Posted on 10/28/2011 10:10:27 PM PDT by george76
California plans to reduce payments to many Medi-Cal providers by 10%. The federal government's approval of the budget-cutting measure raises concerns from doctors and others.
The Obama administration will allow California to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from Medi-Cal, a move doctors and experts say will make it harder for the poor to get medical treatment.
California plans to reduce rates by 10% to many providers, including physicians, dentists, clinics, pharmacies and most nursing homes, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Thursday.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Where did the money go? Oh that’s right...funding tuition for illegal aliens.
Plus we have the 5,400 educators getting 100,000+ pensions.
The state will not allow the doctors to say no. They will, if necessary, chain them to the office walls and force them to treat patients, feeding the doctors on about 1200 calories a day. Idiotic? This is California. We re-elected Gov. Moonbeam last year!
MediCal is rife with fraud. If they would do something about the fraud they wouldn’t have to pay the providers 10% less.
“Oh that’s right...funding tuition for illegal aliens.”
So they’re robbing Pedro to pay Pablo; tuition for illegals instead of healthcare for illegals.
Wonder where California’s poor will move to?
“Plus we have the 5,400 educators getting 100,000+ pensions.”
Here in NJ we have similar problems, which are a huge albatross around the neck of any government (state, county, municipal) in terms of attracting new business or residents. This past winter, as our roads fell into disrepair, many were simply not fixed; the towns had no money to fix them because they were still paying so much for the guys that used to fix them who retired fifteen years ago. These costs killed the US auto industry in their competition with foreign manufacturers, and they’re killing whole areas of the “Rust Belt” in competition with developing areas (the South, for example).
California’s government was furious as the news of their financial straits were publicized; the icing on the cake was when details of the “early release” program in prisons made the news. How could they attract new businesses (or retain existing ones) when they knew they’d be taxed to make up these shortfalls, while crime skyrocketed at the same time?
Hopeless.
Hope & Change.
All the convalescent and assisted living facilities will soon be going out of business in CA. Believe me.. I know The state of CA has imposed a bed tax of $8.10 per bed... per day.. whether they have anyone in them or not. And now they are cutting Medi-Cal 10%... making it veritably impossible to run the homes. I am on such a board and we figure that we only have a few more years to assist our seniors and then go bankrupt. But hey, all college bound illegals will get free student loans.
Dramatic cost cuts for healthcare services provided to the poor will only hasten the demise of private insurance, and the Obamination and his team know that full well.
The first thing that happens is hospitals and others (who have any negotiating clout) will double their rate increase demands for the shrinking population of private HMO/PPO insurance plans. Such plans already pay hospitals in California more than double what the state of California pays, and perhaps 60 to 70% more than what the feds pay for Medicare.
It is a massive hidden tax on the privately insured. The cumulative effect is pushing the costs of private insurance to the breaking point; pricing it out of the market in order to subsidize woefully inadequate public insurance for the otherwise uninsured.
Doubtless there are those on MediCal who don’t deserve it. However, the reality is that there are a growing number of poor who are covered by MediCal, and there are other uninsured working (kind of poor) people who will continue to rely on Safety Net hospitals for free care through the Emergency Departments. That subsidy and free care will be paid for - there is no free lunch. If the payment won’t come through taxes, then it will come through the hidden tax on the privately insured. This represents a narrow and shrinking tax base; and it omits from the taxed those who are on Medicare, Medicaid and those without any insurance at all.
A better tax (better than the hidden tax on the shrinking privately insured) would be a broad based tax - explicitly placed; not hidden.
What people are missing is that in a few more years of this nonsense and private insurance will be dead and all that will be left for most Americans is: Medicare, Medicaid, ObamaCare. Not a pretty picture.
Gummit health care is so wasteful
Rick Perry would approve.
Dog it, it always has to be the emergency rooms that get tied up. Everybody knows it, so why not make accommodations for mini clinics operating in parallel so the hordes of sniffly kids can go there saving the ERs a bundle as well as saving lives that actually need an ER?
10% is a "large cut?"
On what planet?
This is a tiny first step. Medical is a fraud on the State working taxpayer. This is a tiny meaningless step.
Cut the entire Medi-Cal program and put it in the open, add it to the welfare programs, where it belongs, and let everyone debate it there.
you do understand that Medi-cal is funder by the fed and the state and it is a welfare program
Doctors are no longer going to see patients. California wants them to take a 10% cut to their income.
How would you like to see it happen to you? The poor will get no health care in CA. That’s how liberals define “affordable and accessible” health care.
Obamacare at work.
But the illegals will not be touched
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.