Tag: "Medicaid"

Gallup Confirms Obamacare Increased Welfare Dependency

I did not bother to discuss Gallup’s July update on the drop in uninsured Americans, because it was substantively the same as the teaser released in March, which showed most of the increase in health insurance was actually Medicaid, which is welfare dependency.

Gallup has just released a state-by-state report, concluding Medicaid expansion and establishing a state exchange almost doubled the reduction in uninsured. Of the two, I cannot imagine setting up a state exchange is a big factor, because beneficiaries get the same tax credits in state or federal Obamacare exchanges. Obamacare mostly increased Medicaid dependency.

Aug 13, 2015 | 20 comments | by

New Evidence That Obamacare Is Working?

Obamacare supporters are excited by a research article suggesting Obamacare is working to increase access to care. In an article published in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers followed up respondents to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index (which I’ve discussed previously.)

Yes, in an absolute sense, their access to care improved. According to the Huffington Post’s Jonathan Cohn, this means “Another Argument From Obamacare Critics Is Starting To Crumble.”

Oh dear. Even Citizen Cohn admits “The picture from the raw data is a little muddled” and “like all academic studies, this one will be subject to scrutiny that, over time, could call its findings into question.” Well, I won’t call them into question, just point out what is obvious from the abstract itself: Obamacare is dong a terrible job increasing access to care.

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Jul 31, 2015 | 1 comment | by

Only 20 – 40 Cents of Each Medicaid Dollar Benefits Recipients

(A version of this column was published by Inside Sources on July 29, 2015, and syndicated to other media.)

Medicaid is the largest means-tested welfare program in the United States. Jointly funded by state and federal governments, its spending grows relentlessly whether the economy is adding or shedding jobs. Its ostensible purpose is to ensure access to medical care for households without enough income to pay for it. Yet new research suggests that only 20-40 cents of each Medicaid dollar improves recipients’ welfare. On the other hand, 90 cents of every dollar spent on the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) does so.

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Jul 30, 2015 | 10 comments | by

Medicaid’s Poverty Trap Illustrated

The tragic story of a disabled woman trapped in poverty by the hodge-podge of ways the U.S. finances health care illustrates why we need to sweep the whole thing away and give everyone a universal, refundable tax credit:

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Jul 28, 2015 | 11 comments | by

Medicaid Spending To Grow 6.2 Percent Annually For 10 Years

The Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has published the sixth annual report on the welfare program’s financial outlook. Highlights include:

  • Over the next 10 years, expenditures are projected to increase at an average annual rate of 6.2 percent and to reach $835.0 billion by 2023.
  • Average enrollment is projected to increase at an average annual rate of 3.0 percent over the next 10 years and to reach 78.8 million in 2023.
  • Medicaid expenditures are estimated to have increased 9.4 percent to $498.9 billion in 2014, which includes the expenditures for newly eligible enrollees.
  • Average Medicaid enrollment is estimated to have increased 9.6 percent to 64.6 million people in 2014. Newly eligible adults are estimated to have accounted for 4.3 million of the 5.7-million enrollee increase from 2013 to 2014.

“Newly eligible” refers to those eligible as a result of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. What these figures show is that relatively healthy people signed up due to the expansion: The rate of spending increased slower than the increase in enrollment.

However in future, spending will increase exponentially while enrollment will increase on a flat trend line (as shown in Figures 2 and 3).

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Jul 20, 2015 | Leave a Comment | by

When Will We See Fiscally Responsible Health Reform from Congressional Republicans?

(A version of this Health Alert was published by RealClearPolicy on July 16, 2015.)

Just a few weeks ago, Republicans in Congress announced a oint budget resolution, which (if ever enacted) would repeal Obamacare and balance the budget in ten years. That is all well and good. Unfortunately, when they pass health care legislation that actually has a chance of becoming law, they fail to pay for their promises. How can they be trusted to repeal and replace Obamacare with fiscally responsible, patient-centered health reform?

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates repealing Obamacare would increase the deficit by $353 billion over ten years, before considering the economic growth that would result from repeal. Because repeal would grow the economy, federal tax revenues would increase by $216 billion, resulting in a net deficit of $137 billion. So, when Republicans actually repeal Obamacare, they will still have to cut $137 billion of spending elsewhere.

Yet, they cannot even identify miniscule spending cuts to pay for current health-related bills. The latest is repeal of the medical device excise tax. This is a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices – from pacemakers to MRI scanners – to help pay for Obamacare. On June 18, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the tax. Every Republican present voted for it, plus about one fifth of the Democrat members. With those 46 Democrats joining the majority, the votes in favor added up to 280, just eight short of the number needed to override the promised presidential veto. It awaits a vote in the Senate.

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Jul 20, 2015 | 2 comments | by

Government-Health Complex Continues to Congeal

TevennerThe government-health insurance complex continues to congeal as AHIP, the health insurers’ main trade association, picked former Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Marilyn Tavenner to lead it.

Although not confirmed as CMS Administrator until May 2013, she acted in that capacity since December 2011, after the administration fumbled the appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to the position. In other words, she is the grande dame of Obamacare.

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Jul 16, 2015 | 4 comments | by

Only 20 to 40 Cents of Each Medicaid Dollar Benefits Recipients

One of the problems with Medicaid is that it does not appear to improve recipients’ health (although the evidence can be described as mixed). The best evidence on Medicaid comes from Oregon, which ran a lottery to allow eligible people to enroll. This approximates a randomized clinical trial, the gold standard of clinical research and hard to achieve when examining the real world. Plenty of research indicates that the Oregon Medicaid did not improve health outcomes very much.

The original researchers continue to publish results, and have written a paper that might offer the best explanation why Medicaid does so little. Only 20 to 40 cents of Medicaid spending actually goes towards patients’ welfare:

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Jun 30, 2015 | 6 comments | by

Repealing Obamacare Would Grow Economy; Reduce Number of Insured by 10 Million

I have asked, and the Congressional Budget Office has answered.

I have been urging the CBO to do a comprehensive estimate of all the effects of the Affordable Care Act, effectively for the first time since 2012. It did so last week. The main take-away is that “repealing the ACA would increase GDP by about 0.7 percent in the 2021–2025 period, mostly because provisions of the law that are expected to reduce the supply of labor would be repealed.”

CBO concludes repeal would increase deficits. However, this effect is much smaller than previous estimates, because this is the first time CBO has used so-called “dynamic scoring” – taking macroeconomic effects of repeal into account – instead of just the simple (“static”) book-keeping type of estimate:

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Jun 22, 2015 | 3 comments | by

U.S. Busts 243 Providers for $713 Million Medicare, Medicaid Fraud

man-in-wheelchairThis blog does not often congratulate the Obama administration. However, it has been relatively successful at prosecuting Medicare fraud through old-fashioned, gum-shoe type investigations.

From yesterday’s news:

In Miami, the owners of a mental-health treatment center allegedly billed Medicare for tens of millions of dollars’ worth of intensive therapy that actually involved just moving people to different locations. Some of them had dementia so severe that they couldn’t even communicate.

And in Michigan, another physician allegedly prescribed unnecessary narcotic painkillers in return for the use of his patients’ IDs to generate additional false billings. When they tried to escape the scheme, authorities say, he threatened to cut off the medications, to which his patients were addicted.

In the single largest crackdown in an eight-year campaign against health-care fraud, the Justice Department charged 243 people Thursday with $712 million in false billings to Medicare — the medical insurance program for the elderly — and Medicaid, which serves the poor. (Lenny Bernstein & Sari Horwitz, “Government arrests 243 in largest crackdown on health-care fraud,” Washington Post, June 18, 2015)

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Jun 19, 2015 | 5 comments | by
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