Sixteen states have set a limit on the number of prescription drugs they will cover for Medicaid patients, according to Kaiser Health News.
[. . .]
Medicaid is a federal program that is carried out in partnership with state governments. It forms an important element of President Barack Obama's health-care plan because under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--AKA Obamcare--a larger number of people will be covered by Medicaid, as the income cap is raised for the program.
With both the expanded Medicaid program and the federal subsidy for health-care premiums that will be available to people earning up to 400 percent of the poverty level, a larger percentage of the population will be wholly or partially dependent on the government for their health care under Obamacare than are now.
An appeals court ruled on Friday that President Barack Obama's healthcare law requiring Americans to buy healthcare insurance or face a penalty was unconstitutional, a blow to the White House.
The Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, found that Congress exceeded its authority by requiring Americans to buy coverage, but also ruled that the rest of the wide-ranging law could remain in effect.
It would have been easier to say, "Death Panels" but that would be expecting a liberal to be honest and straightforward with an issue.
President Barack Obama started the adult conversation over debt and taxes last week — if only barely. In a forthright and feisty speech, Obama defended the traditional social safety net while also acknowledging the need to curb the growth of spending, especially on health care.
But he riled many Republicans by re-introducing an inconvenient truth: Taxes must be raised. The nation simply cannot pay its debts and sustain worthwhile federal programs without more revenue.
She conveniently lets the point slide by that Obama also increased spending exponentially.
It's funny how people who claim the mantel of 'adult conversations' were the ones who were suckered into voting for someone who ran as a cipher using obscure terms such as 'Hope' and 'Change' as a selling point.
By the way, the "adult conversation" bit is worn out. Both sides are adults. And Cynthia Tucker in a ninny.
While that’s a generally accepted bit of grade-school math in much of the political realm, it has become heresy in the GOP, which has taken up residence in a parallel universe of fairy godmothers, unicorns and Easter bunnies. In that universe, lowering taxes for the rich magically creates jobs, fills government coffers and spreads prosperity for all.
That’s bunk, of course. George H.W. Bush famously called it “voodoo economics.” Still, that notion — proved wrong as recently as the presidency of George W. Bush — has gained a certain power through frequent repetition.
Because when Pres. Bush(43) lowered tax rates, tax revenues rose. But that doesn't fit her narrative so it's ignored.
So it fell to Obama to remind Americans of the Clinton years — when taxes were higher, the budget was balanced, the deficit falling and prosperity widespread. The balanced federal budget was squandered by Obama’s predecessor, who slashed taxes, spent recklessly and presided over a period of tepid economic growth.
Obama will need to repeat the facts that link higher taxes with increased prosperity time and again. And even he didn’t go far enough; the president ought propose raising taxes on the merely affluent, not just the rich.
Again, more glossing over history. In 94, Republicans took over Congress and forced Clinton to work within a budget. It's a sad fact that they lost their way when a Republican was in the White House.
Anyway, that's another posting for later.
Moreover, Obama has only started to nibble at health care spending in Medicare, a voracious federal program. He ought to be frank with the nation’s elderly: they are draining an exorbitant amount of the national treasury, taking up resources that ought to be going to the young.
Somehow, we’ve managed to create an upside-down social safety net that maroons far too many children while swaddling the elderly in a cocoon. How can the nation “Win the Future”[WTF, heh] if we spend 2.5 times as much on its old as the young? (If you count federal spending alone, the ratio is more like 7 to 1.)
At last, she needed 6 paragraphs of justification and strawmen to get to her point.
I don’t mean to sound cavalier about the needs of the elderly, who tend to be sicker and have higher medical expenses. Obama was right to pledge to protect Medicare against the predations of U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-), who wants to end it.
There's a 'But' coming. And anything that was before the 'But' is complete bullcrap.
But [See] an adult conversation — a truly adult conversation — would engage seniors and help them to understand the consequences of our current spending curve. In nations that suffer famine, we hear wrenching stories of starving parents who give the last scraps of food to their children. We’ve taken a starve-the-kids, feed-the-old approach, instead.
Sounds something eerily like. . . Rationing of care for the elderly in order to save money.
While too many children are stuck in bad schools and poor housing, while community clinics that deliver vaccinations and asthma medicine beg for money, while young adults skip college because they can’t afford it, the elderly were given a budget-busting prescription drug plan during the Bush administration. That makes little sense.
If kids are stuck in bad schools, provide vouchers. Let them have school choice rather than forcing them to attend whatever failing school that happens to be in their neighborhood.
I'm not going to defend Medicare Part D. But this is interesting. A liberal is criticizing a government entitlement? Did hell freeze over? Oh yeah, "Bush's fault!"
By the way, there is no truth to the rumor that the Obama administration is training a parrot to squawk, "Bush's Fault" to replace Jay Carney as Press Secretary.
If resources are limited (and they are), the nation needs to make choices – some more painful than others. My brother, Kevin, a Boston physician who treats kidney disease, talks about the Medicare program that pays for dialysis for anyone with failing kidneys — including the terminally ill. Started in the 1970s to help adults still in the workforce, its fastest-growing population is now over 65, he said. And it costs tens of billions a year.
“It may not be the best use of resources for the frail and infirm elderly, and it also forces many elderly patients to spend their last days in the hospital, rather than at home,” a more comfortable setting, Kevin told me.
Here she all but declares rationing and denying of care in order to save money.
I almost missed this part. "The nation needs to make choices. . ." Not the patient, the one. But the nation, the collective needs to make the choice. Not the nation itself but the decision making will be done by a governing board of directors who will look at the variables of the patient (age, sex, general health, estimated life span) and the variables of the procedure (cost of drugs, cost of time, pay of staff involved) and compare the two.
Yet, many patients, even octogenarians who don’t expect to recover, find it difficult to turn down the treatment. “And physicians resist having a conversation with patients that recommends they forego dialysis because it’s an uncomfortable conversation to have. It’s easier just to recommend the treatment,” he said.
But those are exactly the adult conversations we ought to be having.
She wants old people to hurry up and die in order to save money. Let's face it. If a dialysis treatment is denied, death or a transplant are the only option. And if dialysis is too expensive, a kidney transplant is out of the question.
Shorter Tucker: Kill the senior citizens! It's for the children!
Shorter still: Death Panels!
At least shriveled garden gnome Robert Reich was honest when he said this:
Myth 1: Health care reform will reduce the deficit.
Fact 1: Health care reform will increase the deficit.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes many provisions that have nothing to do with health care: the CLASS act, a student loan overhaul, and many new taxes. These provisions don't change the health care system. They just raise money to pay for the new law. Strip them away and the law’s actual health care provisions don't lower the deficit—they increase it!
AARP lobbied for the new health care law and now it stands to profit, Republican lawmakers charged Wednesday as they called for the IRS to investigate whether the powerful interest group representing older Americans should be stripped of its federal tax exemption.
Three veteran GOP representatives released a report that estimates the seniors lobby could make an additional $1 billion over 10 years on health insurance plans whose sales are expected to pick up under the new law. They also questioned seven-figure compensation for some AARP executives.
"Based on the available evidence, substantial questions remain about whether AARP should maintain its tax-exempt status," said the report, released by Reps. Wally Herger of California, Charles Boustany of Louisiana and Dave Reichert of Washington.
The liberals and progressives try and try to explain why ObamaCare is such a good thing but the most of the people aren't buying it. So the left needs to explain it again in a different package.
Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward.
"Imagine if this bill were that in order to protect our communities and homeland security, every American had to buy a gun. Can you imagine the reaction across the country to that?"
There's more there so be sure to read the whole thing.
Don't have too much to say about this. Other than that must be some cookie for the guy to be nibbling on it for the entire 2+ minutes.
I guess he only spent half of that time eating the cooking and the other half saying, "I'm eating my cookie".
It was only a matter of time. See, you can‘t dismiss questions about bloated wait times and problems with Canada’s single-payer health-care system by telling reporters to get lost while “I’m eating my cookie,” and expect to keep your job long.
The last minute or so is a campaign commercial for Dr. Rob Steele. NTTIAWWT. How else would you hear about how ObamaCare will affect physicians and doctors in the medical field?
The classic problem with a single payer (Public option, AKA, government ran health care) systems is that cost often trumps care.
So what happens when diabetics need treatment and special shoes for their feet? Well, in Greece, when the cost reaches a certain point, it becomes a liability for the government to take care of everyone's feet who has diabetes. Instead of new shoes and regular treatment, amputation is the approved method.
This Saturday, one of Greece’s most respected newspapers, To Vima, reported that the nation’s largest government health insurance provider would no longer pay for special footwear for diabetes patients. Amputation is cheaper, says the Benefits Division of the state insurance provider
Quality of life? The Grecian government emailed me to say, "What's that?"
The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government reported yesterday.
Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 19 percent from a year earlier and increased 0.9 percent from April, the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement on its website.
Participation has set records for 18 straight months.
Unemployment in July may have reached 9.6 percent, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts in advance of the Aug. 6 release of last month’s rate. Unemployment was 9.5 percent in June, near levels last seen in 1983.
An average of 40.5 million people, more than an eighth of the population, will get food stamps each month in the year that began Oct. 1, according to White House estimates.
One thing I've noticed about this administration's policies is that they all are designed to put more and more people onto the public doll. Every. Single. One.
Obamacare will burden insurance companies to the point of bankruptcy. Ushering in the single payer public option.
Cap And Trade will drive the cost of coal and oil up. Artificially causing the need for 'Green' energy products that will be tax payer subsidized for use.
It will drive the middle class to extinction with a slow bleed on the wallet. Higher costs will mean spending less money on other things like vacations, a nicer car or larger house.
All with an end game of a population at the behest of a government service. At that point, the real control happens.
It's all a bit of an abstraction on what I laid it out above. Much of it depends on a complacent election this November. Which might not happen after all.
When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”
And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.
Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.
Unless the plan is to push the 95% onto the public plan, letting the highest 5% pay for everyone else. Because that will work.
Krugman doesn't have anything to worry about with ObamaCare. Being the toady that he is, he's hoping that goodwill will carry favor with the Death Panels. That and he can afford to go overseas for surgery.
Congressional Budget Office estimates released Tuesday predict the health care overhaul will likely cost about $115 billion more in discretionary spending over ten years than the original cost projections.
The additional spending — if approved over the years by Congress — would bring the total estimated cost of the overhaul to over $1 trillion.
