Did you see where 74 percent of small businesses are planing on dealing with Obamacare requirements by laying off workers and shifting full-timers to part-time?
Well, it certainly is not something that has been widely reported in the dying, dino media.
Category: Health Care
Wegmans Cuts Health Bennies
Wegmans Cuts Health Bennies — Wegmans, the upscale supermarket beloved by yuppies and Obama voters, has long boasted of how it provided health benefits to its part-time workers.
Well, it can boast no more. It has ended that policy.
Golly gee, what could have ever caused it to do such a thing?
Look at this way kids — be grateful you still have part-time jobs.
Wegmans Cuts Health Bennies
Food Stamps Corporate Greed
Food Stamps Corporate Greed — The tenderhearted souls who call themselves “progressives” and claim to want care for the poor– albeit always by someone else — are huge defenders of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) which is still often referred to as “food stamps” despite the benefits now being distributed by a plastic card.
SNAP benefits for a single person in Pennsylvania are maximized at $200 and they can be used to buy soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream novelties. Any attempt to restrict this program to things like fresh veggies, bulk grain and unsweetened dairy are met with shrieks and media stridency. You ever wonder who is paying for these shrieks and media stridency, and be sure that it is being bought although many of those doing the shrieking aren’t seeing the money?
Well, who is it that makes the soft drinks, and junk food? That’s right progressives, you are simple tools of corporate greed.
Ponder this: the asset/resource limit for SNAP in Pennsylvania is $5,500 or $9,000 for homes with a disabled or elderly member. If we were to halve the maximum — which would also be to roughly $75 for additional household members — yet limit what can be purchased to the healthy stuff that one has to prepare oneself, say like rice which costs about $20 for a 50 pound bag, you can double the resource limit and make a lot of needy people a lot better off.
As PepsiCo would not approve, though, don’t expect this to happen.
Food Stamps Corporate Greed
GOP Saves Health Care For Needy
GOP Saves Health Care For Needy — State Rep. Ryan Aument (R-41) has tweeted that “Medicaid Expansion effort in the PA House fails by a 108-94 vote. A major win for Pennsylvania taxpayers.”
The plan as approved in the state Senate was to expand Medicaid to low-income workers without considering how the expansion would be funded in the long term or expanding the existing number of doctors much less those willing to accept Medicaid patients. This would have meant that those now eligible for the program would have had to fight with the newcomers for attention from the existing pool of doctors willing to treat them.
GOP Saves Health Care For Needy
Christie Nixes Medicaid Expansion
Christie Nixes Medicaid Expansion — Hey Pennsylvania Republicans look at this: New Jersey’s Christie vetoes Medicaid expansion bill
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on June 28 vetoed a bill that
attempted to make the state’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility
permanent under Obamacare saying it “would add
potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to state and local budgets.”
If the “RINO Obama-loving” Christie can do this in a much more liberal state how about you show some similar backbone? Are you listening Sen. Pileggi? Gov. Corbett? Are you afraid the Philadelphia Inquirer will call you names? Don’t be. Nobody reads that paper anymore.
Christie Nixes Medicaid Expansion
Dr. Nunamaker Deals With O-Care
Dr. Nunamaker Deals With O-Care — Dr. Doug Nunamaker of Wichita, Kan. has dumped all his insurance companies and he and his patients are all smiles. He said that after five years he couldn’t take the red tape.
Nunamaker has switched to a “concierge” system where patients sign up for $10 per month for pediatric services, $50 per month for those under 44 and $100 per month for all others which give clients unlimited access to the doctors along with all medical services that can be provided in-house such as EKGs and stitches.
Only cash –including credit and debit cards– is accepted.
He says his income — about $200,000 per year — is about the same as before since he was able to dramatically cut overhead but patient care is greatly improved.
The patients are strongly advised, however, to carry a high-deductible insurance for emergency room visits and illness requiring hospitalization.
Hat tip Breitbart.com
Dr. Nunamaker Deals With O-Care
110 Million STDs In USA
The Centers for Disease Control reports that there are 110 million sexually transmitted infections in the United States with with 20 million new ones annually, which translates to a medical cost of $16 billion.
110 Million STDs In USA
Immigration Reform Could Save Obamacare
Immigration Reform Could Save Obamacare — Texas, California show how immigration reform could save Obamacare
Hat tip Bob Guzzardi
States Fixing Medicaid When President, Congress Won’t
By Thomas J. Smith
This piece first ran in Investor’s Business Daily.
The Affordable Care Act may not yet be fully implemented, but its negative effects and exorbitant price tag are already being felt in statehouses, hospitals, and homes across the country.
Yet in the face of the President’s and the Senate’s unwillingness to address the law’s many issues, some states—including my home state of Pennsylvania—are taking proactive steps to help protect taxpayers and families from the ACA’s burdensome costs by refusing to expand Medicaid programs that fail to serve the poor.
Fifteen states have so far announced their intention not to participate in the ACA’s Medicaid expansion program.
The President may not like this development, but it’s a decision that makes sense—both fiscally and morally.
Consider Medicaid’s current bill of health. Medicaid has a poor record of serving the people who need it the most. The program’s broken system of doctor reimbursements and its reams of red tape mean that many doctors have to choose between accepting Medicaid patients and staying in business. As a result, Medicaid recipients have fewer options, spend more time in the waiting room, and ultimately don’t get the care they need.
The 48-year old program is bleeding red ink. It is already the single largest item in most state budgets, accounting for roughly 23 percent of state spending on average. Pennsylvania alone expects to spend more than $9 billion in state funds on Medicaid over the next year.
The national numbers are even more enormous. Medicaid spending ballooned from $73.7 billion in 1990 to an estimated $450 billion last year. And the GAO predicts Medicaid costs will continue to grow faster than taxpayers’ ability to pay and consume a larger share of state and federal spending.
These numbers—already at mind-boggling levels—are expected to accelerate under the Affordable Care Act. Rather than rein in the runaway cost of Medicaid, the ACA urges states to expand the program using an unfortunate “carrot and stick” approach.
The “carrot” is that the federal government has promised to shoulder the additional costs at first, but its payments will trickle off after three years. The “stick” is 20 new federal taxes that residents will still pay for Medicaid expansion in other states, even if their state refuses to participate. It’s nothing more than financial extortion by another name.
Pennsylvania has seen through this ruse, as have 14 other states, with ten more still weighing the offer. Past experience has taught these governors that Washington politicians will renege on their promises—President Obama has already suggested cutting the federal matching rate. Even if the federal government keeps its end of the deal, states will be forced raise taxes to pay for a program they have little control over.
That’s why Governor Corbett should also be praised for requesting an “innovation waiver” for the program. Unlike the fake flexibility pursued by Arkansas, these waivers offer states wider latitude and have a good track record in the states where they exist.
With flexibility to fix Medicaid, states have saved money, improved patient care, and produced more satisfied participants. In the face of the ACA’s crippling uniformity, such waivers are the best means for states to improve the health care of their neediest citizens while balancing their budgets.
The ACA’s problems are obvious, whether you’re sitting in Washington, Harrisburg, or anywhere in between. That’s why leaders in statehouses across the country should do the right thing and follow Pennsylvania’s lead. Instead of waiting for dollars and dictates from D.C. to expand a broken program, our states can save our ailing health care system by fixing Medicaid themselves.
# # #
Thomas J. Smith was Pennsylvania’s 2012 Republican candidate for U.S. Senate and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives, (www.CommonwealthFoundation.org) Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank.
States Fixing Medicaid When President, Congress Won’t
Medical Device Tax $194 Million Per Month
Medical Device Tax $194 Million Per Month — Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) says the medical device tax that took effect in January as part of Obamacare is expected to cost device manufacturers roughly $194 million per month putting 43,000 American jobs at risk.
He says that in Pennsylvania, the medical device tax will cost our economy $100 million a year, causing job losses and harming the ability of companies to expand and hire.
“I have heard from many manufacturers including Fujirebio Diagnostics based in Malvern, B. Braun located in the Lehigh Valley, and Cook Medical with a location in Vandergrift that this tax is already eliminating Pennsylvania jobs, undermining our economy, and driving up the cost of care for patients,” he said. “I continue to work to repeal the medical device tax that was created in the president’s health care law. We must eliminate a burdensome provision of this law which forces manufacturers of medical devices – ranging from cochlear implants to pacemakers to artificial joints – to pay a 2.3 percent tax on their sales.”
Medical Device Tax $194 Million Per Month