“The Affordable Care Act may be the law of the land, but some states are still doing their best to avoid it. Nearly half the states have refused to participate in the law’s expansion of Medicaid. Some describe this reluctance as tantamount to a moral crime—see Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s recent statement that expansion’s opponents are “prevent[ing] their own constituents from getting access to health care.”
As a doctor, I know this isn’t true. Medicaid is sold to the public as a magic pill that will solve the poor’s inadequate access to medical care. But reality isn’t so simple.
Simply put, Medicaid gives patients terrible access to medical care. A recent study found that nearly a third of doctors no longer accept new Medicaid patients. In some states, as many as 60 percent don’t. Why not? Because Medicaid operates in a world without economic logic.
Bureaucrats in Washington dictate how much money doctors receive for the treatments and services they provide. Unfortunately, on average they reimburse at less than the actual cost—the average Medicaid reimbursement is 40 percent less than the reimbursement from private insurance.
Medicaid payments don’t even match the reimbursement rates for Medicare. Primary care receives 59 cents for every Medicare dollar. Obstetric care receives 78 cents. Overall, Medicaid receives 66 cents for every Medicare dollar—a one third cut for the exact same service.”
“The price tag for healthcare.gov, the Obamacare website, is approaching $1 billion even as key features remain incomplete, congressional auditors said.
The budget to get the site ready for the next round of enrollments, starting in November, jumped to $840 million as of March, according to the Government Accountability Office. That’s a $163 million increase since December.
Accenture Plc (ACN), the company that took over building the site that failed at its introduction this past October, is expected to be paid $175 million as of June, an $84 million increase from the estimate in January when it signed a contract. The data are part of testimony for a congressional hearing today in the Republican-led House. The GAO places blame for the site’s rising price on poor planning and supervision of contractors who built the federal health exchange.
If the management doesn’t improve “significant risks remain that upcoming open enrollment periods could encounter challenges,” William Woods, the GAO’s director of acquisition and sourcing management, is scheduled to testify according to prepared remarks released by the Energy and Commerce Committee.”
“A high-level report recommending sweeping changes in how the government distributes $15 billion annually to subsidize the training of doctors has brought out the sharp scalpels of those who would be most immediately affected.
The reaction also raises questions about the sensitive politics involved in redistributing a large pot of money that now goes disproportionately to teaching hospitals in the Northeast U.S. All of the changes recommended would have to be made by Congress.
Released Tuesday, the report for the Institute of Medicine called for more accountability for the funds, two-thirds of which are provided by Medicare. It also called for an end to providing the money directly to the teaching hospitals and to dramatically alter the way the funds are paid.
The funding in question is for graduate medical education (GME), the post-medical school training of interns and residents required before doctors can be licensed to practice in any state.”
“The recent decision of a three-judge panel in the Halbig case, if it prevails, would have a direct effect on the availability of subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). People buying coverage on their own in insurance exchanges run by the federal government would be ineligible for income-based subsidies. Depending on how you count, that would take premium subsidies away from 4.6 million people in 34 states, or 4.7 million people in 36 states if you count New Mexico and Idaho (which have signaled their intention to operate their own exchanges but are still using the federal marketplace).
Many more people are eligible for subsidies but haven’t yet signed up. We estimate (using the approach described here that a total of 9.5 million uninsured people are eligible for subsidies in federal marketplace states (or, 9.7 million people if you include New Mexico and Idaho).
Since many low and moderate income people would have difficulty affording insurance without the subsidies, this would no doubt alter the extent to which the ACA is reducing the number of Americans who are uninsured, which recent surveys peg at about 8 to 10 million.
But, there would also be two important side effects of the Halbig case.”
“A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled against a challenge to Obamacare’s individual mandate based on the origination clause of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court held in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012) that Obamacare’s individual mandate was constitutional because it was a tax. The Constitution also says tax legislation must originate in the House.
But the Obamacare individual mandate tax did not originate in the House. Senate Democrats took a House bill that provided tax credits to veterans purchasing new homes, gutted its language and “amended” it with the language that would become Obamacare.
Todd Gaziano, one of the lawyers for Matt Sissel, likened this amendment to “the complete destruction of a house and the erection of a massive skyscraper on the same street address.”
In a unanimous ruling in Tuesday’s case, Sissel v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the D.C. Circuit panel held that since the individual mandate’s purpose was to require people to buy health insurance, not to raise revenue, the law did not need to comply with the origination clause.”
“Medicare’s true cost is the biggest problem in Washington and the one most ignored.
The long-awaited 2014 Medicare Trustees report is out, and the “spinning “ is well underway. But the media is not yet reporting another big finding – this one by the Medicare Actuary and revealed on the same day: Taxpayers face a Medicare unfunded liability ranging from $28 trillion to $35 trillion, depending on the most realistic assumptions about the future. In other words, Washington politicians have promised seniors that over the next 75 years (the so-called long-term “actuarial window”) they will receive tens of trillions of dollars of Medicare benefits that are not paid for. It is Washington’s biggest, most expensive and most difficult federal entitlement problem. And it is one most politicians—with a few noble exceptions—continue to ignore.”