Keyword: obamacare
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After rightly rejecting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion for several years, Idaho officials have now concocted a new version of Obamacare expansion. While some supporters have rallied around the plan’s uniqueness, it’s important to examine exactly what distinguishes this expansion plan from the rest: It’s worse. First, the truly needy already qualify for Medicaid in Idaho. Supporters of Idaho’s Obamacare plan want the public to believe that this plan is essential to the survival of Idaho’s neediest residents. But the truly needy already qualify for Medicaid in the Gem State. Idaho’s Medicaid program already covers low-income kids, pregnant women, seniors, individuals with...
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Norma Diaz and her husband, Joseph Garcia, have dedicated their careers to running a nonprofit health insurer that covers some of California’s neediest residents. For three decades, they have worked for a Medicaid managed-care plan, Community Health Group, serving nearly 300,000 poor and disabled patients in San Diego County under a state contract funded entirely by taxpayers. They’ve earned above-average ratings for patient care. And in the process, they’ve made millions of dollars. Together, Diaz and Garcia made $1.1 million in 2016 and received more than $5 million since 2012. Diaz’s compensation as CEO exceeded the pay of several peers...
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Consolidation throughout the healthcare industry is increasing costs and driving more care through hospitals, the Physicians Advocacy Institute warned in a letter to Congress. Healthcare organizations have been joining forces to try to get ahead of the industry's shifting landscape. The number of physicians employed by hospitals and health systems grew by nearly 50% from 2012 to 2015, with a corresponding decline in the number of independently practicing physicians, according to the letter—supported with research from consultancy Avalere Health—sent to the House Energy & Commerce Committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee. The decline of the independent medical practice and lack of...
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Electronic health records were supposed to lower administrative costs, but they may not be getting the job done, according to a new study published this week in JAMA. Administrative costs made up as much as a quarter of professional revenue for some patient encounters, according to the study, which focused on a single academic medical center. Researchers attribute much of the high cost to varying contracts between the hospital and health plans and payer as well as varying price schedules. "After investing more than $30 billion in health IT, we haven't improved the administrative efficiency," said Dr. Kevin Schulman, one...
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Gwen Hurd got the letter just before her shift at the outlet mall. Her health insurance company informed her that coverage for her family of three, purchased through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, would cost almost 60 percent more this year — $1,200 a month. She and her husband, a contractor, found a less expensive plan, but at $928 a month, it meant giving up date nights and saving for their future. Worse, the new policy required them to spend more than $6,000 per person before it covered much of anything. “It seems to me that people who earn nothing...
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Congressional Republicans failed to repeal or replace Obamacare. But one state has come up with a way to get around it. Idaho is dealing with Obamacare by just blowing it off. If it works, other states seem likely to follow. Idaho’s Republican governor, Butch Otter, signed an executive order last year paving the way for non-Obamacare-compliant health insurance plans to be sold in his state, and Lt. Gov. Brad Little has since cobbled together what is sure to be the nation’s most controversial healthcare initiative. Obamacare’s spiraling premium increases have especially hurt middle-income consumers, In Idaho, at least, they will...
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Congressional Republicans failed to repeal or replace Obamacare. But one state has come up with a way to get around it. Idaho is dealing with Obamacare by just blowing it off. If it works, other states seem likely to follow. Idaho’s Republican governor, Butch Otter, signed an executive order last year paving the way for non-Obamacare-compliant health insurance plans to be sold in his state, and Lt. Gov. Brad Little has since cobbled together what is sure to be the nation’s most controversial healthcare initiative. Their principal intention is to give the people of their state a way of avoiding...
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House Speaker Paul Ryan, saying entitlement reform is essential to limiting budget deficits, criticized Sen. John McCain on Tuesday for voting last year against the repeal of Obamacare. “The house has passed these bills, but John McCain said no instead of yes,” Ryan said during an exclusive interview with FOX Business’ Maria Baritromo on “Mornings with Maria.”
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And predictably put the blame somewhere else. "Also, the premium increases for health insurance they want from us will cost us about $600,000 every year," Martin Kich of Wright State University writes on the academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in a broadside against his university's administration. "Right now, we pay about $1.8 million." "$600,000 more would be a 33% increase! On top of higher premiums, they want to cut health benefits via increased co-pays, increased out-of-pocket maximums, and increased coinsurance. Needless to say, cuts such as these harm people who are already sick, defeating...
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The budget that President Trump proposed Monday takes a hard whack at the poorest Americans, slashing billions of dollars from food stamps, public health insurance and federal housing vouchers, while trying to tilt the programs in more conservative directions. The spending plan reaches beyond the White House’s own power over the government social safety net and presumes lawmakers will overhaul long-standing entitlement programs for the poor in ways beyond what Congress so far has been willing to do. The changes call on lawmakers to eliminate the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and transform the rest of that...
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The British Journal of General Practice has urged the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to display LGBT rainbow flags in waiting rooms. Displaying the rainbow flag could “make patients feel more comfortable,” according to Pink News, who reported that, “The British Journal of General Practice has published guidelines to urge more than 50,000 doctors and medical researchers to put Pride flags in the waiting rooms of their practices. ”
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Donald Trump tweeted that Britain's National Health Service is "broke and not working." All too true: expenses have forced 40% of walk-in health centers to close, all elective surgery in January to be cancelled, and primary care has been decimated, it's not surprising that problems have surfaced. It is just as predictable that the usual call for "more money" echoes around the UK. All this is the result of economic laws that have been completely ignored since the days of Aneurin Bevan, the father of the UK NHS. The first is the Law of Rationing. In short, "Everything is...
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SANTA ANA, CA—When local man Ralph Dunkley found himself in the midst of a three-hour-long wait for a two-minute service at his local DMV office, he decided to redeem the time by pulling out his iPad and carefully pecking out a 5,000-word blog post arguing in favor of a government-run healthcare system in the U.S. “America is way behind the rest of the civilized world—we need universal healthcare and NOW,” Dunkley typed as dozens of people around him moaned in agony while waiting in their seemingly never-ending DMV purgatory. “The United States government has more than proven its capability of...
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The IRS overpaid nearly $3.5 billion in Obamacare tax credits last year that it cannot recoup because of constraints built into the program, frustrating Republicans who have failed to repeal the health care law but say that money could have been spent on programs for veterans or infrastructure. A Treasury watchdog said the government paid out roughly $24 billion in Obamacare subsidies in the heart of the 2017 tax-filing season, with $5.8 billion in overages. Of that, just $2.3 billion was clawed back, leaving $3.5 billion in outstanding excess payments. “The overpayments were that much?” said Rep. Phil Roe, Tennessee...
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Donald Trump's habit of testing the US relationship with Britain took a new turn Monday when he attacked the UK's National Health Service, claiming it is "going broke and not working." The US President hit out on Twitter minutes after a segment aired on Fox News that highlighted winter strains on the UK health care system. Trump accused Democrats of pushing a similar universal health care system for the US." The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly...
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If conservatives don’t coalesce behind a new repeal plan soon soon, they will find themselves bystanders as their Republican colleagues link arms with Democrats. ... a concoction of two bills. The first, championed by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D., Wash.), would appropriate cost-sharing-reduction payments to insurers. The second, sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), would give insurers an additional $10 billion (and perhaps more) in federal cash.
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The job of Congress is to represent the people and put the nation’s best interests first. It looks like Maxine Waters has a very different objective: Funnel as much taxpayer money to leftist cronies as possible. According to Judicial Watch, the longtime liberal lawmaker has introduced a bill that moves over a billion dollars to “Obamacare navigators,” who conveniently happen to almost always be leftist organizations. “A fraud-infested Obamacare ‘outreach’ program will get an astounding $1.2 billion from American taxpayers if legislation introduced by a veteran congresswoman becomes law,” the watchdog group explained.
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There is an ongoing narrative in the media and by Democrats that President Trump is a threat to everything American, that he is fascistic and that our most basic freedoms are under assault. Therefor, all must #resist! But the opposite is true when set in juxtaposition to the Obama Administration. The actual facts on the ground do not support what appears to be only a caricature created to scare the Democrat base and the American people in pursuit of the ongoing agenda to undermine the duly elected president. When looking at Trump’s actions, compared to Obama’s actions, several things become...
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A Man Who Could Finally Afford To See A Doctor After Winning The Lottery Died Three Weeks Later Along with the usual things that come with winning the lottery — a new car, a vacation — Donald Savastano was excited about finally being able to see a doctor after winning a $1 million prize in December. The self-employed carpenter in New York told local media he hadn't been able to afford to do so because he lacked health insurance. But the doctor visit yielded devastating news: Savastano, 51, had stage 4 metastatic cancer. He died on Friday, just weeks after...
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A fraud-infested Obamacare “outreach” program will get an astounding $1.2 billion from American taxpayers if legislation introduced by a veteran congresswoman becomes law. The preposterous measure, introduced by California Democrat Maxine Waters a few week ago, aims to recruit customers for the health insurance exchanges set up under Obama’s disastrous healthcare overhaul. The 14-term congresswoman, investigated by the House Ethics Committee for steering federal funds to her husband’s failing Massachusetts bank, crafted the law because the Trump administration slashed Obamacare outreach funding by more than 90%. “Our health care system is under attack by a president, administration, and Republican-controlled Congress...
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