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http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/poll-obamacare-popularity-117182.html

Poll: Obamacare pokes its head above the water line
By Adam B. Lerner

The American public is still almost evenly divided in its views on Obamacare, a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows.

But for the first time since 2012, the president’s signature health care law has its head above water, with 43 percent viewing it favorably and 42 percent unfavorably. The split is still within the margin of error but a vast improvement for the law’s supporters since July of last year, when those opposed outweighed those in favor by 16 percentage points.

Views on the law are still divided by party. Seventy percent of Democrats expressed positive views, compared with 16 percent negative, while 75 percent of Republicans said they view the law negatively, compared with just 16 percent positively.

The poll also showcased the public’s overwhelming ignorance of the law’s actual effects. Only 8 percent of respondents were able to correctly answer that the Affordable Care Act has thus far cost less than the Congressional Budget Office originally projected, while 50 percent said they think the law has been more expensive.
INACCURATE! The "originally" projected costs totaled $970 billion for the initial decade. While the costs came in lower than the FINAL projected costs, that is because they did not meet the FINAL projected enrollment. The states not using the Medicaid expansion makes up for most of that cost reduction.

A majority of respondents — 56 percent — answered that the law has not directly affected them. Nineteen percent said the law has helped them or their families personally, while 22 percent answered that it had hurt them. Again, answers to this question showed a significant partisan split.
It increased the costs for every person who has insurance, with exception for those previously covered now getting subsidies for coverage.

The survey queried 1,506 Americans of voting age via landlines and cellphones from April 8-14. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the survey as a whole, but hovering around 5 or 6 percentage points for questions posed to Democrats, Republicans and independents, as they are smaller subsamples of the whole.

kbp

Apr 22 2015, 09:22 AM

What they are proposing to do to Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Kansas and probably all states not participating in the Medicaid Expansion is not clear to me. I think HHS/CMS is using the Disproportionate Share Hospital funds as the tool SCOTUS left somewhat open to HHS having authority to discontinue. But the Obamacare law on it was set up to reduce that program to offset costs the states expanding Medicaid would spend.

What a mess!

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http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/04/22/us/politics/ap-us-irs-no-answer.html

Hello? 8M Phone Calls Unanswered as IRS Cut Taxpayer Service

The IRS' overloaded phone system hung up on more than 8 million taxpayers this filing season as the agency cut millions of dollars from taxpayer services to help pay to enforce President Barack Obama's health law.

For those who weren't disconnected, only 40 percent actually got through to a person. And many of those people had to wait on hold for more than 30 minutes, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Wednesday.

The number of disconnected callers spiked just as taxpayers were being hit with new requirements under the health law. Last year, the phone system dropped 360,000 calls, Koskinen said.

For the first time, taxpayers had to report whether they had health insurance last year on their tax returns. Those who received government subsidies had to respond whether they received the correct amount. People without insurance faced fines, collected by the IRS, if they did not qualify for an exemption.

A new staff report by Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee criticized the agency's spending priorities. The report said the IRS diverted $134 million in user fees that had been spent on customer service last year to other areas this year.

"It looks to me like you're purposely harming taxpayers," Rep. Kristi Noem of South Dakota told Koskinen at a hearing Wednesday.

Koskinen said the user fees were spent on computer upgrades to implement the health law as well as a new law requiring foreign banks to report information about U.S. account holders.

He said budget cuts approved by Congress left him no choice. The agency's budget has been cut by $1.2 billion since 2010. It now stands at $10.9 billion.

"Customer service, both on the phone and in person has been far worse than anyone would want," Koskinen told the Ways and Means oversight subcommittee. "It's simply a matter of not having enough people to answer the phones and provide service at our walk-in sites as a result of cuts to our budget."

Republicans in Congress adamantly oppose Obama's health law, so some have been working to starve the IRS of funds just as its role in implementing the law ramps up.

It won't work, Koskinen said. The IRS is required by law to help implement the health program and the foreign reporting law, leaving the agency with few other places to cut. He said the agency requested a total of $600 million over the past two years for computer upgrades to deal with the new laws.

"In both years the Congress gave us zero dollars so we had no choice but to look elsewhere," Koskinen said. "We funded the statute that we are required to implement."

The IRS has spent more than $1.2 billion implementing the health law. This year, the agency is scheduled to spend an additional $533 million, said the Ways and Means report.

Each year, millions of Americans call the IRS with questions about filling out their tax returns. Last year, 39.9 million people called. [...]

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http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/04/22/gop-report-irs-budget-move-plagued-tax-filing-season/

GOP Report: IRS Budget Move Plagued Tax-Filing Season

...[Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.)] Mr. Roskam also signaled that the Ways and Means Committee is probing the way the IRS has gone about auditing taxpayers in recent years. The probe appears to be an offshoot of the long-running probe into how the IRS handled applications for tax-exempt status by tea-party-type groups starting in 2010.

A few instances of questionable audits have come to light since then, including an IRS decision to try to impose a gift tax on contributions to a conservative nonprofit group, Freedom’s Watch. That effort was quickly dropped after a congressional outcry in 2011.

The IRS has disclosed to the committee that about 25% of its audits have been based on referrals, including outside complaints. Mr. Roskam said that rate seemed high and suggested agency officials might have too much discretion in choosing taxpayers for audits. He asked the IRS to re-examine the issue.

Mr. Koskinen said the agency has reviewed its audit processes and found no problems

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http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-04-23/republican-governors-may-pay-price-for-refusing-to-expand-medicaid-under-obamacare

Republican Governors May Pay Price for Refusing to Expand Medicaid Under Obamacare

The White House seems to see an opportunity to exact a political price from Rick Scott, Greg Abbott, and other Republicans who continue to resist.

In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government couldn’t force states to expand eligibility for their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act. Since then, the Obama administration has looked for ways to persuade Republicans who have steadfastly opposed Obamacare to participate in this key component of the act. The biggest incentive is the law’s promise of federal funds to cover the whole cost of newly qualified Medicaid patients for three years, until 2016, and at least 90 percent of the costs thereafter. Nevertheless, 20 states have refused to ease access to their Medicaid rolls. A few have been able to eat their cake and have it, too: Because of special arrangements that predate Obamacare, four states that haven’t expanded Medicaid have been getting billions each year in extra funding to pay for the care of people who are uninsured.

That’s about to change. On April 14, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which manages federal funding to the states for health programs, alerted Florida officials that CMS plans to let the $1.3 billion the state gets annually to help hospitals cover the cost of treating uninsured patients lapse at the end of June. “Uncompensated care pool funding should not pay for costs that would be covered in a Medicaid expansion,” CMS wrote in its letter, which it released to reporters.

Rick Scott, Florida’s Republican governor, responded two days later with a threat to sue the Obama administration. “It is appalling that President Obama would cut off federal health-care dollars to Florida in an effort to force our state further into Obamacare,” Scott said in a public statement. On Fox News, Scott was more animated: “This is The Sopranos. They’re using bullying tactics to attack our state.” Scott’s office declined to comment further.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott quickly joined forces with Scott. Texas’ special Medicaid funding, which accounts for about half of the state’s $3.4 billion pool to repay hospitals for treating uninsured patients, expires in September 2016. In an April 20 statement, Abbott, a former attorney general who took office in January, vowed to support Florida’s suit. (As of April 22, no lawsuit had been filed.) “The Supreme Court made it very clear that the Constitution does not allow the federal government to use these coercive tactics against the States,” Abbott said.

Florida and Texas are among nine states with high numbers of uninsured residents that struck deals with CMS for extra federal money to help hospitals, which are legally bound to provide care whether or not patients can pay. The arrangements, known as uncompensated care pools, are subject to periodic renewal and were also granted to Arizona, California, Hawaii, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Tennessee. Of those, only Kansas and Tennessee have joined Florida and Texas in continuing to resist Medicaid expansion.

Florida is the first to come up for review since the Affordable Care Act went into force. Scott, a Tea Party conservative, opposed expanding Medicaid when he took office in 2011, then reversed himself in 2013, saying in a news conference that with Washington picking up the tab, “I cannot, in good conscience, deny Floridians the needed access to health care.” With his state legislature dominated by conservative Republicans, he wavered.

After learning CMS wasn’t going to renew Florida’s funds for uncompensated care unless the state increases access to Medicaid, the governor reversed course again, saying the threat proved the Obama administration couldn’t be trusted to fulfill its promise to cover most of the cost of a Medicaid expansion, either. “Why would we put state taxpayers on the hook for something when we can’t trust the federal government to fulfill a program they already started?” he said to reporters.

As Obama looks to cement his health-care accomplishments before the 2016 election, the White House seems to see an opportunity to exact a political price from Scott, Abbott, and other Republicans who continue to resist expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. “It’s difficult to explain why somebody would think that their political situation and their political interest is somehow more important than the livelihood and health of 800,000 people that they were elected to lead,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said during an April 17 press briefing.

Texas and Florida together have 1.6 million people who could qualify for Medicaid under the wider eligibility criteria, according to estimates from the Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s more than 40 percent of the people who would benefit from Medicaid expansion in the 20 states that have opted out. “What’s going on here in Florida is probably just the first indication of where CMS is going with all of this for all states that have uncompensated care pools,” says Bruce Rueben, president of the Florida Hospital Association, which backs Medicaid expansion.

In Tennessee, conservative lawmakers who control the legislature killed Republican Governor Bill Haslam’s request to expand Medicaid earlier this year. Kansas Republican Governor Sam Brownback, who has long opposed Obamacare, recently signaled that he might be willing to change his position in the face of a $400 million budget gap. CMS won’t say whether states that decide to expand Medicaid will get to keep their low-income pools. “Discussions with each state will also take into account state-specific circumstances,” says CMS spokesman Aaron Albright.

States resisting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion shouldn’t expect the federal government to extend special funds that are “above and beyond the normal workings of Medicaid,” says Cindy Mann, a former top Medicaid official in the Obama administration who’s now a partner at law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. “These were all started before the Affordable Care Act, and it’s not surprising CMS is looking to focus its funding on these pools for care that wouldn’t be otherwise covered by Medicaid.”

Some governors have found conservative-friendly compromises to take federal Medicaid money and use it to expand private coverage. That approach gave Indiana Governor Mike Pence, a Republican, and former Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe, a Democrat, political cover in states where “Obamacare” is a dirty word. Florida’s Senate backs such a proposal. If Scott can’t find a political compromise to get there, he may be the first Republican governor to learn just how costly disagreeing with the Obama administration over health care can be.

• 
  
• “Uncompensated care pool funding should not pay for costs that would be covered in a Medicaid expansion,”
  CMS wrote in its letter
  
  
• “It’s difficult to explain why somebody would think that their political situation and their political interest is somehow more important than the livelihood and health of 800,000 people"
  Josh Earnest

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http://news.yahoo.com/obama-uses-hospital-funds-push-medicaid-expansion-175735743.html

Obama uses hospital funds to push Medicaid expansion

The Obama administration is dialing up the pressure on a handful of states that have resisted expanding Medicaid coverage for their low-income residents under the federal health care overhaul.

The leverage comes from a little-known federal fund that helps states and hospitals recoup some of the cost of caring for uninsured patients. The administration says states can just expand Medicaid, as the health care law provides, and then they wouldn't need as much extra help with costs for the uninsured.

Two top targets so far are Florida and Texas, with large numbers of uninsured residents. Both have received several billion dollars in recent years from Washington under the so-called low income pool, also known as LIP.

Florida's hospital funding is the first of the nine states — which include Tennessee, California, Massachusetts, Arizona, Hawaii, Kansas and New Mexico — to expire on June 30. But the hospital funds are an optional program, not entitlement programs like Medicaid, meaning the federal government has broad discretion whether to grant them, experts say.

[...]

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-reach-budget-deal-take-aim-at-obamacare/2015/04/29/cc19eacc-ee79-11e4-a55f-38924fca94f9_story.html

Republicans reach budget deal, take aim at Obamacare

Republican negotiators in the House and Senate announced a deal on a joint budget Wednesday that would cut domestic spending, increase defense spending and open a new door in the quest to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The deal, which could be approved by the House and the Senate as early as this week, looks like the latest success in a recent flurry of deal­making in Congress. Unlike the bipartisan deals in recent weeks, this budget is a Republican-only agreement for what they would like to accomplish, not a binding prescription for how Congress should allocate money.

Lawmakers must now pass appropriations legislation to actually fund the government — a process that will require tough compromise if Republicans hope to advance spending bills that President Obama is willing to sign.

“We hope to complete the budget conference report in the House and the Senate, and get going on the appropriations process,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) “I’m sure the Democrats will complain that we’re not spending enough on the domestic side, but all of that can be sorted out in the appropriations process.”

The Republican budget ignores Obama’s threat to veto any funding bills that lock in spending cuts for domestic programs. Instead negotiators opted for deep domestic cuts, nearly $40 billion in additional defense spending from off-book funds and a new attack on the president’s signature health-care bill.

[...]

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U.S. Emergency-Room Visits Keep Climbing

Emergency-room visits continued to climb in the second year of the Affordable Care Act, contradicting the law’s supporters who had predicted a decline in traffic

LTC8K6

May 4 2015, 02:08 PM

Another Predictable Failure of Liberalism

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/05/another-predictable-failure-of-liberalism.php

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U.S. Emergency-Room Visits Keep Climbing

Emergency-room visits continued to climb in the second year of the Affordable Care Act, contradicting the law’s supporters who had predicted a decline in traffic

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-emergency-room-visits-keep-climbing-1430712061

Baldo

May 4 2015, 02:37 PM

...IMHO people in general just don't do much preventive care and it's a pipe dream to think some would.