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FULL TITLE: Dying anorexia patient, 25, is denied treatment for the disorder by her insurance company who claim 'it's a luxury' as her weight drops to 58lbs A 25-year-old woman with a debilitating eating disorder is preparing for the possibility of an early death as her insurance company treats a medical program she requires to live on as a luxury. Katrina Howard, who succumbed to anorexia nervosa in her early teen years, has been sent from hospital to hospital for treatment - but doctors fear they are running out of effective options for the young woman - who has whittled...

A new venture capital firm co-led by former CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt will seek to invest in healthcare technology and service companies that deliver innovative care to low-income, high-needs populations. Town Hall Ventures will focus on building companies that provide higher-quality and lower-cost care for poor, underserved communities, particularly involving Medicare, Medicaid, risk-based care, complex care and the social determinants of health. Its leaders see a big opportunity to improve care for the 120 million people in Medicare and Medicaid through innovations such as better models for delivering care at home or in other comfortable and low-cost settings. "We are...

The Donald Trump administration approved New Hampshire’s waiver, becoming the fourth state to implement work requirements for Medicaid. New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu said in a statement on Monday: Work requirements help lift able-bodied individuals out of poverty by empowering them with the dignity of work and self-reliability while also allowing states to control the costs of their Medicaid programs. They help people gain the skills necessary for long-term independence and success. Sununu added, “Today’s announcement by CMS authorizing New Hampshire’s Medicaid work requirements is a transformative step towards a more thriving workforce.” New Hampshire became the fourth state...

Improper payments made by the Medicaid program climbed from approximately $29,149,680,000 in fiscal 2015 to $36,731,130,000 in fiscal 2017, according to data published by the Department of Health and Human Services. That is an increase of $7,581,450,000--or 26 percent. “Despite efforts to reduce improper payments in the Medicaid program by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversees the program, overall improper payments continue to increase—rising to about $37 billion in fiscal year 2017 compared to $29.1 billion in fiscal year 2015,” GAO Health Care Director Carolyn Yocom told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today.

Here are three ways to fix it. Medicaid was intended to be a safety net for the truly needy. But over time, both federal and state policymakers have lost sight of Medicaid’s core purpose and turned the program into a catch-all, open-ended welfare program for non-disabled adults.Obamacare made this problem even worse, giving states the option to expand Medicaid to even more able-bodied adults. Nearly 13 million have been added since that expansion went live in 2014. Today, able-bodied adults in the program now outnumber individuals with disabilities — the people Medicaid was largely designed to serve — by a...

California is indeed the Golden State where Medicaid is concerned. The HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) has found that, by exploiting Obamacare’s expansion of the program, California has enrolled hundreds of thousands of ineligible adults in Medicaid. Consequently, the state has bilked the federal government out of more than $1 billion in funding to which the state was not entitled. Indeed, these figures probably understate the amount of money that California officials have fraudulently extracted from the taxpayers. The OIG sampled a mere six-month period, from October 1, 2014 through March 31, 2015, to arrive at its damning assessment....

The only speaker standing between state budget officers and the opening cocktail hour at a Washington conference was the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. What he said left no one in a celebratory mood. Medicaid costs, said then-Secretary Michael Leavitt, were projected to grow so fast that within 10 years they would “crowd out virtually every other category of spending.” State spending on higher education, infrastructure and safety, he predicted, would all get squeezed.

A new study reveals that 21,904 Americans have died while withering away on Medicaid waiting lists in states that expanded the program under Obamacare. The victims were poor and disabled applicants herded to the back of the line to make room for able-bodied adults with incomes above the federal poverty level (FPL). Why would any state pursue such a cruel and unjust policy? Obamacare incentivizes expansion states to shift Medicaid’s focus to able-bodied adults by paying over 90 percent of their coverage costs, while paying less than 60 percent of the costs for covering the truly poor and disabled. The...

As more states consider expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, along comes another independent study showing increased government insurance for low-income Americans pays for itself. Take the state of Montana, which expanded Medicaid in 2016 to more than 90,000 people. A study out this month from the University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research shows the expansion of Medicaid generates a half-trillion dollars a year in healthcare spending. Of that, 70%, or $350 million to $400 million, is “new money circulating in Montana’s economy.” Beginning this year, states gradually began to pick up some costs, but the...

Amazon has taken another step to woo low-income shoppers to its site and away from rival Walmart. The online retailer opened its discounted $5.99-a-month Prime membership on Wednesday to people on Medicaid, giving it an even bigger pool of potential shoppers who may otherwise have been unable to pay the standard fee. Since June, Amazon has offered the same Prime discount to people using food stamps or other government assistance through an Electronic Benefit Transfer card. Adding Medicaid recipients makes Prime, and its expedited shipping for no extra cost, accessible to more people, Amazon said. Industry analysts believe Amazon is...

At least 21,000 needy people have died while waiting for Medicaid coverage, while 13 million able-bodied adults received Medicaid coverage in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, an explosive new study revealed Tuesday. At least 247,295 people are currently on waiting lists to enroll in Medicaid. The study, published by the Foundation for Government Accountability, revealed that when Obamacare enabled states to vastly expand Medicaid, it resulted in mismanagement, depriving the most needy and rewarding the able-bodied. "This really is a tragedy. Medicaid was designed as a safety net for the truly needy....

After rightly rejecting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion for several years, Idaho officials have now concocted a new version of Obamacare expansion. While some supporters have rallied around the plan’s uniqueness, it’s important to examine exactly what distinguishes this expansion plan from the rest: It’s worse. First, the truly needy already qualify for Medicaid in Idaho. Supporters of Idaho’s Obamacare plan want the public to believe that this plan is essential to the survival of Idaho’s neediest residents. But the truly needy already qualify for Medicaid in the Gem State. Idaho’s Medicaid program already covers low-income kids, pregnant women, seniors, individuals with...

Norma Diaz and her husband, Joseph Garcia, have dedicated their careers to running a nonprofit health insurer that covers some of California’s neediest residents. For three decades, they have worked for a Medicaid managed-care plan, Community Health Group, serving nearly 300,000 poor and disabled patients in San Diego County under a state contract funded entirely by taxpayers. They’ve earned above-average ratings for patient care. And in the process, they’ve made millions of dollars. Together, Diaz and Garcia made $1.1 million in 2016 and received more than $5 million since 2012. Diaz’s compensation as CEO exceeded the pay of several peers...

Gwen Hurd got the letter just before her shift at the outlet mall. Her health insurance company informed her that coverage for her family of three, purchased through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, would cost almost 60 percent more this year — $1,200 a month. She and her husband, a contractor, found a less expensive plan, but at $928 a month, it meant giving up date nights and saving for their future. Worse, the new policy required them to spend more than $6,000 per person before it covered much of anything. “It seems to me that people who earn nothing...

Kentucky became the first state with a work requirement for Medicaid, and now it has to do something arguably more daring: Build a mobile-friendly website that works. The state will require people who get taxpayer-funded health insurance to work or volunteer. It's the kind of government program that often draws disdain from small-government Republicans, but GOP Gov. Matt Bevin has embraced it as "a more efficient use of resources." Government-run websites are notorious for glitches. Kentucky had problems in 2016 when "Benefind" — meant to consolidate all assistance programs — caused chaos. Kentucky officials say this time will be different....

Imagine if you were poor and you got Medicaid, heavily subsidized by the taxpayer, but you had to pay between $1 and $15 a month in premiums. Wouldn't that be confusing? For many people, it is so confusing that they don't understand how to pay and end up being kicked off Medicaid. [Snip] Critics of the plan point to Indiana, which dropped about 25,000 adults from its Medicaid program from 2015 through 2017 for failing to pay premiums there. Some also find the new work requirements some states have imposed troubling ...

Donald Trump's habit of testing the US relationship with Britain took a new turn Monday when he attacked the UK's National Health Service, claiming it is "going broke and not working." The US President hit out on Twitter minutes after a segment aired on Fox News that highlighted winter strains on the UK health care system. Trump accused Democrats of pushing a similar universal health care system for the US." The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly...

"The number of immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) on Medicaid grew twice as fast as the number of natives and their children on Medicaid from 2011 to 2013 — 11 percent vs. 5 percent. About two-thirds of the growth in Medicaid associated with immigrants was among immigrants themselves, rather than the U.S.-born children of immigrants. The increase in Medicaid enrollment among immigrants and their children can be roughly estimated as costing $4.6 billion annually. By 2013, 25 percent of immigrants and their children were on Medicaid, compared to 16 percent of natives and their children.”

One of the biggest drivers of America’s opioid epidemic is Medicaid, and ObamaCare’s expansion of the program has only made matters worse, claims a new report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, drug overdoses were the leading cause of accidental death in the United States in 2016, accounting for almost 64,000 deaths. Adjusting for age, the rate of drug-overdose deaths more than tripled between 1999 and 2016. Abuse of opioids such as oxycodone is one of the primary reasons for this increase.How does Medicaid play into this? For its...

Kentucky’s new Medicaid waiver will ask low-income people to jump over hurdles to keep their coverage. Evidence suggests that many will fail. Washington State ..Instead of requiring people to establish eligibility annually, began requiring them to do so twice a year, and added some paperwork. It worked: Enrollment in the health insurance program fell by more than 40,000 children in a year. Louisiana wanted to maximize the number of eligible children who signed up for coverage, so officials simplified the sign-up process. It also worked: Enrollment surged, and the number of administrative cancellations fell by 20 percentage points. In 2006,...