Free Republic

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...

At Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, the push is on to get patients insured under Obamacare plans. Since Thanksgiving, there's been a line outside of the hospital's enrollment center every morning when the doors open at 7. With the HealthCare.gov website now working better, the hospital is helping more than 100 people a day look over and enroll in plans. "We've reached out to 22,000 of our patients," said Marian Morrow, Parkland's patient financial service manager, in the crowded enrollment office. In 2012, Parkland provided $685 million in uncompensated care for its mostly uninsured patient population and for those who...

Despite being one of the bluest states in the country and one of the first to implement state based Obamacare exchanges, doctors in California are boycotting Obamacare...a whopping 70 percent of them. An estimated seven out of every 10 physicians in deep-blue California are rebelling against the state's Obamacare health insurance exchange and won't participate, the head of the state's largest medical association said. So why exactly the push back? Under Obamcare, doctors are practically expected to work for free. “We need some recognition that we’re doing a service to the community. But we can’t do it for free. And...

Just as cars can’t go anywhere without drivers and employees can’t work without bosses, health care doesn’t happen when there are no doctors around. And when an estimated 70 percent of the doctors in the nation’s deepest-blue state are rebelling against Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act is forcing a critical decision: America will have to junk Obamacare and go back to square one on health insurance reform, or trash the last vestige of private health care in this country by forcing doctors to do the government’s bidding. The rebellion among California physicians was detailed earlier this week by Washington Examiner...

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...

In the latest in the Paper of Record’s recent series on their gradually creeping realization that There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch: ObamaCare Edition, the NYT has a story out this morning that hones in on the Obama administration’s desire to tout premiums that sound as gloriously low as is humanly possible — even if that means deliberately obfuscating the ways in which insurance companies are now looking to make up the increased costs of the overhaul in other, less immediately obvious areas. The Obama administration will herald what appear to be “affordable” premiums available to so...

"....Obama shut down the federal government rather than delay UFA's individual mandate provision though he keeps exempting new favored blocs and delaying various provisions. Instead he's cranked up the propaganda machine, particularly the stuff aimed at the young. The efforts have been ridiculous, a clear sign, I suppose of how little regard he has for the intellectual capacity of those who voted disproportionately for him (a point on which he and I are in rare agreement}.By way of example, HHS named as a winner of their video propaganda outreach one entry which is titled "Forget About the Price Tag."In a...

If you want to keep your doctor, you might have to pay more for it, Obamacare architect Zeke Emanuel said today on Fox News Sunday: The host, Chris Wallace, said: "President Obama famously promised, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Doesn't that turn out to be just as false, just as misleading, as his promise about if you like your plan, you can keep your plan? Isn't it a fact, sir, that a number, most, in fact, of the Obamacare health plans that are being offered on the exchanges exclude a number of doctors and hospitals...

CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: President Obama famously promised, if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Doesn't that turn out to be just as false, just as misleading, as his promise about if you like your plan you can keep your plan? Isn't it a fact, sir, that a number, most, in fact, of the Obamacare health plans that are being offered on the exchanges exclude a number of doctors and hospitals to lower costs? EZEKIEL EMANUEL: The president never said you were going to have unlimited choice of any doctor in the country you want to go to....

An estimated seven out of every 10 physicians in deep-blue California are rebelling against the state's Obamacare health insurance exchange and won't participate, the head of the state's largest medical association said. [Snip] If a large number of doctors either balk at participating in the exchange or retire, the state’s medical system could be overwhelmed. No one is more aware of this than Alex Briscoe, health director for Alameda County Health Care Services Agency, which includes Oakland. “Enrollment doesn’t mean access, because there aren’t enough doctors to take the low rates of Medicaid,” he said. “There aren’t enough primary care...

The rise of nonphysician providers will enable more team care. Skilled health aides will monitor patients at home and alert a doctor if certain medical parameters decline. Nurses will provide wound care to diabetic patients, adjust medications like blood thinners and provide the initial management of chemotherapy side effects for cancer patients. Pharmacists will provide more counseling and urgent care. Physicians will remain essential to the proper diagnosis and treatment of disease, but will be backed up by teams who will help manage the more routine features of chronic illness.

Remember those Medicare cuts that the Democrats and the White House used to make Obamacare appear budget-neutral on paper? The ones that Republicans somewhat hypocritically railed against during the 2010 election cycle? Well, that didn’t make the cuts any less real. So add 14 million more people that Obama lied to — er, “misspoke” to — with his famous “you can keep it” promise...

Eleven Republican doctors are running for the Senate, hoping that voters will see their medical expertise as an asset amid the administration’s botched rollout of ObamaCare. “Doctors are in a very unique position to look at the financing of healthcare,” Rep. Paul Broun, a family physician running for the GOP nomination for Georgia’s open Senate seat, told The Hill. “We go into medicine for one reason, and one reason only: Because we care about people, we want the people who we serve to have a productive, happy, healthy life,” he added. “That’s the kind of policymaker we should have in...

One wonders what the New York Times has been doing the past few years while conservatives were very vociferously warning about the entirely predictable, pending phenomenon: But now, as California’s Medicaid program is preparing for a major expansion under President Obama’s health care law, Dr. Mazer says he cannot accept additional patients under the government insurance program for a simple reason: It does not pay enough.“It’s a bad situation that is likely to be made worse,” he said.His view is shared by many doctors around the country. Medicaid for years has struggled with a shortage of doctors willing to accept...

Nearly four in 10 seniors worry ObamaCare will cause them to lose doctors they like, despite President Obama's repeated promise to the contrary, according to the latest IBD/TIPP Poll. That translates into nearly 16 million people age 65 and over. Their concerns appear to be justified. Many seniors are, in fact, already losing access to their doc tors, and more than half a million are losing access to plans they liked this year, as $200 billion in ObamaCare-mandated cuts to the popular Medicare Advantage program start to take effect. Earlier this month, seniors learned that UnitedHealth (UNH) is dropping thousands...

Obamacare applicants across the country are finding their premiums are tripling, their favorite doctors aren't available, the physicians they can see are often far away and many prestigious hospitals offering specialized care are off-limits to them, according to a Washington Examiner survey of health insurance agents and brokers across the country. Agents associated with the National Association of Health Underwriters were contacted in 16 cites across the country.

WASHINGTON — Many doctors are disturbed that they’ll be paid less – often a lot less – to care for the millions of patients who are projected to buy coverage through the health law’s new insurance marketplaces. Some have complained to medical associations – including those in Texas, California, Georgia, Connecticut and New York – saying the discounted rates could lead to a two-tiered system in which fewer doctors participate, perhaps making it harder for consumers to get the care they need. “As it is, there is a shortage of primary care physicians in the country, and they don’t have...

As Americans have begun shopping for health plans on the insurance exchanges, they are discovering that insurers are restricting their choice of doctors and hospitals in order to keep costs low, and that many of the plans exclude top-rated hospitals. The Obama administration made it a priority to keep down the cost of insurance on the exchanges, the online marketplaces that are central to the Affordable Care Act. But one way that insurers have been able to offer lower rates is by creating networks that are far smaller than what most Americans are accustomed to. The decisions have provoked a...

If there were any shreds of hope left that the stunning decline of the middle class could be turned around, Obamacare has absolutely destroyed them. Over the past decade or so, the middle class in the United States has been absolutely eviscerated. The number of working age Americans without a job has increased by 27 million since the year 2000, median household income in the U.S. has fallen for five years in a row, and the poverty numbers in this country are spiraling out of control. And now here comes Obamacare. As you will see below, Obamacare is causing millions...

Consumers have suffered sticker shock when they try to enroll in Obamacare's health insurance exchanges, but soon those same consumers may be faced with far fewer choices of doctors and hospitals.Insurance companies that participate in the exchanges say they have to narrow consumers' choice of health care providers to keep medical costs and premiums from soaring even higher than they already have."What we are trying to do is create better price points," an official with the insurer WellPoint told the Washington Examiner. "Something that will be very attractive to consumers across the board. So, we are narrowing and focusing" the...