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If the ongoing scandal in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system provides evidence of anything — in addition to our ongoing failure to provide adequate care for our veterans — it’s that Washington’s response is sadly predictable. The first instinct in Washington is to look for scapegoats, or at least a sacrificial lamb. Accordingly, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has resigned. No doubt he should have, since he was apparently clueless about the ongoing problems in his department. But the keyword here is “ongoing.” The problems within the VA health system go back decades, long before the current...

I saw the report that 65-year-old couples will need more than $200,000 for health care costs during retirement. Why is the amount so steep, and what can I do to lower these costs? Fidelity’s annual retiree health care cost estimate found that couples retiring this year at age 65 will need $220,000 for health care costs during retirement (the same figure as last year’s study). The cost assumes the couple has traditional Medicare and pays deductibles and coinsurance for Part A and Part B (plus the premiums for Part B, which are currently $104.90 per month for most people). It...

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development was established by President John F. Kennedy, with the support of Congress, in 1962 to study the “complex process of human development from conception to old age.” In 2007, the NICHD was re-christened to include the name of Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Among NICHD’s many large projects was the so-called SUPPORT study (Surfactant, Positive Pressure, and Oxygenation Randomized Trial). The results of this study were published in May, 2010 in the New England Journal of Medicine, in an article entitled “Target Ranges of Oxygen Saturation in Extremely Preterm Infants.” According to the...

The founder and chair of a group dedicated to reducing hospital infection deaths told the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Thursday that a bill backed by the Senate Wednesday to address the backlog of veterans awaiting medical care “is designed to protect union jobs, not ailing vets.” The bill drafted by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, “will not save the lives of vets stuck on the wait list,” said Dr. Betsy McCaughey, chair of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. “This bill as currently written is designed to protect union...

A Fresno County judge has issued a tentative ruling denying a motion that would have prevented the county from ending health services to about 5,000 undocumented immigrants. A hearing is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Thursday to hear arguments on the motion filed by Western Center on Law & Poverty and California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation on behalf of Clinica Sierra Vista, which operates health clinics in Fresno and Bakersfield. Judge Donald S. Black ruled in April that the county does not have to follow a 30-year-old court order requiring it to pay for medical services for undocumented immigrants, but the...

Colorado will begin charging an Obamacare tax next month on all health insurance policies — even those obtained through private employers — to help prop up the state’s struggling health care exchange. ... Republicans have called the Obamacare tax unconstitutional, given that the state’s constitution requires voters to approve any tax increases, but exchange managers insist it’s a fee, not a tax.

In February the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recorded the lowest percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds working or actively looking for work (32.9%) since the bureau started tracking the data in 1948... Over the past two years, the BLS has recorded some of the worst labor participation rates for 20- to 24-year-olds since 1973... Looking at the seasonally unadjusted data—which is what the BLS makes publicly available—for 25- to 29-year-olds, the April 2014 labor-participation rate was the lowest the BLS has recorded since it started tracking the data in 1982 ... Nonetheless, various states and municipalities have increased their minimum...

Tens of thousands of veterans are stuck in backlogs awaiting care at VA facilities, the department said Monday in a report that confirms employees regularly cooked the books, often under pressure from supervisors, to try to hide long wait times. The audit found that 70 percent of Veterans Affairs facilities surveyed placed patients on alternate wait lists, meaning many of those veterans probably weren’t recorded in the official reports back to headquarters and were used to dole out bonuses to VA executives.

More than 100,000 veterans are experiencing waits of more than 90 days for appointments at medical centers run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, according to an internal audit released by the troubled agency on Monday.

And they’ve been waiting a long time, too. The Associated Press reports on an internal audit from more than 700 VA facilities shows that 57,000 veterans have waited 90 or more days for their initial medical appointment, let alone for any advanced care that might be needed. Another 64,000 have been enrolled in the VA health-care system for more than ten years without ever getting to see a doctor: The Veterans Affairs Department says more than 57,000 patients are still waiting for initial medical appointments at VA hospitals and clinics 90 days or more after requesting them. An additional...

Please see link....Big News

National insurance giant UnitedHealthcare plans to cut up to 700 Massachusetts doctors from its physician network for seniors enrolled in its private Medicare plan as a way to control costs, according to company officials. For elderly patients enrolled in the plan, the cuts mean they will have to find a new doctor or eventually switch to a new health plan that covers their current doctor. The move, effective Sept. 1, follows similar cuts made by the insurer to its Medicare Advantage provider networks in 11 other states... There is also pending legislation in Congress to prevent health plans from cutting...

In Vermont, the rate increases announced Monday range from 9.8 percent to 18.3 percent. Kentuckians will pay up to 17 percent more in 2015, and in Virginia rates will rise as much as 22 percent. These increases are the direct result of the Obamacare scheme to make health care “more affordable,” and the increases could have a considerable impact on the November congressional elections. The state-by-state drip, drip, drip of bad news for Democratic candidates can be good news for the rest of us if it encourages voters to shake up Washington. The shake-up starts with getting the government out...

Ineptitude: Millions of people could be in for a rude surprise later this year when they discover they aren't eligible for ObamaCare, or are getting too big a subsidy, thanks to another failed ObamaCare promise. In early September, administration officials declared that the ObamaCare "data hub" was ready to roll. This hub was central to making ObamaCare work, since it was supposed to verify citizenship, income and other information needed to determine eligibility and the level of insurance subsidies available. More important, it was all supposed to happen in real time, right when people were filling out their online application...

Almost none of the uninsured will end up paying the ObamaCare mandate penalty, according to an updated analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, which found that 87% will be able to claim an exemption. That exemption rate is higher than the CBO had previously thought, which not only blows a hole in its budget forecast for the law, but also increases the odds of an insurance industry "death spiral." According to the CBO's latest estimate, out of the 30 million people who will still be uninsured in 2016, just 4 million will end up paying any tax penalty, despite the...

More Americans than not think the U.S. government gives better health care to militants captured in the war on terrorism than to U.S. troops who may have fought them on the battlefield. A Fox News poll released Wednesday finds that by a 50-31 percent margin, voters think enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay get better health care than veterans. Nearly one in five is unsure (18 percent).

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than 2 million people who got health insurance under President Barack Obama's law have data discrepancies that could jeopardize coverage for some, a government document shows. About 1 in 4 people who signed up have discrepancies, creating a huge paperwork jam for the feds and exposing some consumers to repayment demands, or possibly even loss of coverage, if they got too generous a subsidy. The 7-page slide presentation from the Health and Human Services department was provided to The Associated Press as several congressional committees are actively investigating the discrepancies, most of which involve important details...

They’re vague here on precisely where, and why, the discrepancies are occurring. Is this related to the famous “834″ problem on Healthcare.gov, in which information sheets generated by the website for insurers about new enrollees were ending up garbled and/or incomplete? Or is it more of a bureaucracy problem, i.e. the last known residence that the feds have for a new enrollee in their Social Security database doesn’t match the address on the enrollee’s new insurance application? Eyeball this chart to see just how much technological red tape there is to sort through potentially before an enrollee’s identity and...

I have a female relative in FL who has been working full-time for a day care operation since January. They have about 30 teachers and such. They provide a health care plan to full-time employees, and all but my relative have been offered access. They claim they don't have the money to put her on the plan now, and keep putting her off that they'll get her on when they can. Is this legal, and if not how can she proceed to make them do what they should?

Just 29% think President Obama has done a good job managing the VA in the wake of the department's patient-care scandal, according to the latest IBD/TIPP poll. 43% surveyed say he's done a poor job and 22% rate his performance as only average. Meanwhile, 63% say Obama was either disengaged (29%) or that he "knows more than he claims" (34%) about the scandal. [snip] The public also overwhelmingly rejects the notion that money was the chief reason for the VA scandal.