Free Republic

10 states did not fall for the Medicaid expansion trap under Obamacare. The rest are suffering. Private payers (you, one way or another) make up the loss.. Medicaid Expansion Puts Hospitals at Risk.. The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) reports Medicaid Expansion Dramatically Increases Hospital Shortfalls emphasis mine. Medicaid expansion ushered in through ObamaCare has led to program enrollment growth well beyond what was promised or projected. While proponents argue that expansion is a silver bullet to keep hospitals financially secure, this is simply not true. Because Medicaid does not pay enough to cover the costs to hospitals to provide...

With all of the new bad news coming out this week from ObamaCare, here’s another horror story about the Healthcare.gov exchange from Utah that exemplifies the incompetence of government bureaucracy. One basic and nearly ubiquitous feature of health care — and indeed of family life — is the birth of children. Health insurance plans have made it simple to add children to family plans for decades, allowing new moms and dads to have the costs of childbirth covered ex post facto, as long as the covered individual notified the insurer within a set period of time, usually 30 days. Now,...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A state official says a glitch in the federal health insurance marketplace has affected about 18,000 West Virginians trying to sign up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Jeremiah Samples of the state Department of Health and Human Resources tells the Charleston Gazette (http://bit.ly/1higldL ) the federal exchange is having problems transferring account information to and from West Virginia's system. He says some other states are having the same problem.

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...

David Plouffe, former Obama senior adviser and ABC News contributor says Obamacare Will ‘Work Really Well’ By 2017 Former Obama senior adviser and ABC News contributor David Plouffe said on “This Week” Sunday that the Affordable Care Act will “work really well” when all states run their own health care exchanges and fully expand Medicaid – actions that may not be seen until President Obama is out of office in 2017. “This program was designed to be implemented by the states. And in most of the states that are running their exchanges it’s going quite well,” Plouffe told ABC’s...

Now that the Big Lie has been exposed for everyone to see, it’s going to take some time for it to sufficiently sink in. I imagine most low-information voters who don’t follow politics regularly -- the obvious exception being people who’ve already been negatively impacted by the Affordable Care Act -- aren’t too familiar with the president’s now-broken “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” pledge. That will all change soon enough. Now, of course, when Americans head to the grocery store -- or perhaps to their local pharmacy -- this cover will...

Obama: 'I'm sorry' Americans are losing insurance Associated Press By JULIE PACE 3 hours ago WASHINGTON (AP) — Seeking to calm a growing furor, President Barack Obama said Thursday he's sorry Americans are losing health insurance plans he repeatedly said they could keep under his signature health care law. But the president stopped short of apologizing for making those promises in the first place. "I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," he said in an interview with NBC News. Signaling possible tweaks to the law, Obama said his administration...

Administration officials were concerned that once users were able to view the available policies for purchase on HealthCare.gov, they could be disappointed with the cost and options available. The concerns were expressed in meeting notes from the ObamaCare "war room" obtained by CNN. "In some cases, there will be fewer options than would be desired to promote consumer choice and an ideal shopping experience," the meeting notes read. "Additionally, in some cases there will be relatively high cost plans." The discussion last week among officials at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight appeared to reveal a behind-the-scenes concern...

When it comes to Obamacare, the big date we’ve heard for a long time is Jan. 1, 2014. That’s the day the Affordable Care Act takes full effect, requiring most Americans to be covered, or pay a fine. We’ve also heard that there’s a grace period — that in this first year, people have until March 31 get covered before the fine will kick in. But, whoops! It turns out that Mar. 31 date is wrong, the Obama administration confirmed to the Associated Press on Wednesday. In order to have coverage by March 31, you need to enroll by Feb....

Okay, so if the Continuing Resolution that was supposed to fund the National Parks, Obamacare, and etc. hasn't been passed and the Fed has now had to shut down the parks and etc. due to a lack of funding then why isn't Obamacare being shut down? Is anyone asking this question because I haven't seen it or heard it being asked anywhere.

The new health-care exchanges created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, have been in the news lately. And not in a good way. The system has been overwhelmed with traffic and plagued by bugs. Who built the system? And why are they having so many problems? Read on to find out. What do the Obamacare exchange websites do? The exchanges are online marketplace where millions of Americans who don't receive health insurance from their employers will be able to purchase coverage. The system is designed to work like any other e-commerce site. Users can...

As a retired computer systems manager, I am always fascinated by large, complex software systems that fail -- such as the Federal ObamaCare "insurance exchange" currently being rolled out at HealthCare.gov. This software monstrosity is now in its second week, and most people trying to use it still can't get into the system, or else they can't create an account on it, or their account information is lost. I, and you, can follow this unfolding disaster at any time in the comments section on HealthCare.gov's own Facebook page, at https://www.facebook.com/Healthcare.gov. (You do not need a Facebook account to view this...

ABC on Wednesday morning dismissed Ted Cruz as "bizarre." But that night on the network's World News, reporter Jeff Zeleny  featured a man who will lose his health coverage because of ObamaCare. In a noticeable break from Good Morning America's coverage, Zeleny also allowed, "The bottom line for millions: many young and healthy will likely pay more while older and sick Americans get a break and costs vary widely." On GMA, Zeleny skipped the substance of Cruz's complaints against the health care law. On World News, the journalist conceded, "[Cruz] told story after story how families are bracing for ObamaCare." Zeleny highlighted,...

To understand the crisis in Washington, tune out the histrionics and look at the big picture: Republicans are threatening to shut down the federal government — and perhaps even refuse to let the Treasury pay its creditors — in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to keep millions of Americans from getting health insurance. Seriously. That’s what all the yelling and screaming is about. As my grandmother used to say, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Eugene Robinson Writes about politics and culture in twice-a-week columns and on the PostPartisan blog. Archive Follow on TwitterFacebookRSSGallery Tom Toles on health...

When Sarah Palin said Obama’s healthcare plan would result in “death panels” that would see bureaucrats making subjective judgements on life and death, she was furiously howled down by Obama supporters. So how should we describe the expert panel of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which decided that patients will be denied a new cancer drug on the NHS under draft guidelines, because it is too expensive? Charities are outraged people with advanced liver cancer are to be refused life-extending Nexavar. Andrew Dillon, of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said: “The drug does not...