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The Medicaid trap — 12 Comments

  1. Two words: asset forfeiture. Obamacare is not medical sector reform. It addresses neither availability, which was previously universal, nor affordability, since it maintains the cost structure intact. It also does not address education reform, which is critical to improving personal health. Obamacare is a financial scheme, divorced from economic development, designed to obfuscate consequence of the latter.

  2. I read in my hometown paper today that free health clinics are now suffering money shortages because donations have gone down since Obamacare. Since this is a small city, I suspect that staff and patients had established relationships and that now people will have to shop around for new doctors.

  3. Back on March 31, 2014, Neo wrote another post about the Obamacare deadline day. I added a few comments about the Medicaid trap.

    I wish I could say that the situation has become more clear, but it hasn’t. The Medicaid rules vary somewhat from state to state, so it’s hard to generalize; but it’s still true that people can be forced into Medicaid even though they don’t want it, then receive substandard care — or no care — and then, after death, have all their property seized by the state. The state will take your property to pay for your health care costs. In other words, Medicaid isn’t insurance that you’ve paid for with taxes. It’s a loan that you’ll repay after you die — whether you want the loan or not.

    As I wrote back at the end of March, I know quite a few people who are self-employed, freelancers, or independent contractors. Their incomes are irregular, but they have extensive property. This makes them especially vulnerable to Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid trap. If you happen to fall into this group, there are ways around the problem, but you need to do some research.

  4. I have been warning my lefty-left friends about this from the beginning. As a result of a job market which has remained moribund for years, many previously well-employed people, who have assets after a lifetime of decent employment, are now unemployed or underemployed. These are people who used to have benefits through their good jobs, or who used to be able to pay for reasonable private insurance, but now have neither option. Wow! Now they can qualify for Medicaid, thanks to Obamacare.

    And my lefty-left friends actually moan about how some mean, evil (mostly red) states refuse to expand Medicare coverage to get more such people on the asset-forfeiture express.

    The left is eternally unable to grasp basic cause-and-effect relationships, so they don’t see the direct relationship between Obamacare and the specter of ordinary people like us giving up assets acquired over a lifetime of work for the dubious privilege of Medicare, which is lousy coverage for almost anyone who had competent insurance before this all started.

    The most vile and evil of the left actually do see this relationship and don’t have a problem with it.

  5. I wonder when they are going to mandate that a doctor accept Medicaid/Medicare? You know, you didn’t get there by yourself/didn’t build that. Time to pay back to society. Heck, we all know that doctors make a lot of money anyway – 1 % types.

  6. Now that 0-care makes Medic-aid COMPULSORY … there is a push to nix the asset grab provision.

    It’s actually not a very attractive gambit for the states, either. TONS of collection overhead.

    BTW, what is blowing up state Medicaid budgets is the open ended care for the infirm.

    Those so cared for are the primary targets for asset seizures… because the numbers are large.

    The assets that the state wants are FINANCIAL assets. (usually minimal) That, plus the family HOME… stepping in between the generations.

    This asset seizure scheme is but a shade of the get-backs seen emanating from family courts… which have many a father ducking ‘the system.’

  7. Yes, this looks like the much-touted “expansion of Medicaid.”

    If you get sick, God help you: Doctors can’t afford to take more than a handful of Medicaid patients (if any); and the law FORBIDS doctors to accept cash payments from anyone who’s on the program, so you can’t get the care you desperately need even if you can pay cash on the barrelhead.

    Surveys have shown that you’re better off, actuarily speaking, with NO insurance or Medicaid of any kind, than with Medicaid: people with “nothing” can go to the emergency room and see good doctors there, for nothing; they can also scrape together cash for a (discounted) service and the doc is allowed by our Rulers to accept that.

    They will probably weld that bolt-hole shut, too, at least for legal citizens. Illegal aliens, of course, aren’t subject in practice to many of our laws.

    This fertilizer will hit the circulating air supply for some 80 million more folks in 2015, or so they say: we freelancers are still the only ones taking it in the shorts (my eye doctor, too, BTW, and he’s none too pleased).

  8. Tom Murin Says: Heck, we all know that doctors make a lot of money anyway — 1 % types.

    according to the newspaper, life guards make more (150,000)… plumbers in the news today (250,000)…
    me? i am a degree programmer (under 70,000 – and can never get a raise or promotion for the rest of my life according to my boss)

  9. I wonder if these people are covered under the new obamacare rules:

    Robin and Mani Aldridge – Just last week, a beloved special needs teacher and her high school junior daughter from Charlottesville Virginia were beaten before they were burned in a house fire. Police arrested a black man named Gene Everett Washington and charged him with two counts of first-degree murder.

    Michael Brewer — 15-year-old Michael from Miami had burns over 60% of his body after three black classmates poured alcohol on him and set him on fire. All three are serving time in prison.

    Allen Goin – A 13-year-old from Kansas City, his two black teen attackers put him in a bear hug, poured gasoline on him and set him on fire saying, “This is what you get, white boy”.

    Gabriela Penalba – A 23-year-old teacher in Knoxville Tennessee was set on fire by a 15-year-old black student. She briefly turned her back to the class when the student lit her hair and shirt ablaze.

    Kathryn “Kit” Grazioli – Colorado Springs firefighters found Kit’s 87-year-old body burning on a trail after a nearby resident called to report the fire. Officers arrested a black 21-year-old, Marcus Smith, and charged him with 1st degree murder. Kit was a deacon at her church and loved by the community.

    Jonathan Foster – In Houston, Mona Nelson, a black 44-year-old woman abducted and killed 12-year-old Jonathan with a blowtorch on Christmas Eve, later dumping his body in a ditch. She was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. The story was getting mainstream media coverage until they arrested a black woman.

    Kenneth Athey – Beaten with a hammer, stabbed, doused with chemicals and set on fire, 87-year-old Kenneth survived to testify against his black male attacker.

    Luke Fleischman – a black teenager, who was prosecuted as an adult and sentenced to seven years for the hate crime, set the 18-year-old on fire while sleeping on a bus in San Francisco.

    Richard Michael Carter – Two black brothers were arrested for shooting and burning Richard, a father from South Carolina.

    Flo “Violet” Parker —The 67-year-old homeless woman from California was set on fire by a black man as she slept on a bench.

    Nancy Harris – The 76-year-old grandmother was killed when a black man set fire to her while she was working at a convenience mart. She was loved in her Texas hometown and known as Grandma to everyone.

    Melinda McCormick – A black woman and two black men beat and burned Melinda to death.

    Jimmy Sanders — Shot and burned after stopping to help two black men, Erik Ellis, 28, and Malcolm Melton, 22, with car trouble. “He didn’t answer his phone. I called about eight or nine times. About an hour after he wouldn’t answer I got really, really nervous and upset,” Betty Sanders said. Jimmy was 65 and also from Mississippi, where Jessica Chambers was just burned.

    Raymond Vasholz – Raymond died after his black neighbor, Terrance Hale, attacked him and his wife and set fires. Elizabeth and Raymond were married 58 years.

  10. a note aside… besides turing over our sovereign power to the UN and so forth… this just came out

    As of today, Bill HR4681 has passed the house and senate, and is currently undergoing arbitration before being sent to the President for his signature in to law. The law says that the intelligence community can collect, retain, and disseminate all electronic communications including voice calls [without any constitutional restrictions] on all US citizens and everyone else in the world. And they have 5 years before they are supposed to destroy the records. However, they can keep them indefinitely if they fall into several categories of interest.

    It is all out in the open now. Your 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendment protections are gone. This act gives new meaning to ‘land of the free, home of the brave.’

    Read more at http://universalfreepress.com/share-story-now-congress-just-overruled-1st-4th-5th-amendment-rights/

  11. Kyndyll – there is a difference between Medicare and Medicaid. They are not the same program. Here is the general concept about the programs.

    Medicare = care for people over 65 years. It is financed via the tax taken out of your paycheck and matched by your employer. If you are self employed, you get to pay both parts. When you go on Medicare and Social Security, money is withheld from your SS check to pay for Part B. But, there is a co-insurance amount, so unless you sign up for supplemental insurance, you get to pay about 20% of your health care costs.

    Medicaid = aid for the low income people. It is financed jointly by the federal and state governments. In other words, it is financed by tax payers. Since Medicaid is financed by states, they have some say in who qualifies and what is covered.

    The reason why so many states rejected the Medicaid expansion in the ACA is that the “help” from the federal government was only going to last for a few years and then the states would have to bear the costs.

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