dagblog - Comments for "Why Some Can’t Wait for a Repeal of Obamacare"

Except for a very few ultra

jollyroger — Wed, 17 May 2017 00:11:23 +0000

In reply to Everyone has a Mum & Dad -

Except for a very few ultra high end set ups, moreover, even the 10/k/mo payors are sharing staff with medicaid supported residents, so any adjustment to staff/resident ratios that results from medicaid cuts with bite their loved ones in the ass,so to speak...

WHAT'S THAT SMELL? DO YOU SMELL THAT SMELL? IT'S THE SMELL OF A REPUGNANT VICTORY-AND IT SMELLS LIKE FECAL INCONTINENCE

Everyone has a Mum & Dad -

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 16 May 2017 20:05:00 +0000

In reply to Taxpayers gonna be paying for

Everyone has a Mum & Dad - nursing homes don't much discriminate - they treat everyone just as shitty, unless you're wealthy enough to pay over $10K a month and can find a facility with space. That may include most politicians, but even the upper middle class bracket should find it horrifying & unacceptable.

But like so many things on our home turf, it doesn't make sense but we sustain it somehow.

Taxpayers gonna be paying for

artappraiser — Tue, 16 May 2017 19:58:53 +0000

In reply to We got lucky with one of

Taxpayers gonna be paying for the boomers in nursing homes one way or another, state if not federal. It's just a ridiculous shell game that no one will admit is going on. Because they want to hide those taxes and not have to face the truth and just cover it with Medicare. People would freak because their Medicare tax bite would go way up, but they are paying more for it now doing it this more hidden tax way.

Edit to add: states like Texas might try to keep the cost low by letting really bad cheap nursing homes stay open, but that kind of shell game doesn't last for long when the bedsores lawsuit victories start piling up....

We got lucky with one of

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 16 May 2017 19:44:01 +0000

In reply to Another Times' health-care

We got lucky with one of these policies before insurance companies realized they'd lose money.

Care for Seniors is a huge scandal, neglect bordering on mass torture - I can't quite figure out why it's not a national issue. Only when it hits "our troops" do people seem to care, and even then, not so much.

related: the red state would

artappraiser — Tue, 16 May 2017 16:57:12 +0000

In reply to Another Times' health-care

related: the red state would love to get the Medicaid money back (to help pay grannie's nursing home bills, natch) without having to offer Planned Parenthood; baby red states would surely follow if the big one is successful:

Texas Seeks Medicaid Money It Gave Up Over Planned Parenthood Ban

By Abby Goodnough @ NYTimes, May 15

And yet another piece of

artappraiser — Tue, 16 May 2017 14:22:59 +0000

In reply to Why Some Can’t Wait for a Repeal of Obamacare

And yet another piece of interest at the Times, on major insurance co. bilking Medicare with the Medicare Advantage Plans:

A Whistle-Blower Tells of Health Insurers Bilking Medicare

By Mary Williams Walsh, May 15

When Medicare was facing an impossible $13 trillion funding gap, Congress opted for a bold fix: It handed over part of the program to insurance companies, expecting them to provide better care at a lower cost. The new program was named Medicare Advantage.

Nearly 15 years later, a third of all Americans who receive some form of Medicare have chosen the insurer-provided version, which, by most accounts, has been a success.

But now a whistle-blower, a former well-placed official at UnitedHealth Group, asserts that the big insurance companies have been systematically bilking Medicare Advantage for years, reaping billions of taxpayer dollars from the program by gaming the payment system.

The Justice Department takes the whistle-blower’s claims so seriously that it has said it intends to sue the whistle-blower’s former employer, UnitedHealth Group, even as it investigates other Medicare Advantage participants. The agency has until the end of Tuesday to take action against UnitedHealth [.....]

Another Times' health-care

artappraiser — Tue, 16 May 2017 14:18:40 +0000

In reply to Why Some Can’t Wait for a Repeal of Obamacare

Another Times' health-care-related piece I found useful to read, on the looming crisis with Medicaid regarding long-term care, exacerbated by the availability of gene testing. The elephant in the room which rarely gets mentioned by either party is that Medicare doesn't cover the nursing home by grandma. More and more grandmas are now gaming the system and buying long-term insurance if they are high risk and not if they aren't. In the article is the elusive figure, hard to find: 2/3 of nursing home patients are on Medicaid, far from being just for "poor people" under 65, and it's looking like that number is going to go up:

New Gene Tests Pose a Threat to Insurers

By Gina Kolata, May 12

[....] Two-thirds of nursing home residents are on Medicaid, and the remaining private insurers are already struggling. In the early 2000s, more than 100 firms offered long-term care insurance, according to the Treasury Department. By the end of 2015, only 12 firms offered it, and new enrollees fell from 171,000 to 104,000.

The insurers charged too little for these policies, experts say; policyholders have turned out to be much sicker than anticipated. To pay for an unanticipated increase in policyholders who develop Alzheimer’s, insurers would have to raise prices, said Don Taylor, a professor of public policy at Duke University who has studied the issue [...]