Free Republic

Humana Inc., the nation's fourth-largest health insurer by market share, warned Thursday that the risk pool of applicants for insurance through President Obama's health care law would be worse than previously expected. Ever since the botched rollout of the health care law's exchanges in October, the policy community has been eager to know more about the mix of individuals signing up for insurance through the law. Because the law forces insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions, insurers need to attract a critical mass of young and healthy individuals with lower medical costs into the exchanges to offset the cost....

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...

Federal health officials vowed this week to crack down on illegal immigrants who get Medicare.. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it could save nearly $70 million from 2015 to 2019 by preventing illegal immigrants from taking advantage of Medicare’s prescription drug program or enrolling in Medicare Advantage plans. “We are proposing to establish U.S. citizenship and lawful presence as an eligibility requirement for enrollment in [Medicare Advantage] and Part D plans,” said a proposed rule posted late Monday. Sen. Tom Coburn, Congress‘ top waste-watcher, said the agency is making the right move. “From here, CMS must show...

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...

The contractor building the financial management system for Healthcare.gov is being blamed by a Houston hospital for delayed Medicare reimbursements that have caused the hospital to miss payrolls for weeks. Novitas Solutions is the federal government's new Medicare payment processor for the south-central region of the country hired by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS.) ABC-KTRK in Houston reports: According to the CEO Jason Leday, more than 150 employees haven't been paid in nearly a month. "I understand that they have children and a house payment, bills....

The contractor building the financial management system for Healthcare.gov is being blamed by a Houston hospital for delayed Medicare reimbursements that have caused the hospital to miss payrolls for weeks. Novitas Solutions is the federal government's new Medicare payment processor for the south-central region of the country hired by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS.) ABC-KTRK in Houston reports: According to the CEO Jason Leday, more than 150 employees haven't been paid in nearly a month. "I understand that they have children and a house payment, bills....

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...

**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...

In real life when you find yourself paying more and getting less, you usually search for another product or service. With the federal government, it isn't possible to take your business elsewhere unless you are prepared to give up your citizenship, as some have done. Such a drastic step is rejected by most of us because we still believe in the ideal that once was America, though not in the direction in which the country is currently headed. At the end of the year comes a letter from the person who prepares my taxes. He wants me to know about...

Hospice patients are expected to die: The treatment focuses on providing comfort to the terminally ill, not finding a cure. To enroll a patient, two doctors certify a life expectancy of six months or less. But over the past decade, the number of “hospice survivors” in the United States has risen dramatically, in part because hospice companies earn more by recruiting patients who aren’t actually dying, a Washington Post investigation has found. Healthier patients are more profitable because they require fewer visits and stay enrolled longer. The proportion of patients who were discharged alive from hospice care rose about 50...

This is a story that has caught very little attention, but needs to be circulated as wide as possible. The world of government-managed health care is about to get very ugly for millions of senior citizens who rely on Medicare for their coverage. Quietly announced on the day after Thanksgiving, the Obama administration has decided to cut Medicare home health benefits to the tune of 14% between 2014 and 2017. Some of America's most vulnerable citizens are under attack from a liberal administration who is determined to have its way with our health care system. What does this mean for...

With just a handful of prescriptions to his name, psychiatrist Ernest Bagner III was barely a blip in Medicare’s vast drug program in 2009. But the next year he began churning them out at a furious rate. Not just the psych drugs expected in his specialty, but expensive pills for asthma and high cholesterol, heartburn and blood clots. By the end of 2010, Medicare had paid $3.8 million for Bagner’s drugs 2014 one of the highest tallies in the country. His prescriptions cost the program another $2.6 million the following year, records analyzed by ProPublica show. Bagner, 46, says there’s...

As if ObamaCare’s botched website, coverage cancellations, and higher costs were not bad enough, the Obama Administration has quietly dealt yet another blow – this time striking millions of the nation’s most vulnerable seniors. Specifically, the Obama Administration has decided to deeply cut funding for the Medicare program’s home health benefit as a way to help pay for ObamaCare. The Administration made this announcement very quietly, waiting to do so until the very end of the last Friday before Thanksgiving, perhaps thinking that most people would not be looking. To be sure, the timing of the Administration’s quiet announcement did...

U.S. hospital admissions in November were the weakest in more than a decade, under pressure from a change in reimbursement rules for Medicare patients and confusion tied to the problem-ridden rollout of Obamacare, according to a survey by Citi Research. [Snip] "In addition, it is reasonable to conclude that the cumulative impact of changing physician employment and payment models is beginning to play a role, as well as the paralyzing effect of the impotent Obamacare rollout," Citi analyst Gary Taylor said in a report.

Starting Jan. 1, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will begin slashing 14 percent of their Home Health Care Prospective Payment Program budget, driving small home health-care providers out of business and potentially affecting millions of poor, elderly citizens in need of physical rehabilitation. The cuts — which are being made to fund Obamacare — will slash the homecare budget 3.5 percent every year for the next four. “By CMS’s own calculation, 40 percent or nearly 5,000 home health companies — mainly small businesses — will experience a “net loss” in revenue due to the cuts and go...

A small but growing number of physicians are not accepting government insurance, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and are even refusing to accept patients’ private insurance, according to Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). Orient says the transition to a business model in which patients agree to pay doctors directly for the health care services they provide started before Obamacare was passed, but that the new law has accelerated the trend, especially among AAPS’ 4,000 or so members. AAPS is the conservative alternative to the much larger American Medical Association (AMA), which...

We are locked in a generational war, which will get worse before it gets better. Indeed, it may not get better for a long time. No one wants to admit this, because it's ugly and unwelcome. Parents are supposed to care for their children, and children are supposed to care for their aging parents. For families, these collective obligations may work. But what makes sense for families doesn't always succeed for society as a whole. The clash of generations is intensifying. Last week, a federal judge ruled that Detroit qualifies for municipal bankruptcy. This almost certainly means that pensions and...

“Would you consider an ATM machine to be functional if it created a lifelike experience but no money comes out, no deposits get credited, no transfers actually work?” asked Jonah Goldberg of National Review. The Obama administration “has erected a Potemkin village online — a facade that temporarily conceals the lack of architecture behind it,” said Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin. Perhaps Mr. Obama imagines he can talk his way out of anything. But his isn’t a “messaging” problem. Obamacare has done too much harm to too many people for reality to be spun or ignored.

The two drugs have been declared equivalently miraculous. Tested side by side in six major trials, both prevent blindness in a common old-age affliction. Biologically, they are cousins. They’re even made by the same company...

Obamacare “raided” $300 billion for Medicare Advantage and seniors will begin feeling the cuts next year, according to an analysis Tuesday by the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee. Obamacare took $700 billion from Medicare and $300 billion from Medicare Advantage alone for its own funding, according to the subcommittee. The cuts to Medicare Advantage beneficiaries will “begin to be fully realized in the next year,” according to the subcommittee. “There was a promise made to seniors as well. The promise was that we’re going to use your Medicare dollars as a piggy bank to fund the Affordable Care Act,...