Tag Archives: Medicaid

Texas Loses Entire Women’s Health Program Over Planned Parenthood Law

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Texas Loses Entire Women’s Health Program Over Planned Parenthood Law.

Rick Perry Womens Health

The Department of Health and Human Services announced on Thursday that it will cut off all Medicaid funding for family planning to the state of Texas, following Gov. Rick Perry‘s (R) decision to implement a new law that excludes Planned Parenthood from the state’s Medicaid Women’s Health Program.

Cindy Mann, director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations (CMSO), wrote Texas health officials a letter on Thursday explaining that the state broke federal Medicaid rules by discriminating against qualified family planning providers and thus would be losing the entire program, which provides cancer screenings, contraceptives and basic health care to 130,000 low-income women each year.

“We very much regret the state’s decision to implement this rule, which will prevent women enrolled in the program from receiving services from the trusted health care providers they have chosen and relied upon for their care,” she wrote. “In light of Texas’ actions, CMS is not in a position to extend or renew the current [Medicaid contract].”

The federal government pays for nearly 90 percent of Texas’ $40 million Women’s Health Program, and nearly half of the program’s providers in Texas are Planned Parenthood clinics. But the new law that went into effect earlier this month disqualified Planned Parenthood from participating in the program because some of its clinics provide abortions, even though no state or federal money can be used to pay for those abortions.

According to Medicaid law, Mann said, a state cannot restrict women’s ability to choose a provider simply because that provider offers separate services — in this case, abortion — that aren’t even paid for by the Medicaid program.

Perry wrote a letter to President Obama earlier this month accusing his administration of “mandating which health providers the state of Texas must use” in order to “continue to support abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.” He vowed to continue the Women’s Health Program in Texas without Planned Parenthood and without federal money, although he has yet to outline how his state will come up with money.

But an HHS spokesperson told reporters on Thursday that this was not Obama’s decision and that the administration’s hands are tied on the issue. “Medicaid law is very clear; a state may not restrict patients’ choice of providers of services like mammograms and other cancer screenings, if those providers are qualified to deliver care covered by Medicaid. Patients, not state government officials, should be able to choose the doctors and other health care providers that are best for them and their families. In 2005, Texas requested this same authority to restrict patients’ choices, and the Bush Administration did not grant it to them either.”

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I’m gettin’ aggravated today…

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First.  The internet keeps bogging down on me.  I am still at work.  (If I come in during the week I just stay until my weekend begins.  I’m lazy that way.)

Second.  I am VERY ticked off that very few women were allowed to participate in the Congressional Hearing on Birth Control, only men were allowed invited.  (Isn’t that the same tho, if they were the only ones invited, considering we have Female REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS??  See here: Birth control hearing on Capitol Hill had mostly male panel of witnesses. What are MEN doing testifying about birth control? They don’t even take it!!!! ARGHHHH.

Third. You can get a Pos-T-Vac, this ties in with the second, a prosthetic, and I am happily using that word, if the VA can call my glasses a “prosthetic” I sure as hell can call the Pos-T-Vac a prosthetic. Oh, got distracted here. The Pos-T-Vac can be paid for by Medicaid, visit here:

FOURTH: OMG, they REMOVED THE PAGE!!!!!  This is the link I sent my two whole Congressman, and my Representative JUST THIS FLIPPING MORNING WHEN I WANTED TO KNOW WHY IT IS COVERED VIA MEDICAID: Pos-T-Vac and Medicaid. Dunno why I am still posting it here, as it is gone. I HOPE THEY ARE RUNNING.

I wrote an article about it a while back. I know this is Four Blue Hills Friday Fun, and I don’t necessarily get in to politics here, while I will post about them. This, THIS, though just really makes my blood boil. I removed the article I wrote before because I was very undignified, angry, and if I remember right, I did get a bit crude, references to government being pimps now, and so on. :( I take it ALLLL BACK!

Pos-T-Vac, the symptom of another condition. (Such as a heart problem, ALCOHOL USE, DRUG USE, oh yeah, DRUG USAGE). Using this does NOT prevent the possibility of a disease, such as the birth control pill can. Things like endometrial and ovarian cancer, along with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. See here: Other reasons to take the Pill

Sometimes tho, my ire is set on FIRE and raging.

HOW DARE ANYONE PUT THE HEALTH OF ANOTHER ABOVE THEIR OWN.

HOW DARE ANYONE PUT THE HEALTH OF ANOTHER ON THE BACK-BURNER.

HOW DARE ANY MAN SPEAK FOR ME! (OR ANY OTHER WOMAN)

It’s ok if you wanna HAVE sex.

Not for the possible after effects, like PREGNANCY.

Remember that all you guys, when your girlfriend informs you that she is pregnant, all because she could not afford birth control, and you didn’t buy it for her either.

I’m ranting.

Breathe…..

I wanna start a petition to end the payment, via Medicaid, for the Pos-T-Vac. It is paid for by the government.

Medicaid: NY auditors stumble on $60 million in savings – CSMonitor.com

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Medicaid: NY auditors stumble on $60 million in savings – CSMonitor.com.

ALBANY, N.Y.

On a hunch, state auditors Mike Ernst and Joe Gagnon decided to go beyond their usual work of searching out intricate fraud schemes and double check some of the most basic data in the massiveMedicaid bureaucracy: The patient’s address.

They found a nearly $60 million mistake.

The auditors in the Medicaid Inspector General‘s Office discovered that managed care companies often inaccurately billed the government health program based on where patients got care, not where they lived.

That meant some health care providers were getting paid more than the program allowed. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the error was costing New York taxpayers $8 million per month.

SEE ALSO: Four scenarios for health-care law’s future

“They found and implemented a way to save taxpayers more than $8 million in Medicaid costs every month without compromising care,” Cuomo said. “They showed that ideas for giving New Yorkers the government they deserve can come from any level, especially when staff are encouraged to think aggressively and out of the box.”

Medicaid’s payments to health care providers vary considerably from county to county, mostly to account for differences in the cost of living between places like Manhattan, and rural upstate towns. Many health care providers are in counties with higher reimbursement rates, but they are still supposed to be paid based on where the patient lives.

State officials chalk it up as a mistake, or “locator code error,” not fraud. But the fix has already saved $41.3 million in five months — half of it state dollars. The state has recovered another $16 million.

The fix required the Health Department to rewrite software.

SEE ALSO: Four scenarios for health-care law’s future