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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Tue May 23, 2017, 09:42 AM May 2017

Want to know what Trumpcare would do to the country? Look at the implosion in Iowa.

By Catherine Rampell Opinion writer May 22 at 7:46 PM

Wondering what the country’s health-care system would look like under Trumpcare?
Take a gander at Iowa, where the individual market is on the verge of collapse.

Just one insurer remains in most of the state, and that insurer, Medica, is threatening to exit. Republicans love to point to Iowa’s struggles as evidence of Obamacare’s failures. But in reality, the Hawkeye State has functioned as a petri dish for the GOP’s health plan. The state’s problems provide useful lessons for what could go wrong if Trumpcare becomes law nationwide.

So what, exactly, is the matter with Iowa?

The state’s individual market faces several major problems. The first is that, to a large extent, it did not actually implement Obamacare.

Nationwide, nearly all people who bought their insurance on the individual market are enrolled in plans that meet certain Obamacare requirements. For example, these govern what health benefits must be covered, how much patients can be forced to spend out of pocket, and whether or how much insurers can charge based on age and preexisting conditions. This is not true in Iowa. There, most individual market enrollees are in plans that have been exempted from these federal requirements.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-to-know-what-trumpcare-would-do-to-the-country-look-at-the-implosion-in-iowa/2017/05/22/958d6b56-3f2a-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html

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Want to know what Trumpcare would do to the country? Look at the implosion in Iowa. (Original Post) DonViejo May 2017 OP
No surprise that Trump appointed Seema Verma, who orchestrated Tanuki May 2017 #1
Kick. dalton99a May 2017 #2

Tanuki

(14,893 posts)
1. No surprise that Trump appointed Seema Verma, who orchestrated
Tue May 23, 2017, 10:01 AM
May 2017

this collapse in Iowa, to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in his Dystopia on the Potomac Administration.

http://pnhp.org/blog/2017/01/27/how-seema-verma-botched-up-iowas-medicaid-program/

"David Steen Martin
STAT, January 24, 2017
When President Donald Trump tapped policy consultant Seema Verma to run Medicaid and Medicare in his administration, he called her part of a health care “dream team.”
But the health policy changes she helped design in Iowa have felt more like a nightmare to providers serving poor and disabled residents across the state.
Verma has helped several states revamp Medicaid, including Kentucky and Indiana. Here in Iowa, she worked on an aggressive effort to privatize the program, which provides health care to about 600,000 adults and children.
Complaints poured in when the new program went live on April 1, 2016, shifting all Medicaid recipients at once to managed care.
Nearly a year later, the complaints are still coming: Hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics that provide care to Medicaid patients say they’ve lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in expected reimbursements — and have had to spend untold hours chasing down payments.
The three for-profit managed care organizations running the program aren’t happy either, saying they are hemorrhaging money and accusing the state of vastly underfunding Iowa’s $4.2 billion Medicaid program.
John Bigelow Jr., executive director at the Southwest Iowa Mental Health Center, said the facility was short $313,000 at last count for psychiatric care, outpatient therapy, and other services, in part because the managed care organizations have not reimbursed the center at the same rate the state did.
“We’re doing the same care. We’re just not getting paid for it like we were,” Bigelow said.
When Democrats surveyed 423 Iowa Medicaid providers over the summer, 61 percent said privatization had reduced the quality of services they could provide. Some 90 percent said administrative costs had increased.
“It’s created quite an administrative and financial burden on our hospitals and other providers,” said Scott McIntyre, vice president of communications at the Iowa Hospital Association.
........

President Trump has selected her to head CMS and thus be in charge of the waiver process. Her boss will be Tom Price, as head of HHS, who worships the same inhumane ideology. They have a Congress that will be supportive of their efforts to require that these low-income individuals have more “skin in the game” (Verma’s words).
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