Free Republic

Choice 1 - annual deficit method: The PPACA type Medicaid expansion program shall be continued, but with a participating state having to pay a calendar year share after 2021 at a percentage rate of 10 plus 1 for each prior federal fiscal year after 2017 that had a deficit in excess of $400 billion. If fiscal years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 had a deficits of $399 billion, $500 billion, $300 billion, and $401 billion, respectively, the state share would go from 10% to 12%. Choice 2 - increase in national debt method: The PPACA type Medicaid expansion program shall be...

Progressives have never met an entitlement program they didn’t like. Americans’ love affair with free things, even when they cost us dearly in increased taxes, regulatory costs, limitations on choice, and more, ensures that once an entitlement program is passed, the only change we will see to it is expansion. That is ultimately why Obamacare will never be repealed and why the only change that has happened in the 52 years since Medicare and Medicaid were signed into law is the growth of the entitlement programs.On its face, Medicaid sounds like a worthy and worthwhile use of American taxpayer...

New Mexico residents enrolled in Medicaid may have to cough up more money for their health care costs by the end of the year or early next year under a proposal that aims to offset state spending on the program. New Mexico’s Medicaid rolls have swollen since Gov. Susana Martinez expanded low- or no-cost health insurance in 2014 to cover adults with incomes slightly above the federal poverty level, up to about $16,600. As of July, more than 250,000 New Mexicans had enrolled in Medicaid under the program expansion. A single patient earning $12,060 a year could end up having...

Sarai was 25 years old when she died of Wilson’s disease, an inherited disorder that causes liver failure. A liver transplant could have cured her, but she was uninsured and was denied an appointment at two prominent Chicago transplant hospitals, including my own. Sarai’s plight was brought to my attention when a local religious group held a hunger strike advocating transplant access for Sarai and other uninsured patients. When she died, her congregation marched seven miles, holding her photograph and lugging coffins emblazoned with her name, to launch a sit-in in front of Northwestern University Hospital. Her death certificate named...

The bipartisan Washington, DC “consensus” has so many blind spots, you’d think its exponents lived in a black box. Recently, it has become clear that one of the biggest of those blind spots is the federal government’s treatment of the pharmaceutical industry.This can be most clearly seen in the troubling continuity between the favored policy of pharma-friendly elements within the Trump administration, and the Obama administration’s own weakness on a critical policy in the battle over drug prices: namely, the 340B drug pricing program.As granular followers of pharmaceutical policy will already know, 340B is a program passed during the first...

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,The point is the present system cannot endure.Despite all the happy talk about "recovery" and higher growth, wages have gone nowhere since 2000--and for the bottom 20% of workers, they've gone nowhere since the 1970s.Gross domestic product (GDP) has risen smartly since 2000, but the share of GDP going to wages and salaries has plummeted: this is simply an extension of a 47-year downtrend.Last month I posted one reason Why We're Doomed: Our Economy's Toxic Inequality (August 16, 2017). The second half of why we're doomed is stagnant wages. Why do stagnating...

An estimated $72 million in Medicaid payments were made to potentially ineligible beneficiaries in Kentucky, according to an audit from the agency's inspector general. The audit found the state agency in Kentucky did not always determine eligibility status for Medicaid benefits in line with federal and state requirements and that the agency did not keep paperwork noting it verified citizenship status. In order to receive Medicaid benefits, the state must verify citizenship or nationality status and have documentary evidence. The state can conduct this verification process through the Social Security Administration. The audit found the state determined eligibility status for...

Connecticut, home to hedge fund billionaires alongside cities mired in poverty, is racing against the clock to pass a budget or face further spending cuts to education and municipal aid across the state. Nearly two months without a budget, Connecticut is getting crushed by a burdensome debt load that has squeezed spending and amplified legislative discord. State lawmakers must agree on a biennial budget soon or else Governor Dannel Malloy’s executive order to slash state aid to municipalities and eliminate school funding for some districts will go into effect in October. The state faces a $3.5 billion deficit over the...

Why thieves love America’s health-care system! INVESTIGATORS in New York were looking for health-care fraud hot-spots. Agents suggested Oceana, a cluster of luxury condos in Brighton Beach. The 865-unit complex had a garage full of Porsches and Aston Martins—and 500 residents claiming Medicaid, which is meant for the poor and disabled. Though many claims had been filed legitimately, some looked iffy. Last August six residents were charged. Within weeks another 150 had stopped claiming assistance, says Robert Byrnes, one of the investigators. Health care is a tempting target for thieves. Medicaid doles out $415 billion a year; Medicare (a federal...

There was an article in the Summer 2017 issue of "Good Medicine" that suggested removing SNAP ("food stamp" replacement) program eligibility for sweetened beverages, desserts, red meat, cheese, salty snacks, candy and sugar for health reasons. I support such SNAP eligibility removals, except for red meat or cheese. I'm not so sure that red meat or cheese should be removed from SNAP eligibility since so much of American agricultural land is only suitable for raising red meat/dairy product animals. That issue in "Good Medicine" also reported on the MIND diet to reduce Alzheimer's risk. The MIND diet was also reported...

Oregon has determined it awarded Medicaid health benefits to more than 37,000 people during the past year who earned too much money or otherwise failed to qualify, new figures show. That high number represents nearly half the Medicaid recipients whose incomes the state rechecked this spring and summer. It has come to light as the state health authority works through a backlog of eligibility checks caused by technology problems and the spike in enrollment under the Affordable Care Act. The count surpasses predictions to the Legislature by agency director Lynne Saxton, who pegged the number at 32,000. And it almost...

The hustle is on to insure Chicagoans Community groups are scrambling to figure out how to connect Chicagoans with health insurance in the wake of the Trump administration no longer funding outreach efforts in 18 cities, including Chicago. The federal money was used to help enroll people into plans sold on the Obamacare public health insurance exchanges, and to usher the uninsured into the expanded Medicaid program in Illinois. Combined with consumer confusion over

PARASITES IN US HEALTH CARE In early May my wife and I returned from a short vacation in Peru. Two weeks later I came down with severe diarrhea that has now continued unabated for six weeks. The cause has been identified as a parasite—Blastasytis Species. This parasite is believed to be present in 23% of the American population and 100% of people in “less developed countries” (Wikipedia). Albendazole is the first line of treatment for this infection. Albendazole tablets are sold throughout the world (outside of the US) for 1 penny to six cents each and are usually available as...

The charges started racking up the moment Annette Johnson arrived at Mount Sinai Hospital with a gunshot wound to her left forearm. Doctors sliced open Johnson's arm and installed a $500 metal plate to shore up her shattered ulna, securing it with numerous bone screws that cost $246 apiece. There were morphine drips to quell pain, tetanus shots to prevent infection, blood screens and anesthesia. Two years earlier in a different part of the city, Leo Leyva arrived at a North Side hospital with a gunshot wound to his back. His last memory before going under anesthesia was a nurse...

Dismantling Medicaid is at the heart of President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress’ agenda. President Trump proposed cutting Medicaid by half in his budget, and Congress has proposed taking an ax to the program both through their repeal of the Affordable Care Act as well as through their budget blueprints. In all cases, these cuts to health coverage and services for children, people with disabilities, seniors, and low-income adults whom Medicaid serves would be used to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and corporations. These cuts would have devastating consequences for the individuals, families, and communities that Medicaid serves....

In a bold move to revive their healthcare bill, Senate Republican leaders are getting ready to propose giving $200 billion in assistance to states that expanded Medicaid, according to a person familiar with internal Senate negotiations. The huge sum would be funded by leaving in place ObamaCare’s net investment income tax and its Medicare surtax on wealthy earners, according to the source briefed on the proposal. The figure is likely to outrage conservatives, who would prefer to use the savings from the Senate healthcare bill to pay down the deficit.

More than 400 people have been charged with taking part in health care fraud and opioid scams that totaled $1.3 billion in false billing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Thursday. Sessions called the collective action the "largest health care fraud takedown operation in American history" and said it indicates that some doctors, nurses and pharmacists "have chosen to violate their oaths and put greed ahead of their patients."

California is harming medical care for more than 13 million lower-income residents, more than half of them Latinos, by failing to pay doctors enough to provide proper care, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday. The lawsuit alleges the state violates Latinos’ civil rights because poorly paid health care providers balk at providing treatment. It alleges the low reimbursements often mean that those who rely on Medi-Cal, the state’s health care program for the poor, are denied timely and quality medical care. The lawsuit was filed in Alameda County Superior Court by plaintiffs including the state’s largest labor union representing health...

Archimedes, one of the greatest mathematicians and scientists of all time understood the importance of the design of a system. Commenting on the incredible power of levers he noted, “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth.” With a properly designed system almost anything is possible; with a poor one, almost nothing.

If you want a quick guide to what is wrong with the debate over repealing and replacing Obamacare, just look to the ongoing fight over Medicaid. Democrats have dug in over any change to the current program, solemnly declaring that changing so much as a comma or semicolon in the ACA’s expansion of the program would immediately sentence millions of children to death. Meanwhile, Republicans, having been thoroughly cowed, are debating how best to pretend that they reformed Medicaid without actually reforming it. Not exactly inspiring. Still, in a debate almost completely dominated by politics and public relations rather...