Comments close soon on New Hampshire’s new Medicaid waiver application. The Granite State is one of several states to already have a work requirement approved, and they want to continue it, which is what understandably gets the most attention.
But New Hampshire is also making another change to their Medicaid expansion plan, one that helps signal the end of an era for the program, the quiet death of what was once thought to be a promising conservative alternative to a conventional Medicaid expansion.
New Hampshire wants to end its Medicaid premium assistance program.
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Based on the facts, Obamacare should be a disaster for Democrats this fall. As Bill Clinton observed, people are paying twice as much for half the coverage. Among those who don’t get any federal subsidy (everyone making more than, say, $50,000), premiums have doubled and tripled and there has been a 29% drop off – even though they face a fine for being uninsured next April 15th.
States have often been an incubator for innovative ideas in health technology pricing and reimbursement. In another example of necessity being the mother of invention, Medicaid expansion coupled with rising drug costs have forced state Medicaid authorities to seek new payment mechanisms that would contain drug costs. In June of this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) gave the green light to Oklahoma to pursue a Medicaid drug pricing initiative.
Californians have always had the freedom to purchase “short-term” health insurance. Short-term plans have traditionally filled gaps in coverage, such as when consumers are between jobs or nearing Medicare eligibility. They often cost 70 percent less and offer greater choice of doctors than ACA plans.
Money once reserved for wage increases is now diverted to pay for employer-provided health insurance. A new study provides stunning estimates: For the bottom 60 percent of U.S. workers, wage gains have been completely wiped out by contributions for employer-provided health insurance.
“For many workers, rising health insurance premiums were eating up every last cent of their pay increases and more,” the study said.”
“Medicare for All” is an enormously popular slogan, as evidenced by a slew of recent surveys. Its widespread appeal has emboldened the growing ranks of America’s democratic socialists, the more ambitious of whom see it as the entering wedge of a larger transformation of the country’s economic life. It’s also an indulgent fantasy, based on the illusion that we can simply reset the way the U.S. health-care system operates.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) on Wednesday introduced a measure to overturn a Trump administration rule expanding access to non-ObamaCare insurance plans.
The move is a step in Senate Democrats’ plan to force a vote on the measure as they seek to argue Republicans are attacking protections for people with pre-existing conditions, a key argument Democrats want to make in the midterm election campaign.
Part of the fun of running for office appears to be taking creative liberties with your opponent’s record, so get ready for a fiction-filled autumn. An early ObamaCare misdirection out of Wisconsin is one that Republicans nationwide will have to anticipate.
Senate Republicans say they would like Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) to appoint a successor to the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who, unlike McCain, would support GOP legislation to repeal ObamaCare.
Our health care system must improve quality while reducing the cost of care. There is near-universal agreement that, to do so, we must move from fee-for-service reimbursement to paying for the value of care received.
Yet, despite the fact that the idea of “volume to value” has been around for a decade or more, it is not yet the norm. That means too many patients are not getting the care they need, and our health care system has become too expensive.