Tag Archives: Healthcare

“The Trump administration wants to effectively pull Title X funding from family planning clinics providing abortion services” as reported in Modern Healthcare. Planned Parenthood while offering other healthcare services would not receive federal funding if they provided any abortion services or referred patients to other facilities that did perform abortions. The Washington Post “For Planned Parenthood abortion stats, ‘3 percent’ and ’94 percent’ are...

The Detroit News story, January 2018 “What MSU Knew” details when the abuse started. For twenty years, the female athletes who engaged in the Michigan State Gymnastics program complained of Dr. Larry Nassar to university representatives. MSU President Lou Anna Simon was amongst those who were informed and had known of the 2014 Title IX complaint and police report filed against an unnamed physician. According to university records and victim’s accounts,...

The State of Michigan Legislature is applying for an ACA Waiver as I pointed out in my post Why States Should Not Be Allowed to Alter the ACA with Waviers This is a relief valve for “counties” with high unemployment. In effect if Michigan counties have a high unemployment rate (8.5% or above), the unemployed workers in that county can have Medicaid until such time as the Unemployment Rate drops to 5%. Then the workers are expected to seek employment to...

[embedded content] Having talked about the proposed state High Risk Pools and why they are bad; Charles Gaba at ACASignups.net turns his attention to the proposed Short Term Plans and why they are also bad. Keep in mind the proposed Short Term Plans are not the same as the ACA Catastrophic plans. Most of the protection found in the ACA plans are not in the proposed short term plans. This would include insurability, rates, pre-exiting conditions,...

CBO Director Keith Hall responded to a request from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to project the impact of the $7 billion CHIP rescission package. The CBO letter estimates that the rescission “would not affect outlays, or the number of individuals with insurance coverage.” Well this is good news, I guess? Except, the key here is this is based upon the present number of children enrolled in CHIPS. However, “In its estimates, CBO doesn’t (and can’t)...

Charles Gaba: Why Risk Pools are Bad [embedded content]Charles Gaba at ACA Signups.net has an excellent explanation on how Risk Pools work and how they harm those amongst us who depend upon a community rating system to balance out cost. Michigan Medicaid Wavier Strikes at the Poor The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported on how Michigan’s Medicaid Proposal would lead to “Large Coverage Losses” harming Low Income Workers. The coverage reduction...

CMS is allowing states to seek waivers to alter parts of the ACA. According to Republicans, state government knows better than the federal government the needs of its citizens and can design a better healthcare plan for them. Michigan along with Kentucky and another state have applied for waivers. Michigan and Kentucky have been approved. The Michigan bill has made it through the Republican legislature and will go to the governor to be signed (hopefully...

There are no loud guns shots in the middle of the night. No screams for help or sounds of cars speeding away. No police sirens or flashing lights. It is pretty quiet when someone ODs on Opioids unless someone finds them before it is too late. As I wrote earlier; “From 2006 to 2015, pharmaceutical companies spent $880 million in lobbying state and federal legislatures and contributing to campaigns to prevent laws restricting Opioid prescriptions. Opioid...

Janet Colbert of Stop The Organized Pill Pushers Blog: “The death rate from Opioids continues to escalate year over year due to Florida ignoring the opiate epidemic for so long. Since STOPPNow (Stop The Organized Pill Pushers) started posting, the death rate went from 7/day in Florida. to 14/day. To keep the pressure on the legislature, I (Janet Colbert) will keep the Stoppnow.com site updated when we have bills that will need support to become law.”...

How Pharma Influences Legislation They Do Not Like From 2006 to 2015, pharmaceutical companies spent $880 million in lobbying state and federal legislatures and contributing to campaigns to prevent laws restricting Opioid prescriptions. Their lobbying expenditures has outstripped those advocating for greater controls on prescriptions by 200 times giving them greater influence at the state level. In 2015, 227 million prescriptions were written for opioids...