Obama calls for 'public option' for Obamacare

President Obama joined the chorus of Democrats calling for the creation of a government run health insurance program as Obamacare is facing growing problems. In an article published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the president called for Congress to revisit the "public option" for Obamacare in areas where few insurers offer coverage.
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U.S. Spends More on Medical Care for Inmates than Seniors, Veterans, Military Personnel

President Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that there’s an extra special place in his heart for incarcerated criminals, but this is a bit much. The administration spends a lot more money on the medical care of jailed convicts than retired seniors on Medicare, active U.S. military personnel or veterans, including an extra $100 million in one year alone, according to a federal audit released this month.
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Federal healthcare spending tops Social Security for the first time

The government spent $936 billion last year on health programs including Medicare, Medicaid and subsidies related to the Affordable Care Act, a jump of 13 percent from 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office.  Spending on Social Security, in contrast, totaled $882 billion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported.Read more at The Hill Read More......

Britain's Health Care: So Bad, Doctors Don't Even Want To Practice There

Angry over pay and working conditions, British doctors are threatening to go on strike next week. This is the sort of disaster that can happen only when physicians are government employees. As many as 37,000 "junior doctors, or doctors in training who represent just over half of all doctors in the National Health Service," Reuters reports, have said "they would stage a 24-hour stoppage next week, followed by two further 48-hour strikes."
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State Senate OKs health coverage for many immigrants here illegally

The state Senate on Tuesday approved a hotly debated measure that would allow many immigrants in the state illegally to sign up for special healthcare programs that would offer the same benefits as Medi-Cal.


The action comes just days after lawmakers significantly scaled back the plan, which originally would have offered state-subsidized Medi-Cal to people in the country without authorization.


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In Vermont, single-payer healthcare quietly disappears

If you’re looking for a state with a reliable Leftward tilt, you’d be hard pressed to do better than Vermont. After all, this is the place which has repeatedly elected Bernie Sanders – a man who considers the Democrat Party too conservative for his tastes – to statewide office since 1991. So in terms of socialist experimental laboratories, this is the spot where you’d want to launch progressive initiatives and take them for a test spin. That was the plan for Governor Peter Shumlin, who had promised his constituents that they would soon be enjoying the first in the nation single payer healthcare plan. But faced with the cold, harsh light of reality, that plan is now history.

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New Cover Oregon allegations: 'If it's true, someone's going to prison'

You already know the process that led to the failed rollout of the Cover Oregon website was bad. 

But was it criminally bad?

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'Socialist' Swedes Take to Private Health Insurance

Sweden, a country famous for a welfare state that has actually been trimmed back substantially in recent years, is experiencing a phenomenon unlikely to bring cheer to those Americans who think the answer to Obamacare's problems is more government involvement in medicine. Tired of long waits and inadequate care, Swedes increasingly purchase private health insurance policies to gain access to the care the state can't provide.

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OR Obamacare Online Enrollment System Still Doesn’t Work 3 Months After It Was Supposed To Launch

Gov. John Kitzhaber said Thursday the state has hired a firm to conduct an independent review of what went wrong with Oregon’s troubled health insurance exchange.  Several states and the federal government have struggled with exchange technology, but none as much as Oregon. Cover Oregon’s online enrollment system still doesn’t work more than three months after it was supposed to launch, and the state has hired or reassigned hundreds of workers to manually process applications. Officials say they hope the online system will be operational by March.

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After Repeal of Obamacare: Moving to Patient-Centered, Market-Based Health Care

HERITAGE FOUNDATION RESEARCH
Abstract: Obamacare moves American health care in the wrong direction by eroding the doctor–patient relationship, centralizing control, and increasing health costs. True health care reform would empower individuals, with their doctors, to make their own health care decisions free from government interference. Therefore, Obamacare should be stopped and fully repealed. Then Congress and the states should enact patient-centered, market-based reforms that better serve Americans.

Read more at Heritage.org

Note: Many of the solutions this Heritage paper presents are solutions Republicans have submitted in various bills since the healthcare debate began. Harry Reid and Senate Democrats have refused to consider free-market solutions, while the president deceitfully claims that Republicans have not offered any solutions for greater coverage and health care reform. --bc Read More......

Obamacare: If You Like Your Facts ... You can Keep Them

President Barack Obama recently asserted, "Thanks in part to the Affordable Care Act, also known as 'Obamacare,' the cost of health care is now growing at the slowest rate in 50 years." So, you may be losing your health care coverage, and you may end up paying more -- but, hey, rising costs are slowing overall "in part" because of Obamacare.

True, as Obama says, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services -- the agency that administers Medicaid and Medicare -- "estimated that ... (in) the three years since Obamacare passed, we've seen the slowest growth in health care costs on record."

But is this due "in part" to Obamacare?

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Robert Reich's Health Care Warning

Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration, spoke candidly about health care at UC Berkeley on October 26, 2007. In this video he reveals what an honest politician would say, but doesn't for fear of not winning an election.  In part:  "... [W]hat I'm going to do is I am going to try to reorganize [the American health care system] to be more amenable to treating sick people. But that means you -- particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people -- you're going to have to pay more..."

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Shocker: 58% Say They Trust GOP More on Handling Health Care

A new poll arrived in my e-mailbox this morning, indicating how quickly the conventional wisdom about the issue of health care has been turned upside down: 

“Loyalty prevails among partisans, but among independents, 42 percent trust the Democratic Party more when it comes to handling healthcare compared with 58 percent who trust the Republican Party more.”

 

Forty one percent of registered voters approve of the law compared with 53 percent who disapprove.

 

Since September, Democrats have shifted 11 points away from let the law take effect as is, Independents have moved 10 points away from let the law take effect as is, and Republicans are 10 points more likely to support repealing law.

 

One in five registered voters have or know someone who has received an insurance cancelation notice.

 

Read more at National Review

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State Health Care Websites Are Failures, Too

The federal Healthcare.gov website, serving 36 states that chose not to build their own sites, has been - to quote its boss, Kathleen Sebelius - a "debacle." Its estimated cost to taxpayers stands at $394 million so far and will likely rise as the "tech surge" pours millions of additional taxpayer dollars into trying to fix the site. But federal taxpayers are on the hook for a sum more than 10 times greater - $4.3 billion - for state exchange websites. And some of them are even more spectacular failures than the federal site.  The final cost to taxpayers of the federal site may end up well short of the $910.1 million federal taxpayers have already been forced to send to just one state, California. Its troubled CoveredCA.com reportedly has a dodgy provider directory, delays for agent and provider certification, and its own variety of technical glitches. Independent health broker Alison Gordon said: "The stats released are bogus... When they say they got 36,000 calls in one week, it's because the website isn't up and working properly."

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Oregon Tightens Duty to Die on Cancer Patients

As I have discussed here previously, the first state to explicitly ration Medicaid–an integral feature of all single payer systems–tightened the screws against terminal cancer patients a few months ago. Now, the issues is gaining wider discussion in Oregon. From an opinion column published in the Statesman Journal by Peter J. Pitts:  In August, Oregon’s Health Evidence Review Commission issued an update to its guidelines for providing cancer treatment to low-income individuals covered by the state Medicaid program. These new guidelines require that Medicaid deny coverage for certain cancer treatments for patients that have been deemed “too” sick, haven’t responded well to previous treatments, or can’t care for themselves.  Read more at National Review Read More......

Privacy breaches in VA health records wound veterans

Karen Santoro heard co-workers chattering about her psychological care in 2010.

 

An Air Force veteran and surgical services scheduler at the Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh hospital in Oakland, Santoro asked officials with the VA and the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the source of the gossip. It seemed to violate the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, that prohibits release of medical information.

 

Advised by her physician, Santoro begged her bosses to transfer her or let her work from home until investigators finished their work. They refused. She resigned in mid-2011, disgusted with VA's disregard of privacy laws. She is convinced that officials were retaliating against her and concerned by “inaction” by Health and Human Services, which enforces HIPAA at all health care facilities.

 

Read more at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

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Obamacare Website Quietly Deletes Reference to 'Free Health Care'

Even as President Obama and his administration are making a last minute push to encourage enrollment in Obamacare, a quiet change was made on the Healthcare.gov website regarding those who will still not be able to afford coverage after the program kicks in. From at least June 26, 2013 to as recently as September 15, under the topic, "Where can I get free or low-cost care in my community?" the following statement appeared: "If you can't afford any health plan, you can get free or low-cost health and dental care at a nearby community health center." Here is how the page in question appeared:

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Reid says Obamacare just a step toward eventual single-payer system

In just about seven weeks, people will be able to start buying Obamacare-approved insurance plans through the new health care exchanges. But already, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is predicting those plans, and the whole system of distributing them, will eventually be moot. Reid said he thinks the country has to “work our way past” insurance-based health care during a Friday night appearance on Vegas PBS’ program “Nevada Week in Review.” “What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever,” Reid said.

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Switzerland: A Case Study in Consumer-Driven Health Care

In 2007, Harvard Business School professor Regina Herzlinger and McGraw-Hill published Who Killed Health Care? America’s $2 Trillion Medical Problem—And The Consumer-Driven Cure. In the book, Herzlinger describes the health care system of Switzerland as a case study in consumer-driven health care, one that has things for both liberals and conservatives to like (and dislike). Given the fact that both Obamacare’s insurance exchanges and Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform proposals borrow from Switzerland’s model, it’s worth learning from Regi’s research on the topic. Her work has influenced my own thinking about how to use parts of Obamacare to reform Medicare, Medicaid, and the employer-sponsored health care system in the United States.

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Rep. Richardson: Final Gavel Falls-2012 Legislative Session Adjourned

Rep. Richardson's Newsletter, March 7, 2012

This week the final gavel fell ending Oregon’s five-week, 2012 legislative session. For a complete list of what was accomplished during the 2012 Legislative Session, See 2012 Key Votes PDF. ✧ There were four key goals for this short, even-year session: Rebalance the State Budget, pass transformative legislation for education and health care, and create a clear path for Oregon’s economic recovery and jobs for Oregon workers. ✧ Bipartisan cooperation and compromise enabled legislative success in meeting the first three of Oregon’s key goals. Read Rep. Richardson's full newsletter...

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