Posted on 11/01/2013 9:35:01 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The first month of the new health law’s rollout reveals an unexpected pattern in several states: a crush of people applying for an expansion of Medicaid and a trickle of sign-ups for private insurance.
This early imbalance — in some places, nine out of 10 enrollees are in Medicaid — has taken some experts by surprise. The Affordable Care Act, which expanded Medicaid to cover millions of the poorest Americans who couldn’t otherwise afford coverage, envisions a more even split with an expanded, robust private market.
“When we first saw the numbers, everyone’s eyes kind of bugged out,” said Matt Salo, who runs the National Association of Medicaid Directors. “Of the people walking through the door, 90 percent are on Medicaid. We’re thinking, what planet is this happening on?”
The yawning gap between public and private enrollment is handing Republicans yet another line of criticism against President Obama’s health overhaul — that the law is primarily becoming an expansion of a costly entitlement program.
Supporters, however, caution against reading too much into the early numbers. Some of the states that set up their own exchanges, including Maryland, are suffering Web site glitches similar to those of the national system, and that is delaying private plan enrollments.....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Closing the VA and putting them into medicaid, eventually that will be the vehicle for everyone’s medical plans.
Medicaid equal taxes! No way out of it... Now for veterans, I can see that easily, it is just that the rest of the “free for me society” is on board also... Such is life among the takers...(screw the veterans, they only fought for those rights).
I’ve been dreaming more than usual when asleep. A week ago I dreamt I had received a parcel post package along with all other servicemen who had been discharged, that was wrapped in plastic, about 1.5 inches tall x 3’6” long by about 18” wide with instructions.
It was labeled as a collapsible coffin. Obama had determined the VA Benefits obligated the govt to provide every serviceman a coffin upon death, but to keep the liabilities down, and warehousing costs low, they delivered collapsible coffins to everybody with VA Benefits, thereby meeting the obligation and not having to waste any more resources on death benefits to families.
Dream was pretty vivid. The collapsible coffin had plastic and cardboard inserts, which one placed like opening a collapsible storage box, with burlap sides, into which a body bag would late be placed and the entire cardboard coffin buried or cremated.
My associates think I should patent the idea,..but I’ll document it here first,...;^)
Just how much longer can these so called "experts" continue to be surprised by these "unexpected" events before the liberal media acknowledges that they might not be such good experts afterall?
EBT card crowd gets free healthcare.
Middle Class gets a $10,000 yearly family deductible.
Above $75,000AGI, a $20,000 yearly deductible.
Unions, government workers, and politicians get a free ride, as if poor.
It's really a simple plan. They can fix medicaid and medicare, VA care, all in one shot. All the deductibles for those over 62 will just be putting back what's paid out by SSI, so that fixes social security too.
Here in Washington state, where just about every elected official is a Democrat, Medicaid is only available to children, pregnant women, and people on SSI.
An able bodied adult under 65 is NOT eligible here, no matter how poor.
I believe all states have the discretion to add more benefits or broaden eligibility, but few actually do.
ObamaCare will make millions of new people - perhaps tens of millions - eligible for Medicaid.
In retrospect, it would have been vastly simpler, and much less expensive, just to expand Medicaid by $150 billion per year.
The 40 million uninsured would have health care, and the insane ObamaCare law would have been completely unnecessary.
Do you recall the identity of those 45 million uninsured?
Approximately 1/4 were making at least $75K, but chose not to buy health insurance.
Another 1/4 were working, but were less affluent, and couldn't afford to buy health insurance.
Approximately 1/4 were eligible for Medicaid, but had never applied for it -- likely because they had never needed it.
And approximately 1/4 were illegal aliens.
So the "problem" actually devolved down to about 11 million people uninsured. And Obamacare upset the applecart for 255 million insured people who were otherwise satisfied with their situation just to serve those 11 million.
Of course, insuring the uninsured was never what Obamacare was about, anyway. It was about power and control over the American people.
[This early imbalance — in some places, nine out of 10 enrollees are in Medicaid — has taken some experts by surprise.]
Bwahahaha, Unexpected. Everybody drink!
It isn’t like we conservatives didn’t expect this.
Can you say “death spiral”. I knew you could.
Who would have guessed that young people who don’t want expensive insurance would opt for the least pricy option?
The expansion of Medicaid eligibility by 38% will assure automatic Democrat votes increases. Add to that the Amnesty features, it will assure enough Democrat voters to perpetuate our socialist leadership.
Why are they surprised that so many went for the freebie?
Only a fool would trust democrats with MORE power over health care - single payer is a dead issue.
How in the hell can they possibly know this? Everyone knows that no data will be available until at least mid-November...I heard it during the Committee bloviations and questioning of the MediCaid chickadee.
The rap on Medicaid is the system's so corrupt honest doctors won't accept Medicaid payments or Medicaid patients. Corrupt doctors and their government enablers milk the system for billions.
The end result will be that honest citizens FORCED into ObamaCare will discover they can't find a doctor to accept their so-called 'health insurance'.
That will be the second shoe to drop.
It will also be the beginning of the war against doctors and the medical system.
“So the “problem” actually devolved down to about 11 million people uninsured. And Obamacare upset the applecart for 255 million insured people who were otherwise satisfied with their situation just to serve those 11 million. Of course, insuring the uninsured was never what Obamacare was about, anyway. It was about power and control over the American people.”
This is worth repeating.
When the ACA starts to be unsustainable, and the opposition is ordered to present their “plan”, massive Medicaid expansion will be part of it, unavoidably.
And they never saw this coming?
I guess they had to pass it to see what was in it.
States will declare bankruptcy.
Here is what changed, and where all of these new-sign-ups are coming from.
Prior to the affordable care act, to be eligible for medicaid coverage,
a person had to satisfy two tests:
-belong to an “eligible group”
(parent with dependent children, children, pregnant, blind, disabled, elderly, etc.).
-and meet the financial test
(income threshold as a % of the federal poverty level or FPL) set by the state for that group.
The affordable care act did two things:
-it added a new “eligible group” defined as “all persons not previously included”
(young, healthy, non-disabled adults with no dependent children).
-it lowered the income eligibility threshold for all “eligible groups”.
“...participating states must cover all residents ages 19 to 65
who have a household income below 138% of the federal poverty level (FPL).
This includes any resident who’s household income is below
$15,400 for an individual, and $32,000 for a family of four...”
For reference and additional reading see this FR thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3084084/posts
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Which has comments on this article:
The hidden truth behind early Obamacare numbers: It’s not what it seems.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/26/politics/obamacare-medicaid-enroll/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
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Summarized from the article:
According to Matt Salo, the executive director
of the National Association of Medicaid Directors:
...the states are aggressively targeting people they think might be eligible for Medicaid,
...the states already know the names of the people who are on food stamps,
or some other kind of state or locally funded health program,
...the states already know who these people are,
...the states already know where these people are,
...the states already know what their income is,
...the states already know these people are OK with accepting government benefits,
...so the states are actively recruiting these people,
...and there should be no surprise that these people are being enrolled.
LOL!! Don’t know where you got that, but it’s priceless!
“Only a fool would trust democrats with MORE power over health care - single payer is a dead issue.”
Sure. Only a fool would twice elect an inexperienced, un-vetted community organizer as president. Only a fool would allow this guy and his cronies to run the national debt up beyond 17 trillion and “stabilize” our economy by printing 85 billion dollars a month. And only a nation of fools would believe this guy’s ridiculous lies and let him turn our health care system into a massive redistribution of wealth scheme.
The evidence is right before our eyes. Obama, Pelosi and Reid have all freely admitted to being in favor of a Single-Payer system. Oh, they might call it something else, they might keep a few heavy regulated insurance companies around to preserve the illusion of a free market, but Single-Payer is the Utopia they are working towards.
The Affordable Health Care Act is designed to massively expand Medicaid’s enrollment, and that is the only aspect of the whole thing that is currently working.
America desperately needs an opposition party strong enough to stand up to this atrocity.
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