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Trump Plans to Undo Obama Rule Letting Unions Skim Dues From Medicaid Payments The Trump administration is taking steps to prevent labor unions from withholding dues for home healthcare workers from their Medicaid payments, an Obama-era innovation that many observers believe is illegal. On Tuesday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed undoing a 2014 rule allowing states to skim public-sector union dues from Medicaid payments to independent home healthcare providers on the theory that those providers are de facto public employees — a privilege that has netted unions anywhere from $71 million (CMS’ estimate) to $200 million...

Despite receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money, Medicaid insurers are lax in ferreting out fraud and neglect to tell states about unscrupulous medical providers, according to a federal report released Thursday. The U.S. Health and Human Services’ inspector general’s office said a third of the health plans it examined had referred fewer than 10 cases each of suspected fraud or abuse to state Medicaid officials in 2015 for further investigation. Two insurers in the program, which serves low-income Americans, didn’t identify a single case all year, the report found. Some health plans terminated providers from their networks for fraud...

A White House report said Thursday most Americans living in poverty who receive government benefits are not working, even though they are able to -- a published backing for the Trump administration's plan to impose new work requirements for welfare recipients. The 66-page report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers said poverty numbers of non-disabled adults are "a deeply flawed reflection of material hardship." The study said most non-disabled working-age adults who receive Medicaid, 61 percent, do not work or work very few hours. The other two major welfare programs, Medicaid and food stamps, have similar numbers. The...

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is blistering at a proposed regulation that would prevent the union from siphoning fees from American workers’ Medicaid payments. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a proposed rule Tuesday that would require Medicaid payments to go directly to healthcare workers, ending a 2014 Obama-era rule that let third parties, such as unions and insurance companies, skim off a share of the paycheck before the worker saw any of it. The SEIU, one of the largest public-sector unions in the U.S., referred to the proposed rule “as part of the [Trump] administration’s broad,...

( Full Title )While Everyone Was Focused on SCOTUS Pick, US Judge ELIMINATED Work Requirements for Welfare Programs Over the last month or so, people have been wondering who Trump would appoint to replace Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Obviously, that’s an incredibly important news story to follow and it’s nice to know that Trump ultimately picked a solid conservative in Brett Kavanaugh. However, there’s still a lot of other stuff going on that Americans should be paying attention to. For example, an Obama appointed judge recently ruled against work requirements for welfare programs. Here’s more on that. From...

The Trump administration announced Tuesday it planned to end what it suggested was an illegal Obama-era rule allowing unions to Federal law generally prohibits states from skimming money from Medicaid payments bound for independent in-home personal care workers. But in 2014, the Obama administration created an exception, saying that states could divert some of that Medicaid money to unions, on the theory that these workers effectively were public-sector employees. Eleven left-leaning states have used that provision to raise more than $200 million a year for unions by taking it from health workers who often didn't even realize it, according to...

The Trump administration announced Tuesday it planned to end what it suggested was an illegal Obama-era rule allowing unions to collect dues from state subsidies intended for home health workers -- including family caregivers. Federal law generally prohibits states from skimming money from Medicaid payments bound for independent in-home personal care workers. But in 2014, the Obama administration created an exception, saying that states could divert some of that Medicaid money to unions, on the theory that these workers effectively were public-sector employees. Eleven left-leaning states have used that provision to raise more than $200 million a year for unions...

An Iowa court has determined that the state’s ban on Medicaid coverage for medically necessary surgical care for transgender residents is unconstitutional. Chief District Judge Arthur E. Gamble of the Des Moines-based Fifth Judicial District of Iowa found that the Iowa Department of Human Services’ ban on surgical coverage violates both the Iowa Civil Rights Act and the state’s constitution. In his opinion, Gamble ordered DHS to immediately approve the women’s request for pre-approval of coverage under Medicaid. Both women, Carol Ann Beal, 42, of northwest Iowa, and EerieAnna Good, 27, of the Quad Cities, have been diagnosed with gender...

A South Florida hospital has agreed to reimburse the state more than $800,000 to settle Medicaid claims about care for undocumented immigrants who sought treatment. The payments from Homestead Hospital to the state are part of an ongoing tussle between hospitals and state officials over Medicaid coverage for people who may be in the country illegally but qualify for the program because of medical emergencies or because they are in labor or need dialysis. Mallory McManus, a spokeswoman for the state Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees Medicaid, said the state paid hospitals $484.2 million to care for undocumented...

WASHINGTON — Seven months after Maine voters approved a ballot measure to expand Medicaid to tens of thousands of additional residents, a state judge on Monday ordered Gov. Paul LePage’s administration to stop stonewalling and move ahead with the plan. It was the second victory in a week for Medicaid expansion, which became possible under the Affordable Care Act. Lawmakers in Virginia voted last week to open the program to an additional 400,000 residents. Advocates in Utah have succeeded in getting a question on the November ballot about expanding Medicaid, and similar efforts are underway in Idaho and Nebraska.

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...