The Biden-Harris administration proposed a new rule Tuesday to cover the cost of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro for millions of Americans.
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For decades, Americans have been vaguely aware of the now $36 trillion millstone of federal debt around our collective necks. Historically, the abstraction of the national debt barely nudged the body politic to concern themselves with government spending.
The electorate largely ignored it. And so did too many of their representatives.
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If current trends persist, the Biden-Harris administration will have made over $1 trillion in improper payments by the time President Joe Biden leaves office, according to a report released by the watchdog organization Open The Books on Thursday.
An improper payment is a disbursement “made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount or for the wrong reason,” per federal guidelines. The Biden-Harris administration, between 2021 and 2023, oversaw $801.4 billion in such payments after adjusting for inflation, according to the report.
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Texas and Montana have sued the Biden administration over another federal rule change it implemented, this time over one that requires states to pay for “gender transition” procedures through their Medicaid programs.
It also requires health-care providers to perform such procedures in states where the practice has been banned, including in Montana and Texas. Their state legislatures passed bills their governors signed into law prohibiting “gender transition” procedures from being performed on minors in their states, among other restrictions.
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Utah is giving taxpayer-funded health insurance to illegal immigrant children, according to a law that went into effect Jan. 1.
Roughly 6,500 illegal immigrant children in Utah will qualify for care under the program, Thaiss Del Rio, a health policy analyst at Voices for Utah Children, told Axios of the new law. Utah’s move follows a decision by the state of California to provide health care for illegal immigrants up to the age of 49.
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To borrow from an old saying, nothing can be certain except for death and taxpayer funding for the abortion industry. At the request of pro-life members of Congress, the Government Accountability Office released the latest round of data detailing how much taxpayer funding goes to Planned Parenthood and other international abortion organizations. From 2019 through 2021, Planned Parenthood in the U.S. received $1.7 billion in taxpayer subsidies.
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Starting January 1, Michigan minors will be screened for lead poisoning unless a parent or guardian objects.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed Senate Bill 31, which requires children be tested for lead poisoning at certain ages, the testing be recorded on their certificate of immunization and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) develop rules to implement the bill’s requirements.
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Medicaid emergency spending for illegal immigrants more than doubled from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2021, according to House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green.
During a congressional hearing Wednesday on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ job performance, Green said more people have entered the U.S. illegally under his roughly two-year tenure “than in the 12 years of the Obama and Trump administrations combined.”
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Democrats are trying to paint Republicans as enemies of Medicaid, but Florida GOP Rep. Daniel Webster is gaining support for a bill that would provide a tax deduction to healthcare providers in exchange for pro bono health services for people who rely on Medicaid or CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Webster’s Helping Everyone Access Long Term Healthcare Act, or HEALTH Act, would amend the IRS code to allow medical professionals to take a tax deduction for the value of service performed, which he says will reduce the amount of paperwork associated with the low-income healthcare systems.
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the House Republican majority have unveiled their spending plan for the next decade, the Limit, Save, Grow Act, that will be tied to a $1.5 trillion increase in the $31.4 trillion national debt ceiling, the centerpiece of which imposes discretionary budget caps beginning in 2024, but which will be set at 2022 levels, which could save more than $3.2 trillion over the next decade, according to an estimate by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
While an official score still has not come in from the Congressional Budget Office, the proposal stands out as a promise kept on McCarthy’s part to use the must-pass debt ceiling to restore some semblance of fiscal sanity to the out-of-control federal budget and national debt, the latter of which the White House Office of Management and Budget projects will rise to a gargantuan $50.7 trillion by 2033.
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by Eric Lendrum On April 7th, an amicus brief was filed in favor of Florida’s current ban on using state funds to support “transgender” treatments, with 17 state attorneys general voicing their support for the law. According to the Daily Caller, the brief’s filing was part of an ongoing legal…
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Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana accused the Biden administration of lying about its commitment to working with Congress to protect seniors’ social security benefits at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee Thursday.
Cassidy asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who was testifying about President Joe Biden’s proposed budget for the fiscal year 2024, if the president was aware that “when [Social Security] goes broke in nine years” there would be a 24% cut in benefits for current recipients.
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Medicaid expansion is failing states across the nation according to a recent Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) report. The report found states that have expanded Medicaid have faced more hospital closures than states that haven’t expanded the program. Of course, for years, advocates have claimed that expansion would be a necessary provision for financial health and job security for hospitals. Though, as suspected, data reveals the opposite. More accurately, non-expansion states have seen improved profitability, a larger bed capacity, and increased job growth.
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Medicaid expansion has failed to prevent hospital closure, with almost 50 shutting down in expansion states since 2014, according to research given exclusively to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The research from the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) indicates that while Medicaid expansion was intended to solve hospitals’ finances and job shortage, its “empty promises” have done the opposite, report author Hayden Dublois wrote. Hospitals instead have had to shut their doors, lost thousands of jobs and racked up substantial losses, amounting to a loss of almost 5,400 beds.
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A Michigan doctor was sentenced to 16.5 years in prison for his part in a health care fraud scheme that billed more than $250 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare, Medicaid, and health insurance programs and illegally distributed over 6.6 million doses of opioids.
In September 2021, Francisco Patino, M.D., 68, of Wayne County, was convicted at trial in the Eastern District of Michigan of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, health care fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and pay and receive health care kickbacks, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and money laundering.
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The United States will have 100 million residents on Medicaid in the next 72 days, according to the Foundation for Government Accountability, meaning that nearly one-third of all Americans will be on the program for health care.
Over the past three years, states have been prevented from removing recipients from the program through a federal COVID-19 emergency. Now, the date when states can begin to re-registering recipients when that emergency ends on April 1.
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Sixteen states again are challenging a federal COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers who work at facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.
Friday’s filing in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana comes after the issuance of final guidance on the mandate from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS), arguing the guidance is an action that is reviewable.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled by 5-4 vote Jan. 13 against the original Louisiana challenge to the mandate and a similar Missouri filing.
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For the first time in at least 15 years, an Iowa governor has not recommended funding changes for Medicaid.
The announcement was made by Legislative Service Agency Analyst Jess Benson as he presented Gov. Kim Reynolds’ fiscal year 2023 Department of Health and Human Services budget recommendations Tuesday.
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The liberal justices on the Supreme Court demonstrated a stunningly weak grasp of basic facts concerning the COVID-19 pandemic Friday, as they defended the Biden regime’s policies during oral arguments over vaccine mandates in the workplace.
The court heard separate oral arguments over federal vaccine mandates for employers with more than 100 employees, and for health care workers at facilities receiving Medicaid and Medicare funding.
Justice Stephen Breyer at one point seemed to suggest outrageously that the OSHA mandate would prevent 100 percent of daily US COVID cases. It is common knowledge now that the vaccinated people can still spread the disease.
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Several large U.S. hospital systems have dropped their COVID-19 vaccine requirements for employees in the wake of a U.S. district court’s temporary halt of the Biden regime’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.
After months of protests, the mandate forced thousands of hospital employees to either resign, or be terminated because of their refusal to get vaccinated.
Louisiana-based federal Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction on November 30, blocking the federal government from mandating the experimental injections for workers at Medicare or Medicaid-funded healthcare facilities in 40 states.
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Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the Biden administration over three different vaccine mandates targeting private employees, federal employees and healthcare workers serving Medicare and Medicaid patients.
But lawsuits filed by 27 states over the private sector mandate is setting the stage for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in because they were filed directly in five federal courts of appeals.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is calling for the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association to refund $5 billion in surplus funds to Michigan automotive insurance customers.
“My office recently reviewed the Annual Report of the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association (MCCA) to the Legislature issued in September 2021,” the governor wrote in a Nov. 1 letter addressed to R. Kevin Clinton, MCCA executive director. “The report stated that the MCCA had a surplus of $2.4 billion at the end of 2020. In your annual statement issued on June 30, 2021, the surplus is now $5 billion. I am calling on you today to refund money to Michiganders.”
The governor attributes the surplus to the bipartisan Senate Bill 1 insurance reform bill she signed in May 2019. Provisions of the bill include:
Guaranteeing lower rates for drivers for eight years;
Giving people the choice to pick their own Personal Injury Protection (PIP) options with coinciding PIP rate reductions, offering unlimited coverage (at least 10% PIP reduction), $500,000 coverage (at least 20% PIP reduction), $250K coverage (at least 35% PIP reduction), $50,000 coverage for Medicaid eligible recipients (at least 45% PIP reduction), or a complete opt out for seniors or anyone with sufficient private insurance (100% PIP reduction).
Increasing consumer protections by banning companies from using the following non-driving factors to set rates: ZIP code, credit score, gender, marital status, occupation, educational attainment, and homeownership.
Setting fee schedules for hospitals and providers to prevent overcharging for auto-related injuries.
Following a catastrophic U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the highest inflation since 2008,pushing unpopular COVID vaccine mandates, rationing COVID treatments to red states and finally, watching his domestic legislative agenda falter in Congress, President Joe Biden is already upside down on his job approval ratings, according to the latest average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.com.
Reuters/Ipsos on Sept. 29-30 had Biden’s approval at 46 percent and disapproval at 50 percent.
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In response to pro-life policy victories like the Texas Heartbeat Act and an upcoming Supreme Court case asking the justices to provide a constitutional course correction to America’s arbitrary and unworkable abortion jurisprudence, pro-abortion legislators in Congress are advancing a deceptively named piece of legislation called the Women’s Health Protection Act. The radical, far-reaching proposal would entrench unfettered access to abortion in federal law.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her congressional allies—as well as the media —have characterized the Women’s Health Protection Act as simply “codifying Roe v. Wade.”
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California taxpayers will soon pay more in taxes to enroll more illegal immigrants in Medicaid, a plan that was part of a recently approved state budget. Younger illegal immigrants are already enrolled in Medicaid, SNAP and other federally funded programs.
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The “circle back” meme in the Biden White House isn’t limited to Jen Psaki’s avoidance of tough questions at press briefings. The Biden administration demonstrated that it also intends to circle back to the way things were under the Obama years when it comes to managing Medicaid. Rather than taking a cooperative approach to the state and federal partnership, Obama 2.0 is committed to running the program by decree and eliminating flexibilities that improve the program. Unfortunately, states hoping for true flexibility will be disappointed, as Medicaid flexibility has departed for Mar-a-Lago.
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The Trump administration is expected to announce that the eventual coronavirus vaccine will be covered by Medicare and Medicaid, Politico reported late Monday.
The administration is expected to change a rule that previously prevented Medicare and Medicaid from covering vaccines that received emergency use authorization from the FDA. The official announcement is expected from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Tuesday or Wednesday, according to Politico.
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The Affordable Care Act mandated that states accept a hospitals’ decision on the eligibility of all able-bodied adults who verbally report their income to be below the Medicaid level, which has led to many fraudulent eligibility claims, according to a report published Monday.
The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) report examined recently released data from state Medicaid agencies. It specifically looked at the government Medicaid funds that were wasted through false hospitals’ presumptive eligibility (HPE) determinations.
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Earlier this year James Payne, a 73-year-old retired attorney in Utah, was so fed up with the high cost of a blood thinner medication he takes, he researched prices in Canada, where he found it was cheaper.
“Under Medicare, I am now paying $225 for a three-month supply,” Payne explained. “That’s $25 more than I was paying last year. Under my employer’s insurance I was only paying $20.” Payne says he is not sure why the costs are so much higher and continue to climb under Medicare, but he thinks there must be ways to make life-saving medications more affordable.
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Michigan’s U.S. senators sent a letter to the Trump administration Friday requesting a special health insurance enrollment window in response the coronavirus outbreak.
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A federal court ruled on Tuesday that Michigan’s work requirements for its Medicaid program are unlawful.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer filed a motion on Tuesday for a partial summary judgement in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia after work requirements for Medicaid in Arkansas, similar to Michigan’s program, were found to be unlawful.
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A panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court’s decision Friday blocking the Trump administration’s work requirements for Medicaid recipients.
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Ohio Republican Party Chairwoman Jane Timken wrote an error-riddled apologetics letter sent by email on Thursday to party members defending Gov. Mike DeWine’s refugee resettlement policy. It is highly unusual for the chairman of a state’s Republican Party to defend the politically unpopular decision of the state’s governor. In…
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Republican leaders in the Michigan Legislature announced Tuesday that they won’t comply with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s request to pause work-related requirements for Michigan’s Medicaid expansion program.
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In 2015, when Medicare and Medicaid turned 50, Investors Business Daily pointed out that one was going bankrupt (Medicare), the other was bankrupting states (Medicaid).
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More than 500,000 people enrolled in Medicaid through expansion in nine states though their income made them ineligible for the program, a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found.
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A proposal for a state mental health hotline received some resistance during its first hearing in the Michigan Senate following passage in the House last week. The proposed bill directs the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) to contract for the design, operation, and maintenance of a mental health hotline.
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