In order to tackle the large deficit and significant revenue declines while still protecting Medicaid, lawmakers enacted a temporary hospital provider fee to prevent significant rate cuts to hospitals, doctors, nursing homes, and other health care providers and balance the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. This and other aspects of the healthcare budgets are discussed in the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute's latest analysis: Lawmakers Protect Medicaid, Serious Funding Gaps Loom for 2012.
Thanks in large part to the enhanced federal Medicaid funding made available to all states through the Recovery Act in 2009, Georgia is not implementing major cuts to Medicaid eligibility or services in FY 2011.
But now Georgia is in a tough position.
Georgia is among 30 states that have built its state budget assuming that enhanced Medicaid funding will be available through next June, when our budget year ends. The U.S. Congress is currently considering legislation to extend this funding until then, but unless they act soon to extend the enhanced Medicaid funding, Georgia's budget will be short $375 million.
If, instead of finding additional state revenue, lawmakers cut the Medicaid program to save $375 million, the state would also forgo more than $650 million in federal funds that are in the state's Medicaid base budget.
"The Great Recession has caused more Georgians to seek help for their families through Medicaid and losing a billion dollars would devastate a Medicaid budget that already relies significantly on temporary funding in FY 2011," said Timothy Sweeney, the Institute's senior healthcare analyst and author of the healthcare budget analysis.
"The cuts necessary to balance the budget without these funds would be devastating for individual Georgians and for the healthcare sector that depend on an adequately funded Medicaid program. In addition, many local economies rely significantly on their healthcare industry."
Other notable changes lawmakers made for this upcoming fiscal year are:
*10% cut to state grants to county health departments
* Increasing premiums families pay for children in PeachCare
*Increased funding for mental health services
------
www.fayettefrontpage.com
Fayette Front Page
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
Follow us on Twitter: @GAFrontPage
Showing posts with label cuts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cuts. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
ObamaCare: Giant Meteor Scheduled to Strike in 2014
/PRNewswire/ -- Some argue that ObamaCare isn't ripe for legal challenge, since the most onerous requirements won't be in effect until 2014. By then, the machinery for implementation, and associated "stakeholders," will be cemented in place and much harder to dislodge.
The effect, however, is already being felt, argues attorney Andrew Schlafly, writing in the summer issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (http://www.jpands.org/vol15no2/schlafly.pdf). Schlafly is general counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), which filed suit in the District of Columbia on March 26, three days after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or "ObamaCare") was signed into law (www.aapsonline.org/hhslawsuit).
"By analogy," he writes, "if we knew that a giant meteor would crash into the Earth in 2014, it would have a huge immediate impact on behavior today."
After enactment of PPACA, there was a 10 percent drop in the value of health-related stocks, while the rest of the stock market was rising.
Some physicians are planning an early retirement, and bright students will forgo a medical career because they want to practice "innovative medicine in the free market rather than Post Office-style medicine controlled by government bureaucrats."
Likely physician shortages may keep businesses from relocating to rural areas, and anticipated new costs may keep businesses from expanding.
AAPS argues that it is an unconstitutional "taking" to force individuals to buy insurance they do not want, and which may not cover the medical care that they eventually do need.
Mandatory insurance has failed in Massachusetts, where there have been relatively few uninsured, and imposing that approach on a nation 50 times as large as and less wealthy than Massachusetts is likely to be a still bigger failure.
Schlafly cites a reason for cautious optimism: free enterprise could still expand "amid the rubble and ruins wrought by this legislation."
In addition to overturning the insurance mandates, the lawsuit asks the Court to demand an honest accounting of the solvency of the Medicare and Social Security programs, and to invalidate a rule that seniors must forfeit all Social Security benefits if they decline to participate in Medicare Part A, with its increasingly draconian restrictions.
-----
www.fayettefrontpage.com
Fayette Front Page
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
Follow us on Twitter: @GAFrontPage
The effect, however, is already being felt, argues attorney Andrew Schlafly, writing in the summer issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (http://www.jpands.org/vol15no2/schlafly.pdf). Schlafly is general counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), which filed suit in the District of Columbia on March 26, three days after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or "ObamaCare") was signed into law (www.aapsonline.org/hhslawsuit).
"By analogy," he writes, "if we knew that a giant meteor would crash into the Earth in 2014, it would have a huge immediate impact on behavior today."
After enactment of PPACA, there was a 10 percent drop in the value of health-related stocks, while the rest of the stock market was rising.
Some physicians are planning an early retirement, and bright students will forgo a medical career because they want to practice "innovative medicine in the free market rather than Post Office-style medicine controlled by government bureaucrats."
Likely physician shortages may keep businesses from relocating to rural areas, and anticipated new costs may keep businesses from expanding.
AAPS argues that it is an unconstitutional "taking" to force individuals to buy insurance they do not want, and which may not cover the medical care that they eventually do need.
Mandatory insurance has failed in Massachusetts, where there have been relatively few uninsured, and imposing that approach on a nation 50 times as large as and less wealthy than Massachusetts is likely to be a still bigger failure.
Schlafly cites a reason for cautious optimism: free enterprise could still expand "amid the rubble and ruins wrought by this legislation."
In addition to overturning the insurance mandates, the lawsuit asks the Court to demand an honest accounting of the solvency of the Medicare and Social Security programs, and to invalidate a rule that seniors must forfeit all Social Security benefits if they decline to participate in Medicare Part A, with its increasingly draconian restrictions.
-----
www.fayettefrontpage.com
Fayette Front Page
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
Follow us on Twitter: @GAFrontPage
Sunday, December 20, 2009
AHIP Statement On Senate Health Care Reform Legislation
/PRNewswire/ -- Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), released the following statement today on the Senate health care reform legislation:
"The debate before us today is not whether insurance market reforms are needed. In fact, health plans proposed and support a complete overhaul of insurance market rules and new consumer protections to ensure all Americans have guaranteed access to affordable, portable coverage. The critical policy questions are whether the current legislation can bend the cost curve and result in a sustainable system. While the bill makes important improvements in access and takes steps towards cost-containment, it lacks accountability to ensure that costs are brought under control. Moreover, this bill includes provisions that will increase costs for families and small businesses and disrupt the quality coverage on which millions of Americans rely today."
Barriers to affordability:
-- A new $70 billion premium tax that will increase the cost of health
care coverage for millions of Americans and fall primarily on small
businesses and those who purchase coverage in the individual market.
-- More cost shifting to patients with private coverage as providers are
forced to make up for hundreds of billions in reduced Medicare
payments.
-- New market and rating rules that will increase premiums for
individuals and small businesses with coverage today.
Disruptions for current policyholders:
-- New regulatory requirements and benefit mandates that go into effect
beginning next year - before access provisions go into effect - that
will cause major disruption for millions who have already enrolled in
their plan for next year.
-- A new federal plan that would preclude many high-quality plans from
participating and increase complexity in the exchanges.
-- Arbitrary caps on administrative costs that will undermine essential
health care services, such as disease management and care coordination
programs, investments in health information technology, programs to
root out fraud and abuse in the health care system, and new
administrative simplification requirements.
-- Major cuts in Medicare Advantage benefits beginning next year that
will ultimately result in millions of seniors losing their current
coverage.
"These issues need to be resolved if the country is to make health care coverage more affordable and put the system on a sustainable path. Health plans will continue to work to solve the problems that have been identified."
-----
www.fayettefrontpage.com
Fayette Front Page
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
"The debate before us today is not whether insurance market reforms are needed. In fact, health plans proposed and support a complete overhaul of insurance market rules and new consumer protections to ensure all Americans have guaranteed access to affordable, portable coverage. The critical policy questions are whether the current legislation can bend the cost curve and result in a sustainable system. While the bill makes important improvements in access and takes steps towards cost-containment, it lacks accountability to ensure that costs are brought under control. Moreover, this bill includes provisions that will increase costs for families and small businesses and disrupt the quality coverage on which millions of Americans rely today."
Barriers to affordability:
-- A new $70 billion premium tax that will increase the cost of health
care coverage for millions of Americans and fall primarily on small
businesses and those who purchase coverage in the individual market.
-- More cost shifting to patients with private coverage as providers are
forced to make up for hundreds of billions in reduced Medicare
payments.
-- New market and rating rules that will increase premiums for
individuals and small businesses with coverage today.
Disruptions for current policyholders:
-- New regulatory requirements and benefit mandates that go into effect
beginning next year - before access provisions go into effect - that
will cause major disruption for millions who have already enrolled in
their plan for next year.
-- A new federal plan that would preclude many high-quality plans from
participating and increase complexity in the exchanges.
-- Arbitrary caps on administrative costs that will undermine essential
health care services, such as disease management and care coordination
programs, investments in health information technology, programs to
root out fraud and abuse in the health care system, and new
administrative simplification requirements.
-- Major cuts in Medicare Advantage benefits beginning next year that
will ultimately result in millions of seniors losing their current
coverage.
"These issues need to be resolved if the country is to make health care coverage more affordable and put the system on a sustainable path. Health plans will continue to work to solve the problems that have been identified."
-----
www.fayettefrontpage.com
Fayette Front Page
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)