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5 questions about John Boehner’s lawsuit against Barack Obama
Politico
July 16, 2014
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/john-boehner-barack-obama-lawsuit-108968.html
The GOP-led House is set to take its first big step Wednesday toward launching a high-profile lawsuit charging President Barack Obama with failing to carry out his constitutional duty to enforce the law.  Republicans have complained about Obama’s actions on issues ranging from immigration to welfare to the minimum wage, but the suit is expected to focus narrowly on the Affordable Care Act and the decision to defer for one to two years a requirement that employers provide health insurance starting in 2014.  The House Rules Committee will debate the merits of the potential lawsuit at a hearing Wednesday morning.  Regardless of what the lawsuit looks like, Obama and his allies are laughing off the litigation, which they believe will make liberals angry and strike swing voters as a waste of time and money on the part of congressional Republicans. “Their big idea has been to sue me,” the president said mockingly during a stop in McLean, Virginia, on Tuesday. “That’s what they’re spending time on — a political stunt that wastes America’s time and taxpayer dollars.”
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Dem birth control bill stalls
The Hill
July 16, 2014
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/212451-senate-republicans-block-birth-control-bill
Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked legislation that would require companies to provide birth control coverage in their employee healthcare plans.  The bill failed to advance in a 56-43 vote, with Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine) and Mark Kirk (Ill.) voting with Democrats.  “Today, Senate Republicans blocked legislation that would have made it illegal for any company to deny their employees and dependents specific health benefits required by federal law, like birth control,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said after the vote. “Senate Republicans continue to demonstrate that they are out of touch with women across America.”  Reid switched his vote to “no” on the bill before the vote was closed, giving him the option of bringing it up again.  Democrats put forward the bill to reverse the effects of last month’s Supreme Court ruling, which found that the government could not mandate that certain employers provide birth-control coverage if it conflicts with their religious beliefs.
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California Releases Proposal For Clearing Medicaid Backlog
Kaiser Health News
July 16, 2014
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2014/July/16/Medi-Cal-application-backlog-California.aspx
Responding to inquiries from federal officials, the California health department has released a plan it says will dramatically slash its backlog of Medi-Cal applications within six weeks.  For months, the state has labored under the largest such pile-up in the country, with 900,000 pending cases reported in May—the combined result of unexpectedly high application numbers and bug-ridden computer systems.  In a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Monday, the California Department of Health Care Services said that it had reduced its application backlog to 600,000 by the start of this month. State officials also outlined a plan for technology fixes and administrative workarounds that they project will nearly halve that figure by the end of August—with most of those applications being processed within the allowed 45-day window. The letter was made public Tuesday.
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John Boehner's Obamacare lawsuit isn't really about Obamacare
CBS News
July 16, 2014
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-boehners-obamacare-lawsuit-isnt-really-about-obamacare/
On Wednesday, a House committee will consider Speaker John Boehner's seemingly counterintuitive plan to sue the president. The speaker has suggested the House should sue President Obama for delaying implementation of the employer mandate -- a provision that of the Affordable Care Act that Republicans in the House don't want to implement anyway. In fact, the House has actually passed a bill (though it died in the Senate) to stop the implementation of the provision. And if the lawsuit were successful and Mr. Obama were forced to implement the mandate, the House would once again pass a bill to stop its implementation. None of this, however, is deterring the lawsuit's supporters, who are more interested in making a broad statement about the need to rein in presidential power than they are about the employer mandate.
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Marketing Obamacare
Forbes
July 16, 2014
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2014/07/16/marketing-obamacare/
It’s safe to say that the rollout of the Affordable Care Act was not pretty. Plagued by technical problems on Healthcare.gov, and stymied by a lack of political support in around half of the 50 states, the federal healthcare exchange set up by the ACA—commonly nicknamed “Obamacare”—enjoyed a decidedly lackluster launch. Despite there being 35 million uninsured people in the United States, only 8 million signed up for insurance on the exchange.True, another 5 million people signed up on their own for policies that qualified for the ACA. However, at least one analysis found that of all of those who signed up, only about a quarter of them were truly uninsured. The rest were newly eligible Medicaid recipients (created by increases in income eligibility thresholds under the ACA), were switching policies, or had actually been dropped by their employers when the ACA was passed. What that means is that despite the enormous costs—both financial and political—of setting up these exchanges, fewer than 10 percent of uninsured people in the US have so far been insured as a result.
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Walden sponsors bill to avert home health care cuts
KTVZ
July 15, 2014
http://www.ktvz.com/news/walden-sponsors-bill-to-avert-home-health-care-cuts/26966996
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., introduced legislation Tuesday that he said is designed to protect access to home health care services for seniors in Oregon and nationwide from deep cuts proposed by the Obama administration.  Walden said his “Securing Access Via Excellence for (SAVE) Medicare Home Health Act” will stop the Obama Administration’s proposed 14 percent payment cut to home health care providers. Instead, he said, it will put into place smart reforms that reward home health agencies that provide high-value care to their patients while reducing payments to agencies that don’t meet certain performance and quality standards.  “Home health care allows patients more control over their health care, and provides a sense of comfort, familiarity, and normalcy for the patient and their families," Walden said. "I know this first-hand, because it’s what my parents chose. And it’s not just a win for the patient. Home-based care benefits Medicare as a whole.  Having people recover at home is less expensive than in a hospital or nursing home.”  “But the Obama Administration’s cuts have put thousands of Oregon seniors in danger of losing their home health care," the congressman claimed. "That’s why I’ve introduced legislation to stop these harsh cuts and replace them with smart reforms that reward home health agencies that provide high value care to their patients.
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Health Spending 25 Years Out
Brookings
July 15, 2014
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2014/07/15-health-spending-25-years-out-sheiner
Health spending growth is one of the key drivers of the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook. It also is one of the most uncertain, a point emphasized in the Congressional Budget Office’s latest report on the long-term budget outlook.  Although the continuing slowdown in health care costs led CBO to mark down its estimate of underlying health cost growth a bit, other changes in methodology were offsetting. That left the 25-year projections of total federal health spending largely unchanged from last year.  Nonetheless, those projections are sharply lower than those CBO made just five years ago, despite the coverage expansions enacted in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The most recent estimates show federal spending on the major health programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the subsidies for those eligible who buy insurance on the new exchanges ) rising from 4.9 percent of GDP in 2014 to 7.5 percent in 2035. That is about 2.2 percentage points lower in 2035 than CBO projected in 2009. The outlook for Medicare has improved even more, with projected Medicare expenditures in 2035 about 2.6 percentage points lower than projected in 2009.
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Budget Office Lowers Its Estimate on Federal Spending for Health Care
The New York Times
July 15, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/business/budget-office-revises-estimate-of-federal-spending-on-health-care.html?_r=0
The growth of federal spending on health care will continue to decline as a proportion of the overall economy in the coming decades, in part because of cost controls mandated by President Obama’s health care law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday.  The budget office said in its annual 25-year forecast that federal spending on major health care programs would amount to 8 percent of gross domestic product by 2039, one-tenth of a percentage point lower than its previous projection.  With the latest revision, the budget office has now reduced its 10-year estimate for spending by Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs by $1.23 trillion starting in 2010, the year the health care law took effect. By 2039, the savings would amount to $250 billion a year today, or about 1.5 percent of the economy.  Many factors contributed to the change, including lower anticipated economic growth and a downward projection for interest rates over time. But another factor was a finding that the federal government might be able to sustain a low growth rate of payments to providers in line with requirements set by the health care law.
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Obamacare Isn't Hurting Democrats
BloombergView
July 15, 2014
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-07-15/obamacare-isn-t-hurting-democrats
 Democrats received a bit of good news in two Marist/NBC Senate polls today showing Mark Udall in Colorado and Gary Peters in Michigan holding solid, though not especially large, leads. Throw these results into the polling averages, and Democrats appear to be ahead in both states. Neither race is a must-win for Republicans to get to a 51-seat Senate majority. However, the more live targets, the better the chances for Republicans to get the six seats they need. And at any rate, we’re talking about the Senate, where every seat is important. A 53-47 advantage would give Republicans a far better working majority than a 51-49 split, and would make it more likely they could retain that majority after 2016.
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Obamacare Help Was In High Demand, Survey Shows
The Washington Post
July 15, 2014
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/obamacare-help-was-in-high-demand-survey-shows/2014/07/15/afc4ea6e-0c1d-11e4-bc42-59a59e5f9e42_story.html
Signing up for Affordable Care Act insurance was nothing like that. It involved questions about income, taxes, family size and immigration status. And in most places in the country, there were myriad choices of plans with subtle differences between them. Guess what? People looked for help on the decision. During the Affordable Care Act’s first open enrollment period, about 10.6 million people received personal help from navigators and other enrollment assisters, according to an online survey of the programs released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)
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Are media downplaying ObamaCare progress — or is the GOP just giving up on the issue?
Fox News
July 15, 2014
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/15/are-media-downplaying-obamacare-progressor-is-gop-just-giving-up-on-issue/?intcmp=latestnews
After a disastrous rollout last fall, ObamaCare has been fading from the news. But is it fading as a political issue? The fear of those who oppose the program was always that it would be impossible to repeal if enough recipients got hooked on the benefits. That was the hope of advocates as well—that whatever potholes the ObamaCare bus hit, it would keep barreling toward a finish line of getting more Americans insured. That goal appeared in jeopardy when the administration couldn’t get the website to work. And when the president had to admit that, well, it wasn’t exactly true that if you liked your doctor you could keep your doctor. And when lots of people were kicked off health plans they liked just fine, and faced with big premium hikes. And when the White House delayed the employer mandate yet again. And when many GOP governors refused to sign on to the Medicaid expansion that is a key underpinning of the law.
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Obama Administration Ramps up Efforts to Reduce Medicaid Spending
National Law Review
July 14, 2014
http://www.natlawreview.com/article/health-care-law-update-july-14-2014
This morning, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced up to $100 million in new funding for a new technical assistance initiative called the “Medicaid Innovation Accelerator Program” (IAP). The IAP was developed, in-part, to assist states that have thus far been unable to build the capabilities to implement various delivery/payment reforms. States that could benefit from this initiative could include those who were unable to participate in the testing phase of the State Innovation Models initiative launched two years ago.  The IAP will develop resources to support innovation through four key functions: 1) identifying new models of care delivery and payment; 2) leveraging data analytics; 3) improving and aligning quality measurement; and 4) advancing effective learning and dissemination strategies. The IAP’s focus areas were developed with input from states, including the National Governor’s Health Care Sustainability Task Force, and surveys of states participating in the State Innovation Models initiative. Because the IAP is not a formal grant program, CMS is not anticipating limiting the number of states who will be able to take advantage of the technical assistance tools; however, prioritization of resources will be determined by input from states and other health care stakeholders.
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ACAView Report Shows Medicaid Gap Widening Under Affordable Care Act; No Growth in New Patient Volumes
CNN Money
July 14, 2014
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/globenewswire/10088899.htm
athenahealth, Inc. a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health record (EHR), practice management, and care coordination, today announced ACAView, a joint initiative between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and athenahealth to measure the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on providers, patients, and physicians from 2014 through 2016. ACAView will monitor the impact of coverage expansion on a monthly basis, mining insights from a subset of athenahealth's growing cloud-based network of more than 52,000 health care providers and 56 million patients.  athenahealth and RWJF also announced today the release of ACAView's first comprehensive report, analyzing the impact of the ACA through May of 2014. The report focuses on the provider perspective, showcasing how the ACA affects the practice patterns and economics of physicians and other care team members around the country.
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Nurse Practitioners Gain Flexibility With New State Law
Kaiser Health News
July 14, 2014
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2014/July/14/Kentucky-law-gives-nurse-practioners-more-flexibility-on-practice-prescriptions.aspx
Starting July 15, nurse practitioners in Kentucky who have completed a four-year collaboration with a physician will be allowed to prescribe routine medications without a doctor’s involvement, a major shift that could help improve consumers’ access to care.  The law that makes this possible passed after five years of legislative debate. Nurse practitioners are fighting in other states for more authority to treat patients at a time of rising concern over the impact of the federal health law. As more Americans get insurance, there may be shortages of primary care doctors, especially in states like Kentucky that have many rural areas.  Kentucky’s action offers a possible compromise for states trying to define the roles of nurse practitioners while assuaging the concerns of doctors.  But some experts question whether this approach will provide a model for others.
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ObamaCare’s next court threat
The Hill
July 13, 2014
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/212030-obamacares-next-court-threat
A federal appeals court is poised to rule in a case that could blow a gaping hole in ObamaCare's scheme for providing healthcare coverage. The plaintiffs in Halbig v. Burwell argue that the healthcare law does not authorize the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to offer premium subsidies on the federal exchanges. It's an issue that strikes at the heart of the Affordable Care Act's insurance benefits and could potentially end financial help for nearly 5 million enrollees. That is, if the plaintiffs succeed. Legal experts have generally looked askance at the lawsuit, which has a losing record in federal court so far. But some believe that a looming decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit could break that trend. A ruling could come out on Tuesday.Either way, it's a case that could wind up at the Supreme Court. "The IRS has arrogated for itself the power to rewrite a federal statute, triggering federal appropriations and financial penalties beyond those authorized by the legislature,” wrote Jonathan H. Adler and Michael F. Cannon in an amicus brief to the D.C. appeals court in support of the plaintiffs.
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Affordable Care Act Oriented Products Will Help Boost ADP And Paychex's Sales
Forbes
July 11, 2014
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2014/07/11/affordable-care-act-oriented-products-will-help-boost-adp-and-paychexs-sales/
The Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23 2010, offers growth opportunity for companies like ADP and Paychex. The Employer Shared Responsibility provision of the ACA is of primary importance to these companies since it impacts businesses in the U.S. Both ADP and Paychex have rolled out solutions for small, medium and large sized businesses to deal with the complexities behind compliance with the ACA. We believe that businesses will very soon start purchasing these solutions in order to avoid being penalized due to non-compliance with the ACA.
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U.S. Medicaid enrollment nears 7 million since Obamacare rollout
Reuters
July 11, 2014
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/11/us-usa-healthcare-medicaid-idUSKBN0FG27220140711
New enrollments in Obamacare's Medicaid expansion and other healthcare programs for the poor have reached 6.7 million people since the launch of President Barack Obama's healthcare reforms last year, the administration said on Friday.  The figures, which include state Medicaid plans that existed before Obamacare and the Children's Health Insurance Program, show enrollment climbing by 920,000 people during May, the latest month for which data is available. All told, new enrollments are up 11.4 percent since last October's Obamacare rollout.  Eight million Americans have also signed up for private health insurance through new state-based Obamacare insurance marketplaces. But while private enrollment ended last spring, Medicaid enrollment continues year round.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) did not break out the number of people enrolled in states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which makes benefits available to most low-income people with annual earnings of up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level.
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A rude Obamacare awakening
The Washington Post
July 10, 2014
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2014/07/09/a-rude-obamacare-awakening/
This fall insurance carriers will have to announce next year’s premiums for the Obamacare exchanges. So far it’s looking like big rate increases are ahead. Doctors confer at the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. (Joe Skipper/Reuters)  In New York, for example, the hikes will be huge. The New York Times recently reported: Some New Yorkers are in sticker shock after receiving notices from their insurance companies saying that they have asked for significant rate increases through the state’s health exchange next year.
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U.S. House Republicans to focus Obama lawsuit on Obamacare
Reuters
July 10, 2014
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/10/us-usa-congress-lawsuit-idUSKBN0FF2P020140710
U.S. House of Representatives Republicans said on Thursday they intend to make President Barack Obama's changes to his signature health insurance law the focus of a forthcoming lawsuit accusing him of overstepping his legal authorities.  The House Rules Committee made public a "discussion draft" of legislation to authorize legal action against the president for misusing executive orders and other unilateral actions to advance his agenda.  House Speaker John Boehner first announced plans for a House lawsuit against Obama late last month.  The draft does not mention specific grievances, but gives Boehner authority to seek injunctive relief for failure by Obama and members of his administration for failure to act in a manner consistent with the Constitution and U.S. laws "with respect to implementation of (including failure to implement) the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act."  Republican lawmakers, who have been trying unsuccessfully to repeal the 2010 law for years, regularly decry the Obama administration's decision to delay Obamacare coverage mandates and grant various waivers as illegal without congressional approval.  The moves come less than four months before congressional elections in which Republicans are trying to expand their House majority and wrest control of the Senate from Obama's fellow Democrats.
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