Free Republic

They are objects of derision.  Influential government officials refer to them as unproductive, of less value than others in society. The political party running the government aggressively denies them access to health services while putting in place bureaucracies devoted, in effect, to ending their lives. The Jews in Nazi Germany?  In the Soviet Union of Stalin? In a socialist paradise set up by the rabidly anti-Semitic United Nations? No, seniors in a United States governed by the party of President Barack Obama and his allies on the Democratic left. The Democratic Party senate healthcare bill makes it official: Seniors are...

States that have already broadly expanded health care coverage are pushing back against the Senate overhaul bill, arguing that it unfairly penalizes them in favor of states that have done little or nothing to extend benefits to the uninsured. With tax revenues down and budgets breaking, the states — including Arizona, California, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin — say they cannot afford to essentially subsidize other states’ expansion of health care. The bill passed by the Senate on Thursday would move toward universal health insurance coverage in large part by expanding Medicaid, a program whose costs have traditionally been...

Nebraska’s Republican governor has a stern message for Ben Nelson, the senior Democratic senator from his state: We don’t want Washington to cover all the costs of the proposed expansion of Medicaid under health care legislation. “The last few days have made Nebraskans so angry that now it’s a matter of principle,” Gov. David Heineman told POLITICO. “The federal government can keep that money

COLUMBIA, S.C. - The top prosecutors in seven states are probing the constitutionality of a political deal that cut a funding break for Nebraska in order to pass a federal health care reform bill, South Carolina's attorney general said Tuesday. Attorney General Henry McMaster said he and his counterparts in Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas and Washington state — all Republicans — are jointly taking a look at the deal they've dubbed the "Nebraska compromise." "The Nebraska compromise, which permanently exempts Nebraska from paying Medicaid costs that Texas and all other 49 states must pay, may violate the United...

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) said Tuesday that he and top prosecutors in a half-dozen other states plan to challenge the constitutionality of a health care compromise that exempts Nebraska from paying billions in Medicaid expansion costs, forcing other states to shoulder a bigger burden for the low-income insurance program. The Texas attorney general said he will join with Republican counterparts in up to six other states to challenge what they call the "Nebraska Compromise," the political deal that secured Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson's crucial vote on a massive health care package in exchange for concessions for his state....

Our fearless fiscal warrior went on television yesterday to declare that our country will go bankrupt if he doesn't get his health care "reform" bill passed. Via ABC News: The president said that the costs of Medicare and Medicaid are on an "unsustainable" trajectory and if there is no action taken to bring them down, "the federal government will go bankrupt." "This actually provides us the best chance of starting to bend the cost curve on the government expenditures in Medicare and Medicaid," Obama said. Obama told Gibson that anybody who says they are concerned about the rising deficit or...

There sometimes is a tendency to believe that the last few days, months, and sometimes years of life are not worth living.

COLUMBIA, SC (WMBF) - U.S. Senators Jim DeMint and Lindsay Graham are hoping to turn the tables on health care in Washington, after requesting an investigation into special deals being made to secure votes for successful reform. A letter addressed by the two South Carolina lawmakers was received by State Attorney General Henry McMaster Tuesday morning, detailing concerns over funding arrangements negotiated with Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. "The language of the Nelson provision appears to give Nebraska a permanent exemption from paying the Medicaid expenses all other states in the nation will be required to pay," McMaster said in...

I will predict a few things right now in Ben Nelson just screwed the entire state of Nebraska over for his whoring to pimp Obama. This is exclusive here so bank on it being God given Inspired right. First, Ben Nelson , Reid, Obama and Pelosi, literally created a situation where Nebraska does not have to pay for Obamacrypt as long as the sun shines, the snow falls and the rivers flow. We know how that turned out for the Indians and it will turn out exactly the same for Nebraska.

If you love your parents and your children, and if you voted for Barack Obama and the Democrats, you made a bad choice.

Politics: Sen. Mary Landrieu was the new "Louisiana Purchase." Sen. Ben Nelson got the federal government to pick up his state's future Medicaid tab. Maybe we should just put Senate votes up on eBay. Nelson, the 60th vote in the middle-of-the-night Senate party line vote on health care reform, will go down in American political history as the inventor of the permanent earmark. His seemingly principled stand against including federal funding for abortion evaporated like the morning dew as he decided to take what was behind door No. 1. The deal for Nelson includes special Medicaid funding for Nebraska, along...

At least common thieves don't destroy an entire health care system and socialize the American economy when they commit their felonies. Too bad we can't say the same for our illustrious Democratic senators who sold out the nation. In exchange for criminally unconstitutional favors for their respective states, they voted to pass the Senate health care bill just 38 hours after it had been made available to the public for review. Everyone knows about Sen. Mary Landrieu's negotiating $300 million for her state in non-guaranteed Medicaid payouts. She was even cocky about her institutionalized larceny. Sen. Bernie Sanders finagled $10...

A group called Americans for Prosperity in Nebraska gathered a crowd for a rally in Omaha to press Sen. Nelson on the reform bill. Anger over senator Ben Nelson's support of health care reform. Nearly 2,000 people rally in Omaha, hoping he's listening. The group's message is two fold -- reconsider your vote Senator Nelson and remember your decision when elections roll around. With their signs in hand, Nebraskans filled Omaha's Music Hall, rallying against the senate health care bill and Sen. Nelson's support for it. "I think that's why we're all here. To get him to listen to us,"...

Not that this will come as any great shock, but Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), the lone Democrat holdout against the current iteration of healthcare reform, announced Saturday he will vote for the bill. Also unsurprising: much like Mary "Louisiana Purchase" Landrieu (D-La.) before him, Nelson sold his vote and his very soul for some financial benefits to his state. As Politico reported moments ago: Sen. Mary Landrieu got the "Louisiana Purchase." Sen. Ben Nelson got the federal government to pick up most his state's future Medicaid tab -- forever. As part of the deal to win Nelson's support, the federal...

Politics: If the Democrats' stitched-together Frankenstein monster of health care reform gets the 60 votes to get through the Senate, it will have been done through an assortment of bribes and brass knuckles. (snip) Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, has also been critical of the buy-in and public option, but he has an additional issue about whatever comes out of the Senate not involving public funding of abortion in any way. Michael Goldfarb on the Weekly Standard blog quotes a Senate aide as saying the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base on the...

Socialized Medicine: The administration's own health department, in a devastating analysis, warns of rising costs, shrinking benefits and a long-term health care "death spiral." "Reform" has been pronounced dead. When even the liberal Washington Post warns that congressional Democrats, in trying to save their increasingly unpopular health reform bill, are sneakily making it more like European-style socialized medicine, it means the death watch is on. Letting 55-year-olds "buy in" to the fiscally doomed Medicare program "could be a bigger step toward a single-payer system than the milquetoast public option plans rejected by Senate moderates as too disruptive of the private...

There has been many problems with the automated system of the FSSA. Indiana's citizens that are on the various programs (medicaid, food stamps, and TANF) have reported missing paperwork, the lack of face to face contact and unqualified call center operatives. The problems got bad enough that the federal government started watching the program.

New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows... --snip-- The F.D.A. has approved antipsychotic drugs for children specifically to treat schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder. But they are more frequently prescribed to children for other, less extreme conditions, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, aggression, persistent defiance or other so-called conduct disorders — especially when the...

WASHINGTON – Senate Democratic liberals are seeking expansion of two large federal programs, Medicare and Medicaid, in exchange for dropping a government-sold insurance option from health care legislation sought by President Barack Obama, several lawmakers said Monday. Under the potential trade-off with party moderates, near-retirees beginning at age 55 or 60 who lack affordable insurance would be permitted to purchase coverage under Medicare, which generally provides medical care beginning at 65. Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor, would be open to all comers under 300 percent of poverty, or slightly over $66,000 for a family of four....

With all of the national debate of the US Senate's proposed Healthcare plan, another voice is added to the opposition. Indiana Governor, Mitch Daniels, has voiced his displeasure with part of the bill. Part of the bill increases the availability of Medicaid to those of lower income that need healthcare insurance. In letters to Indiana Senators Evan Bayh and Richard Lugar, Gov. Daniels has said, the new bill will increase Indiana's spending for the program at an estimate of 2.3 billion over the next 10 years. The estimate was given by Milliman, an Indianapolis actuarial firm. Gov. Daniels had privatized...

The "healthc-care reform" bills in Congress would hit 39 states hard with new expenses, by raising Medicaid eligibility above the cur rent income cutoffs. The only states that won't have to raise eligibility because of the Senate bill are Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont and Wisconsin (plus the District of Columbia). And the House bill would force even Massachusetts and Vermont to pay more. Hardest hit would be Texas ($2,750 million a year in extra state spending under the Senate bill), Pennsylvania ($1,450 million), California ($1,428 million) and Florida ($909 million). Who...

Reform: Only a Bernie Madoff could believe the Senate's health care bill will extend coverage to 31 million Americans while cutting deficits by $127 billion over 10 years. It would be the first profitable entitlement. But that's what Majority Leader Harry Reid, citing Congressional Budget Office estimates, tells us the 2,074-page bill — said to cost only $849 billion over a decade — would do. Like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he seems to be following Vice President Joe Biden's admonition at an AARP town hall meeting that "we've got to spend money to keep from going bankrupt." We suspect Reid's...

McALLEN — There were no doctors, no patients or even a floor at a medical office on the city’s south side, but to Hidalgo County’s largest hospital system it was reputedly worth lease payments of $8,000 a month. The lease allegedly was a sham contract given to disguise an improper kickback to Eugenio Galindo, a McAllen doctor, a whistle-blower contended among his allegations in a lawsuit he filed accusing South Texas Health System of Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Galindo is one of seven Rio Grande Valley doctors whom the U.S. Department of Justice, which joined in the suit at the...

Jeffrey Anderson of the NRO health care blog Critical Condition points out an error in the Congressional Budget Office's estimates of how many Americans are uninsured: "By all accounts, the Congressional Budget Office is using the Census Bureau's tallies for the number of uninsured, but the CBO doesn't appear to have read the full Census report. In the very same document in which the now-famous number of 46 million uninsured appears, the Census admits that this number includes roughly 9 million people on Medicaid who were falsely recorded as uninsured. The CBO is not adjusting for this Medicaid undercount. Therefore,...

New York State is facing its worst economic crisis in decades - with projected annual budget gaps rising to more than $19.5 billion over the next four years. The challenge is to use this crisis to make New York stronger than ever, as we did during the New York City fiscal crisis in the 1970s, a rescue effort in which I was heavily involved. To do that, the state must approach the current situation more like a business. When confronted with a financial crisis, a responsible business focuses on its customers: What does the customer need? How can we provide...

... Maine is the Charlie Brown of health care. The state’s legislators have tried for decades to fix its system, but their efforts have always fallen short: health insurance premiums are still among the least affordable in the nation, health care spending per person is among the highest and hospital emergency rooms are among the most crowded. Indeed, many overhauls to the system have done little more than squeeze a balloon — solving one problem while worsening another. ... Maine’s history is a cautionary tale for national health reform. The state could never figure out how to slow the spiraling...

The president wants a massive health care overhaul. He also wants to keep it under $900 billion over the next ten years, and he wants it be deficit neutral. So, how do the Democrats plan on accomplishing all these things? It's through Enron style accounting. 1) Collect taxes and revenues in year one but don't begin to provide services until year three. The CBO has become the "gold standard". Everyone has treated it as the gospel. It's so called scoring system has flaws however. It only takes the first ten years of revenues and expenses. So, how did the Baucus...

The renowned Mayo Clinic is no longer accepting some Medicare and Medicaid patients, raising new questions about whether it is too selective to serve as a model for health-care reform. The White House has repeatedly held up for praise Mayo and other medical centers, many of which are in the Upper Midwest, that perform well in Dartmouth College rankings showing wide disparities in how much hospitals spend on Medicare patients. The model centers have capitalized on their status to insert into health-care legislation provisions that would result in higher Medicare payments for hospitals that do well on the Dartmouth rankings...

Minnesota and other states are worried that emerging plans to overhaul the nation's health care system could leave them facing a expensive new obligation to cover the poor without the money to pay for it. As the health care debate speeds toward a climax in Congress, cash-strapped state officials are running the numbers to gauge the impact on their budgets, which are already bleeding red ink from hard economic times. Minnesota's two U.S. senators, both Democrats, are taking notice. In a letter last week to Senate Democratic leaders, Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken expressed general support for health care...

The estimate includes a projected net cost of $518 billion over 10 years for the proposed expansions in insurance coverage. That net cost itself reflects a gross total of $829 billion in credits and subsidies provided through the exchanges, increased net outlays for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and tax credits for small employers; those costs are partly offset by $201 billion in revenues from the excise tax on high-premium insurance plans and $110 billion in net savings from other sources. The net cost of the coverage expansions would be more than offset by the combination of...

Sole Control - Sen. Harry Reid will write the bill himself taking pieces of the Baucus vapor bill and the Kennedy "Do it for Ted" bill. This merger will happen with a few chosen people behind tightly closed doors. There will be no hearing, no testimony, no public input.

ONE top argument for national health insurance turns out to be based on a false assumption. We've long been told that it's the uninsured who are clogging hospital ERs. Turns out that it's actually Medicaid and other insured patients behind most misuse of emergency-room care. Which means that health-care "reform" would make the problem worse. ERs are indeed dangerously overcrowded; having worked in a busy city ER for more than a decade, I can tell you that the "extra" patients interfere seriously with basic care. But the solution doesn't involve giving more people insurance coverage -- it requires turning more...

Hello my FReeper friends, I am trying to educate myself regarding Medicare and Medicaid to find out the reality of the state of healthcare in the USA. I went to Wikipedia and typed in MEDICAID and right there in the first paragraph, I read this : Medicaid is the United States health program for eligible individuals and families with low incomes and resources. It is a means-tested program that is jointly funded by the states and federal government, and is managed by the states.[1] Among the groups of people served by Medicaid are certain eligible U.S. citizens and resident aliens,...

The nation's governors are emerging as a formidable lobbying force as health-care reform moves through Congress and states overburdened by the recession brace for the daunting prospect of providing coverage to millions of low-income residents. The legislation the Senate Finance Committee is expected to approve calls for the biggest expansion of Medicaid since its creation in 1965. Under the Senate bill and the House proposal, a state-federal insurance program targeted mainly at children, pregnant women and disabled people would effectively become a Medicare for the poor, a health-care safety net for all people with an annual income below $14,404. Whether...

The government option? Government controlled co-op? Beware of fluffy, cutsie-pie nice sounding 1,500 page bill amendments attached in the dead of night. Government sucess stories: Social Security Medicare Medicaid The Veterans Administration Above are four government run healthcare systems well run, well administered and loved by doctors and hospitals. After four successes like the ones listed above, let’s let them have government take over one more program and control all private doctors and private insurance. After all, they’ll base the new system on their previous successes.

Americans expect to show a photo ID when they board a plane, enter many office buildings, cash a check or even rent a video -- but rarely in voting or applying for government benefits such as Medicaid. Many Democrats seem to view asking citizens for proof of identity as an invasion of privacy -- though what's really being protected is the right to commit identity fraud. Exhibit A is Tuesday's 13 to 10 party-line vote in the Senate Finance Committee rejecting a proposal to require that immigrants prove their identity when signing up for federal health care programs. Chuck Grassley,...

On June 5, 2008, the Starr family's life changed forever. Patrick Starr, father of two and a softball fanatic, was playing his favorite sport when he collided with another player and fell backward, striking his head on the field. The impact caused brain damage that put the Pasadena man into a coma, in which he has remained ever since. Now his wife of 16 years, Beth, is prepared to let him go - but she wanted to be sure she and their children Ashleigh, 15, and Zachary, 8, are financially secure first. "That's what he would want," she said. Starr...

Free Speech: The Senate votes against transparency as the administration silences a private insurer for exposing the president's health care proposal. Meanwhile, AARP is allowed to tout reform as it awaits payday. We weren't surprised when the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday voted 12 to 11 against allowing two weeks for the Congressional Budget Office to complete its cost analysis of the health care bill pushed by Montana Democrat Max Baucus and to put the bill online in its original wording. Instead, the Senate panel passed another amendment to require the committee to post the full bill online in "conceptual"...

Jonathan Blum, an acting director at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is apparently responsible for issuing a gag order against Humana, Inc., on Monday evening. Blum is a former staffer to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee currently in markup of their own chopped salad version of the health care bill. Baucus has taken credit in the media for demanding CMS issue the unprecedented order.  CMS also changed their mailing guidelines to include a ban on any Medicare Advantage (MA) provider sending information or placing information on their websites regarding the non-partisan Congressional...

George Orwell call your office.  Again. Was it only two months ago that Cong. John Carter (R-Tx) and a few other conservatives were protesting the Democrats’ censorship of their constituent mailings? Yes, it was.  When  Judge Carter tried to describe Obamacare as “government-run healthcare� the House Franking Commission told him he couldn’t use the term in a constituent mailing that would be mailed for free as are most constituent mailings.  Not only could he not use those words, he couldn’t use the words “Democratic Party.�   Now, the Democratic Party (i.e., the Obama administration) wants to censor the mailings sent...

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid secured a deal today that would give Nevada full, 100 percent funding in the Senate health care bill for an initial expansion of Medicaid. The agreement reached with the committee chairman comes after Reid vowed last week to strike a better deal for Nevada before bringing any legislation to the floor. Reid took heat from Republican Rep. Nathan Deal of Georgia who bemoaned the majority leader’s powerful reach into Senate negotiations to improve the bill for Nevada. The deal would give Nevada full funding for the first five years of the program —...

Give President Obama credit for persistence. And stubbornness. And lack of imagination. He declared again last week that his health care plan "will slow the growth of health care costs for our families and our businesses and our government." And this historic achievement will be accompanied by a dazzling array of new medical benefits that everyone will receive--guaranteed by law. Okay, you've heard this before. But that's the president's story, and he's sticking to it. The question is, why? Does he think we're stupid? His argument has failed to persuade a sizeable majority of the American people precisely because they're...

Discourse: The reaction to the congressman's outburst shows what happens when you judge this president by the content of his character. In a post-racial presidency, charges of racism are the new last refuge of scoundrels.When Joe Wilson, the decorum-challenged South Carolina Republican, reacted to President Obama's assertion that there was nothing in health care legislation giving coverage to illegal aliens by shouting "You lie!" he knew, as his critics ignore, that there was nothing requiring proof of citizenship either. A nonpartisan Congressional Research Service study found that the House health care bill at that moment did not restrict illegal immigrants...

Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY) of Wyoming delivered the weekly Republican address Saturday on the loss of Senator Kennedy and the importance of getting health care reform done right. Senator Enzi discussed how the Democrats are rushing a health reform bill through congress that will ultimately "raid Medicare", raise costs and increase the deficit. And, he urged lawmakers to listen to what the American people are saying and scrap the Democrats’ current plan in order to "enact common sense reform that will actually cut costs." Here's the video: Senator Enzi: ObamaCare to Cut Billions from Elderly

TAMPA — Todd Cohen was diagnosed with bone cancer in 1994 when he was 19. The cancer led to the amputation of his right leg. Since then, Cohen has learned to walk with a prosthesis. He got an education, but he has never held a steady job. He's gotten by with Medicaid and monthly Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, checks that have ranged from $271 to $650.

Jeffrey H. Sloman, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and Bill McCollum, Florida Attorney General, announced that two Miami doctors have been convicted of Medicare and Medicaid fraud. A Miami jury returned guilty verdicts against Walter Proano and Manuel Barbeite late Friday afternoon. Sentencing has been scheduled before U.S. District Judge Patricia A. Seitz for October 29, 2009, starting at 8:30 a.m. Proano and Barbeite were convicted for their involvement in a scheme with Diagnostic Medical Choice, a Southwest Miami clinic that billed the Medicaid and Medicare programs for expensive infusion medications intended to treat a...

How do the party leadership and the president square this circle? They can't entirely, but they can go a long way toward doing so by using the so-called "reconciliation" procedure in the Senate, a budget-related mechanism that would allow the Democrats to pass much, though not all, of Obama's shifting wish list with a mere 50-vote simple majority. With that as the operative target, Senate leaders could move considerably leftward, while allowing butt-covering Senate Blue Dogs to shout "no" in the crowded theater. The leadership couldn't get the "public option," but they could sweeten the pot with generously-defined expansions of...

RUSH: This is a must-read written by an ordinary citizen. A Duke Professor Explains What the Health Care Bill Actually Says August 12, 2009 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, what I have here is very long. I cannot read the entire thing. But there are summaries that I can read. This is a piece entitled, "What the Health Care Bill Actually Says," and it was put together by John David Lewis. It is from the website Classical Ideals. John David Lewis is a professor of classics at Duke University, and here is how he introduces his analysis: "What does the...

While the president and Congress may not welcome actual debate there has been some occurring out here in the real world. I've had several lively discussions the past few days with people who are passionate about health care reform and willing to view it as a policy discussion and not a personal attack on the coolest president in the history of EVER. I've always been a fan of letting states run most programs with a modicum of federal oversight. Once the feds are in charge, we go through the looking glass. The federal bureaucracy is a monolithic, slow moving behemoth...

Page 425 Lines 4-12 - Government mandates Advance Care Planning Consults. Think Senior Citizens end of life. Every five years, the elderly will have to attend a mandatory “advanced care planning consultation” for an “explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end of life services.” The consultation will be conducted more frequently if a significant change in health condition; including diagnosis of a chronic, progressive, life limiting disease, terminal diagnosis, life threatening injury or upon admission to a skilled nursing or long term care facility. In other words, if you are old, you will be consulted about what your...