The administration has shrugged off attacks for its delays on issuing Obamacare regulations. But you'd think they would have been more timely on the Basic Health Program regs, whose postponed implementation will have a major impact on the law's coverage expansion.
The BHP was designed to provide coverage assistance program for people with incomes too high for Medicaid but who cannot afford exchange coverage, even with subsidies. An HHS guidance document released this week put off proposed rules until sometime later this year and implementation of the program until 2015. That's a year later than originally planned.
The delay will hit coverage expansion for people the law was supposed to benefit the most: the low-to-moderate income uninsured.
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Moments after gunman Adam Lanza's mass murder of 26 people—including 20 children—at Sandy Hook Elementary last week, President Barack Obama called on the nation's leaders to set politics aside and take “meaningful action” to prevent future tragedies like the one in Newtown, Conn.
In less than a week's time, those efforts are taking shape in Washington as some lawmakers have made a connection between the nation's recent spate of shooting sprees and the need for stronger mental healthcare services—and adequate federal funding for those services—in America.
Two days after the massacre, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) appeared on “Fox News Sunday” calling for a federal commission on mass violence. “It's like the slogan we use in Homeland Security: 'See something; say something,'” Lieberman said. “If you see a younger person that really looks like they are really troublesome, get them mental health help,” he continued. “Is there enough mental health help available for these kids?”
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The charge that AARP's lobbying is driven primarily by the profits it derives from its Medigap insurance plans, which supplement standard Medicare coverage, has been a staple of congressional Republicans since the seniors group threw its considerable weight behind passage of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Now some high-ranking Democrats are joining in the attack. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) blasted the powerful seniors' group Tuesday for basing its Washington lobbying priorities on its financial profits. The chairman of the Finance Committee's Health Subcommittee accused the 20-million strong seniors group of failing to back congressional Democrats' efforts to block Medicaid changes as part of a major year-end debt deal.
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One of the casualties from last week's congressional elections is a familiar face in the healthcare industry: Rep. Pete Stark, the California Democrat who currently serves as the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee's ranking member and is widely known for the three-part physician self-referral law that bears his name.
A longtime champion of a single-payer healthcare system, Stark—who has served in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 8th, 9th and currently 13th district of California since 1973—was beaten by Eric Swalwell, a fellow Democrat, to represent the Golden State's 15th district. In the healthcare industry, Stark's influence largely stems from his work drafting legislation that governs physician self-referral in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The first phase prohibited physician self-referral for clinical lab services in Medicare starting in 1992, and additional phases became effective in 1994 and 2007, as the law eventually expanded to other healthcare services and also applied to Medicaid.
From 2007 to 2010, Stark served as the subcommittee's chairman. His departure now leaves open the health subcommittee ranking-member spot on the hugely influential panel that makes tax law.
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Coming off a historic slapdown by the government’s nonpartisan ethics watchdog over a recent political speech, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hopped right back into the political fray this week.
Sebelius spoke Wednesday to a Washington gathering of the National Hispanic Council on Aging just a few weeks after the independent U.S. Office of Special Counsel found she violated federal law. The office cited her “extemporaneous partisan remarks” delivered during a February speech in which Sebelius was acting in her official capacity as head of HHS. It was the first such finding against a senior administration official since 2007.
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Cue the ominous legislation soundtrack.
Congressional Democrats welcomed Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan back to Capitol Hill through a day-long series of attacks on his plan to repeal the healthcare overhaul and add an insurance subsidy option to Medicare.
Like other Democrats, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) took to the Senate floor to blast the Romney-Ryan campaign's healthcare plans that echo many of the provisions included in budgets Ryan authored as chairman of the Budget Committee.
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Will they or won't they?
The potential complexities surrounding state decisions over whether to expand their Medicaid programs now that the Supreme Court justices have eliminated fiscal penalties for not doing so continue to emerge. The law required Medicaid eligibility for all people with incomes up to 133% of the federal poverty level with a 5% leeway up to 138%.
The latest wrinkle in the expansion question was highlighted Tuesday by Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. He reminded attendees at a Washington health policy event that regardless of what various governors decide to do with their states' Medicaid programs, any decision may be countermanded by their legislatures.
But as a starting point to understanding where states are headed on the size of their Medicaid programs, Modern Healthcare recently contacted all 50 governors about their plans, as they stand now.
We asked whether states were planning to expand; planning to not expand; or undecided on expansion.
Here are the positions of the 26 governors' offices that responded, including several that specified they were waiting for the outcome of the November presidential and congressional elections.
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