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Report: $2 Billion Spent Annually For Medicaid Emergencies, Largely For Illegal Immigrant Baby Deliveries

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Photo Credit: Laura RauchEven though federal law largely bars illegal immigrants from obtaining Medicaid coverage, the program annually pays out more than $2 billion in free emergency coverage that mostly goes to illegal immigrants, according to Kaiser Health News.

The vast majority of the total emergency care reimbursements cover delivering babies, Kaiser reports.

Based on a Kaiser data analysis of the states believed to have the greatest populations of illegal immigrants — including California, New York, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, Illinois and Florida — more than 100,000 people annually receive emergency care that is reimbursed by Medicaid. California, Kaiser’s analysis showed, receives approximately half of the annual $2 billion Medicaid expenditure category.

That category of Medicaid also covers some homeless people and legal immigrants who have been in the country less than five years — and are therefore mostly ineligible for Medicaid, according to Kaiser.

“We can’t turn them away,” Joanne Aquilina, the chief financial officer of Bethesda Healthcare System in Boynton Beach, Fla., told Kaiser.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Anti-Stimulus Economists Agree: Unemployment Benefits Hurt Employment Rates

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Photo Credit: APUnemployment insurance and other forms of government benefits act as a disincentive to work, economists across the political spectrum agree.

Three different economic experts testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation, and Regulatory Affairs on Thursday afternoon during a heated and contentious hearing. All said that government benefits that kick in during unemployment decrease the economic incentive to pursue work, although they disagreed about the extent of the benefits’ effect.

“The focus of today’s hearing is on the unintended consequences that too often stem from well-intentioned policies,” said Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) in his opening statement for the hearing, “Unintended Consequences: Is Government Effectively Addressing the Unemployment Crisis?”

Casey Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago and author of a recent book on the effect that safety net programs have had on employment, argued that the government’s expansion of assistance programs in the wake of the recession actually has made it financially harmful to return to work in some cases.

He called the loss of benefits caused by employment the “job acceptance penalty,” and noted that a high penalty—100 percent of profit in some cases—is associated with low employment rates.

Read more from this story HERE.

Health Care Exchanges And The Two Americas

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Photo Credit: Reuters In the Obamacare era, there are two Americas. Half the states have refused to set up the health insurance exchanges, ignoring a Friday deadline for states to take on core requirements of the law. They’ll hand over the keys to the Obama administration, which will play an outsize and risky role in driving critical health insurance decisions that are typically the province of state governments.

Barring any surprise last minute Friday announcements, in those 25 states — nearly all led by Republican governors — the feds must set up health insurance exchanges. Enrollment starts in October, and on Jan. 1 those online marketplaces are supposed to provide affordable health coverage for millions of Americans.

Republicans who voted against the law and still clamor to repeal Obamacare believe the feds are heading for a nationwide failure.

“I have a hard time understanding how the administration expects to have exchanges up and running by Oct. 1, ” Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said Thursday.

For the administration, it’s a dangerous endeavor: the text of President Barack Obama’s health law didn’t envision widespread abdication by the states. There’s not much of a playbook for federal health officials to follow. And if it goes horribly awry, not only will the Obama administration be blamed, the entire health care law could be in trouble.

Read more from this story HERE.

Seven Million Will Lose Insurance Under Obama Health Law

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Photo Credit: Carolyn KasterPresident Obama’s health care law will push 7 million people out of their job-based insurance coverage — nearly twice the previous estimate, according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.

CBO said that this year’s tax cuts have changed the incentives for businesses and made it less attractive to pay for insurance, meaning fewer will decide to do so. Instead, they’ll choose to pay a penalty to the government, totaling $13 billion in higher fees over the next decade . . .

Overall, the new health provisions are expected to cost the government $1.165 trillion over the next decade — the same as last year’s projection

Read full story HERE.

Obama’s Tear-Jerking Story About His Uninsured Dying Mother was a Lie

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Despite our political and philosophical differences, one of the most touching and humanizing aspects of Barack Obama was his mother’s tragic death of uterine and ovarian cancer in 1995. Obama frequently stated his self-employed mother spent her last days frantic, desperately trying to assure the insurance industry would not deny her coverage, instead of resting and preparing to meet her Maker (Whom she apparently did not believe in). As it turns out, the entire story was, at best, greatly exaggerated and at worst calculated fabrication. Unlike so many of the president’s scandals, this lie has been reported not simply in conservative outlets like The Washington Examiner and The Blaze but in major Establishment media sources like Politico, and the New York Times.

Candidate Obama took little shame in cashing in on his dead mother’s lingering illness on the campaign trail. Byron York collected a few examples:

“I remember in the last month of her life, she wasn’t thinking about how to get well, she wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality, she was thinking about whether or not insurance was going to cover the medical bills and whether our family would be bankrupt as a consequence,” Obama said in September 2007.

“She was in her hospital room looking at insurance forms because the insurance company said that maybe she had a pre-existing condition and maybe they wouldn’t have to reimburse her for her medical bills,” Obama added in January 2008.

“The insurance companies were saying, ‘Maybe there’s a pre-existing condition and we don’t have to pay your medical bills,’” Obama said in a debate with Republican opponent Sen. John McCain in October 2008.

Read More at Floyd Reports by Ben Johnson, the White House Watch