Some GOP governors blasted health care reform last week, saying that it would result in crippling costs to states. But an analysis released last week by the Kansas Health Policy Authority concluded that the proposed reforms could save Kansas up to $50 million per year. The net savings would come in part from shifting some Kansans out of Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and into a private insurance market. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the reform bills could extend coverage to up to 240,000 uninsured Kansans.
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- Shocker_1 on Palin a charismatic gal with crib notes
- American_Way on Open thread 2/9
- TomPaine on Is tea party movement Perot redux?
- gster on Palin a charismatic gal with crib notes
- CapnAmerica on Palin a charismatic gal with crib notes
- Shocker_1 on Palin a charismatic gal with crib notes
- Shocker_1 on Palin a charismatic gal with crib notes
- Shocker_1 on Palin a charismatic gal with crib notes
- okobserver on Palin a charismatic gal with crib notes
- Shocker_1 on Palin a charismatic gal with crib notes
38 Comments
According to Mr. Brownlee’s comments above, many healthcare costs will merely shift from state government to the federal government, most likely at even higher costs, waste and fraud. No money or tax dollars saved.
The best way would be too make obtaining health care similar to going to the grocery store or Wal-Mart. Go in, ask the price, receive the medical service and pay at the cash register as you walk out the door.
Under the current system, your medical insurance company works hand in hand with doctors and hospitals, often with cross ownerships involved. Long after you receive the service, a bill or record of payment shows up often with convoluted information thereon, showing enormous charges for virtually no service.
Fraud? Fraud. Definitely fraud.
Insurance companies defend the practice and payments saying you, the individual, have no rational yard stick to measure the charges.
What a mess. And you can bet its only going to get worse with the new government health care legislation.
Fraud? Fraud. Definitely fraud. – JWink
Care to publicly name the doctors and businesses doing this?
“JWink” –
Uhm, no.
If you actually read Brownlee’s comment, the shift would be from state-funded programs to affordable private insurance.
One of the keys is expanding the risk pool.
Another is the efficiencies of scale as demonstrated by Medicare.
And don’t throw up that CON meme about Medicare deficits; they’re due to the program’s unique risk pool, limited to that segment of the population most likely to need expensive treatments.
Health is not market-driven. We’re spending too much for all the health care we’re likely to ever need. You don’t go out and get cancer simply because you can afford it.
Oh, yeah. There will be some additional costs, like paying for a prosthetic arm for that 12-year-old kid whose for-profit insurance company simply dropped his coverage. Or the insurance company that dropped a subscriber’s treatment for depression simply because she’s seen smiling on a facebook.com page.
“satatom” offers –
“Fraud? Fraud. Definitely fraud. – JWink
Care to publicly name the doctors and businesses doing this?”
Just pick up the Yellow Pages and turn the “Chiropractic” section.
hahahahahahahaaha
Had to mention Wal-Mart? JWink
Why?
Time it took you you feel out that note, it’s implications of doom and gloom health care, could have walked from your area to Intrust Arena and cleared your mind of all of it.
Complain about Health Care, not Wal-Mart express lane style, what a shame America is. It’s so clear Wal-Mart Health needs to make Walton family members more Billions and they will be sure health care paperwork is nothing like their payroll files.
Wal-Mart managers may not let discharged patients from their stock room/triage area too quickly! Won’t Wal-Mart make more money keeping Health Care spending in stores long as possible?
Oh yes, no cross ownership there.
Beyond getting a prescription in a grocery or Big Box store, who wants to ring the blue light for a Doctor of gastronomy on Aisle 6?
Consider, Health care in your mega bowling alley, someday call it Pins and Needles!
No one here on this blog can make sense of Federal Health care. Assumptions are political leanings.
Be lucky, a brisk walk, some good food, get rest, smile instead of being bitter, ranting and raving all the time, maybe the Express Lane is yours for life without Medical care killing you expensively.
There will always be victims when money is too be made. Some are worked to death at Wal-Mart, allegedly!
If you read the report you will see there are a lot of assumptions made. So they are guessing it will save money.
The real need is facts not assumptions. There appears to be a lot of things missing from this report so I do not believe it would be wise to bank on it.
MRage: I thought you moved to Denver and perhaps you have. Are you still trying to get some level of Sedgwick County’s taxpayers to pay another several million dollars to build your dream of a football stadium somewhere near the Intrust Arena?
That would fail of course just like the downtown Intrust Arena is destined to fail because the population demographics of Sedgwick County does not support the type of sports that requires people to sit on their butts watching old men run up and down a field or court throwing or kicking a ball … with 50 year old cheerleaders limping along on the sidelines.
Sports need to be left to the young, high school and college age students. Beyond that, its all professional and, frankly, not enough people are interested in small population communities like Wichita. That’s why the Intrust Arena is throwing up the smoke screen of presenting “concerts” in a building not designed for proper acoustics.
Now, I recognize there are always people who tout these sports activities too try to produce jobs and business for themselves … at the expense of the overburdened taxpayers.
In your case, if you want to build a football stadium, you should raise your own money, go to a lending institution (not the taxpayers) to justify your estimated financial numbers. I doubt if legitimate lenders would buy in to it but that’s the free enterprise system. Here in Wichita the so-called “private-public partnerships,” mostly all public if you follow the money, is used.
And I might even have a lot or two to sell you.
Health Care Reform means some lose and others win. of course it always, always, always will mean more regulations and added costs. There is no such thing as reform to a politician. It means it was not right to start with. In the name of poor(who is not}and the children we all lose. Moving money and care around does not indicate savings too me.
Yeah CSPAN was on my TV almost all day yesterday once the Senate when in secession.
The aggravation continued as later the subject was being touched on but not to solve the problem.
The Republicans used the topic of Doctors and Hospitals refusing to treat because of Medicare and medicate. But it was only a tool to say that the Democratic plan should not be passed.
As the plan is to put more people in these programs where they may not receive health care.
No one is saying, “This is a government ran program and we are the Government so we need to fix the problem!”.
The Democrats are simply saying that putting more people into these program would provide them with health insurance! No mention of really improving the program and in fact there is actions in the process that will make the problem worst.
The stated problem and why Doctors and Hospitals are refusing these patents is that the payment they receive is too low. And that the money lost for treating them has to be made up else where.
But now there is a plan to lower rate of payment?
Put more people on these programs and lower the rate of payment.
There is already a problem as there is, too many Doctors are seeing patents on the likes of a assembly line.
Walk in, take one look, make a SWAGE, walk out of the room to the next door and next patent… total time is less then five minutes!
More people need to see a Doctor, not a Doctor needs to see more people!
Politico complains about the reports “assumptions.”
The CONs only have one assumption–gov’t is always bad.
Despite the evidence to the contrary, they refuse to re-examine that assumption.
“…the plan is to put more people in these programs where they may not receive health care.”
Who writes stupid things like this?
The last thing Roberts and Brownback need is affordable insurance, why on earth would those self serving politicians vote for it? They’ll shake the money tree from the health care ind. opposing health care!
“Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan says health care cost reductions for employers will save 3.5 million jobs.
Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania says the health care measure would save the country $800 billion over the coming 20 years.
Medicare was a Godsend to the ins. companies, those that consume the highest medical resources are removed from the market and are covered by the govt., while ins. companies can take the lower risk segment of society and overcharge them.
We need reform now.
Saves money while savig jobs of course ks. repubs politicians hate it, and are adored by their ignorant constituents.
Good points, Phantom.
And the RepubliCONs fought Medicare tooth and nail then too.
Not a single R voted in favor of it.
Yet old folks CONtinue to vote for Republics, proving W. C. Fields right when he claimed, “there’s a sucker born every minute.”
I think Roberts is going to try and serve until he croaks because he doesn’t care for the medicare coverage, and he really doesn’t have to work at his job.
David that is part of the problem I am seeing in this attempt to make it where people receive what should be a human right. The solution that is put forth is devoid of reality and facts at hand.
i.e. there is a program already in place that provides for health care, so the simplest answer to the problem of lacking health care is to put more people into that program.
What is lacking is there is no looking into how that existing program is doing and what ever problems there may already be with it. Of how it is running and how could it handle the addition of more people?
To add to that program means that steps will need to be taken, more money for that program and along with adding more patents there would need to be more people within the running of that program.
But first there is a need to correct any problems within that existing program.
I have never been on such a program but my wife was a ward of the State at one point.
I witnessed how such people are treated both by the program and the Doctor they would see.
One incident, I witnessed reach the point where I was implying physical violence against the Doctor if he did not stop his attitude and actions. He was all cheer and warmth until he noticed that she was on public insurance. Then suddenly he soured and spoke to her as he would a cur dog.
Then the final straw was the Doctor grabbing her spanned foot and doing shifting patterns while with a smiling grammas asking “Does that hurt? (shifting to reverse) Does that hurt? (shifting to third) Does that hurt?”. She was screaming in pain and crying openly which seem to be his intent.
It took me coming off my chair and half way across the exam table and growling to stop that.
Before he stopped and apologized.
My point is that people on such programs are still human beings and entitled to health care.The fact that the Doctor is not going to make as much as they would with someone under a private insurance. Should not make a difference in how they are treated or seen by that Doctor.
They are not there because they want to pay someone, they are there because they have a medical problem.
That is another problem in health care that is not being addressed.
Then on the other end of the spectrum you have people that have gone to the poor house because of medical health dysfunctions, and the govt. picks many of them up on medicaid, so ins. companies operate in the ’sweet spot’.
When an ins. company drops coverage because of high medical costs or drops an entire policy line, unless those people Die Quickly, many of them will be forced onto the medicaid system.
“Some GOP governors blasted health care reform last week, saying that it would result in crippling costs to states.
Read more: http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/#ixzz0Xc96IaTe
No doubt we’ll get the Repub Doublespeak from Brownback and Roberts and their constituents will swallow hook line and sinker.
I do hope Brownback runs on a promise of opting out, because you know he will. The money is going to move to the State level in the fight over protecting ins. companies profits, and Brownback will have many favors to repay when he takes their money.
The dims in congress are not worried about their health care because they will not be forced to change their existing plans. They are exempt from the bill.
If it is good enough for the people that vote them into office it should be good enough for the congressman or woman to have the same.
Perhaps there is the question that should be answered.
Just how good an insurance should the average citizen have?
From the link:
“KHPA does not advocate for or against federal health reforms, but has used Medicaid actuaries through a private grant to get an external analysis of the reform measures.
Advertisement
According to the analysis, the health care bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee would save the state between $25 million and $50 million per year. Congressional Budget Office benchmarks indicate the Senate Finance bill would reduce the number of uninsured Kansans by 190,000 people. There are currently 335,000 uninsured in Kansas.”
Problem is, it won’t save Kansasns anything, and costs will go up because we will be an Opt Out State.
If reform isn’t done now, it will be in the future, when companies are faced with the stark reality that they can not afford to provide ins. anylonger and the workers start picking up the tab or going without.
Spending: The cost of the bill is $2.5 trillion over 10 years of full implementation.
• Taxes Increases: Taxes will go up $493.6 billion—nearly half a trillion dollars.
• Medicare Cuts: Medicare will be cut $464.6 billion—another half a trillion dollars.
• Abortion: The bill permits the use of accounting gimmicks that will, for the first time, allow federal dollars to go to plans covering abortion. The bill does not include the Stupak language, and as a result, National Right to Life describes the Reid bill language as “completely unacceptable” and said it would “result in coverage of abortion on demand in two big new federal government programs.”
• Government Plan: The bill includes a [one]government run plan [no choice]and provides states with the possibility of opting out of participating in that plan. According to CBO, the government run plan “would typically have premiums that were somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans in the exchanges”
• Employer Mandate: The bill will impose $28 billion in new taxes on employers that do not provide government approved health plans. These new taxes will ultimately be paid by American workers in the form of reduced wages and lost jobs.
The bill would bend the federal cost-curve up. CBO says, “Under the legislation, federal outlays for health care would increase during the 2010–2019 period, as would the federal budgetary commitment to health care.” The coverage expansion would drive a net increase in government spending on health by $160 billion over 10 years.
• CBO scored the bill as reducing the deficit by $130 billion over FYs 2010-2019. However, CBO notes that the bill includes two budget gimmicks that hide the true cost of the bill. Doctors are assumed to get a 23 percent cut in 2011 which would carry into subsequent years. Fixing the SGR would cost $247 billion. Additionally, the CLASS Act generates $72 billion over the budget window, but later turns to deficits. Eliminating these two gimmicks means the bill would be $189 billion in the red. It would also put the real cost of the bill over a trillion dollars.
• The start dates for the individual mandate, exchanges, and employer penalties were all moved from July 1, 2013, to January 1, 2014.
This is another budget gimmick to hide the true cost of the bill.
• 24 million people would be left without insurance.
• Unfunded mandates on the states: The bill mandates that states spend an additional $25 billion in Medicaid expenditures
• Taxes on uninsured individuals would total $8 billion.
• Taxes on employers from the “free-rider” penalty would total $28 billion.
• 5 million Americans would lose their employer coverage.
• Cuts to Medicare include: Permanent reductions in the annual updates to Medicare’s payment rates for most services in the fee-for-service sector of $192 billion; $118 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage; $43 billion in DSH cuts; $23 billion in unspecified cuts by the Medicare Advisory Board.
• Only 19 million people will get a subsidy to help them buy health insurance. None of the 162 million people with employer-based care will even be eligible for a subsidy.
• The government plan would have higher premiums than private plans. CBO said the government plan would “typically have premiums that were somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans in the exchanges.”
o With the opt-out provision, two-thirds of Americans are expected to have a government plan available in their state.
o Co-ops are included but would have “very little effect.”
• The CLASS Act would reduce deficits by $72 billion in the 10 year budget window, but “would begin to increase budget deficits” in the decade following 2029.
• The IRS would need $5-$10 billion to expand and implement the provisions in the bill.
• The costs of the subsidies in the exchange would grow at 8 percent a year.
• The tax on high value plans will quickly be applied to almost all plans. CBO expects the revenues from the Cadillac plan tax to grow at 10-15 percent per year outside the budget window.
• Includes a $15 billion “Prevention and Public Health Fund” slush fund.
• CBO says it would be “difficult” to maintain the predicted savings over a long period of time—meaning that the plan will likely run deficits when savings do not materialize.
If you are a lib: DISREGARD ALL THE ABOVE. As your party and prez say: “Fuq the cost.”
Disregarded.
Straight from the conservative think tank Alabama Policy Institute, huh amway?
You should really get more variety in your reading diet.
Where is the outrage about the dims in congress not wanting the same health insurance they are going to mandate on the people?
Are the people just servants to them?
“….there’s a sucker born every minute.” [cAPn]
Funny, CapN… I thought that was P. T. Barnum who said that…
Doesnt really matter much… just sayin…
My god, health bill gives 10 BILLION to Unions to cover their mismanagement of retirement funds.
And then forces home health care providers INTO Unions…
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6719913.html
Unbelievable mrbill.
Unions are being integrated into the federal government with power to control like nothing the constitution provides for and certainly far beyond what only 7.6% of private sector workerforce should be entitled to.
Workers Party of America?
Yer right AmWay.. and that kid born without a right arm. screw him too.
Untruthful distortions like asserting death panels and union benefits serves to confuse the electorate. After businesses bankrupted so many of their retirement and health plans the government established new strict rules on funding of the plans that affect both businesses and union plans. They now are required to purchase insurance on the plans and funds are reserved to back up that insurance.
Health care workers are some of the lowest paid and most taken advantage of by business. They deserve the opportunity to consolidate their voices into a union.
What is distorted about the union benefits as listed in the Houston Chronicle??
Health care workers are some of the lowest paid and most taken advantage of by business. They deserve the opportunity to consolidate their voices into a union.
Sure they do. It’s a federally protected right. Apparently they have, and chose not to.
. But an analysis released last week by the “Kansas Health Policy Authority concluded that the proposed reforms could save Kansas up to $50 million per year. The net savings would come in part from shifting some Kansans out of Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and into a private insurance market.”
————-
Let ignore the fact that this bust the bank plan will still leave over 24 million uninsured – lets look at the logic of what the CBO has predicted in relationship to this statement:
“• The government plan would have higher premiums than private plans. CBO said the government plan would “typically have premiums that were somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans in the exchanges.”
——————
So let me see if I have this right. We have people on medicaid under their state’s plan and in Kansas we are going to move these to the fed plan and save $50 million dollars. We are going to do this by putting them in a plan that has been forcast by the experts to have higher costs than existing private insurance.
Now these poverty striken recipents will be paying for this how?
Any voter that looks at the logic of what Obamacare promises and doesn’t run for the hills is just not capable of being a voter anymore.
If someone tells you it will cover more people, give better care and be cheaper – well people think – think!!