Obamacare Fallout: More Doctors Opting Out of Medicare

Three times more doctors are refusing Medicare patients than three years ago, many citing Medicare's increasing rules and lowered payment rates.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers the program, even doctors who still see some Medicare patients are limiting the number of Medicare patients they will treat, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The declines are in addition to the growing number of doctors who won't accept new Medicaid patients, and come just as millions of Americans are poised to become eligible for coverage under Obamacare. 

Editor's Note: Should ObamaCare Be Repealed? Vote in Urgent National Poll 
The numbers of doctors refusing both Medicare and Medicaid payments won't completely undermine Obamacare, health experts say, but some patients may have problems finding doctors who will accept their new coverage under the healthcare-reform law. 

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 9,539 doctors who had accepted Medicare payments opted out of the program last year. That seems like a large number, but 685,000 doctors nationally were enrolled as participating Medicare physicians in 2012. 

Eight-one percent of them were family doctors, a drop from 83 percent in 2010, the American Academy of Family Physicians reports. The journal Health Affairs, however, reported this month that one-third of primary-care physicians did not accept new Medicaid patients in 2010-2011.

Part of the problem is that Medicare payment rates have not kept pace with inflation, and Medicare reimbursements could be slashed by 25 percent next year unless Congress delays the cuts. In addition, the amount of paperwork and information required from doctors and providers is massive
Via: Newsmax

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Obama's HUD to Expand Middle Class

How? Just move people from low income neighborhoods into middle class neighborhoods.

This brilliant stratagem is being promoted by Shaun Donovan, Obama's newly appointed head of HUD.

According to Donovan, the middle class is the middle class because they have all the advantages of living in middle class neighborhoods. After all, middle class neighborhoods have better  "schools, jobs, transportation, and other important neighborhood resources that can play a role in helping people move into the middle class."

Move people from low income neighborhoods with poor "assets" into neighborhoods with good "assets" and presto  they will have middle class jobs and all the other "assets" of being in the middle class.

Not only is this economically sound, it follows from the moral principle that every American has  the right "to choose to live in a community they feel proud of."

That being the case, not only is it immoral to discriminate on the housing front on the basis of ethnicity and sexuality, it is equally immoral to discriminate on the basis of ability to pay. Under HUD"s  new "Fair Housing" plan, HUD, one way or another, will make sure taxpayers eat the tab for this brilliant piece of social engineering..  Unlike the old failed  Housing Choice Voucher(HCV) program,  this one under HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan  is going to work because Donovan is going to use "21st Century methods":

Via: American Thinker

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Peggy Noonan: Obama Got To Point Where People Stopped Listening To Him Faster Than Most Presidents

"I think every president in the intense media environment we have now, certainly every two-term president, gets to a point where the American people stop listening, stop leaning forward hungrily for information. I think this president got there earlier than most presidents. And I think he's in that time now."

So said the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan on ABC's This Week Sunday

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST: You are seeing (ph) more populist Democrats, I agree with that, but Peggy Noonan, you know, the president going back to the country one more time, it's unclear that these speeches are doing much to move public opinion, much less Washington.

PEGGY NOONAN, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Yes, I think that's true. But when the White House calls it a pivot, somebody counted it up and said it's probably the tenth pivot to the economy the president has done since he came in.

I noticed that in one of the speeches, it went over an hour. There was a heck of a lot jammed in. That tells me something. It said we're not sure exactly what to say, so we're going to say everything, but a speech about everything is a speech about nothing. Beyond that, I think every president in the intense media environment we have now, certainly every two-term president, gets to a point where the American people stop listening, stop leaning forward hungrily for information. I think this president got there earlier than most presidents. And I think he's in that time now.

Via: Newsbusters

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Report: 4 in 5 Americans at risk of poverty, joblessness, reliance on welfare

Four in five adults in America have dealt with unemployment, risked falling into poverty or relied on welfare for portions of their life, The Associated Press reports.

As President Obama pivots to discussions about the economy, the AP’s report offers a dreary picture of the current personal economy many in America experience.

The AP reports that the struggle is largely due to globalization, the widening gap between the rich and poor and the declining availability of good-paying manufacturing jobs.

The findings include an increase in economic insecurity — or a period of joblessness, reliance on welfare for a year or income below 150 percent of the poverty line — among whites, narrowing the racial disparity between whites and minorities when it comes to the likelihood of ending up in poverty, with 76 percent of white adults experiencing economic insecurity by the time they reach the age of 60.

Further, while the poverty rate for blacks and Hispanics are three times that of whites, by straight numbers, with 19 million whites in poverty, whites make up more than 41 percent of the population in poverty — nearly twice the number of black Americans in poverty, the AP reports.

To be sure, nonwhites are still more likely to experience economic insecurity, at 90 percent, compared to 76 percent for whites. Across all races, the risk of economic insecurity is 79 percent. According to the data trends, however, by 2030, nearly 85 percent of working-age adults will deal with economic insecurity, the AP reports.

The findings, reported by The Associated Press, were calculated by Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and include additional analysis by experts and Census data. The Oxford University Press is set to publish Rank’s analysis next year.

“Poverty is no longer an issue of ‘them,’ it’s an issue of ‘us,’” Rank told the AP. “Only when poverty is thought of as a mainstream event, rather than a fringe experience that just affects blacks and Hispanics, can we really begin to build broader support for programs that lift people in need.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Obama: Speeches won’t help make ObamaCare popular

President Obama said he can't turn around public opinion on his signature healthcare law with a public-relations push, but insisted that the law will be popular once it is fully implemented.

Polls show the healthcare law is unpopular, and its approval ratings are falling. Disapproval topped 50 percent in a CBS News poll last week.

Obama said in an interview with The New York Times that the law will gain popularity once key provisions take effect next year and people are able to more easily purchase insurance.

"But until then, when we’re getting outspent four to one and people are just uncertain about what all this means for them, we’re going to continue to have some polls like that," Obama said. "And me just making more speeches explaining it in and of itself won’t do it. The test of this is going to be is it working. And if it works, it will be pretty darn popular."

The administration has ramped up its public-relations push recently, bringing on new healthcare communications strategists and enlisting celebrities to help encourage people to sign up for new coverage options.

Obama has also made three speeches just since May about the law. But he downplayed those efforts in the Times interview, saying full implementation is the real test.

"Over the course of six months to a year, as people sign up, and it works, and lo and behold, the people who already have health insurance are not being impacted at all other than the fact that their insurance is more secure and they are getting free preventive care, and all the nightmare scenarios and the train wrecks and the 'sky is falling' predictions that come from the other side do not happen, then health care will become more popular," Obama said.

The key deadline in the administration's implementation push is Oct. 1. That's when new insurance marketplaces known as exchanges are supposed to open in each state, to begin enrolling people in private insurance plans that begin Jan. 1, 2014.

Most people who buy insurance through an exchange will receive tax subsidies to help cover the cost of their premiums.

Via: The Hill

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How To Get Around The Law That Requires Cutting Off Aid To Countries With Coup? Obama Admin: “We Will Just Not Say It Was A Coup”

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has concluded it is not legally required to determine whether the Egyptian military engineered a coup d’état in ousting President Mohamed Morsi, a senior administration official said Thursday, a finding that will allow it to continue to funnel $1.5 billion in American aid to Egypt each year.

The legal opinion, submitted to the White House by lawyers from the State Department and other agencies, amounts to an escape hatch forPresident Obama and his advisers, who had concluded that cutting off financial assistance could destabilize Egypt at an already fragile moment and would pose a threat to neighbors like Israel.

The senior official did not describe the legal reasoning behind the finding, saying only, “The law does not require us to make a formal determination as to whether a coup took place, and it is not in our national interest to make such a determination.”

“We will not say it was a coup, we will not say it was not a coup, we will just not say,” the official said.

News of the administration’s legal determination began circulating on Capitol Hill after a deputy secretary of state, William J. Burns, briefed House and Senate members in closed-door sessions earlier on Thursday.

The White House said it would continue to use financial aid as a lever to pressure Egypt’s new government to move swiftly with a democratic transition. On Wednesday, the Pentagon delayed the shipment of four F-16 fighter jets to the Egyptian Air Force to signal the administration’s displeasure with the chaotic situation in Egypt.

Such case-by-case decisions, the official said, would be the model for how the United States disbursed aid in the coming months. The administration might also “reprogram” assistance to promote a transition, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the White House’s internal deliberations.

Via: New York Times

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