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The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) suspended enforcement of its vaccine mandate for healthcare workers after two court orders earlier this week.A memo issued by the agency, posted by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Twitter Thursday, said that CMS “remains confident” it will prevail in court but is “suspending activities related to the implementation and enforcement of this rule pending future development in the litigation.”“While these preliminary injunctions are in effect,” it continues to say, “CMS surveyors must not survey providers for compliance with the requirements” with the rule. The memo is referring to federal government...

Judge Matthew Schelp of the Eastern District of Missouri issued an injunction halting President Joe Biden's Wuhan coronavirus vaccine mandate for Medicare and Medicaid workers in ten states Monday, citing a lack of approval from Congress. "The mandate requires nearly every employee, volunteer, and third-party contractor working at fifteen catogires of healthcare facilities to be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 (“COVID”) and to have received at least a first dose of the vaccine prior to December 6, 2021," court documents show. "Congress did not grant CMS authority to mandate the vaccine. Plaintiffs are likely to succeed in their argument that Congress has...

The White House also warned health care facilities the government will terminate them from Medicare and Medicaid programs as further punishment if they did not comply with the mandate.

Health provisions remain a sticking point in spending package amid efforts to reduce price tag, rally factions Democrats’ sweeping plans to bolster Medicare and Medicaid benefits have been scaled back amid an assault from industry groups and opposition from centrists like Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), with popular coverage expansions likely to be narrowed in hopes of reaching a deal this week. U.S. coronavirus cases tracker and map A proposal to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision benefits is in danger of falling from the tax-and-spending package rapidly taking shape in Congress. A framework to expand Medicaid to...

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress offered states more federal dollars to help pay for their growing Medicaid rolls. Distracted by the crisis in front of them, many state leaders hardly even noticed the handcuffs that were slipped on as the extra cash changed hands. But more federal funding inevitably means more federal control—and now states are realizing they have been locked into a Medicaid straitjacket, with only one option to break free and restore program integrity: opt out. Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, Congress gave states an additional 6.2 percent of federal funding for states’...

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Wednesday said it would be “unAmerican” not to prioritize Medicaid expansion in the Democrats's social spending package amid an intra-party clash over health care priorities. Clyburn is a leading advocate of including in President Biden’s Build Back Better plan a provision for the federal government to step in and provide Medicaid coverage in the 12 GOP-led states that have so far declined the coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

States are putting caps on prices, and Semglee, the first interchangeable biosimilar in the United States, may exert some downward pressure. More than 30 million Americans have diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association, and many rely on insulin. But insulin prices have been rising in recent years, and that has put many people with diabetes at risk because the price leads to people skipping doses or not taking insulin altogether. The latest figures from the American Action Forum show that the price of insulin rose 14% a year, on average, between 2012 and 2018, and the past few years...

While the California recall, Nicki Minaj’s thoughts on the COVID vaccine and testicles, and General Milley’s insane rogue operation are dominating headlines, the Biden administration is quietly moving ahead with a plan that will cost many taxpayers a lot at the pharmacy. This follows the media’s complete ignoring of Mississippi launching a lawsuit against insulin makers for actions that allegedly held insulin prices up artificially high, the media’s constant depiction of Democrats as the only party focused on drug prices even though a bunch of proposals Democrats are now pursuing actually emanated from Donald Trump, the media ignoring Sen. Charles...

Americans are learning and relearning many lessons from the coronavirus pandemic. One is the importance of allowing drug companies to innovate. In the United States, where the federal government encouraged pharmaceutical innovation, three companies came up with effective vaccines within a few months. Contrast that with China, where the government controls everything (especially prices). China also produced vaccines; but they don’t work very well. If you doubt me, just ask people in Thailand and Indonesia, which stopped using Chinese vaccines this summer. It’s not simply COVID-19 at issue, though. It’s prescription drugs in general. Lawmakers in the House and Senate...

In his recent $6 trillion budget proposal, President Biden called for increasing government health care spending by 23%. Though well-intended, his budget outlines the wrong way to reform health care: It funnels more spending into inefficient bureaucracies, without fixing the root problems in the health care system. Instead, policymakers should look to promising reforms focused on modernizing outdated rules and bureaucracies to reduce health costs. This is especially urgent today as America is running a record $2 trillion budget deficit and 78% of Americans are concerned about inflation—which is primarily driven by the rise in government spending. Since 2000, government...

The federal government has become so desperate to get Americans vaccinated against COVID-19 that it plans to hold Medicare and Medicaid payments hostage. On Wednesday, Joe Biden, the virtual president, announced that nursing homes will receive federal money for Medicare and Medicaid expenses only if their employees are vaccinated. The "Delta variant", it appears, justified the step. "I’m using the power of the federal government as a payer of healthcare costs to ensure we reduce those risks to our most vulnerable seniors," Biden said. The Department of Human Services will issue the mandate, which will take effect in September, in...

Joe Biden is going to do to nursing homes what he did to Afghanistan.His decree that all nursing home employees must be vaccinated, or their employers would lose their Medicare and Medicaid funding, is going to set off a staffing crisis that may force some facilities to close. At best, it will create stresses and resentments in the American nursing home industry that will hurt residents and communities.He announced it yesterday. While the rest of the world was horrified by what is likely the most damaging international development of the generation, Joe Biden prattled on about Republican governors and booster...

As a retiree from high school teaching in NYC, we have Medicare (80%) and supplemental insurance (20%). Effective Jan. 1, our insurance will be NYC Medicare Advantage Plus Plan and will be administered by Emblem Health and by Blue Shield, not by the troika of Medicare, Emblem Health, and Blue Shield as is presently the case. All medical bills will go to the new plan. The plan in turn will pay the doctors and hospital. There is a $253 deductible for each person and a $300 deductible for hospital admission. My experience is that we are already moving toward Medicare...

Federal health officials will likely reject Montana’s request to include work requirements for beneficiaries of its Medicaid expansion program, which insures 100,000 low-income Montana adults, state officials said. Three years after the Trump administration encouraged states to require proof that adult enrollees are working a certain number of hours or looking for work as a condition of receiving Medicaid expansion benefits, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has reversed course under Democratic President Joe Biden. “CMS has communicated to (the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services) that a five-year extension of the Medicaid expansion waiver will not...

On Saturday, Oregon’s State Senate passed bill HB 3352, which expanded eligibility for illegal aliens to receive Medicaid. Advertisement - story continues below The Radical-left Governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, is expected to sign the bill into law this week. She has been a flagrant supporter of the use of taxpayer funds to people who are here illegally. Her office has been pressuring the Oregon Legislature to pass the “cover all people” proposal since March. Gov. Brown: “Everyone deserves access to health care. It’s the right thing to do, the just thing to do. And, it’s smart economic policy.”

With the latest HHS report about Obamacare coverage, the Biden administration doesn’t want to let facts get in the way of a good narrative.In the “lies, d-mned lies, and statistics” category comes a report the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released Saturday, in conjunction with a Zoom call from presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama promoting Obamacare.The report wants you to believe more than 30 million people obtained coverage because of Obamacare. But the Biden administration knows that number isn’t true. So instead of discussing people “newly insured” by the law, it talks about those who were merely...

If Congress follows the president’s lead and does not renew the Hyde Amendment, court precedents may require state Medicaid programs to cover abortions in most if not all cases.If Congress enacts them into law, the legislative concepts outlined in President Biden’s first budget will have far-reaching effects on American debt, deficits, and taxation. One specific policy may have an effect even as a proposal. By suggesting a repeal of the Hyde Amendment, the president gave conservative states another reason not to expand Medicaid. While coverage of the Biden budget has focused on its support of taxpayer funding for abortion, fewer...

The Biden administration was slapped with a lawsuit on Friday after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched a suit countering changes to the state’s federally funded portion of Medicaid last month. In April, the administration rescinded a Trump-era eight-year extension to provide billions of dollars in federal funds annually for Texas’ uninsured residents, which was set to expire next year. While the move does not revoke healthcare funding through 2022, Paxton called it an "unlawful abuse of power aimed at sovereign states." "The Biden Administration cannot simply breach a contract and topple Texas’s Medicaid system without warning," he said in...

The North Carolina Medicaid program doled out close to $214,000 over nearly two years for made-up therapy treatments, according to federal prosecutors. Now a business owner accused of profiting off the scheme is going to prison. Pamela Grace Faulkner, 60, was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison and ordered to pay $213,927 in restitution, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina said in a news release. She pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to commit health care fraud in 2019. A defense attorney representing Faulkner did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for...

What would you do with $100 million? Arkansas could let this hypothetical situation become their reality as the future of Medicaid expansion comes under debate. In 2014, Arkansas unfortunately took the bait of broken promises and expanded Obamacare to a new class of able-bodied adults. We’re not here to debate the merits of Medicaid expansion as a whole, though the research overwhelmingly says there are few, if any. Expansion has been a disaster for states across the country, but Arkansas managed to find a way to make it even worse. No, the topic of my reproach today is the specific...