Block-granting Medicaid, according to the Kaiser Foundation, means "that the federal government gives states a fixed amount of money and each state decides who to cover and what services to pay for."
Sixty percent of respondents to a Kaiser poll rejected block-granting in favor of leaving the current system unchanged, whereby it is the "federal government guaranteeing coverage and setting minimum standards for benefits and eligibility."
Reagan tried to block-grant Medicaid in 1981 and failed. Clinton vetoed similar legislation that Congress had passed in 1995. Nobody has had to vote on anything to accomplish block-granting of Medicaid in Hawaii.
Even now, Hawaii is accepting bids for new state Medicaid contracts, and Wellcare and Unitedhealth are expected to be bidding. The Governor acknowledged last month knowing of the mounting list of complaints filed with federal regulators (CMS, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) against the State as well as Unitedhealth. He blamed the contract, which he inherited (true), while turning the entire Medicaid appeals process over to the same state bureaucrats already caught lying to federal regulators.
This is not over-dramatizing. CMS has caught DHS lying to them about my daughter at least twice. Rumors have it that Unitedhealth even lied to the state about losing a circuit court appeal that was actually won by one of the medically fragile children.
At the beginning of the year, CMS investigated DHS and Unitedhealth for Medicare fraud in Hawaii. The company was targeting what are called "dual eligibles", adults with disabilities who qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare. Every time the company signs up a new individual for Medicare, they are paid a bonus. A company employee made an appointment to see a severely disabled young man on Kauai, as a representative of Unitedhealth Medicaid. He was actually from Unitedhealth Medicare, and never explained to the family the purpose of the paperwork he had them sign. They only discovered it when prescriptions and services began to be denied, leading to such a severe deterioration in his condition he now requires dialysis three times a week.
It is not just Hawaii. Florida has passed legislation mandating the state's entire Medicaid population enroll into the same publicly traded companies already found embezzling from the state. Texas is also on the verge of mandating everyone on Medicaid join a managed care organization, among which will be the top publicly traded corporations.
Parents of children with disabilities in New Jersey recently received letters requiring them to sign up for Medicaid from one of four companies. Two of them were Unitedhealth (they also do business as Health Net of New Jersey), and a third was Amerigroup, another publicly traded company caught stealing from children.
The companies themselves make it difficult to track membership and revenues. Several companies do business under different names, with Unitedhealth needing thirteen pages in their year end SEC filing to list all the company aliases. I found the same publicly traded companies reporting themselves to CMS under two different categories (commercial or non-commercial), making official Medicaid statistics somewhat unreliable.
In last week's $150 million Medicaid fraud settlement, Tony West, assistant attorney general of the civil division of the U.S. Department of Justice, stated "This type of fraud uses patients as pawns in a game of corporate greed that puts cash over care, running up the bills on the very people our public health care programs are supposed to benefit."
Wellcare's $137 million Medicaid fraud settlement announced in May has not yet warranted a DOJ press release, let alone such passionate rhetoric.
In June, 29 Republican governors signed a letter to Congress asking for increased control over Medicaid budgets, supposedly to help balance local state spending.
An August letter from CMS to State Medicaid Directors contained the White House response. The governors had demanded a way to get out from under Medicaid access and participation ("maintenance of effort") requirements established first under the Recovery Act and then under the Affordable Care Act. The CMS response provided detailed instructions in how states could ignore these inconvenient regulations, removing one of the last obstacles to block-granting Medicaid out to publicly traded corporations.
Should these companies be considered "too big to fail"? How do you weigh shareholder profits against how I felt after waiting ten years for Hannah to give me my first hug?
Please sign our petition, take our poll, send a letter to your newspaper and congressional representatives. This enslaving of our country's most medically vulnerable people to corporate profits needs to end.
Sixty percent of respondents to a Kaiser poll rejected block-granting in favor of leaving the current system unchanged, whereby it is the "federal government guaranteeing coverage and setting minimum standards for benefits and eligibility."
Reagan tried to block-grant Medicaid in 1981 and failed. Clinton vetoed similar legislation that Congress had passed in 1995. Nobody has had to vote on anything to accomplish block-granting of Medicaid in Hawaii.
Even now, Hawaii is accepting bids for new state Medicaid contracts, and Wellcare and Unitedhealth are expected to be bidding. The Governor acknowledged last month knowing of the mounting list of complaints filed with federal regulators (CMS, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) against the State as well as Unitedhealth. He blamed the contract, which he inherited (true), while turning the entire Medicaid appeals process over to the same state bureaucrats already caught lying to federal regulators.
At the beginning of the year, CMS investigated DHS and Unitedhealth for Medicare fraud in Hawaii. The company was targeting what are called "dual eligibles", adults with disabilities who qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare. Every time the company signs up a new individual for Medicare, they are paid a bonus. A company employee made an appointment to see a severely disabled young man on Kauai, as a representative of Unitedhealth Medicaid. He was actually from Unitedhealth Medicare, and never explained to the family the purpose of the paperwork he had them sign. They only discovered it when prescriptions and services began to be denied, leading to such a severe deterioration in his condition he now requires dialysis three times a week.
It is not just Hawaii. Florida has passed legislation mandating the state's entire Medicaid population enroll into the same publicly traded companies already found embezzling from the state. Texas is also on the verge of mandating everyone on Medicaid join a managed care organization, among which will be the top publicly traded corporations.
Parents of children with disabilities in New Jersey recently received letters requiring them to sign up for Medicaid from one of four companies. Two of them were Unitedhealth (they also do business as Health Net of New Jersey), and a third was Amerigroup, another publicly traded company caught stealing from children.
The companies themselves make it difficult to track membership and revenues. Several companies do business under different names, with Unitedhealth needing thirteen pages in their year end SEC filing to list all the company aliases. I found the same publicly traded companies reporting themselves to CMS under two different categories (commercial or non-commercial), making official Medicaid statistics somewhat unreliable.
In last week's $150 million Medicaid fraud settlement, Tony West, assistant attorney general of the civil division of the U.S. Department of Justice, stated "This type of fraud uses patients as pawns in a game of corporate greed that puts cash over care, running up the bills on the very people our public health care programs are supposed to benefit."
Wellcare's $137 million Medicaid fraud settlement announced in May has not yet warranted a DOJ press release, let alone such passionate rhetoric.
In June, 29 Republican governors signed a letter to Congress asking for increased control over Medicaid budgets, supposedly to help balance local state spending.
An August letter from CMS to State Medicaid Directors contained the White House response. The governors had demanded a way to get out from under Medicaid access and participation ("maintenance of effort") requirements established first under the Recovery Act and then under the Affordable Care Act. The CMS response provided detailed instructions in how states could ignore these inconvenient regulations, removing one of the last obstacles to block-granting Medicaid out to publicly traded corporations.
Should these companies be considered "too big to fail"? How do you weigh shareholder profits against how I felt after waiting ten years for Hannah to give me my first hug?
Please sign our petition, take our poll, send a letter to your newspaper and congressional representatives. This enslaving of our country's most medically vulnerable people to corporate profits needs to end.
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