Obamacare is robbing patients of their private plans and dumping them into Medicaid, forcing them to accept not only subpar treatment but less access to care.
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal today by Jeffrey A. Singer MD, a general surgeon who is also an adjunct scholar at the conservative CATO Institute, Obamacare is resulting in a involuntary shift of patients onto government-run care, establishing at least a beachhead for the long-held liberal dream of fully socialized medicine.
From the piece:
A recent Boston University/Harvard Medical School study suggests that up to 80% of people participating in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion have been shifted off their private insurance. These patients’ plans—that they liked, and were told they could keep—did not meet Affordable Care Act requirements, and were wiped out. Healthcare.gov offered them Medicaid.
But the irony doesn’t stop there. Even if my patients save money by no longer paying premiums, they suffer in the long run by being trapped in a subpar health-care system. A Medicaid card does not translate into quality medical care. In some cases, it does not translate into medical care at all.
Only 45% of doctors are now accepting new Medicaid patients, according to a recent survey by the health-care company Merritt Hawkins. This number has dropped from 55% in the past five years. In some cities—Dallas and Minneapolis, for example—as few as 23% of doctors are seeing new Medicaid patients. As ObamaCare vastly expands the number of patients on the Medicaid rolls—three million new patients, by last count—this threatens these patients’ well-being.
For some, this will literally be a death sentence:
Medicaid patients were twice as likely to die in the hospital after undergoing major surgery than those on private insurance, according to a 2010 study from the University of Virginia published in the Annals of Surgery. The research also showed that patients who had no insurance at all were 25% less likely than those on Medicaid to have an “in-hospital death,” and that Medicaid patients have the longest stays and highest hospital costs.
How will government solve the problem of too many patients for too few doctors?
Well, Death Panels, for one. The geniuses in the Obama administration, despite their remarkable intellectual prowess and top-school degrees, have still not found a way to eliminate the laws of supply and demand. And so rationing, at least in the public sector, must take place.
Another solution would be forcing doctors to accept Medicaid patients, whether they like it or not. If demand increases, that is, the five-year plan will call for increasing supply. How good will your private plan care be if doctors have less time for you and are making less money?
Will we have plumbers throwing down their wrenches and going to medical school, while the best students, instead of practicing medicine, become attorneys to help companies wade through the growing library of Obamacare regulations?
I guess I wouldn’t mind a plumber doing my colonoscopy.
Finally, there’s the raise taxes option. I don’t know exactly how this would help, but the Left usually tries to throw money at problems and hope it sticks somewhere useful.
50 thoughts on “Obamacare Dumping Patients Into Medicaid”
I guess I wouldn’t mind a plumber doing my colonoscopy.
Roto-rooter man!
I spent my entire work day trying to find a new primary–mine of several yrs left my Medicare Advantage Plan. They came up with eight docs–six had either mistreated me, sister, or mother or the numbers were disconnected. So I may have to change plans to keep the one I have now, whom I can tolerate.
TSA Agent did MY last colonoscopy.
I have one word for you: “Idiocracy.” if you guys haven’t seen this brilliant movie yet, run don’t walk to your computer and start streaming it now!
from the brain-dead lawyer to the multiple-choice-diagnosis hospital to the low-info voters watering their crops with Gatorade, that movie describes the world we are now starting to live in.
I consider “Idiocracy” to be documentary film for the near future USA… Hell some of its already true!
Mike Judge is a genius.
And a conservative!
For years I’ve thought we need to implement a draft of the best students and make them be doctors. If they don’t like that, they can be an enlisted soldier for 25 years. If malpractice gets too bad, maybe we’ll resort to capital punishment.
Is that like “the beatings will continue until morale improves” kind of thing? lol.
Wow…never saw this comin’.
/sarc
Medicaid usually means that a patient goes to a medical clinic to be treated by a doctor who has 14 vowels in his last name and English is his second language. The lack of communication is only the first obstacle to proper care and treatment. .
The truth is that oncologists, heart specialists, brain surgeons and all the rest of the specialists fields are not accepting Medicaid patients and payment.
As always, money talks, and the rest of us can walk (if we’re able).
I have kind of a different take–we WANT Medicaid for my daughter–and she missed the cutoff by $26. She is full-time at Wendy’s. The hospital where they were clueless about her paralyzed arm wants a ransom in dough for their efforts. The hosp told her to get on Medicaid…now, we are thrashing around in the Obamacare world. By the way, the phone # and website are still screwed up.
Star: Medicare and Medicaid were the beginning of the government’s takeover of our health. Neither of them should ever have been implemented and neither would have if the apathetic and complacent Americans had opened their eyes decades ago to the realities that our health care system should have changed from a mostly employer-provided benefit and a third-party payer (insurance companies) to a more modern and sustainable system. This practice made it impossible for anyone to know what the real cost of health care was and allowed the constant increase in its costs while entrenching the government further into controlling our lives.
All that is fine and good–the usual line–but this is reality–my daughter needed care–didn’t really get it–and now owes thousands. Real world.
Also, without Medicare, I would be dead and you would not be reading my irritated post.
You are right on some pts–esp arbitrary costs. They failed in 3 detached retina surgs on me (eye blind) but did cut the nerve to the eye surface so I get infections I cannot feel. Once they sewed my eye shut for 10 weeks as therapy. The second time, I said no way–so they put on a crescent-shaped piece of tape–and when the EOB came, they were trying to get $6500 for that little piece of tape. They coded it as surgery. Absurd!
Yes, since FDR and LBJ. Americans have literally accepted Socialism after it was forced on them. Now, people are so dependent upon the government for their survival, the only future is more Socialism and more government control. People absolutely cannot survive now without accepting some kind of entitlement, tax credit, or handout. Just the way the Socialists planned it.
It is tragic that so many Americans are dependent on the benevolent government to take care of them and that families, who used to take care of themselves, are becoming extinct.
Despicable. Population thinning has happened in other cultures.
The visual of a plumber doing a colonoscopy is too much for me.
And the Roto-Rooter man.
The consequences of electing Barry continue. It’s too bad they aren’t falling only on those who voted for him.
What I don’t understand is that the Republican governor of Ohio, Kasich, has warmly embraced Obamacare and just the other day said how it is here to stay. I know politicians in OH and PA have to play to Democratic constituents, but this man is going nowhere on the national level if he plans to run in 2016.
He’s claiming he was misquoted now. He supposedly wants the repeal of the expansion of Medicaid.
I cancelled Kasich from my list of serious — when he first came out with Obamacare. Never looked back.
What I do not get is that some of these people affected by Obamacare — whose rates have gone up, care down, and shifted onto Medicaid — some of them must be Democrats. So, WTF — the health of your family is not enough to question what the Democrats are doing? I do not get it.
Well, let’s see what happens two weeks from tonight.
If I were a tribal elder looking past casinos to make money for my tribe I’d be looking at opening branch after branch of Tribal medical care centers which on tribal lands are not under any federal government regulations. I’d parlay my casino money into building the best hospitals while acquiring top talent. Then advertise like crazy, “come get your medical care and while you’re at it have a few chips to try your luck at the slots.”
kmb – What a great idea!
Butt! Having worked with the medicaid community, they DO get federal money and Medicaid. And they bitch & scream when their fed money is held back when they get casino tribal money.
The VA is a single payer, non-competitive, government run health care provider.
I’ve heard getting an appt there is a challenge.
OT. ISIS — not too worried about Ebola. Now lobbing mortars (2) into Baghdad — Green Zone — within 500 meters of US Embassy.
I am sure when Obama reads about this there will be no one madder than he.
If I were in that Embassy I would be a tad nervous given Obama’s history with US personnel abroad — Benghazi — Mexico.
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/21/isis-mortar-shells-now-landing-in-baghdads-green-zone/
I hope those helicopters are ready, but even that in this day and age would be dangerous.
If I was in that Embassy I would have little concern about the capability of the military or special forces to execute but I would have a lot of concern about whether Obama could make that decision in time.
What historians will call the “Battle of Baghdad” has begun, it would appear. They will describe the battle as completely avoidable, but for the hapless, bizarre, foolhardy and passive behavior of Barry Obama and his band of misfits.
This is no biggie, but it’s one of the craziest by-products of Obamacare…involving patient privacy. I went to Walgreen’s to pick up a refill last week and, as a matter of habit, I asked the pharmacy asst. to verify the name of the Rx. They have been known to make mistakes.
Instead of double checking the Rx, the girl behind the counter started whispering to me. I looked around to see if there was something going on behind me that I should be aware of. Then, suddenly, the girl motioned me to follow her to a secluded corner of the pharmacy. She then whispered to me that the ‘new law’ forbids her to look at my RX b/c it violates my privacy. She told me to look inside the bag and check the RX for myself. I then told her I forgot my glasses. She told me she still couldn’t look at my Rx. So I asked her point blank – Is it (name of drug)? And she surreptitiously nodded her head…’yes’.
I laughed and told her not to worry – I wouldn’t report her to the FBI !
The medication I take happens to be a synthetic thyroid drug. You would have thought it was cocaine or something. It’s crazy!
If I may say, Walgreens gave me someone else’s script TWO times!
I was at my doctor’s the other day and was asked a personal question that was relevant to the situation for which I was there. Suspecting that, but not for sure, I asked — who wants to know you or Obama?
Girly1 are you stating she was not allowed to tell you what RX she put in the bag? If so, Why not? You did state RX privacy. Can you ask the pharmacist?
Obamacare has succeeded at its primary goal – to increase the government’s control over our lives.
“Finally, there’s the raise taxes option. I don’t know exactly how this would help, but the Left usually tries to throw money at problems and hope it sticks somewhere useful.”
I hope the public, especially us old codger who will be quietly shuffled off out mortal coil, whether we want to go or not, stick the left right up their whazoo!
Just read this – Typical Democrat Budget Plan
The Treasury Department released this month figures showing that federal tax revenue exceeded $3 trillion in fiscal year 2014—the first time revenue surpassed that mark.
Yet the deficit was still almost $500 billion.
The democrats tax us heavily and still can not balance the budget and have absolutely no consequences for saddling taxpayers with more debt each year.
Obama’s goal is to turn the United States of American into Venezuela….remember the wink and a nod years ago given to Chavez.
I do.
That’s when I knew Obama really was implement policies by executive action and truly transform this country into a 3rd world country controlled by the ruling class. We are well on our way as Obama has opened our borders and is now in the process of granting work visas to 100,000 Haitians. And Obamacare creates dependency on the government for healthcare…make the masses dependent on the government for healthcare, food and energy and then the government is in total control and democracy is cast aside.
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Death Panels!!!
Who knew???
Until the leftist’s dream of implementing complete government control over health care is realized, the following will occur:
1. Lowering the standards of medical schools. (This is already a reality but it will be even worse in the years to come.)
2. Importing medical workers and accepting whatever credentials their country uses to be able to practice medicine. That these credentials aren’t as rigorous as those in the U.S. won’t matter (especially since the standards here will continue to decline.)
3. Allowing more PA’s and less qualified medical workers to make more health decisions. M.D.’s will only see you if you are really, really sick.
4. Allowing more hospitals to consolidate and buy up private practices so their administrator’s can function under the draconian rules of Obamacare and stay in business.
5. Force all doctors to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients and payments thereby making the profession less desirable so more imported workers can get into the U.S.
6. Restrict and ration all tests, services, and treatment of health problems that IPAB (the unelected health care Gestapo) deems are not cost-effective.
7. Implement taxes on those deemed unhealthy.
8. Restrict and ration the use of life saving treatments for those the government deems are using too many resources compared to their “quality of life” (determined by government bureaucrats of course) which we know are the elderly and those who are the sickest.
There will have to be higher and higher premium rates because the government will force everyone to pay for abortions and homosexual/lesbian sex change operations and the resulting medical costs of them.
Allowing more PA’s and less qualified medical workers to make more health decisions. M.D.’s will only see you if you are really, really sick.
Once again, contrary to conventional wisdom, I am fighting to keep a PA as my provider. He gets me–his “boss” from India cannot communicate with me. i
When the medicaid patients understand that everything they own now belongs to the US government or that health facility, then they will realize what communism is about. If one carefully read the bill, all health care stops at 78. Good luck ma and pa. America has chosen this poison and many will die by this socialistic program. Kasich is politically dead to most Ohio conservatives.
Obama is the lowest form of human life that it is no wonder no one can stand to hear him talk (always putting down Americans) anymore. Aside from robbing people of good health care so he can kill off people (population control), the absolute no excuse idiocy of him letting people with Ebola in this country everyday when it brings DEATH is beyond evil. He is definitely a moron and filled with hatred for America. The best is, that no one stops him from these treasonous acts??? Four people with symptoms are on the loose in Washington, D.C. I hope they go to the White House. Maybe then he will feel what we feel about having Ebola here.
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