Free Republic

Words matter. “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your healthcare plan, you'll be able to keep your healthcare plan, period,” President Obama said during a speech to the American Medical Association in June 2009. Honoring your commitments is the cornerstone of trust in our leaders. The American people won’t accept illusions or misdirection’s. That’s why its troubling that because of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare, Medicare will be cut by $1.05 trillion, 6.3 million Americans have lost their healthcare coverage since its implementation and millions more stand...

In the push to make health-care coverage more widespread, Washington is meeting its goals for boosting the number of people covered by Medicaid, while the state is lagging in its enrollment in the new health insurance marketplace. By Jan. 2, more than 121,258 adults newly eligible for Medicaid had enrolled in the program, which locally goes by the name Washington Apple Health. That number was just a few hundred short of the program’s goal, and an additional 6,000 people have enrolled since the beginning of the month, a state spokesman said Tuesday night. More than 71,205 Washington residents and their...

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein has found what he thinks is a bright spot amid the gloomy Obamacare news. When you hear what he's enthusiastic about, you'll perhaps understand why I wonder if there is any common ground at all between liberals and conservatives. Klein reports that Obamacare's "biggest success" is that 4 million new enrollees signed up for Medicaid as of November and the number should be even higher when December's statistics are tallied. "If the point of health care reform is covering people who need health insurance, the expansion of Medicaid should be a huge win." Sorry,...

Failure: ObamaCare is driving millions of people into Medicaid, a program we now know does nothing to improve health and actually drives emergency-room use higher. A central premise of ObamaCare was that vastly expanding Medicaid would ultimately save health care dollars. The millions of uninsured gaining access to Medicaid would no longer crowd costly emergency rooms looking for care, the thinking went. And that improved access would keep them healthier. Turns out that neither of those claims is true.

**SNIP** The Medicaid fight offers hope for Democrats whose 2014 election chances took a hit from the embarrassing October rollout of the insurance exchanges, said Ed Rendell, the former Pennsylvania governor and ex-chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In states like Florida and Pennsylvania, Medicaid may make a difference in governor’s races, he said. “You’re telling people who don’t have health care now that you can give it to them, and that’s something that can get people off their duffs and turn out the vote,” Rendell said in a telephone interview. **SNIP** “We’re having a desperate struggle to pay for...

A couple of weeks ago I visited my internist for the annual physical to which she subjects me in order to confirm that my various organs are still operating according to specifications. As she poked and prodded, I asked how her practice was going. This question elicited a resigned sigh and a brief but poignant discourse on the necessity of “firing” her Medicaid patients. Medicaid, the government program that ostensibly provides health coverage for the poor, imposes so much red tape and pays so parsimoniously that she simply cannot afford to treat these patients if she wishes to avoid bankruptcy.

Last week the liberal documentary-maker Michael Moore prompted indigestion across the progressive wonk community by pronouncing Obamacare “awful.” In a New York Times op-ed, he bemoaned the way the president’s law preserved the health insurance industry rather than replacing it with a Medicare-for-all style single-payer system. The good news, Moore conceded, is that the previously uninsured (and often previously uninsurable) can get finally get coverage. The bad news is that their coverage will often be lousy and pose an enormous financial burden. He ended by calling for activists to lean on state politicians in an effort to beef the law...

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina health officials said Friday that they had inadvertently disclosed the personal information of tens of thousands of children receiving Medicaid coverage, but were tight-lipped about precisely what caused the massive privacy breach. The state Department of Health and Human Services issued a written release saying that new Medicaid cards for nearly 49,000 children were mailed on Dec. 30 to the wrong people. The information on the cards includes the children’s names, Medicaid identification numbers, dates of birth and the names of their primary care doctors — personal medical data that is supposed to be...

Welcome to the new regime, America. Meanwhile in Illinois, a surgeon chose to operate on a female patient even though his office couldn't verify whether she was covered by an Obamacare "bronze" plan she and her husband signed up for in mid-December. A receptionist reportedly spent two hours on the phone with the insurance company seeking answers, but got none. The doctor told the Associated Press that many of his patients are experiencing "tremendous uncertainty and anxiety" because of the new law. A 61-year-old Illinois woman with pre-existing conditions had a hard time obtaining coverage because Obamacare's website wouldn't let...

It's early -- we have 362 days to go -- and so there will undoubtedly be competition. But as of Jan. 3, your leader in the clubhouse for most revealing quote of the year is this one reported by the Washington Post: "[Saving money] was sometimes a misleading motivator for the Affordable Care Act. The law isn't designed to save money. It's designed to improve health, and that's going to cost money." The speaker being quoted was Jonathan Gruber, an MIT health economist and one of the authors of -- you guessed it -- the Affordable Care Act. Does anyone...

More than 100,000 Americans who applied for insurance through HealthCare.gov and were told they are eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) remain unenrolled because of lingering software defects in the federal online marketplace, according to federal and state health officials. To try to provide coverage to these people before they seek medical care, the Obama administration has launched a barrage of phone calls in recent days in 21 states, advising those who applied that the quickest route into the programs is to start over at their state’s Medicaid agency.

The last time John Nunnemacher had health insurance was 15 years ago, when his employer paid for his coverage. Since then, the freelance graphic artist hasn't been able to afford a policy. Luckily, he didn't get seriously ill or have a bad accident -- which could have left the San Jose man bankrupt. But as of New Year's Day, the 43-year-old Nunnemacher was once again insured. Nearly four years after Congress passed a controversial health care law, tens of thousands of Californians like Nunnemacher can now see a doctor without begging for charity care.

Another Obamacare rationale bites the dust: A new study of Medicaid beneficiaries in Oregon makes a strong version of this case. The study, published today in the journal Science, finds that adult Medicaid beneficiaries rely on emergency rooms about 40 percent more than similar uninsured adults.“When you cover the uninsured, emergency room use goes up by a large magnitude,” said Amy Finkelstein, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who served as a lead investigator on the study, in an MIT press statement accompanying the study.There were no exceptions to the trend. “In no case were we able...

The Obama administration came out with new Obamacare numbers today. Almost twice as many Americans have signed up for the taxpayer-funded Medicaid as the private Obamacare plans. 2.1 million have signed up for Obamacare 3.9 million have signed up for the Medicaid coverage with Obamacare 6.1 million Americans have lost their insurance due to Obamacare

Supporters of President Obama’s health care law had predicted that expanding insurance coverage for the poor would reduce costly emergency room visits as people sought care from primary care doctors. But a rigorous new study conducted in Oregon has flipped that assumption on its head, finding that the newly insured actually went to the emergency room more often. The study, published in the journal Science, compared thousands of low-income people in the Portland area who were randomly selected in a 2008 lottery to get Medicaid coverage with people who entered the lottery but remained uninsured. Those who gained coverage made...

<p>Because of the decision on Obamacare by the Supreme Court, which left the decision to expand Medicaid (a key part of Obamacare) up to the individual states, most Republican-controlled states refused said expansion, leaving substantial portions of the citizenry in the lurch.</p>

**SNIP** 3. Medicare and Medicaid Health care was been a huge issue in 2013, and Congress continues to grapple with how to fix the ailing benefits program. One thing that doesn’t help is the millions of dollars in waste uncovered in the programs. A December investigation found that Medicare payed $24 million for full vials of medicine, even when health care providers were only using part of the vial. It’s the kind of thing that happens often with the program, said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “This is endemic. This...

The day before health insurance was set to kick in for millions of Americans under Obamacare, a new problem emerged on Tuesday that could leave thousands of Pennsylvanians without the government coverage they thought they had obtained through the troubled federal marketplace. A technical glitch has prevented states from finalizing Medicaid coverage for some people who applied for insurance on the website that the federal government is operating for Pennsylvania and 35 other states, officials disclosed. It is unclear how many people nationwide might be affected, but Gov. Tom Corbett's office put out a consumer alert that said at least...

The Obama Administration announced today that 1.1 million Americans have signed up for Obamacare so far. That number includes the number who have signed up for the taxpayer-funded Medicaid part of the plan. As of December 11, 2013– Over 800,000 Americans signed up for the taxpayer-funded Medicaid program. Over five million Americans have lost their health care plans so far. The Hill reported: More than 1.1 million people enrolled in ObamaCare before a December 24 deadline for consumers seeking healthcare plans that begin Jan. 1, the Obama administration said early Sunday. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Marilyn...

**SNIP** “None of our diplomats charged by the Americans remains in the United States, they have all returned home,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said. Ryabkov added that Russia had discussed the matter with US officials and planned to take no action in response. “I repeat what we have always said: we do not want to go down the path of retaliating with an eye for an eye.”