medicaid – Page 2

#Obamacare’s expanded Medicaid asset seizure bonanza.

Hey, you had to pass the act to find out what was in it:

It wasn’t the moonlight, holiday-season euphoria or family pressure that made Sofia Prins and Gary Balhorn, both 62, suddenly decide to get married.

It was the fine print.

As fine print is wont to do, it had buried itself in a long form — Balhorn’s application for free health insurance through the expanded state Medicaid program. As the paperwork lay on the dining-room table in Port Townsend, Prins began reading.

She was shocked: If you’re 55 or over, Medicaid can come back after you’re dead and bill your estate for ordinary health-care expenses.

Continue reading #Obamacare’s expanded Medicaid asset seizure bonanza.

Add Connecticut to the list of disastrous state #Obamacare exchanges.

And yes, I am scoring this as disastrous:

More than 2,400 Connecticut customers who bought health plans on Access Health CT were given incorrect information about their insurance plans, in one case underestimating the maximum out-of-pocket by at least $4,000.

The website for Access Health CT, the state’s new health exchange, had incorrect information online about deductibles and co-insurance impacting all 19 individual health plans from the three insurance companies that offer those plans through the exchange: Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut, ConnectiCare, and HealthyCT.

[snip]

John Javaruski, a 62-year-old retired actuary from Farmington, said he received a letter dated Nov. 1 after he signed up for an Anthem plan with a $2,000 out-of-pocket maximum and zero deductible. According to the revised schedule of benefits attached to the letter, Javaruski’s plan jumped to $6,250 out of pocket and a $3,000 deductible.

Continue reading Add Connecticut to the list of disastrous state #Obamacare exchanges.

PSA: #Obamacare drawing con-men like rotten meat draws flies.

Don’t believe me? Then maybe you’ll believe that notorious right-wing Tea Party rag The New York Times:

To the list of problems plaguing President Obama’s health care law, add one more — fraud.

With millions of Americans frustrated and bewildered by the trouble-prone federal website for health insurance, con men and unscrupulous marketers are seizing their chance. State and federal authorities report a rising number of consumer complaints, ranging from deceptive sales practices to identity theft, linked to the Affordable Care Act.

Madeleine Mirzayans was fooled when a man posing as a government official knocked on her door. Barbara Miller and Maevis Ethan were pitched by telemarketers who claimed to work for Medicaid. And Buford Price was almost caught by another trap: websites that look official but are actually bait set by fly-by-night insurance operators.

Continue reading PSA: #Obamacare drawing con-men like rotten meat draws flies.

RS Q&A: Gov. Bobby Jindal, on the Medicaid expansion.

I was on a conference call today with Governor Bobby Jindal and former Governor Tim Pawlenty; they are both currently on a bus tour of Pennsylvania and Ohio for the benefit of the Romney campaign. We had an opportunity to ask questions; and, seeing as these two states are both Republican-controlled (due at least in part to the 2010 backlash against Obamacare), I asked Governor Jindal about whether he had some advice to the state governments about signing up for the proposed expansion of Medicaid, now that it would be voluntary on the states’ part.

Governor Jindal’s advice was, essentially: don’t. Audio below:

Download audio here

To summarize the Governor’s response – and with the caveat that Jindal doesn’t actually want to tell other states what to do – Louisiana will not signing on to the Medicaid expansion, for three reasons:

It will add a 3.7 billion expense over first ten years for Louisiana taxpayers alone.
It will remove 100, 000 people from private insurance and putting them into Medicaid.
It will not in fact even create jobs; it will just create a new entitlement program.

Continue reading RS Q&A: Gov. Bobby Jindal, on the Medicaid expansion.

Texas defies Obama administration’s war on poor women.

You should have seen the original title, by the way. It was highly profane.

Background: the Texas Medicaid Women’s Health Program provides mixed state-federal assistance to poor women in Texas, including cancer screening. Recently, the Texas legislature decided to prohibit Planned Parenthood from participating in the program, because then Texas would be subsidizing abortion providers. The Obama administration retorted by shutting down funding to the Texas Medicaid Women’s Health Program, primarily because Planned Parenthood is a more reliable source of checks for Barack Obama than are poor Texan women.

So what did Governor Rick Perry (R) do? Perry said fine, be that way:

Perry, who slammed the federal government constantly during his short-lived bid for the Republican presidential nomination, has directed state health officials to find the funding to keep the program going from other parts of the budget, but he has promised not to raise revenues to cover the costs.

[snip]

“It is the height of political posturing for the Obama administration to put the interests of abortion providers and their affiliates, like Planned Parenthood, over the well-being of more than 100,000 low-income Texas women,” Perry said in a statement Thursday. “I will not stand by and let this administration abandon these Texas women to advance its political agenda; Texas will fund these services with or without the federal government.”

Continue reading Texas defies Obama administration’s war on poor women.

Project Veritas. James O’Keefe. Russian drug-dealing Medicaid applicants.

You know where this is going, right?

[UPDATE: I have been made aware that the individuals in this video are county employees, not state ones.]

OK, let me set the background. You are a public sector employee for the state of Ohio; this probably means that you are a Democrat. You are probably aware, however vaguely and dimly, that there is a group out there who went around a few years ago and got ACORN defunded by pretending to be a prostitute and her pimp who wished to get tax help for the former’s prostitution, not to mention tax help for their underaged El Salavadoran hooker enterprise. This was largely considered ‘bad.’ So, you’re working one day, and in walk two men with bad Russian accents who wants to apply for Medicaid benefits, even though one of the men owns a modified sports car with a gold-plated engine that’s been purchased with profits from their illicit drug business. And, oh yes: they need to know about getting public funding for abortions for their under-aged hooker sisters.

WHAT DO YOU DO? Continue reading Project Veritas. James O’Keefe. Russian drug-dealing Medicaid applicants.