“The Republican fight against Medicaid expansion is far from over, but there are fewer opponents than there used to be.
The expansion of the government health insurance program was originally supposed to be mandatory under the Affordable Care Act, but the Supreme Court made it optional as part of a landmark decision on the law in June of 2012.
In the wake of the decision, Republican governors flocked to announce they were declining to expand coverage.
As of 2014, 19 states — 18 of which are led by Republican governors — have declined outright to expand coverage, but some former holdouts are beginning to come to terms with expansion.
This week, Pennsylvania formally agreed to terms with federal regulators, raising the number of states that have expanded coverage for low-income residents under Obamacare to 27. Pennsylvania is the ninth state led by a Republican governor to expand Medicaid.:”
“Federal officials have reached an agreement with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett over his plan to use federal funds to pay for private health insurance coverage for up to 600,000 residents, the governor said on Thursday.
The deal highlights a growing number of Republican governors who are finding ways to accept money under President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, despite political opposition that has so far prevented nearly half of U.S. states from moving forward with the Medicaid expansion plan.
Corbett sought a waiver in February to use those expansion funds to instead subsidize private health insurance for low-income residents.”
“PHOENIX — The Arizona Supreme Court has agreed to hear Gov. Jan Brewer’s appeal of an appeals-court decision that could unravel the Medicaid expansion she fought for last year.
The high court has not yet set a date, but indicated it will hear Brewer’s argument that about three dozen Republican lawmakers don’t have the legal standing to challenge the controversial vote.
The court’s decision, reached in a scheduling conference, comes on the heels of Tuesday’s primary election in which every Republican lawmaker who voted to expand the state’s Medicaid program won re-election. That means it would be highly unlikely the next Legislature would vote to reverse the 2013 decision, which was a consistent fault line in numerous GOP legislative primaries.
The case revolves around whether the Legislature’s 2013 vote to impose an assessment on hospitals to help cover the cost of expanding the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment program was a tax. If so, it would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.”
“An announcement could be made soon on Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s plan to use billions of federal Medicaid expansion dollars under the 2010 healthcare law to subsidize private health insurance policies, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Kait Gillis, a state Department of Public Welfare spokeswoman, said negotiations with the federal government are in the final stages, but details remain under wraps.
HHS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, and the federal agency consistently has declined to publicly discuss details of Corbett’s plan. The 124-page plan was formally submitted in February, and closed-door negotiations began in April after a public comment period.”
“Bill Jacobs spent four nights in a hospital in Florida battling pneumonia. His kids visited each day, fluffed his pillows, brought his favorite Sudoku puzzles and got regular updates from his nurses and doctors. Imagine their surprise when they found out that their 86-year-old father was never actually admitted; instead, he was treated as an outpatient under what Medicare refers to as “observation status.”
What difference does that make? Actually, more than you might think. If your parents are on Medicare, the difference between being considered an inpatient or an observation patient could be thousands of dollars out of their pocket, if not more.
First, Medicare Part A will cover all hospital services, less the deductible, but only if you’re admitted to the hospital as an inpatient. The one-time deductible covers all hospital services for the first 60 days in the hospital. Doctors’ charges are covered under Medicare Part B. After you meet the deductible for Part B, you’ll then owe 20 percent of the Medicare-approved amount for doctor services, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Are You A Hospital Inpatient Or Outpatient?”
“Cover Oregon will hold a special open enrollment period for 1,400 Oregonians who were incorrectly enrolled into the low-income Oregon Health Plan by the state’s troubled health insurance exchange.
Starting Aug. 31, the people affected will have no coverage through the OHP, the state’s version of Medicaid. However, they will have the option to sign up for coverage from private insurers and to qualify for tax credits through Cover Oregon to bring down premiums.
Meanwhile, Cover Oregon is contacting at least 700 people who should have been enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan, but were incorrectly enrolled in a commercial health plan instead.
If they were receiving tax credits for private plans, those will go away immediately, though they can keep their plan.
Cover Oregon is currently negotiating with the federal government over whether those people will have to refund to the IRS all the tax credits they received incorrectly, said Amy Fauver, Cover Oregon communications director. She said the exchange is optimistic that they won’t.”
“Revenue at not-for-profit hospitals grew at an all-time low of 3.9% last year with sluggish gains in both inpatient and outpatient activity, according to a report on 2013 medians from Moody’s Investors Service.
In comparison, hospital revenue increased 5.1% in 2012 and historically has grown about 7% per year.
Moody’s pegged the increased popularity of high-deductible health plans for leading people to postpone care or seek out lower cost retail clinics. “Patients have more skin in the game,” said Jennifer Ewing, an analyst at Moody’s.
The volume decline also is coming amid a number of Medicare reimbursement cuts, including the ones known as sequestration triggered by the 2012 Budget Control Act and reductions in disproportionate-share hospital payments under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In addition, Medicare’s two-midnight rule has made it harder for hospitals to bill short stays as inpatient care, and commercial payers have offered lower payment rate increases.”
“CARMICHAEL, Calif. — The lobby of Rosewood Post-Acute Rehab, a nursing home in this Sacramento suburb, bears all the touches of a luxury hotel, including high ceilings, leather club chairs and paintings of bucolic landscapes.
What really sets Rosewood apart, however, is its five-star rating from Medicare, which has been assigning hotel-style ratings to nearly every nursing home in the country for the last five years. Rosewood’s five-star status — the best possible — places it in rarefied company: Only one-fifth of more than 15,000 nursing homes nationwide hold such a distinction.
But an examination of the rating system by The New York Times has found that Rosewood and many other top-ranked nursing homes have been given a seal of approval that is based on incomplete information and that can seriously mislead consumers, investors and others about conditions at the homes.
The Medicare ratings, which have become the gold standard across the industry, are based in large part on self-reported data by the nursing homes that the government does not verify. Only one of the three criteria used to determine the star ratings — the results of annual health inspections — relies on assessments from independent reviewers. The other measures — staff levels and quality statistics — are reported by the nursing homes and accepted by Medicare, with limited exceptions, at face value.”
“It was late in the afternoon on a warm Friday in early fall and Doug Sumrell was mowing the lawn outside his suburban home in Evans, Georgia. As he pushed the mower across the yard, Sumrell began to feel faint — his chest tightened and the back of his neck started throbbing — so he went inside to take a break and drink a glass of water. But each time he went outside to finish the job, the feeling came back. He drove himself to the hospital as the sun was setting. On the way there, he left a message for his primary care doctor, Dr. Paul Fischer.
At the hospital, a cardiac enzyme test showed Sumrell’s levels were extremely high, a strong indication that Sumrell had experienced a heart attack. The emergency room doctors said that they wanted to admit him, but it was already after midnight and Sumrell’s symptoms had subsided. His wife was out of town and their dog Buddy needed to be let out. Sumrell checked himself out of the hospital.
He was jolted awake at 7:30 a.m. by the telephone. Dr. Fischer was on the line demanding that Sumrell return to the hospital immediately to meet Dr. Faiz Rehman, a cardiologist and friend of Fischer’s, to examine his heart. Within 15 minutes of arriving, Sumrell was in the hospital’s “cath lab,” where Dr. Rehman inserted a catheter through Sumrell’s groin and into his heart, allowing him to see blockages in Sumrell’s arteries. The news was bad: his left anterior descending artery — also known as the “widow maker” — was up to 98 percent blocked. “Lord, I would’ve stayed home and not told anybody if Dr. Fischer hadn’t interceded and gotten me down there and arranged everything,” Sumrell told me.”
“Carondelet Health Network, a Tucson, Ariz.-based division of Ascension Health, has agreed to pay $35 million to settle allegations that two of its hospitals inappropriately billed Medicare and other federal health programs for inpatient rehabilitation care.
The settlement is the highest amount paid in Arizona under the False Claims Act, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Phoenix. From 2004 to 2011, the Justice Department alleged, the Carondelet hospitals billed the government for inpatient rehab services for patients who didn’t meet coverage criteria.
The Roman Catholic hospital system “expressly denies” the allegations in the settlement agreement.”