Free Republic

Brian Kemp’s election as governor likely means that full-fledged Medicaid expansion will remain off the table in Georgia, at least for a while. Republican Kemp, who will take office in January, opposed Medicaid expansion during the campaign, while Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams strongly supported it. Gov. Nathan Deal and his fellow Republicans who control the Georgia General Assembly have resisted expansion since it became an option for states several years ago. But there may be other health care ideas coming under a Kemp administration that can bring coverage to more Georgians. And those ideas come under the general heading of...

On a sunny, cold Sunday in November, Victoria Laverde walked up to an information table at Plaza Las Americas in Lilburn and asked for federal help in signing up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. It’s exactly what officials under the Trump administration hoped would happen when they made big changes to funding for ACA navigation. The government has made news as it stripped down the grant money, reducing Georgia’s enrollment navigator funding to $499,995, down from $1.4 million last year and $3.7 million in 2016. It’s virtually eliminated advertising, and it fired the major statewide nonprofits that...

HHS Secretary Alex Azar on Wednesday said Medicaid may soon allow hospitals and health systems to directly pay for housing, healthy food or other solutions for the "whole person." In a speech supported by the Hatch Foundation for Civility and Solutions and Intermountain Healthcare in Washington, Azar said Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation officials are looking to move beyond existing efforts to partner with social services groups and try to manage social determinants of health as they see appropriate. "What if we gave organizations more flexibility so they could pay a beneficiary's rent if they were in unstable housing,...

As we have noted in earlier correspondence, this change is necessary to expand (public) beneficiaries’ access to preventive services The drug also is very expensive, at nearly $1,676 for a 30-day supply, The proposed recommendations are open for public comment until Dec. 26. Stuart Caplan RN, MAS Lead Analyst Office of Clinical Standards and Quality Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Mail Stop C1-09-06 7500 Security Boulevard Baltimore, Maryland 21244-1850 Already commented: African American Health Alliance, AIDS Action Baltimore, AIDS Alabama, AIDS Alliance for Women, Infants, Children, Youth & Families, AIDS Foundation of Chicago, The AIDS Institute, AIDS Legal Referral...

A little more than 1.9 million people signed up for health insurance in the first three weeks of the Affordable Care Act open enrollment for 2019 coverage. That compares with almost 2.3 million during the first three weeks of open enrollment last year, which included an additional day. Americans are signing up for coverage through the federal marketplace at a slower rate this year, but the CMS numbers don't include enrollment in states that operate their own exchanges. It also does not include those who will be automatically enrolled in plans during the last week of open enrollment, which ends...

... Although we have not observed direct evidence that actors have manipulated the electoral process in any major national or regional election by infiltrating the systems or hardware used to record or tally votes, the sheer complexity of these systems prevents us from categorically stating that these systems have not been successfully compromised ...

While Georgians may not yet know who will occupy the Governor’s Mansion in January, there is something Georgians know for sure: They want Medicaid expansion. A recent AJC poll found that 73 percent of Georgians, including 51 percent of Republicans, support expanding Medicaid. Georgians know that expanding Medicaid will allow those without insurance to finally get the coverage they need and deserve. This is true for all Georgians, but is especially true for women, particularly those that live outside of metro Atlanta. The state is currently failing its women. Georgia ranks 48th among the states for health insurance coverage for...

Virginia is facing a huge bill for unexpected Medicaid costs that hamper proposed new spending on things like school improvements or tax breaks for the poor. State officials said Friday that Virginia has about $460 million in unforeseen Medicaid costs. The new costs, first reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, are unrelated to Virginia’s recent decision to expand Medicaid eligibility to low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act. Instead, Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne said much of the new costs stem from faulty forecasts overestimating the benefits of having private health insurers cover a greater number of some of the state’s...

The current political debate over Medicaid has centered on the idea of putting patients to work so they can earn their government benefits. Yet some experts say the country would be better served by asking this question instead: Are insurance companies — which receive hundreds of billions in public money — earning their Medicaid checks? More than two-thirds of Medicaid recipients are enrolled in such programs, a type of public-private arrangement that has grown rapidly since 2014, boosted by the influx of new beneficiaries under the Affordable Care Act. States have eagerly tapped into the services of insurers as one...

Support from family and community appear to shield Latinos from rising suicide rates. ... experience illustrates a “suicide paradox,” experts say. Even though Latinos face economic disadvantages and other stress in their lives, their suicide rate is about one-third that of non-Hispanic whites, both in Texas and nationally. Experts attribute the relatively low suicide rate among Latinos to the culture’s strong family and community support systems, which appear to provide some degree of protection. In Texas, the suicide rate among non-Hispanic whites has been steadily increasing during the past 16 years, from 13.4 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2000 to...

Early voting takes place in person before Election Day. You don’t need an excuse to vote early — you can vote early even if you are capable of voting at the polls on Election Day. Most states offer early voting at this point. Delaware, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, South Carolina, and Virginia will let you vote early ONLY if you have a valid excuse for not voting on Election Day. This is technically NOT early voting, although it does take place before Election Day. We call this “absentee in-person voting.”

Recruiting technology could be contributing to a higher unemployment rate for young veterans. A startup run by a former sub commander is attempting to change this. Young veterans have a much higher unemployment rate than their civilian counterparts, and recruiting technology may share some of the blame. The problem is that military skills aren't translating well into civilian skills. Noel Gonzalez, a former submarine commanding officer, is trying to change this. Gonzalez is heading a startup, SkillMil, a recent spinoff by SRI International, a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit research institute. SkillMil's recruiting technology can extract military training and certifications from records...

We estimate the extent of defensive medicine by physicians, embracing the no-liability counterfactual made possible by the structure of liability rules in the Military Heath System. Active-duty patients seeking treatment from military facilities cannot sue for harms resulting from negligent care, while protections are provided to dependents treated at military facilities and to all patients—active-duty or not—that receive care from civilian facilities. Drawing on this variation and exploiting exogenous shocks to care location choices stemming from base-hospital closures, we find suggestive evidence that liability immunity reduces inpatient spending with no measurable negative effect on patient outcomes.

"One of the unintentional consequences of GDPR is the strengthening of the duopoly," said Gil Elbaz, a former Google executive who now runs the marketing firm Factual. "If Google continues to go unchecked, their dominance will be extreme." Google is still raking in marketing dollars from advertisers, propelling the online search giant to another strong quarter in the face of costly regulatory trouble in Europe. Parent company Alphabet reported second-quarter revenue, minus partner payouts, of $26.24 billion during the second quarter. Google's advertising business grew 24 percent. Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said most of that came from mobile and...

Objective To describe liver disease related mortality in the United States during 1999-2016 by age group, sex, race, cause of liver disease, and geographic region. Based on Death certificate data from the Vital Statistics Cooperative, and population data from the US Census Bureau compiled by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (1999-2016). From 1999 to 2016 in the US annual deaths from cirrhosis increased by 65%, to 34 174, while annual deaths from hepatocellular carcinoma doubled to 11,073. Annual increases in cirrhosis related mortality were most pronounced for Native Americans (4.0%, 2.2% to 5.7%)....

Despite receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money, Medicaid insurers are lax in ferreting out fraud and neglect to tell states about unscrupulous medical providers, according to a federal report released Thursday. The U.S. Health and Human Services’ inspector general’s office said a third of the health plans it examined had referred fewer than 10 cases each of suspected fraud or abuse to state Medicaid officials in 2015 for further investigation. Two insurers in the program, which serves low-income Americans, didn’t identify a single case all year, the report found. Some health plans terminated providers from their networks for fraud...

Most SNAP recipients spend ... early it increases food insecurity. 39% spend 2/3 of monthly benefit in the first 4 days. 14% of GA households are food insecure. Over 1.6 million (16%) utilized $2.54b in SNAP in GA. Few statistically significant differences explain why spending patterns are so different. We hoped we would be able to find something that said the ‘patient’ people do this and ‘impatient’ people do that, but we did not, Dorfman said. I guess it comes down to personality. Many households are connected to SNAP through local food banks and caseworkers at state agencies, DFCS, Camardelle...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants to research whether gay and transgender people of color could receive better access to care and experience reduced HIV infection rates if they discuss insurance coverage with their providers earlier. The agency is seeking approval from the White House's Office of Management and Budget to launch the study in Chicago, focusing on black and Hispanic males who have sex with men and transgender persons. The CDC will work with community partners to help people connect to coverage. Gay men accounted for 81% of new HIV infections among males and 65% of all...

Townhall columnists Wayne Allyn Root Opinion A Message For Christians About Donald Trump Wayne Allyn Root Wayne Allyn Root | Posted: Jun 24, 2016 12:01 AM The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com. A Message For Christians About Donald Trump Trending Kurt Schlichter It Is Terrible To Be A Liberal In 2018 – Which Is Awesome Derek Hunter The Liberal Mob Won’t Stop Until Someone Gets Killed, And Then Only Maybe Larry Elder Criminal Behavior, Not Racism, Explains 'Racial Disparities' in Crime Stats I am a Jew turned evangelical Christian. I...

A social movement of public health vaccine opposition has been growing in the United States in recent years; subsequently, measles outbreaks have also increased. Since 2009, the number of “philosophical-belief” vaccine nonmedical exemptions (NMEs) has risen in 12 of the 18 states that currently allow this policy: Arkansas (AR), Arizona (AZ), Idaho (ID), Maine (ME), Minnesota (MN), North Dakota (ND), Ohio (OH), Oklahoma (OK), Oregon (OR), Pennsylvania (PA), Texas (TX), and Utah (UT). Several US “hotspot” metropolitan areas stand out for their very large numbers of NMEs. They include Seattle, WA, Spokane, WA, and Portland, OR in the Northwest; Phoenix,...