Obamacare was intended, in part, to rein in sky-high healthcare costs. Yet some doctors and hospitals are responding to the reform law with outstretched palms and brother-can-you-spare-a-dime pleas for more money from patients. Evelyn Stern, 75, of Brentwood has been treated at UCLA Medical Center for the last few years and always has appreciated the hospital's gleaming facility and state-of-the-art resources. "They don't seem to be hurting for money," she told me. So Stern was more than a little surprised to receive a recent solicitation for voluntary donations from the hospital's Division of Geriatrics.
Whenever I feel like taking a trip back in time, I save myself the trouble of building a time machine and instead just head over to a doctor's office. For a Millennial, or really anyone who lives a modern lifestyle, getting medical care is a rare departure from an otherwise technology-fueled existence. First comes making the appointment, which usually requires a phone call. My gynecologist's office, for example, doesn't use online booking, so scheduling a visit means calling them from my "open plan" office and describing what, if any, "the issue is." Layered on top of this indignity, my last name is basically impossible to spell or pronounce. "Yes, once again that's K-H-A-Z-as-in-zebra-A-N."
Medicare beneficiaries who have been waiting months and even years for a hearing on their appeals for coverage may soon get a break as their cases take top priority in an effort to remedy a massive backlog. Nancy Griswold, the chief judge of the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals (OMHA), announced in a memo sent last month to more than 900 appellants and health-care associations that her office has a backlog of nearly 357,000 claims. In response, she said, the agency has suspended action on new requests for hearings filed by hospitals, doctors, nursing homes and other health-care providers, which make up nearly 90 percent of the cases.
Nationally, Republican party leaders say their number one campaign issue for the midterm elections is opposition to Obamacare. But at the same time, a growing number of Republican states are now embracing a major provision of the law – expanding Medicaid, the government-funded health benefit program for the poor. The Supreme Court made doing that optional for states in 2012 and most Republican-led states said "no". But now, some states like Ohio, Iowa and Michigan are forging compromises with the White House on Medicaid. To understand why this happened in Michigan, drop in on the cavernous, busy emergency room at Henry Ford Hospital in the heart of Detroit.
As health care coverage under the new law sputters to life, it is already having a profound effect on the lives of poor Americans. Enrollment in private insurance plans has been sluggish, but sign-ups for Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the poor, have surged in many states. Here in West Virginia, which has some of the shortest life spans and highest poverty rates in the country, the strength of the demand has surprised officials, with more than 75,000 people enrolling in Medicaid. While many people who have signed up so far for private insurance through the new insurance exchanges had some kind of health care coverage before, recent studies have found, most of the people getting coverage under the Medicaid expansion were previously uninsured.
Plans to allow people to keep their individual health insurance policies, even if they don't meet the requirements of the health-care law, are unlikely to threaten the short-term viability of the new health insurance marketplace, according to a new Rand Corp. study. The study, released Tuesday, examines the impact of President Obama's decision in November to allow consumers to keep their insurance plans, even if those plans don't meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Obama made the announcement after millions of cancellation notices were sent to consumers who buy insurance on their own, angering supporters and critics who accused him of breaking his promise that people who liked their plans could keep them.