Medicaid

Washington fiddles while the entitlement problem metastasizes

President Trump’s second annual address to Congress passed Tuesday night without him mentioning a sole word about entitlement spending, continuing a deviation from the economically conservative Congress he inherited.

In one part of the room, lawmakers and public health experts debated whether an increase in opioid abuse among Medicaid expansion states could be a direct result of Obamacare policy. In the other part by himself—a shock, I tell you—was Rand Paul.

The Republican tax overhaul significantly undoes the Affordable Care Act by removing the individual mandate to purchase health insurance. Next, the GOP House has their sights on Medicaid reform.

The biggest scandal that nobody is talking about has nothing to do with the Donald Trump White House or the connection between the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Russia dossier. It involves New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat, who stands accused by the federal government of bribery,…

The biggest scandal that nobody is talking about has nothing to do with the Donald Trump White House or the connection between the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Russia dossier. It involves New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat, who stands accused by the federal government of bribery,…

There are fewer and fewer economic principles on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, and any point of consilience will surely be forgotten as some momentary partisan need overwhelms reason and sense. Surely, however, we can all agree on a few points:

There are fewer and fewer economic principles on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, and any point of consilience will surely be forgotten as some momentary partisan need overwhelms reason and sense. Surely, however, we can all agree on a few points:

The Graham-Cassidy health reform bill is notable for how much its policy caters to governors—no matter their party affiliation. Its private-market provisions are premised on a simple plan: Take the money projected to be spent on four key Obamacare-driven expenditures, including the Medicaid…

The Senate GOP has revealed its closely guarded alternative to the American Health Care Act, which stitches together significant changes to Medicaid intended to unify disparate Republicans and modifies the House approach to Obamacare regulations in a way that still provoked the immediate ire of…

President Trump is no dummy. He chose to exchange gifts with the pope in Rome while leaving his budget director and Treasury secretary in Washington to respond to critics of his budget. Let them take the heat while he takes the bows for a successful trip.

Health care legislation proposed by Republicans to replace Obamacare has received a barrage of criticism from outside conservative groups, as well as a number of prominent members of Republicans' own caucus, such as Sen. Mike Lee. Many have speculated that the current bill is dead on arrival.

It wasn't Ted Kennedy—not that he'd want it to be—but House speaker Paul Ryan quipped Tuesday morning that his dream of entitlement reform hadn't died.

The Maryland Health Connection is the state's Obamacare Marketplace. Monday, an agency press release noted that Maryland "has cut by 40 percent the number of Marylanders who were eligible for private insurance coverage when the state marketplace began three years ago." However, the breakdown of…

Just a few months ago, few would have predicted that John Kasich would be one of the last three candidates standing in the GOP presidential primary. Now, a lot of GOP voters are looking at Kasich with fresh eyes and considering voting for him.

The federal technocracy, like the old B-horror-movie monster The Blob, grows by sucking all surrounding life into its amoeba-like digestive system. There are never enough bureaucratic controls or government programs to “incentivize” us—in the jargon—to behave in ways the technocrats think best.

Carly Fiorina says she disagrees with her Republican rival for president Donald Trump on the issue of Planned Parenthood. Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday that "we have to look at the positive also for Planned Parenthood" and said abortions were just a "small part" of what the…

Ohio Gov. John Kasich has made clear that he's seriously considering running for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. If he formally announces, it will be important for conservative voters to punish him for his expansion of President Obama's healthcare law in his state.

Every year since 2011, the White House has used tax time to post a "Federal Taxpayer Receipt" showing taxpayers how their federal tax dollars are being spent. President Obama introduced the concept in his 2011 State of the Union address, and Wednesday the White House posted the fifth installment so…

Given that Obamacare’s supporters like to take the Congressional Budget Office’s overly optimistic scoring of the president’s signature legislation as gospel, it’s fun to look at how poorly Obamacare is actually doing in relation to earlier CBO projections.  When the Democrats rammed Obamacare…

Last November, Tennessee’s Republican governor Bill Haslam won his reelection effort resoundingly, taking 70 percent of the vote and every single county in the state. Just six weeks later, Haslam surprised nearly everyone in Tennessee’s Republican-controlled state assembly by announcing that one of…

The federal government is taking New York City to court. "Manhattan U.S. Attorney Files Healthcare Fraud Lawsuit Against Computer Sciences Corp. And The City Of New York For Orchestrating A Multimillion-Dollar Medicaid Billing Fraud Scheme," reads a headline from the Justice Department's press…

Given that I’ve probably published more articles critical of Obamacare than anyone alive, I’m often asked to speak to conservative audiences about our new health law. Last month, I was at the big grassroots confab of Americans for Prosperity, the Defending the American Dream Summit. I asked the…

Some 53,000 Medicaid recipients in western New York will lose their managed care coverage from BlueCross BlueShield, the Buffalo News reports:

May 22, 2014, marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Great Society” address, delivered at the spring commencement for the University of Michigan. That speech remains the most ambitious call to date by any president (our current commander in chief included) to use the…

On Sunday, the White House blog declared that Obamacare made this Mother's Day "particularly special."  On Monday, the Obamacare website Healthcare.gov got into the act, suggesting that "Health insurance with Medicaid is the perfect Mother’s Day gift":

The office of the inspector general (OIG) for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has uncovered seventy-nine "high-risk security vulnerabilities" in the information processing systems of ten state Medicaid agencies that "raise concerns about the integrity of the systems used to…

In light of the beating the Obama administration is taking over the ignominious launch of the Obamacare insurance marketplaces, it makes sense that the White House would be looking for good news to share.  The White House Twitter account attempted to provide a boost on Thursday with the following:

The state of Alabama received bonus payments from Medicaid for 2009 and 2010 that were a stunning 13 times higher than the state was eligible for.  So says the inspector general (IG) for Health and Human Services in a report released on Wednesday.

“South Carolina has passed a bill that criminalizes the implementation of Obama’s health care law reform law,” said HuffPost Live host Jacob Soboroff last week. The claim, from the Huffington Post and others, is that South Carolina is attempting to “nullify” Obamacare. But what the…

In a report on its website, the credit rating firm Moody's pushes for Medicaid expansion. The firm warns that states who do not expand Medicaid will face "political and budgetary pressure."

Yesterday, Chris Christie became the eighth Republican governor to capitulate on Obamacare’s massive Medicaid expansion, declaring his desire to implement it in his state.  Yet while Christie wasn’t the first GOP governor to fold, he was presumably the first to offer the novel defense that his…

Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan knocked President Barack Obama for "shadowbox[ing] a straw man" in his inaugural address. Speaking Tuesday morning on the Laura Ingraham Radio Show to guest host Raymond Arroyo, Ryan responded to Obama's statement that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security "do not…

The head of the AARP has stated clearly where his organization stands on the matter of cutting entitlements. As Kate Ackley reports in Roll Call:

First off, it’s not a “fiscal cliff.” What we’re slated to hit as of New Year’s Day, as the Wall Street Journal notes, is a tax cliff. Our fiscal cliff, which drops off into a far deeper canyon, is what looms because of our $16,000,000,000,000 debt and the runaway entitlement spending that fuels it…

During last Wednesday’s presidential debate, President Obama claimed that the private sector just can’t match the leanness and efficiency of the federal government. He was speaking specifically about privately covered health care versus government-run health care. Obama said, “Jim, if I — if I can…

The Hill reports:

In his speech yesterday, President Obama said, “[M]y plan would reduce our yearly domestic spending to its lowest level as a share of the economy in nearly 60 years.”  Such an amazing claim is made possible only by excluding the two domestic programs that have contributed the most to our nearly $16…

During a major speech today at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Paul Ryan laid out his vision of health care reform, saying, “Choice and competition are critical to controlling costs…[and] improving quality….And yet, across the federal landscape, choice and competition are undermined…

CBS News: "Clinton: US using 'smart power' for Libya, Syria"

Sometime late this summer—the Friday before Labor Day if historical patterns hold—the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will announce the beginning of something called Medicare Round Two of “the Competitive Bidding Program for certain Durable Medical Equipment, Prosthetics,…

A new report from federal officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) says that Obamacare will increase nationwide health care spending. Particularly interesting are the report’s findings for 2014, the year that’s slated for Obamacare’s grand opening (if the overhaul isn’t…

President Obama and the Democrats claim that the Medicare reforms proposed by Paul Ryan and the Republicans would shift the burden of health costs onto the backs of seniors. This has been the central—and essentially the only—argument the Democrats have made against the GOP plan. But the Democrats’…

One of biggest impacts of Obamacare is the law's expansion of Medicaid. A program designed to help the poor will now balloon to cover as many as 84 million Americans.

The CBO’s newly released 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook forecasts that federal spending will soon exceed spending during parts of World War II. In 1942, federal spending equaled 24.3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) (Table 1.3). Less than 25 years from now (in 2035), according to the CBO,…

In June 2009, President Obama said, “Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin.” Two years later, Paul Ryan and the House Republicans have advanced a serious proposal to deal with these two biggest drivers of our debt. Obama…

When President Obama tours the country and touts Obamacare, one thing you never hear him highlight is that half of Obamacare’s projected decrease in the number of uninsured comes from people who would simply be dumped into Medicaid at taxpayer expense. Of the 32 million people that the…

In February, Defense secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sounded a cautionary note at a congressional hearing on the defense budget. "We shrink from our global security responsibilities at our peril," Gates warned members of Congress. "Retrenchment…

In proposing to cut another $400 billion from U.S. defense budgets over the next ten years as part of his deficit reduction counter-offer, Barack Obama’s words were few. Yet they were revealing.

If there is one thing that political strategists, pollsters, and elected officials of both parties have agreed on for decades, it’s that entitlement reform is a sure political loser. Social Security is the “third rail”—touch it and you die. Suggest changes to Medicaid and you don’t care about the…

Ever wonder why health costs have risen so fast? Jim Capretta offered a thorough and informative answer to that question during recent congressional testimony before the House Budget Committee. Here’s the short answer: Federal programs and tax policy have created a situation where — whether their…

President Obama’s average annual deficit spending (including his proposed deficit spending for 2012) has been 9.7 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) — more than double the tally of any other president since World War II.  In the wake of Obama’s spending spree, it’s therefore a bit…

According to Politico, President Obama will be forced to abandon his controversial nomination of Donald Berwick as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Politico reports that “Senate Democrats have given up on confirming Don Berwick as CMS administrator in the…

The Associated Press reports:  

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a 347-page, 118,072-word Obamacare "rule" released by Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius and unconfirmed-Medicare Administrator Donald Berwick, two people whose power would increase immensely under Obamacare. I wrote, "To get a real flavor for…

Technically speaking, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform seems headed toward failure. The commission, chaired by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, is required to produce a report by December 1 providing recommendations for reducing the deficit and debt.…

Today's Wall Street Journal reports:

The Obama administration is spending still more of your tax dollars to have Andy Griffith tout Obamacare. Politico writes: