Free Republic

While states debate expanding their Medicaid programs under Obamacare, they're wrestling with a looming 2017 deadline — when their taxpayers begin paying for the cost of the expansion. Beginning in 2014, states that agree to expand Medicaid to persons with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty line will have the federal government pay 100 percent of the cost. But beginning in 2017, the federal share will fall to 95 percent, and it drops to 90 percent in 2020. This has officials — many of them in Republican-dominated states across the country — worried that they will not...

Azealia Banks is still bothered by America’s history with slavery and took to Twitter to let everyone know about it! The 23-year-old rapper believed that America owed money to blacks for putting them into slavery and stopping them from being successful in society. “I don’t know why all the white people on my Twitter are saying I’m “playing the victim” cause I’m not… I really just want my [expletive] money,” the 23-year-old rapper tweeted on Saturday (December 27). Azealia decided to voice her opinion after she stirred up some controversy by saying that she wanted to find descendants of slave...

This is a .pdf format document. Full Title: Reversing the Medicaid Fee Bump: How Much Could Medicaid Fees For Primary Care Fall in 2015?

WASHINGTON — Just as millions of people are gaining insurance through Medicaid, the program is poised to make deep cuts in payments to many doctors, prompting some physicians and consumer advocates to warn that the reductions could make it more difficult for Medicaid patients to obtain care.

Andy Pasternak, a family doctor in Reno, Nev., has seen more than 100 new Medicaid patients this year after the state expanded the insurance program under the Affordable Care Act. But he won’t be taking any new ones after Dec. 31. That’s when the law’s two-year pay raise for primary care doctors like him who see Medicaid patients expires, resulting in fee reductions of 43 percent on average across the country, according to the nonpartisan Urban Institute. The challenge is to convince physicians not just to continue accepting such patients but to take on more without getting paid what they’re...

California's health exchange is violating the law by canceling private coverage for up to 95,000 people because they might qualify for Medi-Cal, the state's insurance commissioner says. At issue is health insurance for some of the poorest Californians whose incomes aren't high enough to even qualify for subsidized policies in the Covered California exchange. The state marketplace is notifying thousands of policyholders that their federal premium subsidies for Obamacare coverage will end Dec. 31 and their private health plan won't be renewed starting in January. Instead, these people will be put into Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program for low-income residents....

An entire nation votes, tens of millions of Americans come out to their local polls to tell Washington it is going in the wrong direction on amnesty and Obama Care, and endless deficits, and cowardice in the face of terrorism…and what do the Republicans leaders do? They give the president everything he could ask for, while turning on one of the few in the Republican ranks that understands we are fighting for the very life of the nation. The Republican Party simply is not up to the task of changing the course of this nation. Too many in the Republican...

While enrollment on government-run Obamacare exchanges gets the bulk of media attention, sign-ups for Medicaid have been even greater, in no small part due to another part of the Affordable Care Act. Since October 2013, enrollment in Medicaid and the related Children's Health Insurance Program had grown by about 9.7 million people as of this past October, according to data released Thursday by the federal government. That's 17 percent higher than what was the average monthly enrollment level seen from July through September 2013. That bump brings total enrollment in the programs that provide coverage without a premium charge to...

Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Haslam became the latest red-state governor to approve a twist on Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion Monday.Haslam is supporting a private-option version of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which was pioneered by Arkansas in 2014. The proposal will have to be approved by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Republican-controlled legislature; if it goes through, Tennessee will be just the 28th state to move forward with the expansion of the welfare program through Obamacare.“We made the decision in Tennessee nearly two years ago not to expand traditional Medicaid,” Haslam said Monday. “This is an alternative approach that...

Gov. John Kasich’s Obamacare expansion has put 450,941 Ohioans on Medicaid, outpacing his administration’s projections by 24 percent. Instead of tempering leftist support for the expansion, budget-busting enrollment is portrayed as good news for Ohio; Obamacare sticks federal taxpayers with 100 percent of Medicaid expansion benefit costs through 2016. Kasich — who expanded Medicaid over the General Assembly’s express disapproval — told attendees at a Dec. 4 infant mortality summit to march in favor of more Obamacare expansion spending, but critics are encouraging legislative opponents to stand their ground. “Kasich is threatening to organize protests to ensure the state continues...

Jonathan Gruber’s health care forecasting is failing in Colorado as Vermont’s Gov. Peter Shumlin prepares to use the economist’s math for single-payer health care. As Vermonters anxiously await a Gruber-modeled financing plan for Green Mountain Care, modeling done for Colorado’s health exchange by Jonathan Gruber Associates has proven wildly erroneous. In 2011, following Colorado’s decision to set up a state health exchange for Obamacare, the state hired Gruber to forecast enrollment trends from which the state and federal government could estimate costs. According to a presentation delivered to the Colorado Health Benefit Exchange Board on Sept. 16, 2011, and provided...

The same day ObamaCare architect Jonathan "Stupid Americans" Gruber swore before Congress that there wasn't any deception involved in getting it passed, an inspector general report showed how the law continues to mislead the public. Writing off an advance copy of the report, the New York Times said the Health and Human Services IG found "half of the providers" listed as serving Medicaid patients "could not offer appointments to enrollees."

LEXINGTON — Rural hospitals in Kentucky are facing some of the biggest challenges in their histories and some may be forced to close their doors state auditor Adam Edelen told the Kentucky Chamber on Monday. Edelen, who will be releasing an audit on the plight on the states rural hospitals in January, told members of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce who were attending their annual legislative preview conference, that the difficult economy and managed care are the primary drivers of the difficulty in rural health care. Generally, Medicare reimburses hospitals around 90 percent of cost while Medicaid reimbursement is around...

It's not even under investigation, but Planned Parenthood is worried it is coming to the end of the line in Scott Walker's Wisconsin. Investigators with the state's Department of Health Office of Inspector General (OIG) say that two family planning facilities alone have charged the Medicaid program more than twice their allowable cost for birth control, overbilling taxpayers by millions of dollars a year. A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Wisconsin admitted, if the state will demand that they follow the law as written, it would have to shut down its locations across the state.

In 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services estimated that 72.2 million Americans were receiving Medicaid benefits for at least a month. Medicaid is a government health insurance program aimed at helping the poor and disabled. Enrollment into the program is going up dramatically, according to the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI). Both Medicaid and ChildrenÂ’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are up 15 percent, or 8.7 million people, since Obamacare began enrolling people in the fall of 2013; states that expanded Medicaid coverage are seeing 22 percent growth or more. For many states, Medicaid is the largest item of...

Ohio taxpayers are being treated to an unwelcome taste of DC, as Governor John Kasich brings President Obama’s favorite policies and tactics to the Buckeye State. Narrowly elected as a small-government conservative in 2010, Kasich has veered sharply to the left despite Republican supermajorities in both houses of the Ohio General Assembly. Candidate Kasich warned that the Obamacare Medicaid expansion would “stick states with large and unsustainable costs.” But after failing to trim public unions’ power in 2011, Kasich decided last winter that he’d show what a caring moderate he is by hanging the millstone of Medicaid expansion around Ohio’s...

The state of North Carolina has given Jonathan Gruber the boot, firing the ObamaCare architect after he was caught on camera repeatedly calling American voters “stupid.” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) went “On The Record” tonight, explaining that Gruber was hired one year ago to help with a health care plan that dealt with Medicaid recipients and the uninsured. Meadows said that Gruber was supposed to be an unbiased individual, but after these reports, the auditor decided that he’s not so unbiased after all. …

Roughly one million undocumented immigrants in California qualify for President Obama’s executive action of deferred deportation that he announced on Thursday. Of those 40% will be eligible for the states free Medi-Cal health services, while the remaining will be ineligible under the program’s income requirements. Medi-Cal is the state’s name for Medicaid, a federal health services program for people who have low income. According to KQED News, the newly protected illegal immigrants do not qualify for other benefits of the Affordable Care Act and are not eligible for subsidies on the Covered California exchange. “They’ll be in the same situation...

--SNIP-- Gruber said during an event at Simmons College in February. ”Ted Kennedy had managed to figure out a way to rip off the federal Medicaid program to the tune of about $500 million a year through a series of strange manipulations. “Here was Mitt Romney’s dirty little secret that we don’t like to talk about in Massachusetts, which is the way we passed our law is the federal government paid for it. “George Bush said why am I sending this Democrat $500 million a year, I’m taking it back,” Gruber explained, adding “Mitt Romney to his credit went to...

Immigrants and their U.S.-born children make up more than 40 percent of new Medicaid recipients at a cost of $4.6 billion, according to an analysis of government data. The Center for Immigration Studies, a low-immigration advocacy group, released a report early Thursday that found both legal and illegal immigrants and their minor children made up 42 percent of Medicaid growth from 2011 to last year. Part of the increased enrollment came as a result of the new healthcare law’s expansion of Medicaid to impoverished and low-income adults. [SNIP] According to CIS officials, most of the immigrants tallied in the report...