State can seize your assets to pay for care after you’re forced into Medicaid by Obamacare

The fact that this is being treated with seriousness at Kos is an indication of how large a liability it could be for this government program. Washington is scrambling to change the law. No doubt other states will start looking at their implementation of this part of Obamacare. But there will be people caught unaware that their houses effectively belong to the government because the government forced them into Medicaid coverage.

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Obamacare-exchange insurance is essentially Medicaid lite – insurance but few doctors who will see you.

THANKS DEMOCRATS:

Not only can’t you keep your doctor, you may not even have a doctor

We knew it was coming and now it is here

Rationing Begins: States Limiting Drug Prescriptions for Medicaid Patients

Thanks, Obama!

6 charts that show the Welfare State run amok

The original purpose of Medicaid was to provide improved healthcare access for poor people, while not turning the safety net into a trap. Under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Medicaid will be greatly exapnded beyond what Congress originally intended.

In fact, as these charts show, it has already expanded beyond what Congress surely originally envisioned and, in the process, has created a terrible fiscal problem for the United States. (These charts and graphics come from a briefing today here at AEI, conducted by Gary Alexander, secretary of public welfare for Pennsylvania.)

A few scary factoids:

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RyanCare would be far less injurious to seniors than ObamaCare or, for that matter, doing nothing.

Official calculations show that Medicare has $34 trillion less than it needs to keep all its promises to seniors. Yet ObamaCare will take $500 billion out of Medicare over 10 years to cover 30 million uninsured Americans.

Basic arithmetic suggests that this would hasten the demise of the program. Not so, according to President Obama. He says he’ll squeeze out savings by cutting reimbursement to providers. ObamaCare will create something called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, composed of 15 experts. Their job will be to hold down spending by identifying reimbursement cuts, and their recommendations will be binding on Congress. If this board recommends what many fear it will, Medicare’s reimbursement rates will drop below Medicaid’s, which will mean that doctors will turn away seniors like they do the poor. In effect, in addition to an early death option, ObamaCare offers seniors diminished access to quality care. If this is compassion, give me cruelty.

RyanCare is not perfect, but at least it won’t rob Grandma Millie to buy Cousin Joe coverage.

Medicare’s least bad fix

Cuts Leave Patients With Medicaid Cards, but No Specialist to See

NEW YORK TIMES:

My Medicaid card is useless for me right now. It's a useless piece of plastic. I can't find an orthopedic surgeon or a pain management doctor who will accept Medicaid.

NICOLE R. DARDEAU, a nurse in Opelousas, La., who needs surgery for herniated discs in her neck...

How can an already overtaxed Medicaid system handle such a huge influx of people?

asked Dr. Michael A. Felton, a family doctor in Church Point, La., near Lafayette. It is a question being asked in many states.

Medicaid Is Worse Than No Coverage at All

WSJ: New research shows that patients on this government plan fare poorly. So why does the president want to shove one in four Americans into it?

Cliffhanger

This movie is the only one I've ever seen where I thought I was literally going to have a heart attack and die! (I saw it at a free screening when I worked for Universal Studios.) I really don't know how a director pulls off this sort of thing.

This story - Medicaid panel off to rocky start - somehow reminds me of the film!

A little ways after I started reading, I got the feeling that we're all in a slow motion fall off of a cliff. Don't forget: this is only just one of many big government programs.

The difference between liberals and conservatives? Conservatives are afraid of heights.

Richard Foster, chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, delivers devastating blow to Obamacare

Washington Post:

James Capretta, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, also testified and observed the full hearing. In response to my inquiry as to the main take-away, he e-mailed, "The most important thing said [by Foster] today: in so many words, moving toward defined contribution health care has more potential than price controls to bring about real efficiency gains and higher productivity in the health sector, and slow the pace of rising costs. That's a very big deal." And a very big blow to the credibility of ObamaCare cheerleaders.

Rep. Paul Ryan 1, ObamaCare 0

New bad news about Obamacare

WSJ:

It's also dawning on employees that they will lose their coverage. Some will blame management; many more will blame those who wrote this terrible legislation.

Employees who lose coverage get to select a policy from a government-sponsored insurance marketplace called the "exchange." This will be subsidized by taxpayers. Depending on his income, a worker will have to pay between 8% and 9.8% of the cost.

But there are a few hitches. Employers now pay for employee health plans with pre-tax dollars, but workers who buy into one on the exchange pay with after-tax dollars. Families making less than $30,000 and individuals making less than $15,000 a year will be dumped into Medicaid, widely viewed as second-class health care.

Either Mr. Obama was stunningly blind to these perverse effects when he promised people could keep their coverage, or he felt that admitting his plan would collapse employer-provided health coverage could keep it from passing. Either way—self-deception or deliberate deceit—health reform is going to turn out far differently than was promised. And because more workers will be dumped into subsidized coverage, taxpayers are likely to pay much more than the $1 trillion-plus price tag claimed by ObamaCare advocates for its first 10 years.

It doesn't end there...

The Bad News About ObamaCare Keeps Piling Up

Saturday night live: Saturday night letter from Obama calling for action on education and Medicaid assistance but giving no direction on how to pay for them!

Our Prez...you just hafta love 'im!

Obama letter stalls war funding...

President Obama on Monday unveiled a new health care proposal that adds spending provisions and raises taxes without making any real concessions to Republicans ahead of this week's health care summit...

Obama HC Proposal Has More Spending, Higher Taxes Than Senate Bill

Given the ever-increasing national debt ($12+ trillion and counting), and with nearly $90 trillion (!) in unfunded Medicare liabilities, why, oh why, are we on the verge of having the federal government assume responsibility for providing healthcare for 40+ million more Americans?

With 15 million additional people fully covered under Medicaid and another 26 million heavily subsidized by the government in the new insurance exchange. All at an incremental annual cost approaching $200 billion by 2019 according to the CBO. (A number, I suspect, which will be much higher by then.)

Have our leaders in Washington completely lost their minds? Is this why “we need heath insurance reform now”? So a federal government which has never in history demonstrated one iota of ability to reign in spending can permanently add another 40+ million people to federal entitlement programs. This is the silver bullet necessary to reduce costs? Really??

It defies logic. It defies evidence. It’s completely preposterous.

Read the whole thing!

Medicare cuts approved by House may affect access to providers

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

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If OBAMACARE is So Great, Why Did Congress Reject 11 Amendments Requiring THEIR Participation?

Critics of the health care bill said they offered the 11 amendments – including some that would require the president, vice president, and Supreme Court justices to give up their Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP) to enroll in the ‘public option’ or Medicaid – to showcase the problems with the massive legislation.

“If Congress forces our constituents into a public option plan over time, then members of Congress should be expected to do the same,” Rep. Howard McKeon (R-Calif.) told CNSNews.com.

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Starner Jones, MD: "Our Congress expects me to pay for this woman's health care?"

Starner Jones, MD is a seventh generation Mississippian and wanted to come back to Mississippi after going somewhere else for college and medical school. His extracurricular interests are golf, hunting, fishing and college football.

This was his "letter to the editor" in August 29th Jackson, MS newspaper.

Dear Sirs:

During my last night's shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos, a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ringtone. Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: MEDICAID. She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.

And our Congress expects me to pay for this woman's health care? Our nation's health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture - a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. A culture that thinks "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me". Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.

Don't you agree?

STARNER JONES, MD Jackson , MS

If Obama passes healthcare...

Here's what you can expect:

• The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775 - they've had 234 years to get it right; it is broke, and even though heavily subsidized, it can't compete with private sector FedExp and UPS services.
  
• Social Security was established in 1935 - they've had 74 years to get it right; it is broke.
  
• Fannie Mae was established in 1938 - they've had 71 years to get it right; it is broke. Freddie Mac was established in 1970 - they've had 39 years to get it right; it is broke. Together Fannie and Freddie have now led the entire world into the worst economic collapse in 80 years.
  
• The War on Poverty was started in 1964 - they've had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our hard earned money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor"; it hasn't worked.
  
• Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 - they've had 44 years to get it right; they are both broke; and now our government dares to mention them as models for all US health care.
  
• AMTRAK was established in 1970 - they've had 39 years to get it right; last year they bailed it out as it continues to run at a loss!
  
• This year, a trillion dollars was committed in the massive political payoff called the Stimulus Bill of 2009; it shows NO sign of working; it's been used to increase the size of governments across America, and raise government salaries while the rest of us suffer from economic hardships. It has yet to create a single new private sector job. Our national debt projections (approaching $10 trillion) have increased 400% in the last six months.
• "Cash for Clunkers" was established in 2009 and went broke in 2009--after 80% of the cars purchased turned out to be produced by foreign companies, and dealers nationwide are buried under bureaucratic paperwork demanded by a government that is not yet paying them what was promised.

So with a perfect 100% failure rate and a record that proves that each and every "service" shoved down our throats by an over-reaching government turns into disaster, how could any informed American trust our government to run or even set policies for America's health care system--17% of our economy?

Maybe each of us has a personal responsibility to let others in on this brilliant record before 2010, and then help remove from office those who are voting to destroy capitalism and destroy our grandchildren's future!

A veteran - whether active duty, retired, national guard or reserve - is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America", for an amount of "up to and including my life." That is honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it. -- Author Unknown

Obama's public pleas: "It's close to Peter Pan telling the children that thinking lovely thoughts will make them fly!"

President Obama in his public pleas for the plan appears to be truly upset that his benign view of it isn't obvious to all. In his op-ed Sunday for the New York Times he said, "We'll cut hundreds of billions in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid." Hundreds of billions? Just like that? This is nothing but an assertion by one man. It's close to Peter Pan telling the children that thinking lovely thoughts will make them fly.

Most people are aware that the big three entitlements we've got are underfunded. Medicaid is wrecking state budgets, Medicare goes broke in eight years, followed by the flatlining of Social Security.

King Canute ordered the tides to recede to prove to his courtiers that his powers were limited. President Obama appears to believe he can reverse the tides of entitlement. What evidence has government given to allow anyone to believe this?

In Government We Trust?

Lessons For Health Care Reform

Tennessee was home to a failed attempt at universal single payer care, and has lessons to teach a President who has promised that in pursuing his goal of universal health care, he will learn from the policy failures of the past...

Why the health care mess to begin with?

From the CATO INSTITUTE blog (CATO is a Libertarian think-tank):

The health care system is a mess, largely because of perverse government incentives through its big health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid, and its tax break for employer-provided insurance. As a result, we now have a third party payment-dominated system which simultaneously encourages excessive spending and pushes insurers and providers to decide how to “ration” (i.e., limit) care.

What people need is a medical system that allows them to make the basic rationing decisions: what kind of insurance to buy, what kind of coverage to choose, what kind of trade-offs to make between spending on medicine and spending on other goods and services.

Read the whole thing