Thursday, January 02, 2014

Those who live in red states need the benefit of Medicaid expansion. 

It may have seemed like smart politics in the short term for Republican governors to grab the opportunity offered by the Supreme Court rulings that made Medicaid expansion optional for states, but it was long-term stupid: 

If those 20 states hold out, they will eventually lose an estimated total of $20 billion in federal funds per year—money that would be going to hospitals and treatment. 

In blue states, let’s lobby for a public option on the insurance exchange—a health plan run by the state government, rather than a private insurer. 

In Massachusetts, State Senator James B. Eldridge is trying to pass a law that would set one up.

Some counties in California are also trying it.

Montana came up with another creative solution. Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat just completed two terms, set up several health clinics to treat state workers, with no co-pays and no deductibles.

The doctors there are salaried employees of the state of Montana; their only goal is their patients’ health. (If this sounds too much like big government to you, you might like to know that Google, Cisco and Pepsi do exactly the same.)

Michael Moore is Not Happy 
With ObamaCare                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     FoxNews.com

January 02, 2014--The liberal documentary filmmaker marked the Jan. 1 launch of coverage under the Affordable Care Act with a scathing op-ed that declared: "ObamaCare is awful."

This, he wrote in The New York Times, is the "dirty little secret many liberals have avoided saying out loud for fear of aiding the president's enemies."

Moore's problems with the law, though, naturally are different than the complaints from Republican critics.

Moore continues to back a single-payer, government-run system and argues that the current one is too favorable to the insurance industry.

"I believe Obamacare's rocky start--clueless planning, a lousy website, insurance companies raising rates, and the president's telling people they could keep their coverage when, in fact, not all could--is a result of one fatal flaw: The Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president who knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go," he wrote.

Yet in the same op-ed, Moore also called ObamaCare a "godsend," because of its protections preventing insurance companies from denying or dropping sick patients.

He urged the public to pressure "blue states" to add a so-called "public option"--a plan run by the government--and "red states" to expand Medicaid.