President Donald Trump is expected to outline his plans to replace the Affordable Care Act during a meeting Monday with health insurance executives and the nation's governors.
Reported by cbs4.com 15 hours ago.
Trump To Outline Obamacare Replacement Plan To Health Execs
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Republicans Are Replacing "Obamacare" With "Who Cares?"
Based on a rough draft of a bill leaked Friday, February 24, Republicans in Congress are developing a plan to replace the ACA. Some might say it is too early to criticize a rough draft. However, as a doctor and health justice advocate, I feel the politicians opposing Obamacare have had almost 7 years to develop an alternative. Republicans had the audacity to vote over 60 times to repeal the ACA without any replacement. After all their theatrics and tantrums, they owe my patients and the rest of the American people a plan that can withstand scrutiny. So let’s scrutinize:
*1. Are the insurance plans in the House GOP’s replacement bill as affordable as they are under the ACA?*
Right now, the Affordable Care Act gives subsidies to people based on their income. The ACA goal is that if you have a low income, you’ll get more help, while people with higher incomes get less help. In their replacement plan, House Republicans are planning to change the tax credits to be based on age, not income. If you’re older, you’ll get more help, even if you’re a millionaire or billionaire. If you’re younger, you’ll get less help, even if you have a struggling income. The tax credit will only be between $2,000 and $4,000, which is hardly enough to help low-income families afford health insurance.
*2. How does the House GOP’s replacement bill maintain or change Medicaid and CHIP? *
Under the ACA, 31 states and Washington, DC expanded Medicaid, covering the health care needs of 15 million Americans with low incomes. When surveyed by the Commonwealth Fund, 77 percent of new Medicaid enrollees across the country described their coverage as good, very good, or excellent. Right now, when a state opts to expand Medicaid, the federal government picks up 90 percent of the cost for expansion, much to the relief of struggling state budgets.
Speaker Ryan and other House Republicans say they don’t plan to “pull the rug out from anyone who received care under states’ Medicaid expansions.” Pull the rug out? It’s more like they’re pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes. House Republicans plan to terminate federal funding for the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid by the year 2020. After that, if a state wants to keep covering people through its expanded Medicaid, it must find the money for it on their own. Furthermore, the House GOP’s bill calls for per capita caps on Medicaid where the federal government gives each state a small, fixed amount of money for each person enrolled in the program. Alternatively, a state can get a block grant for Medicaid, where a state gets a small lump sum of federal money for its entire Medicaid program. Whether they’re called per capita caps or block grants, I call them attacks on the health of my patients and my fellow Americans, over 70 million of whom are covered by Medicaid. No one voted for Congress to create chaos for this cornerstone of health care.
*3. Does the House GOP’s replacement bill protect people with pre-existing conditions?*
Right now, one of the most popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act is that it stops insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions. The ACA stops insurance companies from kicking you off your plan if you develop an expensive illness like cancer or a serious injury. Thanks to the ACA, insurance companies can not sell you a plan that covers everything but your pre-existing condition. Also, you can not be charged extra if you use insurance to cover costs for your pre-existing condition.
Under the replacement plan from House Republicans, patients with pre-existing conditions must maintain “continuous coverage” in order to avoid the insurance industry’s discrimination. “Continuous coverage” is an unacceptable replacement for protecting patients with pre-existing conditions. The average American’s experience with cancer demonstrates why. After most patients find out they have cancer, they need weeks or months away from their jobs to start treatment. During that time, a patient might not be able to keep her job, much less her health insurance benefits. There may be a lapse in insurance coverage during the time a patient is between jobs, or before she can get insurance on an exchange marketplace. Because this patient failed to maintain “continuous coverage,” an insurance company could charge her 30 percent more under the House GOP’s replacement for the ACA. Some say this policy emphasizes personal responsibility. As a doctor and health justice advocate, I see a policy putting profits before patients.
*4. Based on all of the above, will the House GOP’s plan cover the same number of people?*
Right now, over 90 percent of people in America are covered for health care through Medicaid, private insurance, and/or Medicare. This is the highest rate of coverage our country has ever seen, and the Affordable Care Act is a major contributor to that achievement.
There is simply no way the replacement plan from the House Republicans will cover as many people. Their plan wrecks Medicaid, a cornerstone of health care for millions of Americans. Medicaid can not cover over 70 million Americans through per capita caps or block grants, and many of those people have nowhere else to go for coverage. Their plan provides less help to people who cannot afford private health insurance. Their plan lets insurance companies discriminate against Americans with pre-existing conditions. Early estimates are that 30 million people will lose coverage if the ACA is repealed, and the House GOP’s replacement plan will create additional shock waves across public health.
We must remind our Congress and the Trump regime that the majority of Americans did not vote for Trump and they certainly did not vote for chaos in health care. Any upgrades to the Affordable Care Act need to deliver real health justice, where every man, woman, and child has the right to high-quality health care. We need to free ourselves from worrying whether a new diagnosis means the end of our family finances. Staying healthy is hard work just by itself. Let’s stand up to the insurance industry and demand better value for premium dollars. Let’s build upon the great work Medicaid and Medicare are doing. Health care must not be a privilege for a few. However, in order to make health care a right for all, all of us must fight for it.
In the latest episode of his podcast on We Act Radio, Dr. America reveals the public health consequences of recklessly replacing the ACA: https://goo.gl/Yz3w6o
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 11 hours ago.
*1. Are the insurance plans in the House GOP’s replacement bill as affordable as they are under the ACA?*
Right now, the Affordable Care Act gives subsidies to people based on their income. The ACA goal is that if you have a low income, you’ll get more help, while people with higher incomes get less help. In their replacement plan, House Republicans are planning to change the tax credits to be based on age, not income. If you’re older, you’ll get more help, even if you’re a millionaire or billionaire. If you’re younger, you’ll get less help, even if you have a struggling income. The tax credit will only be between $2,000 and $4,000, which is hardly enough to help low-income families afford health insurance.
*2. How does the House GOP’s replacement bill maintain or change Medicaid and CHIP? *
Under the ACA, 31 states and Washington, DC expanded Medicaid, covering the health care needs of 15 million Americans with low incomes. When surveyed by the Commonwealth Fund, 77 percent of new Medicaid enrollees across the country described their coverage as good, very good, or excellent. Right now, when a state opts to expand Medicaid, the federal government picks up 90 percent of the cost for expansion, much to the relief of struggling state budgets.
Speaker Ryan and other House Republicans say they don’t plan to “pull the rug out from anyone who received care under states’ Medicaid expansions.” Pull the rug out? It’s more like they’re pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes. House Republicans plan to terminate federal funding for the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid by the year 2020. After that, if a state wants to keep covering people through its expanded Medicaid, it must find the money for it on their own. Furthermore, the House GOP’s bill calls for per capita caps on Medicaid where the federal government gives each state a small, fixed amount of money for each person enrolled in the program. Alternatively, a state can get a block grant for Medicaid, where a state gets a small lump sum of federal money for its entire Medicaid program. Whether they’re called per capita caps or block grants, I call them attacks on the health of my patients and my fellow Americans, over 70 million of whom are covered by Medicaid. No one voted for Congress to create chaos for this cornerstone of health care.
*3. Does the House GOP’s replacement bill protect people with pre-existing conditions?*
Right now, one of the most popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act is that it stops insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions. The ACA stops insurance companies from kicking you off your plan if you develop an expensive illness like cancer or a serious injury. Thanks to the ACA, insurance companies can not sell you a plan that covers everything but your pre-existing condition. Also, you can not be charged extra if you use insurance to cover costs for your pre-existing condition.
Under the replacement plan from House Republicans, patients with pre-existing conditions must maintain “continuous coverage” in order to avoid the insurance industry’s discrimination. “Continuous coverage” is an unacceptable replacement for protecting patients with pre-existing conditions. The average American’s experience with cancer demonstrates why. After most patients find out they have cancer, they need weeks or months away from their jobs to start treatment. During that time, a patient might not be able to keep her job, much less her health insurance benefits. There may be a lapse in insurance coverage during the time a patient is between jobs, or before she can get insurance on an exchange marketplace. Because this patient failed to maintain “continuous coverage,” an insurance company could charge her 30 percent more under the House GOP’s replacement for the ACA. Some say this policy emphasizes personal responsibility. As a doctor and health justice advocate, I see a policy putting profits before patients.
*4. Based on all of the above, will the House GOP’s plan cover the same number of people?*
Right now, over 90 percent of people in America are covered for health care through Medicaid, private insurance, and/or Medicare. This is the highest rate of coverage our country has ever seen, and the Affordable Care Act is a major contributor to that achievement.
There is simply no way the replacement plan from the House Republicans will cover as many people. Their plan wrecks Medicaid, a cornerstone of health care for millions of Americans. Medicaid can not cover over 70 million Americans through per capita caps or block grants, and many of those people have nowhere else to go for coverage. Their plan provides less help to people who cannot afford private health insurance. Their plan lets insurance companies discriminate against Americans with pre-existing conditions. Early estimates are that 30 million people will lose coverage if the ACA is repealed, and the House GOP’s replacement plan will create additional shock waves across public health.
We must remind our Congress and the Trump regime that the majority of Americans did not vote for Trump and they certainly did not vote for chaos in health care. Any upgrades to the Affordable Care Act need to deliver real health justice, where every man, woman, and child has the right to high-quality health care. We need to free ourselves from worrying whether a new diagnosis means the end of our family finances. Staying healthy is hard work just by itself. Let’s stand up to the insurance industry and demand better value for premium dollars. Let’s build upon the great work Medicaid and Medicare are doing. Health care must not be a privilege for a few. However, in order to make health care a right for all, all of us must fight for it.
In the latest episode of his podcast on We Act Radio, Dr. America reveals the public health consequences of recklessly replacing the ACA: https://goo.gl/Yz3w6o
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 11 hours ago.
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'Tick tock, motherf------': John Oliver rails against Republican Obamacare replacement plan
John Oliver, the host of HBO's "Last Week Tonight," set his sights on the Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, during his show Sunday night.The HBO political commentator and comedian broke down the major parts of the GOP's replacement plan and railed against it.
Oliver pointed to key points from a Republican fact sheet that went out to House GOP members last week. He broke down various parts of the proposal, from high-risk pools to Medicaid block grants. He said coverage was likely to be lacking, citing new Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price's plan to replace the ACA.
"Tom Price once proposed a tax credit of $1,200 for people aged 18 to 35 and $3,000 to people 50 and up, which is roughly a third of the cost of the most bare bones plans on the market today," said Oliver. "A tax credit that small helps cover your health insurance the way a thong covers your dad's a-- — it doesn't — and there's something fundamentally wrong about that."
Oliver also called out the lack of detail in the Republican guidelines, citing the use of a placeholder at the end of one draft of a bill. (The bill is not finalized, however.)
"If you need any more proof of how unprepared Republicans are right now, let me show you one of the draft bills they circulated," Oliver said. "It is just seven pages long and it end abruptly with the word 'placeholder.'"
Oliver concluded by saying the timeline for a Republican replacement is growing shorter, since insurance companies must submit plans for their 2018 exchange coverage in April.
"Insurers are going to need an answer soon, so tick tock motherf------ because you don't get to placeholder your way out of this one again," Oliver said
-Watch the full segment here:-
*SEE ALSO: Americans have flipped their opinion on Obamacare right as Republicans are set to repeal it*
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: 'Sit down! Quiet!': Watch Trump's heated exchanges with reporters in his longest press conference as president Reported by Business Insider 14 hours ago.
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Hot mic catches Trump griping about special prosecutor: ‘I haven’t called Russia in 10 years’
President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed calls for a special prosecutor to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election. At the conclusion of a press availability ahead of Trump’s meeting with health insurance executives, NBC’s Kristen Welker asked the president if...
Reported by Raw Story 13 hours ago.
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Trump warns health care system will "implode" unless fixed
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump warned Monday that the nation's health care system was in danger of imploding and said Congress must make fundamental changes to the sweeping health law passed by his predecessor. Without offering specific details about what he wants in a replacement package, Trump said the current health insurance market is "going to absolutely implode" and called on the executives to work with the government on a way forward.
Reported by SeattlePI.com 12 hours ago.
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Most Americans Want U.S. To Keep Funding Expanded Medicaid
A majority of Americans say it is important to keep federal funding for an expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor under Obamacare, even as Republicans work on repealing and replacing former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, according to a poll released on Friday.
The 2010 Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid in more than 30 states with the help of increased federal funding, extending health insurance to millions of Americans.
Eighty-four percent of respondents in a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll said it was important that federal support for the expansion remain in place.
The Republican-led Congress and the administration of President Donald Trump have said repealing and replacing the law - under which more than 20 million previously uninsured Americans received health insurance, many through the Medicaid expansion - is a top priority. They have vowed to unveil legislation to begin doing so next month.
Republicans have long opposed Obamacare on grounds it was government overreach and that it simply led to higher insurance premiums for many Americans.
Early Republican proposals have included capping the amount of money states receive for Medicaid programs.
But the Kaiser poll found that the Medicaid expansion has broad bipartisan support. Ninety-five percent of Democrats, 84 percent of independents and 69 percent of Republicans said it was “very” or “somewhat” important to continue to provide federal funding for the expansion.
In the 16 states with a Republican governor that expanded Medicaid, 87 percent of residents said it was important that federal funding for the expansion be maintained.
The Kaiser poll also found that 48 percent of Americans view the healthcare law favorably while 42 percent view it unfavorably, the highest level of support tracked by Kaiser since 2010.
A poll released on Thursday from the Pew Research Center also found that support for Obamacare had reached a new high, with 54 percent saying they approved of the law.
(Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 12 hours ago.
The 2010 Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid in more than 30 states with the help of increased federal funding, extending health insurance to millions of Americans.
Eighty-four percent of respondents in a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll said it was important that federal support for the expansion remain in place.
The Republican-led Congress and the administration of President Donald Trump have said repealing and replacing the law - under which more than 20 million previously uninsured Americans received health insurance, many through the Medicaid expansion - is a top priority. They have vowed to unveil legislation to begin doing so next month.
Republicans have long opposed Obamacare on grounds it was government overreach and that it simply led to higher insurance premiums for many Americans.
Early Republican proposals have included capping the amount of money states receive for Medicaid programs.
But the Kaiser poll found that the Medicaid expansion has broad bipartisan support. Ninety-five percent of Democrats, 84 percent of independents and 69 percent of Republicans said it was “very” or “somewhat” important to continue to provide federal funding for the expansion.
In the 16 states with a Republican governor that expanded Medicaid, 87 percent of residents said it was important that federal funding for the expansion be maintained.
The Kaiser poll also found that 48 percent of Americans view the healthcare law favorably while 42 percent view it unfavorably, the highest level of support tracked by Kaiser since 2010.
A poll released on Thursday from the Pew Research Center also found that support for Obamacare had reached a new high, with 54 percent saying they approved of the law.
(Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 12 hours ago.
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Trump On Whether There Should be a Special Prosecutor On Russia: ‘I Haven’t Called Russia in Ten Years’
During a meeting with health insurance executives today, *President Trump* seemed to shrug off a question about whether he would ever appoint someone to investigate the level of Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
Reported by Mediaite 12 hours ago.
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Chair Of House Intel Committee: No Evidence Of Contact Between Trump Campaign, Russia
In what will likely be a setback to the ongoing press campaign to portray the Trump administration and campaign as a Kremlin puppet, on Monday the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee said he has seen no evidence of contact between Donald Trump's campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 presidential election, Reuters reported.Devin Nunes, head of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said the panel is expanding an ongoing investigation into Russian activities to include Moscow's efforts targeting the U.S. election. Nunes said he had been briefed on a transcript of a phone call that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn had with a Russian envoy after the election. *He said he did not hear anything worrisome about that call*.
During a press conference with reporters on Monday, Rep. Nunes downplayed claims that the White House had asked members of the CIA and FBI to squelch reports of contact between Russia and members of Trump’s presidential campaign, *saying that there was “nothing wrong” with what he characterized as attempts to have a better working relationship with the press. *He also said that the committee wanted evidence of any American citizens who may have talked to Russian officials, implicitly broadening the issue beyond the Trump campaign and administration. He characterized the FBI as being “very upfront” with his committee about what they know about Trump’s potential connections with Russia, although he admitted that he’d like to know more.
When asked if they have any evidence of contacts specifically from the Trump campaign, Nunes replied: “It’s been looked into and there’s no evidence of anything there. Obviously we’d like to know if there is.” He also dismissed concerns that Flynn had violated the Logan Act as “ridiculous” and said that they would not subpoena Trump’s tax returns, which puts him at odds with Senate Intelligence Committee member Susan Collins, R-Maine. Throughout the press conference, Nunes insisted that both he and the White House were simply trying to be “transparent” and claimed to be confused as to why the Trump administration providing his phone number to a reporter would be a news story. He also repeated his earlier statements about wanting to avoid “McCarthyism” and “witch hunts” based on reports that Americans may have connections to the Russian regime.
“This is almost like McCarthyism revisited,” Nunes told reporters at the California Republican Party’s spring convention on Saturday according to Politico. “We’re going to go on a witch hunt against, against innocent Americans?”
Nunes added: “*At this point, there’s nothing there*. Once we begin to look at all the evidence, and if we find any American that had any contact with Russian agents or anybody affiliated with the Russian government, then we’ll be glad to, at that point, you know, subpoena those people before the House and let the legislative branch do its oversight and then we would recommend it over to, you know, the appropriate people.”
Nunes concluded, saying, “we can’t go on a witch hunt against the American people, any American people who have not had any contact, just because they appeared in a news story.”
Also on Monday, while speaking to a gathering of health insurance executives he was meeting with at the White House, president Trump on Monday dismissed a question about his aides’ alleged ties to Russia by saying he hasn’t spoken to the country in a decade.
Q: Do you support a special prosecutor on Russia?
Trump: “I haven’t called Russia in 10 years.” pic.twitter.com/wJGTUHzBaq
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 27, 2017
*“I haven’t called Russia in 10 years,” *he told a reporter who asked him whether a special prosecutor should carry out an investigation. Reported by Zero Hedge 10 hours ago.
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GOP will end up saving Obama's legacy on health insurance
How the GOP will end up saving the policy they hate.
Reported by FOXNews.com 9 hours ago.
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Yes, Mr. President, Health Care Is 'Complicated.' Now What Are You Going To Do About It?
“Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”
That was President Donald Trump speaking at the White House Monday, and if anything can encapsulate the dilemma facing Republicans as they haltingly try to keep their campaign promises to repeal and “replace” the Affordable Care Act ― aka Obamacare ― it’s that.
The idea that “nobody” knew health care is complicated is, of course, nonsense ― as literally anyone who’s ever visited a doctor or used health insurance could tell you. But the realization seems to have come belatedly to Trump.
Perhaps Trump will use his address before a joint session of Congress Tuesday to lay out a detailed plan for how to remake the health care system. But the president’s own shifting and contradictory statements about health care reform suggest that he remains unclear about what to do and how much ownership to take of the consequences of repealing the Affordable Care Act.
At a recent meeting with Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), for example, Trump seemed to be swayed by appeals to keep much of the law’s coverage expansion in place. The governor drew charts on pieces of paper on the president’s desk outlining the potential costs of repeal, an aide familiar with the exchange told The Huffington Post.
“He responded very positively to a number of the ideas I had,” Kasich, who used the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid, said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.
Trump went over the charts three separate times, and even got his newly installed Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on the phone to discuss it further, according to the aide. Other aides had to remind the president that the congressional Republican plans are far less generous, after which Trump expressed preference for Kasich’s approach, as The Washington Post reported.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) seem to have a better sense of where they want to go with repeal ― perhaps because they, especially Ryan, have spent more time focusing on the issue.
But these congressional leaders haven’t been able to bridge the divides in their own skittish caucuses about the timing or scope of the repeal and “replace” effort. Meanwhile, there has been a groundswell of anger over the prospect of killing the increasingly popular law.
Ryan appears desperate enough to advance Affordable Care Act repeal that he’s considering pushing legislation to the floor and essentially daring reluctant and unsatisfied members to vote against it, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The bet is that few Republicans would pass up a chance to damage the Affordable Care Act, lest their supporters see them breaking their promise to do so. This trial balloon didn’t soar long: On Monday, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who chairs the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said that he would vote against a forthcoming GOP leadership proposal if, like a version that leaked to the press last week, it still had elements of an entitlement program.
That underscores Republicans’ risky bid. Additionally, legislators would have to be on record calling for millions of people to lose health care with no guarantee that the Senate would follow suit, or that Congress as a whole would eventually come up with something better than the Affordable Care Act.This disarray is new ― although, in hindsight, it was to be expected. In the years since Democrats in Congress and then-President Barack Obama began putting together the Affordable Care Act and working to implement it, Republicans have had the luxury of sitting in the backseat, criticizing the law and talking about how much better they could do.
Now they’re in the driver’s seat, and they can’t even agree on a destination, much less a route to get there.
Republicans are trying to square their promises to, as Trump put it, offer “great health care” that’s “much less expensive and much better” while still eliminating the taxes on wealthy people and health care companies.
That’s pretty much impossible, because those taxes pay for about half of what the Affordable Care Act does ― and there’s no enthusiasm for alternative ways to raise the money.
Republicans also can’t square their promises of great health care with the party’s ideological commitment to smaller government, since without regulations, insurers will offer policies that cover fewer services and offer even less financial protection. And without generous government subsidies, poor people and many middle-class people won’t have enough money to buy coverage.
That draft legislation that leaked to Politico makes clear how leaders intend to resolve the inconsistencies in their rhetoric. They would weaken protections for people with pre-existing conditions and dramatically slash federal spending on health care for the poor and the middle class, while proposing a new tax on the job-based health benefit plans that cover the majority of Americans.
The result would be many more people without insurance and much greater exposure to medical bills for those who have coverage, according to an analysis of the plan that Axios and Vox obtained.
This approach isn’t surprising. Ryan’s philosophical idol is the “objectivist” writer Ayn Rand, and he believes that high taxation of the wealthy is morally wrong and that the government should provide far less help to the indigent than it currently does. McConnell has a more flexible ideology, but he’s never had much of an appetite for preserving big government programs when he can kill them instead.
The White House, though, is another story. Trump certainly isn’t an orthodox conservative, and he’s barely a Republican in the traditional sense.
On the one hand, Trump chose Price, an ideological conservative, to be secretary of health and human services. And at various points during his candidacy and the presidential transition, he embraced reforms consistent with Ryan’s.
On the other hand, Trump also keeps pledging “insurance for everybody,” a pledge utterly inconsistent with Ryan’s and Price’s proposals, and with decades of GOP health care policies.
The simplest explanation for the inconsistency is ignorance ― Trump doesn’t really understand the trade-offs of health policy, and can’t be bothered to learn. His comment at the White House Monday supports that theory.
But it’s also possible that Trump has genuinely mixed feelings. The abstract notion of snatching away health coverage from millions of poor and working-class families may not trouble the president’s sleep, but some of those folks are his voters, and they’re growing increasingly worried that when Republicans promised to repeal Obamacare, it meant their Obamacare, too.
We also know that Trump’s advisers are divided, as The Washington Post reported over the weekend.
Vice President Mike Pence and others are urging the president to forge ahead with repeal. But chief strategist Steve Bannon, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner (whose brother runs a health insurance company) and National Economic Council Chairman Gary Cohn don’t want the president mired in the health care mess, according to the report.
This is the dawning realization that repeal is politically riskier than GOP lawmakers allowed themselves to acknowledge during the past eight years.
The health care fight is also sucking up time and political capital, creating higher hurdles for Trump and the GOP to advance the rest of their agenda, including tax cuts for the rich and infrastructure spending.
The question is whether at some point Trump decides to steer this debate in one direction or the other. He may not. He may just remain hands-off, or continue to send conflicting signals. But at some point the fate of reform may hang on his actions ― whether it’s giving up, lobbying legislators or, ultimately, signing a bill. In other words, he can’t duck the choice forever.
And so it will be interesting to see whether, on Tuesday night, Trump decides to start weighing in more forcefully. Like the man said: It’s complicated.
Sam Stein contributed reporting.
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-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 6 hours ago.
That was President Donald Trump speaking at the White House Monday, and if anything can encapsulate the dilemma facing Republicans as they haltingly try to keep their campaign promises to repeal and “replace” the Affordable Care Act ― aka Obamacare ― it’s that.
The idea that “nobody” knew health care is complicated is, of course, nonsense ― as literally anyone who’s ever visited a doctor or used health insurance could tell you. But the realization seems to have come belatedly to Trump.
Perhaps Trump will use his address before a joint session of Congress Tuesday to lay out a detailed plan for how to remake the health care system. But the president’s own shifting and contradictory statements about health care reform suggest that he remains unclear about what to do and how much ownership to take of the consequences of repealing the Affordable Care Act.
At a recent meeting with Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), for example, Trump seemed to be swayed by appeals to keep much of the law’s coverage expansion in place. The governor drew charts on pieces of paper on the president’s desk outlining the potential costs of repeal, an aide familiar with the exchange told The Huffington Post.
“He responded very positively to a number of the ideas I had,” Kasich, who used the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid, said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.
Trump went over the charts three separate times, and even got his newly installed Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on the phone to discuss it further, according to the aide. Other aides had to remind the president that the congressional Republican plans are far less generous, after which Trump expressed preference for Kasich’s approach, as The Washington Post reported.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) seem to have a better sense of where they want to go with repeal ― perhaps because they, especially Ryan, have spent more time focusing on the issue.
But these congressional leaders haven’t been able to bridge the divides in their own skittish caucuses about the timing or scope of the repeal and “replace” effort. Meanwhile, there has been a groundswell of anger over the prospect of killing the increasingly popular law.
Ryan appears desperate enough to advance Affordable Care Act repeal that he’s considering pushing legislation to the floor and essentially daring reluctant and unsatisfied members to vote against it, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The bet is that few Republicans would pass up a chance to damage the Affordable Care Act, lest their supporters see them breaking their promise to do so. This trial balloon didn’t soar long: On Monday, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who chairs the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said that he would vote against a forthcoming GOP leadership proposal if, like a version that leaked to the press last week, it still had elements of an entitlement program.
That underscores Republicans’ risky bid. Additionally, legislators would have to be on record calling for millions of people to lose health care with no guarantee that the Senate would follow suit, or that Congress as a whole would eventually come up with something better than the Affordable Care Act.This disarray is new ― although, in hindsight, it was to be expected. In the years since Democrats in Congress and then-President Barack Obama began putting together the Affordable Care Act and working to implement it, Republicans have had the luxury of sitting in the backseat, criticizing the law and talking about how much better they could do.
Now they’re in the driver’s seat, and they can’t even agree on a destination, much less a route to get there.
Republicans are trying to square their promises to, as Trump put it, offer “great health care” that’s “much less expensive and much better” while still eliminating the taxes on wealthy people and health care companies.
That’s pretty much impossible, because those taxes pay for about half of what the Affordable Care Act does ― and there’s no enthusiasm for alternative ways to raise the money.
Republicans also can’t square their promises of great health care with the party’s ideological commitment to smaller government, since without regulations, insurers will offer policies that cover fewer services and offer even less financial protection. And without generous government subsidies, poor people and many middle-class people won’t have enough money to buy coverage.
That draft legislation that leaked to Politico makes clear how leaders intend to resolve the inconsistencies in their rhetoric. They would weaken protections for people with pre-existing conditions and dramatically slash federal spending on health care for the poor and the middle class, while proposing a new tax on the job-based health benefit plans that cover the majority of Americans.
The result would be many more people without insurance and much greater exposure to medical bills for those who have coverage, according to an analysis of the plan that Axios and Vox obtained.
This approach isn’t surprising. Ryan’s philosophical idol is the “objectivist” writer Ayn Rand, and he believes that high taxation of the wealthy is morally wrong and that the government should provide far less help to the indigent than it currently does. McConnell has a more flexible ideology, but he’s never had much of an appetite for preserving big government programs when he can kill them instead.
The White House, though, is another story. Trump certainly isn’t an orthodox conservative, and he’s barely a Republican in the traditional sense.
On the one hand, Trump chose Price, an ideological conservative, to be secretary of health and human services. And at various points during his candidacy and the presidential transition, he embraced reforms consistent with Ryan’s.
On the other hand, Trump also keeps pledging “insurance for everybody,” a pledge utterly inconsistent with Ryan’s and Price’s proposals, and with decades of GOP health care policies.
The simplest explanation for the inconsistency is ignorance ― Trump doesn’t really understand the trade-offs of health policy, and can’t be bothered to learn. His comment at the White House Monday supports that theory.
But it’s also possible that Trump has genuinely mixed feelings. The abstract notion of snatching away health coverage from millions of poor and working-class families may not trouble the president’s sleep, but some of those folks are his voters, and they’re growing increasingly worried that when Republicans promised to repeal Obamacare, it meant their Obamacare, too.
We also know that Trump’s advisers are divided, as The Washington Post reported over the weekend.
Vice President Mike Pence and others are urging the president to forge ahead with repeal. But chief strategist Steve Bannon, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner (whose brother runs a health insurance company) and National Economic Council Chairman Gary Cohn don’t want the president mired in the health care mess, according to the report.
This is the dawning realization that repeal is politically riskier than GOP lawmakers allowed themselves to acknowledge during the past eight years.
The health care fight is also sucking up time and political capital, creating higher hurdles for Trump and the GOP to advance the rest of their agenda, including tax cuts for the rich and infrastructure spending.
The question is whether at some point Trump decides to steer this debate in one direction or the other. He may not. He may just remain hands-off, or continue to send conflicting signals. But at some point the fate of reform may hang on his actions ― whether it’s giving up, lobbying legislators or, ultimately, signing a bill. In other words, he can’t duck the choice forever.
And so it will be interesting to see whether, on Tuesday night, Trump decides to start weighing in more forcefully. Like the man said: It’s complicated.
Sam Stein contributed reporting.
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-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 6 hours ago.
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Second House Conservative Won't Back Trump's Obamacare Replacement
Just hours after *Rep. Mark Meadows *(R-N.C.), chair of the conservative Freedom Caucus, said he would* vote against Trump*'s draft ObamaCare replacement bill (that leaked last week), The Hill reports that *another influential Republican Committee member, Rep. Mark Walker* (R-N.C.) has said he will not back the bill.*Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), head of the 172-member committee, said Monday his opposition stems from the draft bill's use of refundable tax credits. *
"There are serious problems with what appears to be our current path to repeal and replace Obamacare. The draft legislation, which was leaked last week, risks continuing major Obamacare entitlement expansions and delays any reforms," Walker said in a statement Monday.
*"It kicks the can down the road in the hope that a future Congress will have the political will and fiscal discipline to reduce spending that this Congress apparently lacks. Worse still," Walker continued, "the bill contains what increasingly appears to be a new health insurance entitlement with a Republican stamp on it."*
Walker said he could not "in good conscience" recommend Study Committee members vote for the draft.
*Walker became the second top Republican to come out against the draft bill Monday.*
*Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chair of the conservative Freedom Caucus,* also said he would vote against the measure as drafted.
He voiced his opposition to the tax credits, which he called an "entitlement program," in an interview with CNN.
*Meadows indicated that other members of the caucus may vote against the repeal bill if it contains the refundable tax credit.*
Congressional disillusionment at Trumps' Obamacare reform plan follows the "disturbing" reaction the President got from State Governors over the weekend.
Given that President Trump made it clear that his Obamacare reform plan has to be complete before he can begin his tax reform plan, this is a problem for the anxious market participants dolefully waiting for their tax handout to make stocks great-er again. Reported by Zero Hedge 6 hours ago.
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Trump applauds 'great' meeting with health insurance CEOs
Everything President Trump has tweeted (and what it was about) Feb. 27, 2017, 4:50 p.m. His tweets have the power to shape international relations, send stock prices up - or down - and galvanize the American public. We're watching how Donald Trump is using this platform of unfettered communication...
Reported by L.A. Times 5 hours ago.
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Company Healthcare: Are You Responsible For Employer Shared Payment?
Employee shared payment refers to the amount of health insurance compensation companies are required to provide their employees.
Reported by CBS 2 15 hours ago.
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Avoiding Health Insurance
One of the critical goals of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to get more people to purchase health insurance. The premise was to get more healthy people to pay premiums for health insurance they would never use; this would allow people with health issues to pay lower premiums for their health insurance. Unfortunately, this business model did not work as many did not participate in this insurance market and, instead, opted to pay a penalty (tax?) that was much less than the premiums and co-pays would have been.
One of the main reasons to opt out of the health insurance requirement was the fact that people could still have access to health care whether they were insured or not. In 1986, the Congress of the United States enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) which imposed obligations on all Medicare participating hospitals to provide emergency services to anyone who presented to their facility. Under EMTALA, the hospital had to provide a medical screening exam to anyone presenting for emergency care. After the medical screening exam, the hospital would then have to provide stabilizing treatment for anyone found to have an emergency medical condition.
For those patients who had a screening exam under EMTALA and were found to have a non-emergency condition, care would still need to be provided as the newly formed physician-patient relationship would have created a “duty of care” for the physician; this would make him subject to the State’s medical malpractice statutes. The physician would have to have continued with the patient’s care so long as a “reasonable physician would have continued to provide care if faced with the same or similar circumstances” — the legal standard needed to avoid a medical malpractice suit.
For years, the emergency department was the default area for primary care for both insured and uninsured patients. Even today, people who have a primary care provider who call for an appointment will first hear a recording advising them to “hang up and call 911 if this is a medical emergency.” This message is predicated on the presumption that lay people will know what a “medical emergency” is. Of course, many people do not know and will call 911 to have various non-emergency conditions checked out. Since emergency room care is very expensive, one of the other key goals of the ACA — to decrease the cost of health care — was not being met.
With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, it should be no surprise that people who opt out of buying health care insurance, will take advantage of EMTALA to obtain emergency care. This will buy them the time they need to then purchase insurance; there are no penalties for waiting to buy the insurance until the time it is really needed and this was a major short-coming of the ACA.
EMTALA also has short-comings. Although the implementation of EMTALA was meant to insure that all people could have access to care regardless of their ability to pay, the constitutionality of the law has not been addressed by the courts. There is no question that the law forces a “taking” on the hospitals that participate in Medicare. The hospitals forced to evaluate and stabilize patients presenting to the emergency departments must use personal property for this care and there is no provision under EMTALA to reimburse these costs. Under the United States Constitution, if the government imposes a taking on a private entitiy, then just compensation must be provided (Amendment 5 states: “...nor shall private property be taken for a public use, without just compensation.”)
There is no argument that hospitals are providing personal property in caring for patients under EMTALA. Medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, the costs for using the ER, operating rooms, and hospital rooms, and nursing care can be substantial. Some have argued that this type of taking is not the usual citizen to government transfer originally envisioned under the Constitution. However, this government mandated transfer of property of one private entity (the hospital) to another private entity (the patient), was confirmed to be a government taking in Kelo v. City of New London (2005). In this landmark Supreme Court decision, the Court held that this type of transfer of property was a “taking” for “public use” and must be compensated. The government has never compensated for the takings resulting from EMTALA.
The ACA is in a financial crisis as insurance carriers are pulling out of the exchanges and healthy people continue to avoid the requirement to purchase health insurance. The penalty to avoid purchasing insurance is not severe and the risk-benefit analysis clearly comes down on the side of not participating. This decision is made easier when people know they will get medical care no matter what.
E.H. Morreim has recently presented a creative solution to this health care conundrum (Minn. J. L. & Tech, Vol 15:1, 2014). If Congress is serious about the health care insurance mandate, they could force the issue as an act of eminent domain instead of an easily avoided tax. They could “take” people’s money and the “just compensation” would be a health insurance policy that would include enumerated essential health benefits, and the “public use” would be to save a health care system dependent on health care insurance policies and government support through Medicaid and Medicare. Essential to this analysis is to provide fair compensation to the hospitals and providers who are giving of their personal property to take care of these patients.
Kelo also made it clear that the review of an eminent domain action would be under a “rational basis” standard. This is a much easier standard to meet than the Commerce Clause or the Taxing Clause. Under this standard, the government would only need to prove that their purpose was legitimate and the means was not irrational. Requiring people to have health insurance is legitimate and having them pay for it, if they can afford the payments, is rational. Unfortunately, the penalty for not buying health insurance is without teeth and EMTALA as a safety net has further enabled people to not buy health insurance. The resultant crisis of the ACA was entirely predictable.
At this time, it is uncertain how a new health care plan will address these and other issues, but whatever is decided, the hospitals, physicians, and other providers should not be expected to take on an unfair burden in dealing with the costs.
Dr. Weiman’s website is www.medicalmalpracticeandthelaw.com
Dr. Weiman is the author of *Medical Malpractice *and *Fundamental Issues In Health Care Law*
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 8 hours ago.
One of the main reasons to opt out of the health insurance requirement was the fact that people could still have access to health care whether they were insured or not. In 1986, the Congress of the United States enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) which imposed obligations on all Medicare participating hospitals to provide emergency services to anyone who presented to their facility. Under EMTALA, the hospital had to provide a medical screening exam to anyone presenting for emergency care. After the medical screening exam, the hospital would then have to provide stabilizing treatment for anyone found to have an emergency medical condition.
For those patients who had a screening exam under EMTALA and were found to have a non-emergency condition, care would still need to be provided as the newly formed physician-patient relationship would have created a “duty of care” for the physician; this would make him subject to the State’s medical malpractice statutes. The physician would have to have continued with the patient’s care so long as a “reasonable physician would have continued to provide care if faced with the same or similar circumstances” — the legal standard needed to avoid a medical malpractice suit.
For years, the emergency department was the default area for primary care for both insured and uninsured patients. Even today, people who have a primary care provider who call for an appointment will first hear a recording advising them to “hang up and call 911 if this is a medical emergency.” This message is predicated on the presumption that lay people will know what a “medical emergency” is. Of course, many people do not know and will call 911 to have various non-emergency conditions checked out. Since emergency room care is very expensive, one of the other key goals of the ACA — to decrease the cost of health care — was not being met.
With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, it should be no surprise that people who opt out of buying health care insurance, will take advantage of EMTALA to obtain emergency care. This will buy them the time they need to then purchase insurance; there are no penalties for waiting to buy the insurance until the time it is really needed and this was a major short-coming of the ACA.
EMTALA also has short-comings. Although the implementation of EMTALA was meant to insure that all people could have access to care regardless of their ability to pay, the constitutionality of the law has not been addressed by the courts. There is no question that the law forces a “taking” on the hospitals that participate in Medicare. The hospitals forced to evaluate and stabilize patients presenting to the emergency departments must use personal property for this care and there is no provision under EMTALA to reimburse these costs. Under the United States Constitution, if the government imposes a taking on a private entitiy, then just compensation must be provided (Amendment 5 states: “...nor shall private property be taken for a public use, without just compensation.”)
There is no argument that hospitals are providing personal property in caring for patients under EMTALA. Medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, the costs for using the ER, operating rooms, and hospital rooms, and nursing care can be substantial. Some have argued that this type of taking is not the usual citizen to government transfer originally envisioned under the Constitution. However, this government mandated transfer of property of one private entity (the hospital) to another private entity (the patient), was confirmed to be a government taking in Kelo v. City of New London (2005). In this landmark Supreme Court decision, the Court held that this type of transfer of property was a “taking” for “public use” and must be compensated. The government has never compensated for the takings resulting from EMTALA.
The ACA is in a financial crisis as insurance carriers are pulling out of the exchanges and healthy people continue to avoid the requirement to purchase health insurance. The penalty to avoid purchasing insurance is not severe and the risk-benefit analysis clearly comes down on the side of not participating. This decision is made easier when people know they will get medical care no matter what.
E.H. Morreim has recently presented a creative solution to this health care conundrum (Minn. J. L. & Tech, Vol 15:1, 2014). If Congress is serious about the health care insurance mandate, they could force the issue as an act of eminent domain instead of an easily avoided tax. They could “take” people’s money and the “just compensation” would be a health insurance policy that would include enumerated essential health benefits, and the “public use” would be to save a health care system dependent on health care insurance policies and government support through Medicaid and Medicare. Essential to this analysis is to provide fair compensation to the hospitals and providers who are giving of their personal property to take care of these patients.
Kelo also made it clear that the review of an eminent domain action would be under a “rational basis” standard. This is a much easier standard to meet than the Commerce Clause or the Taxing Clause. Under this standard, the government would only need to prove that their purpose was legitimate and the means was not irrational. Requiring people to have health insurance is legitimate and having them pay for it, if they can afford the payments, is rational. Unfortunately, the penalty for not buying health insurance is without teeth and EMTALA as a safety net has further enabled people to not buy health insurance. The resultant crisis of the ACA was entirely predictable.
At this time, it is uncertain how a new health care plan will address these and other issues, but whatever is decided, the hospitals, physicians, and other providers should not be expected to take on an unfair burden in dealing with the costs.
Dr. Weiman’s website is www.medicalmalpracticeandthelaw.com
Dr. Weiman is the author of *Medical Malpractice *and *Fundamental Issues In Health Care Law*
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 8 hours ago.
↧
UPS airplane mechanics want to walk away from labor negotiations
Unionized mechanics negotiating a labor deal with Atlanta-based United Parcel Service Inc. are ready to walk away from the table. The negotiations, which have been ongoing for more than three years, are being mediated by the National Mediation Board— a federal agency. The mechanics, represented by the Teamsters Local 2727, asked the board to release them from negotiations last week. The two sides have reached an impasse on health insurance — something we've been writing about for months now.…
Reported by bizjournals 12 hours ago.
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Trump Looks to Jump-Start Momentum
President Trump, in an address to Congress on Tuesday, will look to jump-start momentum on top White House and congressional initiatives, including enacting a new health-insurance system and overhauling the tax code.
Reported by Wall Street Journal 12 hours ago.
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Adventure Dental and Molina Healthcare to Host Wellness Day March 4th to Provide Needed Preventative Care to Albuquerque Families
Albuquerque, NM, February 27, 2017 – Adventure Dental, Vision & Orthodontics and Molina Healthcare are co-hosting a Wellness Day on March 4, 2017 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Adventure’s Albuquerque location; 5000 Menaul Blvd. on the southwest corner of San Mateo and Menaul Blvds.
Baltimore, MD (PRWEB) February 28, 2017
Albuquerque, NM, February 27, 2017 – Adventure Dental, Vision & Orthodontics and Molina Healthcare are co-hosting a Wellness Day on March 4, 2017 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Adventure’s Albuquerque location; 5000 Menaul Blvd. on the southwest corner of San Mateo and Menaul Blvds.
The goal of the Wellness Day is to raise awareness about the benefits of preventative care and to expand care access to children and adults not currently taking advantage of services they are qualified to receive.
Wellness Day attendees will enjoy a variety of fun and educational activities while taking advantage of a long list of needed wellness services, including:· Children’s dental cleanings, exams and operative services
· Children’s vision exams and glasses fittings
· Blood pressure screening
· Glucose screening
· Diabetic retinal eye exams
· On-site Mammograms
Over 65 percent of New Mexico’s children are currently enrolled in Medicaid. Because of the importance of regular wellness care for childhood development, Medicaid covers pediatric wellness exams plus twice annual dental check-ups, all medically required dental treatment, annual eye exams and glasses for children needing a vision correction.
Despite this coverage, the majority of children enrolled in Medicaid are not receiving the care for which they are eligible. In studies by the Department of Health and Human Services and George Washington University, less than half of Medicaid enrolled children ages 1-20 received preventative dental or vision care in a 12 month period:
· 55 percent received pediatric medical screenings
· 42 percent received preventative dental services
· 40 percent receive vision screenings
Medicaid-enrolled adults are also falling short in terms of preventative care costing the U.S. healthcare system billions each year. Wellness fairs are a proven way to expand care access and educate the public on the importance of regular health screening. Adventure and Molina Healthcare are committed to driving community wellness to Albuquerque families.
About Adventure Dental, Vision & Orthodontics
Adventure Dental, Vision & Orthodontics is 100% focused on delivering quality care to children in underserved communities. With offices nationwide, Adventure Dental, Vision and Orthodontics has been helping children ages six months through 20 years gain access to the care they need since 2006. Their kid-friendly offices and caring staff take the fear out of dental visits, making it fun, easy and affordable for children to thrive.
About Molina Healthcare of New Mexico
Since 1998, Molina Healthcare of New Mexico has been providing government-funded care for low-income individuals. Our mission is to provide quality health care to people receiving government assistance As of December 2016, the company serves approximately 254,000 members through Medicaid, Medicare and Health Insurance Marketplace programs across New Mexico. Molina’s state provider network includes 2,276 primary care physicians, 9,200 specialists and 72 hospitals. Additionally, Molina owns and operates a primary care clinic in Albuquerque. Visit molinahealthcare.com and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
To learn more visit: mydentalvisioncare.com/ABQwellnessday
Contacts:
Adventure Dental, Vision & Orthodontics
Janelle Shumaker
719/323-2366
janelle(at)herodvo(dot)com
Molina Healthcare
Leidy Arevalo
(562) 528-5521
Email leidy.arevalo(at)molinahealthcare(dot)com
### Reported by PRWeb 11 hours ago.
Baltimore, MD (PRWEB) February 28, 2017
Albuquerque, NM, February 27, 2017 – Adventure Dental, Vision & Orthodontics and Molina Healthcare are co-hosting a Wellness Day on March 4, 2017 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Adventure’s Albuquerque location; 5000 Menaul Blvd. on the southwest corner of San Mateo and Menaul Blvds.
The goal of the Wellness Day is to raise awareness about the benefits of preventative care and to expand care access to children and adults not currently taking advantage of services they are qualified to receive.
Wellness Day attendees will enjoy a variety of fun and educational activities while taking advantage of a long list of needed wellness services, including:· Children’s dental cleanings, exams and operative services
· Children’s vision exams and glasses fittings
· Blood pressure screening
· Glucose screening
· Diabetic retinal eye exams
· On-site Mammograms
Over 65 percent of New Mexico’s children are currently enrolled in Medicaid. Because of the importance of regular wellness care for childhood development, Medicaid covers pediatric wellness exams plus twice annual dental check-ups, all medically required dental treatment, annual eye exams and glasses for children needing a vision correction.
Despite this coverage, the majority of children enrolled in Medicaid are not receiving the care for which they are eligible. In studies by the Department of Health and Human Services and George Washington University, less than half of Medicaid enrolled children ages 1-20 received preventative dental or vision care in a 12 month period:
· 55 percent received pediatric medical screenings
· 42 percent received preventative dental services
· 40 percent receive vision screenings
Medicaid-enrolled adults are also falling short in terms of preventative care costing the U.S. healthcare system billions each year. Wellness fairs are a proven way to expand care access and educate the public on the importance of regular health screening. Adventure and Molina Healthcare are committed to driving community wellness to Albuquerque families.
About Adventure Dental, Vision & Orthodontics
Adventure Dental, Vision & Orthodontics is 100% focused on delivering quality care to children in underserved communities. With offices nationwide, Adventure Dental, Vision and Orthodontics has been helping children ages six months through 20 years gain access to the care they need since 2006. Their kid-friendly offices and caring staff take the fear out of dental visits, making it fun, easy and affordable for children to thrive.
About Molina Healthcare of New Mexico
Since 1998, Molina Healthcare of New Mexico has been providing government-funded care for low-income individuals. Our mission is to provide quality health care to people receiving government assistance As of December 2016, the company serves approximately 254,000 members through Medicaid, Medicare and Health Insurance Marketplace programs across New Mexico. Molina’s state provider network includes 2,276 primary care physicians, 9,200 specialists and 72 hospitals. Additionally, Molina owns and operates a primary care clinic in Albuquerque. Visit molinahealthcare.com and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
To learn more visit: mydentalvisioncare.com/ABQwellnessday
Contacts:
Adventure Dental, Vision & Orthodontics
Janelle Shumaker
719/323-2366
janelle(at)herodvo(dot)com
Molina Healthcare
Leidy Arevalo
(562) 528-5521
Email leidy.arevalo(at)molinahealthcare(dot)com
### Reported by PRWeb 11 hours ago.
↧
↧
What If You Could Take It With You? Health Insurance, That Is
A key part of GOP plans to reform health care may include making health care more portable. But it's not so easy to do.
Reported by NPR 11 hours ago.
↧
The Democrat Responding To Trump's Big Speech Has A Warning For The President
WASHINGTON ― Steve Beshear, the former Kentucky governor who will deliver the Democratic Party’s official response to President Donald Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, is not a fresh face, rising star, or future presidential candidate. He’s taken positions that buck Democratic ideology. And at 72 years old, his electoral career is over.
But atypical a choice as he may seem, the speech isn’t meant to set up Beshear as the next star of the Democratic Party. Rather, his selection is a sign that Democrats now sense they have renewed political momentum in the key policy battle currently taking place in Washington: the fight to save the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
And for that role, there may be no better pick.
Beshear’s Kentucky emerged as Obamacare’s signature success story soon after the health care law passed, and it has continued to serve as a lens into the law’s past and potential future since Beshear left office.
As Republican repeal efforts continue in Washington, Kentucky is already engaged in its own miniature repeal-and-replace battle. Making Beshear the new face of Obamacare could help Democrats frame this fight around concrete results rather than partisan politics.
Of the states President Barack Obama lost twice, Kentucky was one of just two (along with Arkansas) that expanded Medicaid and set up its own health exchange. The Medicaid expansion gave government health insurance to more than 400,000 low-income Kentuckians; the exchange helped nearly 100,000 more access health coverage from private companies.
In a state just shy of 4.5 million people, an estimated 500,000 — 1 in 9 Kentuckians — enrolled in health coverage through Obamacare. No state has seen a bigger drop in its uninsured rate since the law passed, and studies have shown that poor Kentuckians are healthier now than people in states that did not expand Medicaid. Kentucky also saw declines in the rates of people skipping needed care, visiting emergency rooms for care, and struggling to pay medical bills in the years after the law was implemented, according to a survey conducted by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.
Beshear has always positioned his embrace of Obamacare as an opportunity to address major problems in one of America’s poorest and least healthy states ― a chance to “improve the future of our state and the lives of our families,” as he told a Senate committee this month ― rather than an act of toeing the party line.
The 20 million Americans who gained health care coverage through the law “are Republicans, Democrats, independents, and folks that aren’t registered to vote at all,” Beshear told The Huffington Post last week. “But they deserve a better quality of life, and becoming healthier will give them a better quality of life.”
They’re faced with 22 million Americans who now have health care ― most of whom never had it before ― who don’t want to give it up. That’s a lot of votes.
Steve Beshear, former governor of Kentucky
Now Beshear is warning Trump and Republicans that rescinding the gains made under the law could be devastating.
“They’re faced with 22 million Americans who now have health care ― most of whom never had it before ― who don’t want to give it up,” Beshear said. “That’s a lot of votes.”
Beshear is already a veteran of the sort of fight taking place in Washington. Despite its successes, the Affordable Care Act remained unpopular among Kentucky voters throughout Beshear’s second and final term. A year before Trump won, Kentucky voters replaced Beshear with Republican Matt Bevin, a Louisville businessman who won the election while advocating a full dismantling of the law.
But just as they have nationally, the politics of Obamacare began to shift in Kentucky as soon as Republicans won the power to change the law.
Bevin scrapped Kynect ― Kentucky’s broadly popular insurance exchange ― during the opening year of his governorship. Rolling back the Medicaid expansion, however, proved more difficult: The month after Bevin’s election, nearly three-quarters of Kentuckians opposed changes to Medicaid, according to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Last August, Bevin decided instead to apply for a waiver from the Department of Health and Human Services that, while limiting or eliminating coverage for some Kentuckians, wouldn’t end the expansion entirely.
Bevin still favors repealing and replacing Obamacare, he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington last week. But to Beshear, Bevin’s difficulties in Kentucky foreshadow the problems Republicans are now facing in Congress.
“Nationally, I think the president and the Republican Congress are like the dog that caught the car,” Beshear said. “I don’t think that the Congress ever thought they’d ever actually be in this position to have to follow through with all the repeal promises they made.”
“They’re finding it to be a lot more difficult issue than they ever thought it would be,” he added. “Folks that are advocating repeal … didn’t realize how successful it would end up being, and how many people would end up being [covered].”Providing specifics on their repeal and replace efforts has proven a source of consternation for congressional Republicans, especially as the Trump administration has promised that no one will lose coverage under the reforms.
GOP leadership has struggled to craft a replacement plan that wouldn’t result in countless Americans losing health coverage. Members of the party’s rank-and-file have privately worried about the political and policy implications of repealing the law without an adequate replacement. Polls have shifted against them, and GOP lawmakers faced raucous opposition to their repeal efforts at town halls in their districts during February recess.
That should force Republicans to consider amending the law to address its shortcomings instead of shooting for an all-out repeal, Beshear argues.
“There are certainly issues with the Affordable Care Act that ought to be fixed,” Beshear said. “That’s really where Congress and the president ought to be spending their time, is trying to figure out how to make this better. I am sensing that some of the more thoughtful Republicans in Congress understand that.”
Democrats might feel cautious optimism that a law they once presumed dead may now survive. Still, Beshear and Kentucky offer a warning to them, as well. Even if the law remains on the books, he cautions, Republicans can “tinker” with it in a way that limits its effectiveness without drawing such high-profile resistance.
Bevin’s Medicaid waiver, for instance, was crafted with the help of Seema Verma, a health policy consultant Trump picked to run the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. If it is approved, it could force thousands of Kentuckians to pay small premiums while also adding work requirements and other changes that could limit the state’s poorest residents’ access to health care.
Dismantling Kynect, meanwhile, shifted more than 74,000 Kentuckians onto the federal insurance exchange, where a comparably difficult process of obtaining insurance awaited them. And at CPAC, Bevin said he could support block granting Medicaid — or sending a set amount of money to states each year to administer the program as they see fit ― a GOP hobbyhorse that Democrats and health policy experts have argued would have disastrous results.
“Everything we do that makes it harder for these people to access health care will result in some people finally just giving up because they can’t figure it out,” Beshear said. “Honestly, I think that is the goal of the administration in Kentucky, and it will be the goal of folks on the national level. In some way or another, they hope to be able to reduce the number of people who are involved in the program. Those of us who feel that every American [should be] involved in health care, that’s our challenge.”
Beshear is still hesitant to predict the fate of the law on the national level. But his speech on Tuesday will represent the next step in his and his party’s fight to save the Affordable Care Act. That they’ve chosen to focus their first response to Trump almost singularly on this issue is a sign they think they can do it.
“Kentucky is, I think, a prototypical story of what happens if you look at health care through a bipartisan lens,” said Andy Slavitt, who ran the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services during the final two years of Obama’s presidency. “When you add it all up, it’s a relatively modestly sized state that has a lot to lose, and [Beshear] can tell that story so well because he took the partisanship out of it and did what was best for the state.”
Tapping Beshear is a move that excites Democrats familiar with his approach to the law. The former governor is “a perfect person to offer a reality-based, factual response to President Trump’s address on Tuesday,” Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) said in an email.
It’s one that might also annoy Republicans who still insist their repeal efforts are on track, as Bevin argued at CPAC last week.
“It’s discouraging for me that he’s still in the arena throwing stones at people,” Bevin said in response to Beshear’s characterization of his and the GOP’s struggles to repeal Obamacare. “I would think retirement would serve him well.”
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 10 hours ago.
But atypical a choice as he may seem, the speech isn’t meant to set up Beshear as the next star of the Democratic Party. Rather, his selection is a sign that Democrats now sense they have renewed political momentum in the key policy battle currently taking place in Washington: the fight to save the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
And for that role, there may be no better pick.
Beshear’s Kentucky emerged as Obamacare’s signature success story soon after the health care law passed, and it has continued to serve as a lens into the law’s past and potential future since Beshear left office.
As Republican repeal efforts continue in Washington, Kentucky is already engaged in its own miniature repeal-and-replace battle. Making Beshear the new face of Obamacare could help Democrats frame this fight around concrete results rather than partisan politics.
Of the states President Barack Obama lost twice, Kentucky was one of just two (along with Arkansas) that expanded Medicaid and set up its own health exchange. The Medicaid expansion gave government health insurance to more than 400,000 low-income Kentuckians; the exchange helped nearly 100,000 more access health coverage from private companies.
In a state just shy of 4.5 million people, an estimated 500,000 — 1 in 9 Kentuckians — enrolled in health coverage through Obamacare. No state has seen a bigger drop in its uninsured rate since the law passed, and studies have shown that poor Kentuckians are healthier now than people in states that did not expand Medicaid. Kentucky also saw declines in the rates of people skipping needed care, visiting emergency rooms for care, and struggling to pay medical bills in the years after the law was implemented, according to a survey conducted by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.
Beshear has always positioned his embrace of Obamacare as an opportunity to address major problems in one of America’s poorest and least healthy states ― a chance to “improve the future of our state and the lives of our families,” as he told a Senate committee this month ― rather than an act of toeing the party line.
The 20 million Americans who gained health care coverage through the law “are Republicans, Democrats, independents, and folks that aren’t registered to vote at all,” Beshear told The Huffington Post last week. “But they deserve a better quality of life, and becoming healthier will give them a better quality of life.”
They’re faced with 22 million Americans who now have health care ― most of whom never had it before ― who don’t want to give it up. That’s a lot of votes.
Steve Beshear, former governor of Kentucky
Now Beshear is warning Trump and Republicans that rescinding the gains made under the law could be devastating.
“They’re faced with 22 million Americans who now have health care ― most of whom never had it before ― who don’t want to give it up,” Beshear said. “That’s a lot of votes.”
Beshear is already a veteran of the sort of fight taking place in Washington. Despite its successes, the Affordable Care Act remained unpopular among Kentucky voters throughout Beshear’s second and final term. A year before Trump won, Kentucky voters replaced Beshear with Republican Matt Bevin, a Louisville businessman who won the election while advocating a full dismantling of the law.
But just as they have nationally, the politics of Obamacare began to shift in Kentucky as soon as Republicans won the power to change the law.
Bevin scrapped Kynect ― Kentucky’s broadly popular insurance exchange ― during the opening year of his governorship. Rolling back the Medicaid expansion, however, proved more difficult: The month after Bevin’s election, nearly three-quarters of Kentuckians opposed changes to Medicaid, according to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Last August, Bevin decided instead to apply for a waiver from the Department of Health and Human Services that, while limiting or eliminating coverage for some Kentuckians, wouldn’t end the expansion entirely.
Bevin still favors repealing and replacing Obamacare, he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington last week. But to Beshear, Bevin’s difficulties in Kentucky foreshadow the problems Republicans are now facing in Congress.
“Nationally, I think the president and the Republican Congress are like the dog that caught the car,” Beshear said. “I don’t think that the Congress ever thought they’d ever actually be in this position to have to follow through with all the repeal promises they made.”
“They’re finding it to be a lot more difficult issue than they ever thought it would be,” he added. “Folks that are advocating repeal … didn’t realize how successful it would end up being, and how many people would end up being [covered].”Providing specifics on their repeal and replace efforts has proven a source of consternation for congressional Republicans, especially as the Trump administration has promised that no one will lose coverage under the reforms.
GOP leadership has struggled to craft a replacement plan that wouldn’t result in countless Americans losing health coverage. Members of the party’s rank-and-file have privately worried about the political and policy implications of repealing the law without an adequate replacement. Polls have shifted against them, and GOP lawmakers faced raucous opposition to their repeal efforts at town halls in their districts during February recess.
That should force Republicans to consider amending the law to address its shortcomings instead of shooting for an all-out repeal, Beshear argues.
“There are certainly issues with the Affordable Care Act that ought to be fixed,” Beshear said. “That’s really where Congress and the president ought to be spending their time, is trying to figure out how to make this better. I am sensing that some of the more thoughtful Republicans in Congress understand that.”
Democrats might feel cautious optimism that a law they once presumed dead may now survive. Still, Beshear and Kentucky offer a warning to them, as well. Even if the law remains on the books, he cautions, Republicans can “tinker” with it in a way that limits its effectiveness without drawing such high-profile resistance.
Bevin’s Medicaid waiver, for instance, was crafted with the help of Seema Verma, a health policy consultant Trump picked to run the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. If it is approved, it could force thousands of Kentuckians to pay small premiums while also adding work requirements and other changes that could limit the state’s poorest residents’ access to health care.
Dismantling Kynect, meanwhile, shifted more than 74,000 Kentuckians onto the federal insurance exchange, where a comparably difficult process of obtaining insurance awaited them. And at CPAC, Bevin said he could support block granting Medicaid — or sending a set amount of money to states each year to administer the program as they see fit ― a GOP hobbyhorse that Democrats and health policy experts have argued would have disastrous results.
“Everything we do that makes it harder for these people to access health care will result in some people finally just giving up because they can’t figure it out,” Beshear said. “Honestly, I think that is the goal of the administration in Kentucky, and it will be the goal of folks on the national level. In some way or another, they hope to be able to reduce the number of people who are involved in the program. Those of us who feel that every American [should be] involved in health care, that’s our challenge.”
Beshear is still hesitant to predict the fate of the law on the national level. But his speech on Tuesday will represent the next step in his and his party’s fight to save the Affordable Care Act. That they’ve chosen to focus their first response to Trump almost singularly on this issue is a sign they think they can do it.
“Kentucky is, I think, a prototypical story of what happens if you look at health care through a bipartisan lens,” said Andy Slavitt, who ran the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services during the final two years of Obama’s presidency. “When you add it all up, it’s a relatively modestly sized state that has a lot to lose, and [Beshear] can tell that story so well because he took the partisanship out of it and did what was best for the state.”
Tapping Beshear is a move that excites Democrats familiar with his approach to the law. The former governor is “a perfect person to offer a reality-based, factual response to President Trump’s address on Tuesday,” Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) said in an email.
It’s one that might also annoy Republicans who still insist their repeal efforts are on track, as Bevin argued at CPAC last week.
“It’s discouraging for me that he’s still in the arena throwing stones at people,” Bevin said in response to Beshear’s characterization of his and the GOP’s struggles to repeal Obamacare. “I would think retirement would serve him well.”
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 10 hours ago.
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Tax Strike? IRS Has Received 13% Fewer Returns This Year
Submitted by Nicholas Colas of Convergex*The (Tax Refund) Check Is Not In The Mail*
No one likes paying taxes, but this year Americans are taking things to extremes. Through last Friday, *the IRS had received 13.3% fewer returns than the same period last year*. And it seems like we’re not even really interested in starting the process*: visits to IRS.gov are down 16.2%. * All this means tax refunds – an important piece of disposable/savable income for many Americans – are down 14.4% versus last year. What’s going on?
A few explanations. First, the IRS has not been able to issue refunds to filers claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit, which last year totaled 27 million returns. That will start to be fixed next week and may encourage more filings. Also at issue: the 100% increase in Obamacare penalties to $695/adult and $348/child, something that concerns many filers.
Lastly, there seems to be some broad confusion about President Trump’s campaign promise of lower individual taxes and eliminating Obamacare and its penalties. The upshot: tax refunds add $250 billion to US consumer liquidity from February – May. This year’s payment cycle will be harder to predict and likely make an accurate read on the US economy more difficult for the next few months.
* * *
*You probably know that Benjamin Franklin said something like “The only sure things in life are death and taxes”. *That is, however, just the tail end of a sentence written in a letter back in 1789. The whole thing goes like this:
“*Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”*
*Now, life expectancy when Franklin wrote these words was 37 years due largely to very high infant mortality. *Thanks to medical science, it is now 79 years, or double that of Franklin’s age. Death is still inevitable, of course, but we’ve managed to put it off for a while.
*As it turns out, Americans are trying to replicate this trend with the other unavoidable feature of life: taxes*. As of the end of last week, the Internal Revenue Service had received 13.3% fewer tax returns from individual filers than last year (42.5 million versus 49.0 million). Moreover, visits to the IRS.gov website are down 16.2%. All this has put a crimp in tax refunds, which are down 14.4% versus last year ($103 billion versus $121 billion) even though the average payment back to taxpayers is essentially the same ($3,137).
*To see the data, check these out:*
· *The latest IRS report here*: https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/filing-season-statistics-for-week-ending-february-17-2017
· *The history of this and prior year refund cycles here*: https://www.irs.gov/uac/2017-and-prior-year-filing-season-statistics
· *Our own data is in the PDF version of this report, available by clicking on the link at the top of this note*. We have tracked actual total refund payments through the Daily Treasury Statement since 2008, and the numbers here show the magnitude of the problem. Year to date 2017 is the worst start to tax refund season in at least the last 10 years.
* * *
*What are the reasons for this sudden procrastination? A few ideas:*
*#**Reason **1: The IRS announced last year that it would delay refunds for tax filers who claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit until February 15th 2017*. The EITC is a credit for lower income households (the cutoffs are $39,296 - $44,846 for a one child household filing single/married, for example) and can be as high as a $5,572 credit for a two child household. In other words, this is real money and last year 27 million households received the credit, which averaged $2,455.
*The IRS is concerned about fraud here, and is taking steps to do more diligence on those individuals who claim the EITC. *Payments should finally start hitting bank accounts next week.
*With the delay, households that claim the EITC may have put off filing, knowing that there was no point until this week.*
*Sources: *
· *About the EITC *(https://www.eitc.irs.gov/EITC-Central/abouteitc)
· *Income Limits *(https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-income-tax-credit/eitc-income-limits-maximum-credit-amounts)
*Reason #2: *Rising Obamacare penalties. Last year, if you did not have qualifying health insurance, your fine maxed out at $325 (based on income). This year, the equivalent fine is $695/person. Now, the IRS will still accept your return if you don’t fill in the line item about your insurance status. Professional tax preparers, however, don’t like to file incomplete returns, so for uninsured taxpayers who use such services this is going to be a discussion with their accountant.
*More details here: *https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/how-much-is-the-obamacare-penalty-not-having-health-insurance/
*And a Politico article that explains the chatter of “Repeal and replace” may also be pushing tax payers to delay filing*: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/obamacare-taxpayers-confusion-repeal-235313
*Bottom line*: *some tax payers may be delaying filing until they decide what to do here. *
*Reason #3: *Upcoming revisions to the US tax code. Hope springs eternal, and with all the talk of tax cuts coming out of DC some citizens may be taking a wait and see attitude about filing their taxes. Yes, the chances of that happening by April 18th (that’s the actual deadline this year) AND being retroactive are both zero.
A good description of this phenomenon here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-people-are-delaying-filing-their-ta...
*Summary point*: Ultimately, the cadence of tax refund payments is one of the most overlooked drivers of the American economy in Q1/early Q2, so understanding the unusual start to Tax Season 2017 is very important. According to a recent National Retail Federation survey, consumers plan to save 48% of their refund (which averaged $2,860 last year) and spend/pay down debt with the balance. See here for the full findings: https://nrf.com/media/press-releases/nrf-says-consumers-plan-save-their-tax-refunds-later
*The key question now is “How unusual will this tax reporting season really be?*” So far, the answer is “Very”, with unusually slow filings and delayed EITC return refunds. In the end, Franklin’s observation will prove out: everyone will have to file by April 18 or face the consequences. But with so many other moving parts (Obamacare fines, consumer hopes for tax cuts), the next two months will be very different from the usual. Reported by Zero Hedge 10 hours ago.
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