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Florida Doesn’t Have Enough Doctors For Medicaid Expansion, Lobby Group Says

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Photo Credit: Mike StockerBrace yourself for longer lines at the doctor’s office. Whether you’re employed and insured, elderly and on Medicare, or poor and covered by Medicaid, the Florida Medical Association says there’s a growing shortage of doctors — especially specialists — available to provide you with medical care.

And if the Florida Legislature goes along with Gov. Rick Scott’s recommendation to offer Medicaid coverage to an additional 1 million Floridians — part of the Affordable Care Act that takes effect next January — the FMA says that shortage will only get worse. “Florida needs more doctors and it needs more nurses, and it needs them working together in teams,” said Rebecca O’Hara, a lobbyist for the FMA.

About 15 million Floridians have health insurance today, and Obamacare, which requires most adults to have coverage by January, could add as many as 2.5 million more. One million would come through a potential expansion of the federal-state Medicaid program that Scott announced this week he was backing. The others would be the result of new mandates requiring employers and individuals to have insurance or be fined.

Currently, the state has 44,804 doctors, but about 5,600 of them are expected to retire in the next five years. And even though Florida has opened three new medical schools in the past dozen years, the state isn’t producing as many doctors as it needs. Scott’s budget this year has $80 million to fund programs to train 700 new residents a year, in hopes they’ll remain in the state.

Of all patients, people covered by Medicaid may have the hardest time finding a doctor; only 59 percent of the state’s physicians are taking new Medicaid patients, according to a Kaiser Health News study.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sessions: Jack Lew ‘Complicit’ In Violation Of Medicare Law

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Photo Credit: APThe office of Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), ranking member of the senate budget committee, sent out a statement claiming that Jack Lew, former White House Chief of Staff and current Treasury Secretary nominee, is “complicit in” violating the law that is “aimed at saving medicare.”

Alarmed by the unsustainable growth of Medicare’s unfunded obligations and the direct threat this posed to seniors, Congress in 2003 enacted a legal requirement that the President submit legislation if the Medicare Trustees issue a funding warning for the program as part of their annual report. This provision of federal law is commonly known as the Medicare Trigger, and it is intended to ensure that steps are taken to shore up the program’s finances before it is too late.

In 2008, then-President George W. Bush submitted Medicare legislation to Congress in response to such a warning being issued for the first time. Throughout the past four years of President Obama’s first term, no such legislation has been submitted, despite warnings from the Medicare Trustees every year.

Sessions’ office points out that the warnings were ignored “despite a clear and unambiguous legal obligation” to submit legislation in response. Jack Lew, as the head of the Office of Management and Budget in 2010 and 2011, was responsible for responding to the Medicare Trigger.

Read more from this story HERE.

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.

Lew’s Blues:
 GOP probing Jack Lew’s failure to respond to Medicare insolvency warnings

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Photo Credit: APThe Office of Management and Budget has declined to cooperate with a Republican inquiry into whether treasury secretary nominee Jack Lew was complicit in violating federal Medicare law.

Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee are probing Lew’s involvement in the administration’s alleged failure to respond to annual warnings about Medicare’s pending insolvency.

The administration is required by law to submit legislation to address the Medicare funding crisis within 15 days after a funding warning is issued by the Medicare Trustees.

According to Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee, the Obama administration has not responded to the last four years of funding warnings, including during 2010 and 2011 when Lew was director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The senators are requesting a detailed legislative proposal addressing the current Medicare funding warnings as well as all documents received or written by Lew regarding these warnings.

Read more from this story HERE.

House Investigating Obama’s $8.3 Billion Slush Fund Created to Hide Impacts of Obamacare on Medicare Prior to Election

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President Obama had a big political problem: Obamacare destroys the popular Medicare Advantage program, which offers private insurance plans to supplement Medicare. Something like a quarter of Medicare beneficiaries use this program. (It’s funny how free-market competition is both popular and effective when it’s actually tried, isn’t it?)

Obamacare sucks over $200 billion out of Medicare Advantage, something that would have been very noticeable through price increases and benefit reductions during open enrollment… which began in October, right before the election.

If you’re Barack Obama, you solve a problem like that by throwing huge amounts of other peoples’ money at it. So it was that a little “demonstration project” to reward the most effective Medicare Advantage plans was suddenly inflated into a titanic $8.3 billion slush fund – bigger than the 85 previous demonstration projects combined – in order to delay the pain of Medicare Advantage cuts until after the election. The standards for receiving payouts from this “incentive” program were lowered so much that even mediocre plans could receive a “reward.” It wouldn’t do to have seniors opening envelopes that say their premiums have skyrocketed or some of their favorite benefits have been dropped, right before the election!

The House Oversight Committee began investigating this jumbo Slurpee of slush in May, and ran into a Health and Human Services stonewall so obvious that it’s comical. A request for documents on May 23 was ignored by HHS. It was repeated on August 1, and ignored again. House Oversight fired off emails to a couple of HHS staffers, and didn’t get a response for weeks… at which point the HHS Deputy Director for Oversight and Investigation said, “I’m checking on the status and will get back to you,” but never got back to anybody.

Read more from this story HERE.

Campaign 2012: The Return of the Death Panels

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Photo credit: eleanor ryan

Health care was supposed to be President Obama’s issue in 2012. The 2009 Obamacare law was hailed as his signature legislative achievement, but it’s never been popular. Its most onerous provisions were timed to kick in after the election specifically to avoid damaging the re-election effort. For months, the Obama campaign tried to negate the issue. It spent a great deal of energy seeking to inoculate itself from Mitt Romney’s attacks by claiming the Massachusetts health care law passed when Mr. Romney was governor was “just like Obamacare.”

Some of Mr. Obama’s supporters claimed to be thrilled by Mr. Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate. The spin was that Mr. Ryan’s budget plan provided the necessary contrast to Obamacare to enable Democrats to move to the offensive. Pro-Obama commentators resurrected the allegation that the Ryan plan would “end Medicare as we know it,” a charge the nonpartisan fact checkers at Politifact dubbed the “lie of the year” in December 2011. Meanwhile, Republicans highlighted the $716 billion that Obamacare cuts from Medicare, a fact affirmed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. This cut was the talking point that stuck.

The Obama campaign has had to contend with a serious pre-existing condition, namely a lack of support from seniors. According to the latest Gallup data, Mr. Romney enjoys an 11-point advantage among voters age 65 and older. Among the same group, Mr. Obama’s approval rating is 37 percent, the lowest of any age demographic. Medicare is a critical election issue in general. A recent poll by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found that 73 percent of respondents described Medicare as “very important” or “extremely important” in determining their votes. Mr. Obama now must explain to this skeptical cohort why he chose to cut a very popular program to pay for his very unpopular law.

Death panels also are back. At an appearance in Florida over the weekend, Mr. Ryan criticized the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) established under Obamacare to “contain” Medicare costs. The law “puts a board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of Medicare who are required to cut Medicare in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors,” he said. “We will make sure that this board of bureaucrats will not mess with my mom’s health care or your mom’s health care.”

Obamacare defenders scoff at the idea that the IPAB’s decisions would have fatal consequences for seniors, but the panel has been given an extraordinary and perhaps unconstitutional degree of power. Its proposals automatically become law unless Congress counters it with another plan. Overriding the IPAB requires a three-fifths supermajority in the Senate. The Obamacare law dictates that Congress may not even propose doing away with the IPAB until 2017 and may not actually get rid of it until 2020. This dubious provision undercuts the argument that the IPAB is a harmless advocate for government efficiency.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: National Review’s Lowry destroys Rachel Maddow on Meet the Press

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Watch this video to see National Review’s Rich Lowry destroy Rachel Maddow on Meet the Press. He backed her into a corner and wouldn’t let up.

Here’s the transcript the Lowry vs. Maddow exchange:

LOWRY: Do you support $700 billion in cuts in Medicare over the next 10 years?

MADDOW: I’m not running for president.

LOWRY: Do you?

MADDOW: I’m not running for anything. Paul Ryan is running for vice president.

LOWRY: Do you? Why can’t you answer? See, you can’t answer.

MADDOW: But wait, I’m not running for anything.

LOWRY: This is the key vulnerability. Democrats have cut $700 billion out of Medicare which you won’t or can’t defend it. Defend it.

MADDOW: Is it good or bad?

LOWRY: Do you support it? You can’t answer.

MADDOW: But wait. Why are you asking me?

LOWRY: You can’t answer. Because you’re an opinion maker who is supposed to give us your opinion. But you will not tell us what your opinion is?

MADDOW: What I want to know is the logic of . . .

LOWRY: Democrats cannot defend that.

MADDOW: Wait. I want to know is the logic . . .

LOWRY: Go ahead. Defend it.

MADDOW: What I want to know is the logic . . .

LOWRY: [Laughter]

MADDOW: Wait. Rich, hold on.

LOWRY: Answer me. You’re not answering.

MADDOW: Can I say something?

LOWRY: Can you answer?

Photo credit: Paul Schultz

The Economics of Abortion: Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Lost

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As we all know, there are so many effects that abortion has on our society and the whole world. What seems to be overlooked is how abortion can hurt the economy. People make the mistake that abortion is solely a moral issue, and therefore cannot be related to the effects of the economy.

In the United States, we have a national debt nearing $16 trillion, which has surpassed the nation’s annual GDP. In other words, our federal government is spending beyond our means. Since abortion was legalized in 1973 by Roe v. Wade, over 50 million babies have died, with over 3,000 killed on a daily basis.

It’s horrible enough that these innocent babies are murdered, but can you imagine how many more contributions those 50 million lives would have made? Perhaps one of those aborted could have found a way to cure AIDS, cancer, or asthma, just to name a few. Plus, with more people contributing to society through work, we would have a higher GDP, which would greatly help reduce the burden of our government spending, which spends about $4 billion daily. Much progress could be made to shore up the social security of the 10,000 individuals who retire every day.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Social Security Administration, Guttmacher Institute, and National Center for Health Statistics, if abortion had never been legalized in 1973, more than 17 million people would be employed, resulting in an additional $400 billion from those workers, with $11 billion contributed to Medicare and $47 million contributed to Social Security. Although it is important to also reduce government spending, these added incomes would nevertheless help the country.

It doesn’t take a world-renowned economist to figure out that when you’re decreasing the youth from abortion and with all the baby-boomers retiring, Social Security is going to eventually run out if we continue with abortions and the amount of spending by the federal government. Even though Social Security cannot last forever with the amount of federal spending today, not having abortion would help Social Security last longer, assuming that the amount of federal spending is the same.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: utsfl

Obama’s “Animal House” Policy for Medicare

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The trustees of the Medicare system recently reported that the program will go broke in the year 2024—five years sooner than was projected just last year.

The millions of Americans who have been counting on Medicare to be a reliable, stable guarantor of affordable health care in their senior years should be asking themselves, “Who is responsible for this predicament?” The short answer is “lots of people,” but let’s start by looking in the mirror.

The shameful status of Medicare brings to mind a sequence in the movie Animal House. A freshman pledge, Flounder, let some upperclassmen in the fraternity use his brother’s brand-new Lincoln for a road trip. Naturally, the brothers trashed the car. As Flounder wept in regret, the suave, smooth-talking senior, Otter, put his arm around Flounder’s shoulder and explained the facts of life to him: “You [goof]ed up; you trusted us.” (“Goof” replaces the original R-rated verb.)

“We the people” have goofed up big time, trusting a government bureaucracy to oversee our health care.

When will we learn that gigantic bureaucracies—undisciplined by the profit-motive and insulated from the normal competitive pressures of the marketplace—are inherently inefficient?

Read More at Floyd Reports By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson, Floyd Reports