Free Republic

The Illinois Medicaid program paid an estimated $12 million for medical services for people listed as deceased in other state records, according to an internal state government memo. The memo dated Friday, which The Associated Press obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, says the state auditor compared clients enrolled in the Medicaid database with state death records dating back to 1970. Auditors identified overpayments for services to roughly 2,900 people after the date of their deaths... Republicans have pressed for the state to use a private company to verify Medicaid eligibility. Maximus Health Services was hired to scrub...

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....