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Marilyn Tavenner, head of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, plans to step down at the end of February, she told her staff in an e-mail.As Bloomberg reports, Tavenner didn’t say why she was leaving.In November, she acknowledged that her agency had made a mistake in its calculation of the number of people enrolled under Obamacare. As a reminder... from November The Obama administration said it erroneously calculated the number of people with health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, incorrectly adding 380,000 dental subscribers to raise the total above 7 million. The accurate number with full health-care plans...

The leader of the agency charged with the ObamaCare rollout is stepping down after five years on the job. Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), announced her departure Friday, which will take effect next month. "It is with sadness and mixed emotions that I write to tell you that February will be my last month serving as the administrator for CMS," Tavenner wrote in an email to staff. Tavenner is leaving after five turbulent years overseeing the agency. Her tenure included the disastrous rollout of the government’s HealthCare.gov website as well as, most recently,...

Hey, are you one of the 9.7 million Americans who have been put onto the Medicaid rolls since 2013 mostly as a result of theAffordable Care Act? Congratulations! But that and $2.75 will get you one ride on the New York City subway. That's because finding a doctor who accepts Medicaid payments – never all that easy to do even before 2013 – is getting harder than ever thanks to a steep drop in reimbursement rates for doctors who treat patients on Medicaid. When I say "steep," I mean it. We're talking an average of 43 percent nationwide and almost...

The Gold ‘N Silver Inn in Reno, Nev., has long offered health coverage to its employees — but many of the cooks, dishwashers and waiters who make close to minimum wage can’t afford the $100 monthly premium. Last January, when Nevada became one of more than two dozen states to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, 10 of the diner’s 55 employees qualified for the government insurance program for low-income Americans. None of them realized it, however, until the family-run restaurant hired BeneStream, a New York-based start-up funded partly by the Ford Foundation. BeneStream charges $40 to screen each...

Thirty-six states that rely on private managed care programs to provide medical services to all or some of their Medicaid recipients are facing an added ObamaCare tax. According to a report by Milliman consulting actuaries, states that contract with Medicaid managed care plans face up to $15 billion in added costs over 10 years for their share of the law’s tax on private health insurance. States will pay even if they strongly oppose ObamaCare and are refusing to establish health insurance exchanges or expand Medicaid. The health law imposes an annual tax on private health insurance plans – a tax...

While states debate expanding their Medicaid programs under Obamacare, they're wrestling with a looming 2017 deadline — when their taxpayers begin paying for the cost of the expansion. Beginning in 2014, states that agree to expand Medicaid to persons with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty line will have the federal government pay 100 percent of the cost. But beginning in 2017, the federal share will fall to 95 percent, and it drops to 90 percent in 2020. This has officials — many of them in Republican-dominated states across the country — worried that they will not...

WASHINGTON — Just as millions of people are gaining insurance through Medicaid, the program is poised to make deep cuts in payments to many doctors, prompting some physicians and consumer advocates to warn that the reductions could make it more difficult for Medicaid patients to obtain care.

Andy Pasternak, a family doctor in Reno, Nev., has seen more than 100 new Medicaid patients this year after the state expanded the insurance program under the Affordable Care Act. But he won’t be taking any new ones after Dec. 31. That’s when the law’s two-year pay raise for primary care doctors like him who see Medicaid patients expires, resulting in fee reductions of 43 percent on average across the country, according to the nonpartisan Urban Institute. The challenge is to convince physicians not just to continue accepting such patients but to take on more without getting paid what they’re...

Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Haslam became the latest red-state governor to approve a twist on Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion Monday.Haslam is supporting a private-option version of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which was pioneered by Arkansas in 2014. The proposal will have to be approved by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Republican-controlled legislature; if it goes through, Tennessee will be just the 28th state to move forward with the expansion of the welfare program through Obamacare.“We made the decision in Tennessee nearly two years ago not to expand traditional Medicaid,” Haslam said Monday. “This is an alternative approach that...

Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee on Monday morning became the latest Republican governor to announce support of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion —and the third in the nation since Republicans gained more power at the state and federal levels in the November midterm elections. Like most other Republican governors who want to take the health-care law's generous federal funding, Haslam is now offering a plan that deviates from the Medicaid expansion envisioned under the Affordable Care Act. Haslam, who made the announcement almost a month after his re-election, said the Obama administration has verbally approved the approach. The Tennessee plan, which Haslam...

In 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services estimated that 72.2 million Americans were receiving Medicaid benefits for at least a month. Medicaid is a government health insurance program aimed at helping the poor and disabled. Enrollment into the program is going up dramatically, according to the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI). Both Medicaid and ChildrenÂ’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are up 15 percent, or 8.7 million people, since Obamacare began enrolling people in the fall of 2013; states that expanded Medicaid coverage are seeing 22 percent growth or more. For many states, Medicaid is the largest item of...

Gruber saves some special scorn for the Republican governors who have bravely said no to...Free Money! "What I don't get is these STUPID governors who are turning down the Medicaid expansion," he said. "This is preposterously STUPID. First of all, your low-income people get health-insurance, and you get billions and billions of dollars of stimulus in health-care spending. For example, there are one million uninsured Floridians who are below the poverty line. The federal government is saying we'll pay to insure them, and, in addition, we're sending billions of dollars to you. And Rick Scott says no. There is no...

With the midterms looming, Obamacare politics are again prominent. But some Republican candidates find themselves defending that law. ___ With midterm elections looming, the politics of Obamacare are again coming to the fore—only this time it’s not just Democrats making the case that the law’s Medicaid expansion is good but also some leading Republicans, chief among them Ohio Gov. John Kasich. This week Kasich staked out the rather untenable position that Congress should repeal Obamacare but keep the Medicaid expansion part, as if they’re two different things. “From Day One, and up until today and into tomorrow, I do not...

A funny thing happened on the way to Medicaid expansion in Virginia: it didn’t happen. Governor Terry McAuliffe demanded expansion. The Washington Post and other state-worshiping media outlets insisted on its passage. The Post explained, “there remains only one reasonable solution: Republicans must ultimately compromise on expanding Medicaid.” But Republican legislators stood strong in the face of months of pressure — proving that it is, indeed, possible for them to maintain their principles. After a long legislative tug-of-war seemingly headed toward a government shutdown, the state senate suddenly flipped. It went from evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, 20-20, to...

Obamacare, as its advocates increasingly point out, has succeeded in expanding the number of Americans with insurance. Even though this achievement came at enormous cost, still leaves millions of Americans uninsured, and dumped millions more into Medicaid, this is still one of the few “successes” that the health-care law can claim. However, health insurance and access to health care are not the same thing. And evidence is growing that Obamacare is likely to make it harder for us to see a doctor or otherwise obtain care. Of course, we already know that the limited network of physicians available through most...

<p>As heavy lobbying by the hospital industry intersects with immediate political considerations, a growing number of Republican governors are caving in to Medicaid expansion through President Obama’s healthcare law.</p> <p>In the process, they are imposing massive and unnecessary financial burdens on taxpayers.</p>

Ending a yearlong negotiation, the Obama administration on Thursday approved Gov. Corbett's alternative Medicaid expansion proposal, a step that could extend health-care benefits to roughly 600,000 uninsured Pennsylvanians. In what was described as a five-year demonstration project, Pennsylvania got the go-ahead to use federal money to pay private insurers to provide health care to uninsured individuals - many in low-wage jobs. The Obama administration praised Pennsylvania for joining other states that opted into the program under the Affordable Care Act. Corbett administration officials called the agreement a successful compromise.

The cost of providing free taxpayer-funded coverage to Bay Staters unable to sign up for Obamacare because of Massachusetts’ disastrous website problems has soared to $173 million, according to a new Patrick administration report. Some 251,280 Bay Staters are now on the free transitional coverage — basically Medicaid — marking an increase of about 50,000 people since April that one watchdog found alarming. “There should be a red siren going off for state budget writers and taxpayers about the cost of this, and yet there seems to be very little alarm,” said Joshua Archambault of the Pioneer Institute. “There will...

<p>Chicago’s public health system is facing a massive $67 million shortfall after an early adoption of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion cost much more than expected, Crain’s Chicago Business reports.</p> <p>Cook County, which encompasses Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, made a deal with the Obama administration to get an early start on the health care law’s Medicaid expansion in 2012.</p>

A mountainous backlog of Medi-Cal applications is well into its third month, but California officials have provided little information about how and when the largest such bottleneck in the nation might be cleared. Not only has application processing been delayed, the state has also fallen behind in sending final notifications to enrollees, officials confirmed. Meanwhile, many low-income people who qualify for Medi-Cal are showing up at community clinics and costly emergency rooms as they have in the past. Others are putting off care. The holdup in Medi-Cal approvals has led to financial uncertainty for many of California's community health clinics,...