healthcare under Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid expansion. The LA Times reported: A new report shows that as many as 125,000 young California immigrants may qualify for an expansion of Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. The Affordable Care Act bars insurance subsidies and enrollment in the Medicaid expansion for undocumented immigrants, but a wrinkle in California rules...

The advent of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has created a number of problems for our state that did not exist prior to that legislation, in addition to exacerbating most, if not all of the existing issues faced by Nebraskans. We long ago decided as a society to care for those who could not care for themselves. This deference to the needs of the vulnerable is a hallmark of our social contract and has been a driver of public policy for more than a century. It is the foundation of our entire social services system. For more than a century...

It’s not the first time that the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler has dropped a bunch of Pinocchios on claims from Democrats on Medicaid expansion, and it looks like it won’t be the last, either. Kessler even gave himself three Pinocchios a month ago for initially buying the White House spin on the Medicaid numbers. Today, he gives Barack Obama the maximum four Pinocchios for claiming that ObamaCare has resulted in seven million enrollments in the federal program for low-income Americans: “We’ve got close to 7 million Americans who have access to health care for the first time because of Medicaid...

Imagine going to the dentist for a free regular checkup, and getting a free $25 gift card in return. It’s happening right here in Pennsylvania, and taxpayers are paying for all of it. Every year, Pennsylvania spends $20 billion to provide medical care to low-income and disabled residents. But one of the biggest problems the state has is getting people to use those medical services for preventative care. Now a new program designed to address that problem has some people outraged. "I am upset." Michelle Tonkin is seeing red thanks to a Walmart gift card, which she recently got in...

A plan to provide undocumented immigrants in California access to subsidized health care has been spelled out in Senate Bill 1005 by Sen. Ricardo Lara, a Democrat from Bell Gardens. Undocumented immigrants are excluded from the federal Affordable Care Act that is offering legal residents the ability to purchase health insurance through government-run marketplaces. Lara’s bill would create two avenues for Californians who are in the country illegally to seek health care. The state would expand Medi-Cal to include undocumented immigrants whose incomes are under 138 percent of the poverty level – about $32,000 a year for a family of...

Last week I testified before the House Oversight committee on the “risk corridors” in the (ObamaCare) exchanges. Republicans claim that this is a device to bail out the insurance companies. Democrats, in the unusual position of defending the insurance companies, actually claimed that the government was going to make a “profit” because of it. I was in the uncomfortable position of not agreeing completely with either side. The Affordable Care Act creates a new health insurance marketplace (the exchange). But because of the great uncertainty about what buyers will enter the market and who will buy what product, the law...

The anonymous Obamacare expert, who provided us a year ago with the most complete account of Obamacare available, http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/02/03/obamacare-a-primer/ has returned with an explanation of estate recovery. Obamacare herds the poor into Medicaid which requires some enrollees to forfeit homes and other assets they might have to the state to cover the cost of their medical care. The research article below is meticulous and demonstrates that Obamacare was not enacted to serve the people. Obamacare: The Final Payment Raiding the assets of low-income and poor Americans Since writing “Obamacare: Devils in the Details” posted on this site on February 3,...

One thing the ACA didn't change was Medicaid's estate recovery rule. Under a law enacted in 1993, states are required to seek recovery from the estates of deceased enrollees for the costs of long-term care, such as nursing-home care. The recovery rule applied to those who received that care when they were 55 and older, or who were permanently institutionalized at any age. Medicaid eligibility for the expanded programs is based on income alone, which means there might be some new members with low incomes but sizable illiquid estates, such as homes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The prospect...

Republican governors scored easy political points by rejecting President Barack Obama’s plan to enroll more poor people in government health insurance. Now Republican leaders in Georgia and Mississippi may be bailing out hospitals that will lose funding they would have gotten from Obama’s health care law. South Carolina’s leaders increased payments to some hospitals in a push to improve rural health, though the extra money likely placated hospital officials who might otherwise have pressured Republicans to adopt the Democratic plan. The basic problem is simple: Obama’s overhaul is not being implemented as was planned. Its designers assumed that very few...

Congratulations! You have successfully signed up for a truly excellent plan on the Covered California website! It's a really, really great plan. Really. Now, good look finding a doctor who will treat you. Los Angeles Times: After overcoming website glitches and long waits to get Obamacare, some patients are now running into frustrating new roadblocks at the doctor's office.A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business.Experts have warned...

Missouri’s Medicaid program expected to see an uptick in enrollment with the rollout of HealthCare.gov because outreach efforts would attract more people – particularly children – who were already eligible. But the state hasn’t added any of them to the Medicaid rolls. Rather, the number of Missourians on Medicaid has actually decreased by about 14,000 since the marketplace launched on Oct. 1. The state says application data forwarded by the online exchange is fraught with errors and duplication. “We’re in the process of sorting it out,” said Brian Kinkade, acting director of the social services department. As for declining Medicaid...

Families shopping for health insurance through the new federal marketplace are running into trouble getting everyone covered when children are eligible for Medicaid but their parents are not. Children who qualify for Medicaid, the safety-net program for the poor and disabled, can’t be included on subsidized family plans purchased through the federal marketplace, a fact that is taking many parents by surprise and leaving some kids stuck without coverage.

This was not in the fine print of the Affordable Care Act (that no one read), and there was nothing in it that changed the existing law from 1993. The ACA however, did expand the number of people who are eligible for Medicaid, so now there are more people from the ages of 55 to 65 whose estates could be on the hook for Medicaid expenses after the beneficiary dies. This sounds like a cash grab to me. Many states have not changed the law to limit the amount of expenses the government can claim are owed for Medicaid, but...

Every day the scorecards went up, where they could be seen by all of the hospital’s emergency room doctors. Physicians hitting the target to admit at least half of the patients over 65 years old who entered the emergency department were color-coded green. The names of doctors who were close were yellow. Failing physicians were red. The scorecards, according to one whistle-blower lawsuit, were just one of the many ways that Health Management Associates, a for-profit hospital chain based in Naples, Fla., kept tabs on an internal strategy that regulators and others say was intended to increase admissions, regardless of...

What are the major differences between Medicaid, Medicare? Which covers more? Since Obamacare thrusts so many into Medicaid, and has raised income limits, can a retiree chose Medicaid over Medicare? Can I assume a person who retires early (at 62) and can't get Medicare until 66, can get Medicaid?

Labor Law: The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case that will determine if a Medicaid recipient caring for her child is a state worker required to turn part of her meager resources over to union bosses. Illinois resident Pam Harris is a 55-year-old mom earning less than the minimum wage who cares for her son Josh Harris, 25. He has Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome, a muscular degenerative disease, compounded by physical disabilities and mental illness. Josh and his family qualify for an Illinois home-based support-services program that lets disabled adults live at home. He gets $721 each month from...

On Oct. 1, 2012 the Obama administration started awarding bonus points to hospitals that spend the least on elderly patients. It will result in fewer knee replacements, hip replacements, angioplasty, bypass surgery and cataract operations. These are the five procedures that have transformed aging for older Americans. They used to languish in wheelchairs and nursing homes due to arthritis, cataracts and heart disease. Now they lead active lives. But the Obama administration is undoing that progress. By cutting $716 billion from future Medicare funding over the next decade and rewarding the hospitals that spend the least on seniors, the Obama...

As healthcare reform occurs throughout the nation, Virginians voice their opposition to Medicaid expansion. Funding Limitations The promised levels of Federal funding for Medicaid expansion cannot be fulfilled. The evidence is mounting. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, recently stated that funds will not be available for Medicaid expansion. Medicaid ExpansionThe funding streams for expansion have been greatly impacted by the disastrous roll-out of the ACA. The federal government has recently refused to pay what they promised to Indian tribes for medical services. Health insurance companies are guaranteed a bailout because not enough young people are singing up...

The GOP has made opposition to ObamaCare a central pillar of its 2014 campaign strategy. And even though the health care law has begun to turn around, that may not be such a bad idea given lingering public skepticism over the law. However, there is one crucial piece of ObamaCare that may well become a big winner for Democrats by the end of the year: The dramatic expansion of Medicaid. Unlike the overall law, the expansion of Medicaid is actually quite popular with voters of all political stripes. Even in the Deep South, more than six in ten support expanding...

As many as 383 Medicaid enrollees in Maryland received welcome packets in the mail this month that contained the names and birth dates of strangers, health officials announced Sunday evening. They blamed the mix-up on a “programming error” caused by the chief IT contractor hired to build a health-insurance marketplace for the state. Officials at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said they learned of the problem Friday after a customer contacted a Medicaid enrollment broker and reported receiving the wrong packet in the mail. The enrollment packets are automatically assembled by pulling names, addresses and other information...

Look closely at this tweet by the @BarackObama account, maintained by the pro-Obama group Organizing for America. The 6 million figure comes from combining a figure of 2.1 million for people selecting a plan via state and federal exchanges, through December, and 3.9 million for Medicaid, through November. Thus the claim that “6 million Americans have already signed up for coverage thanks to health reform.” There is much less to the Medicaid figure than meets the eye. (The exchange figure has been updated recently, to 2.2 million, but not the Medicaid figure.) Indeed, there has been vast confusion about what...

HHS: 5.6M of 6M Who Signed Up on Exchanges Will Get Federal Funding January 13, 2014 - 6:13 PM By Terence P. Jeffrey (CNSNews.com) - In their first three months of operation, the federal and state health-insurance marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act—AKA Obamacare--have signed up 5,572,305 people who qualify to get federal funding for their health care, either through Medicaid or through an insurance premium subsidy, according to data released by the Department of Health and Human Service. Those 5,572,305 are part of the “6 million Americans” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today have used the exchanges to...

In 2014, 25 million to 30 million Americans who have employer-provided health insurance are likely to lose it thanks to Obamacare’s requirement that all plans cover what Washington deems “essential benefits.” Some employers will consider that unaffordable and drop coverage altogether, when their current, lower cost plans expire over the course of the year. These 25 to 30 million are in addition to 6 million who bought plans in the individual market and had them cancelled by January 1. The plight of those 6 million made headline news and caused the first cracks in the Democratic Party’s support for the...