Medicaid is health overhaul's early success story

[Redfairen]

Source: Associated Press

The ugly duckling of government health care programs has turned into a rare early success story for President Barack Obama's technologically challenged health overhaul.

Often criticized for byzantine rules and skimpy payments, Medicaid has signed up 444,000 people in 10 states in the six weeks since open enrollment began, according to Avalere Health, a market analysis firm. Twenty-five states are expanding their Medicaid programs, but data for all of them was not available.

.......

The Obama administration plans to release October enrollment statistics this week, but publicly available figures already provide a contrast between a robust start for Medicaid expansion and lukewarm early signups for new, government-subsidized private plans offered separately under the law.

"Medicaid is exceeding expectations in most places," said Dan Mendelson, Avalere's president. "It is definitely a bright picture in states that have chosen to expand."




Read more: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20131112/DAA167681.html

[truedelphi]

1. However in many states, medicaid rules indicate that

A person will not be leaving anything to their kids or friend upon their death.

Here is relevant statement from the MediCal brochure about how once you are on MediCal (which is Calif's version of medicaid,) teh stare will be recouping any expenses on your behalf from any estate that you leave.

"When a Medi-Cal beneficiary is 55 years of age or older at the time of death, the State will collect from his/her estate the cost of Medi-Cal services received including insurance premiums paid an d payments made to managed care on or after the 55th "birthday."

The brochure goes on to detail exclusions, such as if your spouse has survived your death, they won't go after the estate until the spouse has also died. And they exclude a household where a child survives a parent AND IS UNDER THE AGE of 21.

[Iliyah]

2. Gosh, won't hear this on our informative corporate media

Nice to hear some good news.

[TorchTheWitch]

3. Yet he allowed states to decide for themselves whether or not

to expand Medicaid. And in my state it's not being expanded, so people are fucked.

And in those states that have expanded Medicaid just where are all these people going to find doctors willing to see them? It's already been hard enough to find a doctor willing to see a patient on Medicaid as it was. Fat load of good it does to expand medicaid yet not force doctors to see patients on Medicaid that was already a huge problem before any expansion.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Wrong.

The Supreme Court threw out the law's provision for mandatory expansion of Medicaid and its "or else" penalty. I.e., the intent was to withhold all Medicaid funds if a state didn't expand (as the penalty). But once the SCOTUS invalidated that provision, what was left was that the state could choose to expand or not, and if they did, they would get the extra money, and if they didn't, there would be no penalty.

Court holds that states have choice whether to join medicaid expansion

The Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion is divided and complicated. The bottom line is that: (1) Congress acted constitutionally in offering states funds to expand coverage to millions of new individuals; (2) So states can agree to expand coverage in exchange for those new funds; (3) If the state accepts the expansion funds, it must obey by the new rules and expand coverage; (4) but a state can refuse to participate in the expansion without losing all of its Medicaid funds; instead the state will have the option of continue the its current, unexpanded plan as is.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/06/court-holds-that-states-have-choice-whether-to-join-medicaid-expansion/

[dotymed]

4. On "Tweety" yesterday

They had an R and a D arguing the merits of Obamacare.

The R said that he thought that Medicare should be expanded for all instead of Obamacare.

The D mentioned single payer and the R said that was preferable..

Does anyone remember how we ended up with insurance reform?
They are a lying bunch of shit.

1 party, 2 sides...corporatism at it's height.

"Neither" party would allow single payer "at the table."