Healthcare expectations from Biden

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I was reading something this weekend and the TV was on in the background. And I don't know what show was on, but they brought up the issue of healthcare and what they thought Biden could or couldn't get done.

The host (no one I recognized, I don't really watch TV news) said he expects Biden to expand Obamacare...and said it was unlikely he could do a public option. That's what caught my attention...and it got me thinking.

My EXPECTATION is that Biden creates a public option...AT A MINIMUM!!! As in, if he doesn't get a public option, I'm going to be raising a lot of hell. Sure, I'd love a government single payer system, but I don't see that happening. But my EXPECTATION at this point...If you can't get at least a public option (which is what he campaigned on) following a pandemic...You're just not trying hard enough.
“I think there’s a right-wing conspiracy to promote the idea of a left-wing conspiracy”

Re: Healthcare expectations from Biden

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Feds rescind health care funding agreement that would have paid for care for uninsured, poor Texans after 2022

The Biden administration on Friday rescinded changes to a federal funding agreement, known as a 1115 waiver, that would have extended for 10 years Texas’ health care safety net for uninsured residents — teeing up a new round of negotiations before the existing waiver expires in 2022.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in a statement that it erred in exempting the state from the normal public notice process before granting an extension to the waiver in the waning days of the Trump administration.

The agency "has rescinded the extension approval, which corrects this oversight with as little impact as possible to the people of Texas, since the original demonstration remains intact through September 30, 2022," it said in a statement.

The Washington Post, citing two federal health officials, said the decision was a bid to push Texas toward expanding Medicaid to cover more low-income adults, a move the state and eleven others have resisted.

The 1115 waiver reimburses hospitals for the “uncompensated care” they provide to patients without health insurance and pays for innovative health care projects that serve low-income Texans, often for mental health services. The extension — worth billions of dollars a year — would have continued hospital reimbursements until September 2030, but allowed the innovation fund to expire this year.

The earlier waiver is still in effect, and federal authorities “stand ready to work with the state” if it wishes to extend it beyond next year, according to a Friday letter from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The state’s rationale to get out of the normal public notice process was that health care providers needed financial stability during the coronavirus pandemic, the letter said. But the state’s request did not “meaningfully explain why the extension request addressed the COVID-19 public health emergency or any other sudden emergency threat to human lives,” it said, in part.

The state’s first 1115 waiver was approved in 2011. It was meant to be a bridge to Medicaid expansion under the newly passed Affordable Care Act, but a subsequent U.S. Supreme Court ruling gutted the Medicaid expansion part of the sweeping federal health law. Republican leadership in Texas — which has the nation’s highest rate of uninsured residents — has stood fast against expanding Medicaid, sometimes characterizing it as building on a broken system.

Republican state officials slammed Friday’s decision.

“The State of Texas spent months negotiating this agreement with the federal government to ensure vital funds for hospitals, nursing homes, and mental health resources for Texans who are uninsured,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement.

Attorney General Ken Paxton said he would “use every legal tool available to regain the assistance Texans need.”

Texas Hospital Association president Ted Shaw said the group was "extremely disappointed."

"The waiver extension would have helped the state to seamlessly continue support for much-needed health care improvements and would have continued stable funding for hospitals that serve large numbers of uninsured patients," he said.

And the president of the nonprofit Texas Essential Healthcare Partnerships said the loss of funding would "create a cascading disaster as hospitals failed and Texans had no or limited access to hospital services."

The announcement comes as some health care advocates and state lawmakers are pushing to broaden Medicaid coverage, though bills to do so have so far failed to pass either chamber.

State Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, said the 10-year waiver extension approved in January had taken some pressure off lawmakers to expand Medicaid, but the Friday letter puts it back on.

The "decision is being portrayed as a strike against vulnerable Texans, but it is not at all, it doesn't terminate funding for anything," he said. "It tells Texas to resubmit its application and this time, follow the rules. And while we're at it, why don't we do what we're supposed to do, which is expand Medicaid."

Patrick Bresette, head of the Children's Defense Fund, said that “the waiver was always intended to serve as a temporary bridge until the state implemented a coverage option — with federal Medicaid expansion funds — for low-wage workers whose jobs don’t provide health insurance."
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/16 ... aid-biden/

This boils down that Texas state government doesn't want to expand Medicaid because they would have to pay for part of it. As true members of the Reptilian Party they don't give a damn about poor people.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Healthcare expectations from Biden

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I'm really not worried about the states, their day will come. For now I'm focused on the national level. If Biden delivers something really good, and that good program works out; the states will eventually have to confront that. But it all begins with presenting them with something that works... Without that, what the states are doing is moot.
“I think there’s a right-wing conspiracy to promote the idea of a left-wing conspiracy”

Re: Healthcare expectations from Biden

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The American Jobs Plan is expected to be followed by a second economic package in April that includes a major expansion in health insurance coverage, child-care subsidies, free access to community colleges and other proposals.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-polic ... ture-plan/

The $2 trillion Biden will ask Congress to approve for his American Jobs Plan will be spent over a period of eight years and paid for with tax hikes over a period of 15 years.

Included in that $2 trillion is $621 billion for transportation infrastructure like roads and bridges, with $174 billion of that set aside for the electric vehicle market, $111 billion for clean drinking water, $100 billion for expanding broadband and $100 billion for power infrastructure like the electric grid.

There’s also $213 billion for affordable and sustainable housing, $400 billion for the “care economy” and $100 billion for workforce development.

To help pay for all that spending, the Biden administration is expected to propose a series of major tax changes including raising the corporate rate from 21% to 28% and raising the global minimum tax.

Biden also wants to encourage domestic manufacturing by making it more expensive for American companies to produce goods and services overseas.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhanse ... 0a608ed473
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Healthcare expectations from Biden

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Biden hasn't even hit 100 days in office. Restating the obvious, Democrats have a 10 seat majority in the House and a one seat majority in the Senate. Biden didn't get elected with long coat tails that gave him a legislative mandate, voters were divided. Democrats had a 36 seat majority after the 2018 election and 10 after the 2020 election, the infighting among Democrats didn't help.

A good time to do anything in his first term is between now and the midterm election because he might not have majorities in both chambers in his last two years of office. To get past the Senate filibuster he'll need all the Democratic senators and somehow use reconciliation again but that process has limits.

Biden spent 40 years in the Senate and he's gotten legislation passed and Nancy Pelosi has been in the House over 30 years and she too knows how to get things done. Politico had a good article on her for a forthcoming book.
“Nancy doesn’t have much patience for people who don’t know what they don’t know.”
Did the new members fail to understand the sausage-making process?“ Some people come here, as Dave Obey would have said, to pose for holy pictures.” She [Pelosi] changed her voice and mimicked a child trying to make a solemn show of piety. “See how perfect I am and how pure?”

Obey, a Wisconsin congressman, had made his share of sausage as chair of the Appropriations Committee. “Remember when David used to say that all the time?” Pelosi asked, still steaming. “‘OK, there’s the group that’s going to go pose for holy pictures. Now let’s legislate over here.’ “And that’s experience,” Pelosi declared.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... tez-481704
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Healthcare expectations from Biden

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sikacz wrote: Tue Apr 20, 2021 11:18 amThis. His campaign made it clear.
I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion; please expand.

Here's what I see TODAY on Biden's website
Giving Americans a new choice, a public health insurance option like Medicare. If your insurance company isn’t doing right by you, you should have another, better choice. Whether you’re covered through your employer, buying your insurance on your own, or going without coverage altogether, Biden will give you the choice to purchase a public health insurance option like Medicare. As in Medicare, the Biden public option will reduce costs for patients by negotiating lower prices from hospitals and other health care providers. It also will better coordinate among all of a patient’s doctors to improve the efficacy and quality of their care, and cover primary care without any co-payments. And it will bring relief to small businesses struggling to afford coverage for their employees. https://joebiden.com/healthcare/

April 20 article, NBC News
In his new plan released on Monday, Biden proposes adding a “Medicare-like” public option that would serve as an option for consumers to receive health insurance. Americans would also be able to choose their own private insurance and would now only spend a lower income rate to obtain it. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-t ... blogHeader

Healthline April 11 article
In Biden’s campaign he proposed a new public option that would provide an alternative to private insurance for Americans who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/ ... care-costs
“I think there’s a right-wing conspiracy to promote the idea of a left-wing conspiracy”

Re: Healthcare expectations from Biden

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Only reason there was any hint of a “public option” was to try to blunt and win over sanders’ healthcare for all position supporters. Every public statement he has made that I’m aware of only promised to bring back the obama era positions. You have to look beyond the campaign to a candidates past to get an idea of which positions are just for political strategy. This was one of them. Since he opposed the healthcare for all concept there really wasn’t much point in listening or believing he’d try to go beyond the obama ACA. Which was a typical neoliberal rehash of a republican plan.
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