Keith D. Milby :: blog

The new health care overhaul law – that promised increased access and efficiency in health care – will prevent doctor-owned hospitals from adding more rooms and more beds.

These hospitals are advertised as less bureaucratic and more focused on doctor-patient decision making. However, larger corporate hospitals say doctor-owned facilities discriminate in favor of high-income patients and refer business to themselves.

The new rules single out physician-owned hospitals, making new physician-owned projects ineligible to receive payments for Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Existing doctor-owned hospitals will be grandfathered in to get government funds for patients but must seek permission from the Department of Health and Human Services to expand.

via 60 hospitals cancelled due to new health law.

Two weeks after President Barack Obama signed the big health care overhaul into law, Americans are struggling to understand how — and when — the sweeping measure will affect them.

Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors’ offices, human resources departments and business groups.

“They’re saying, ‘Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?’ ” said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com. The California-based company sells coverage from 185 health insurance carriers in 50 states.

via Health care overhaul spawns mass confusion for public | McClatchy.

A half-dozen health insurers yesterday filed a lawsuit against the state seeking to reverse last week’s decision by the insurance commissioner to block double-digit premium increases — a ruling they say could leave them with hundreds of millions in losses this year.

via Health insurers sue to raise rates – The Boston Globe.

Even by President Obama’s loquacious standards, an answer he gave here on health care Friday was a doozy.

Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a “wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care” package.

“We are overtaxed as it is,” Doris said bluntly.

via The great elaborator: Obama gives 17-minute answer to health-care query in N.C. – washingtonpost.com.

The federal government already has the “Doc Fix,” an annual shortfall of about $20 billion that must be paid to maintain current payment rates to physicians under Medicare.

Now, it looks like President Obama’s health-care bill created another funding cliff, costing an additional $5.5 billion or so each year.

Critics say the costs were hidden from view in the $940 billion health-care bill to lower the price tag by about $30 billion, and also as a way to gain the support of doctors and hospitals without angering governors.

via Obama health bill hid $30 billion in Medicaid costs, critics say | The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment.

BY ELECTING me to the US Senate, the people of Massachusetts sent a clear message: Washington needs to get its priorities straight. Voters believed I would be the best candidate to fight for jobs and a stronger economy, keep our country safe, and serve as the 41st vote against the health care reform legislation debated in the Senate.

After my election, Washington politicians began an aggressive push to bend the rules and force their unpopular health care bill on an unwilling nation. They went into secret negotiations to make up their own rules, and eventually found a way to circumvent the will of the people by using the reconciliation process to ram through their health care bill. For the last year, the American people have been shaking their heads at the closed-door meetings, sweetheart deals, and special carve-outs. It has been a very ugly process, and caused many Americans to lose faith in their elected officials in Washington.

via The health care fight is not over – The Boston Globe.

Under the health care overhaul, young adults who buy their own insurance will carry a heavier burden of the medical costs of older Americans — a shift expected to raise insurance premiums for young people when the plan takes full effect.

Beginning in 2014, most Americans will be required to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. That’s when premiums for young adults seeking coverage on the individual market would likely climb by 17 percent on average, or roughly $42 a month, according to an analysis of the plan conducted for The Associated Press. The analysis did not factor in tax credits to help offset the increase.

via Youth may pay a lot more for health premiums – Health care- msnbc.com.

Frank Rich spent many years as the theater critic for the New York Times, where, at worst, his venom could cause a Broadway production or two to close down.

Now, however, Mr. Rich opines on political and social issues for the Times, and, while the results are usually mildly amusing (even if unintentionally so), his reach has grown a bit, so the damage he causes can travel beyond the footlights. I’m not sure why anyone turns to Rich for political analysis—heck, you might as well read the rantings of a TV game show host—but the Gray Lady continues to pay him for his weekly column, and, at the rate she’s bleeding money, that’s no small sacrifice.

via Conservative News: Sajak – Opposed to Obamacare? Then You Must Be A Racist – HUMAN EVENTS.

Documents show that health chiefs are considering plans to begin sacking workers, cutting treatments and shutting wards across the country.

The proposals could lead to:

* 10 per cent of NHS staff being sacked in some areas.

* The loss of thousands of hospital beds.

* A reduction in the number of ambulance call-outs.

* Medical professionals being replaced by less qualified assistants.

The plans are contained in a series of internal NHS documents uncovered by The Daily Telegraph.

via Hospital wards to shut in secret NHS cuts – Telegraph.

Americans have always exercised their Democratic rights under the U.S. Constitution to speak out against the government.

Amid the bitter fight over health care reform, a round of hate-filled messages and sometimes violent actions toward members of Congress has prompted calls to ease up on the rhetoric.

Experts say that although protests against social issues such as health care reform are nothing new for the country, such reaction to a landmark bill’s passing is uncommon.

via Health care bill anger a sign of the times? – CNN.com.

Farm equipment maker Deere expects after-tax expenses to rise by $150 million this year as a result of the health care reform law President Barack Obama signed this week.

via Deere Sees $150 Million Hit From Health Care Reform – CNBC.

It perhaps was not the endorsement President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress were looking for.

Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro on Thursday declared passage of American health care reform “a miracle” and a major victory for Obama’s presidency, but couldn’t help chide the United States for taking so long to enact what communist Cuba achieved decades ago.

“We consider health reform to have been an important battle and a success of his (Obama’s) government,” Castro wrote in an essay published in state media, adding that it would strengthen the president’s hand against lobbyists and “mercenaries.”

via Cuban leader applauds US health-care reform bill – Yahoo! Finance.

More than half of all American workers are employed by businesses with fewer than 100 employees. Forty-six percent of them get their health insurance through work. The rest have to look elsewhere for coverage.

Will companies still offer insurance under the new health care law? CBS News correspondentJim Axelrod looked into it for our User’s Guide to Health Care Reform – and found that it all depends on size.

via How Health Reform Affects Small Businesses – CBS Evening News – CBS News.

The health care reform bill signed into law by President Barack Obama Tuesday requires members of Congress and their office staffs to buy insurance through the state-run exchanges it creates – but it may exempt staffers who work for congressional committees or for party leaders in the House and Senate.

Staffers and members on both sides of the aisle call it an “inequity” and an “outrage” – a loophole that exempts the staffers most involved in writing and passing the bill from one of its key requirements.

via Health bill may exempt top Hill staffers – Erika Lovley and Patrick O’Connor – POLITICO.com.

The attorneys general of at least eleven states will file lawsuits over the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the health-care act, which is scheduled to be signed into law tomorrow:

via State AGs to File Suit Over Obamacare – Daniel Foster – The Corner on National Review Online.

President Obama has crossed the Rubicon with the health care vote. The bill was not really about medicine; after all, a moderately priced, relatively small federal program could offer the poorer not now insured, presently not on Medicare or state programs like Medicaid or Medical, a basic medical plan.

We have no interest in stopping trial lawyers from milking the system for billions. And we don’t want to address in any meaningful way the individual’s responsibility in some cases (drink, drugs, violence, dangerous sex, bad diet, sloth, etc.) for costly and chronic health procedures.

via Works and Days » We’ve Crossed the Rubicon.

Summoned to success by President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled Congress approved historic legislation Sunday night extending health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and cracking down on insurance company abuses, a climactic chapter in the century-long quest for near universal coverage.

Widely viewed as dead two months ago, the Senate-passed bill cleared the House on a 219-212 vote, with Republicans unanimous in opposition.

Congressional officials said they expected Obama to sign the bill as early as Tuesday.

via Congress clears historic health care bill | The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment.

Well, it seems to be in the bag now. I try to be a sunny the-glass-is-one-sixteenth-full kinda guy, but it’s hard to overestimate the magnitude of what the Democrats have accomplished. Whatever is in the bill is an intermediate stage: As the graph posted earlier shows, the governmentalization of health care will accelerate, private insurers will no longer be free to be “insurers” in any meaningful sense of that term (ie, evaluators of risk), and once that’s clear we’ll be on the fast track to Obama’s desired destination of single payer as a fait accomplis.

via Happy Dependence Day! – Mark Steyn – The Corner on National Review Online.

“It is naive for any elected official, especially one who describes himself as ‘pro-life,’ to expect that a promise to issue an Executive Order that reasserts the intentions of the Hyde Amendment will be fulfilled by the most pro-abortion president to ever sit in the White House. Perhaps Mr. Stupak and his fellow pro-life Democrats forget that President Obama’s first Executive Order was the repeal of the Mexico City Policy to allow for international funding of abortion.”

“Not only would an Executive Order be rendered meaningless in the face of Congress passing legislation which actively provides for the massive expansion and funding of abortion services, but anyone who doubts the abortion tsunami which awaits this bill becoming law lives in a fantasy world.”

via Schlafly: Health Care Vote Set to Expose the Myth of the ‘Pro-Life Democrat’ – Yahoo! News.

If the president signs H.R. 3590 (whether or not the bill is reconciled, “slaughter ruled,” and/or deemed in its passage), the legislation will be challenged on constitutional grounds. Let’s look at a few of the ways that federal control of health care, and H.R. 3590 in particular, is unconstitutional.

via Pajamas Media » Probable Constitutional Challenges to ObamaCare.

On the eve of the possible passage of a health care bill, Arizona has provided a glimpse of our possible future by shutting down its SCHIP program and booting a bunch of people out of Medicaid:

The reason this is so troubling, of course, is that the new proposed health care plan gets about half of its coverage expansion through adding people to Medicaid. The state side of this expense doesn’t show up on the books as a government expenditure (neatly enabling the bill to get a lower CBO score), but someone in America has to be taxed to pay for it, and there is a big problem when tax revenues fall short of the required expenditure.

via Arizona Kills SCHIP, Puts Medicaid on a Diet – Business – The Atlantic.

Congressional budget scorekeepers say a Medicare fix that Democrats included in earlier versions of their health care bill would push it into the red.

via Medicare fix would push health care into the red – Yahoo! Finance.

Rep. John Boehner (R., Ohio), the House minority leader, tells National Review Online that as of late Thursday afternoon, Democratic leadership “still doesn’t have the votes” to pass their health-care bill, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) is “prepared to sacrifice her members, and her speakership, so that she can plant the flag of universal health care in the ground.” Boehner says this weekend will be a waiting game — “If the speaker doesn’t have 216 votes locked down, she will not go to the floor. If she’s short, she knows that there is no way she can pick up two or three votes on the floor.” On that same point, he admits that “if this comes to the floor, it’s already over…though I still don’t know how she can get there [to 216].…I’d never put myself in this box.”

via Exclusive: House Minority Leader John Boehner on the Health-Care Vote – Robert Costa – The Corner on National Review Online.

Buyers, beware: President Barack Obama says his health care overhaul will lower premiums by double digits, but check the fine print.

Premiums are likely to keep going up even if the health care bill passes, experts say. If cost controls work as advertised, annual increases would level off with time. But don’t look for a rollback. Instead, the main reason premiums would be more affordable is that new government tax credits would help cover the cost for millions of people.

via FACT CHECK: Premiums would rise under Obama plan – Yahoo! News.

After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate’s health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.

Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers “deem” the health-care bill to be passed.

via House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it – washingtonpost.com.