Another One of Landrieu’s Obamacare Promises Could Come Back to Haunt Her

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Andrew Johnson:

Mary Landrieu’s role as chair of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship committee may put her in an increasingly difficult situation as she campaigns for reelection. With small businesses’ health insurance prices expected to jump in the months leading up to the election thanks to Obamacare, Landrieu will find herself at odds with previous statements made while sitting on a committee that could be called upon to address the issue.

Yesterday, Politico described the incoming wave of cost hikes as “another political time bomb lurking that could explode” just a month before the November midterms. Many small-business will see their premiums increase at the end of 2014 under Obamacare, especially businesses with younger employees. Many employers were able to avoid compliance with some of the new regulations in 2013 by renewing their insurance policies earlier than usual, but they will be unable to renew those plans in October. One insurance broker told Politico that he expected 75 percent of his clients to see premiums increase; last month, another broker told Fox News that most small businesses are seeing premiums increase by at least 50 percent.

Landrieu, who has headed the committee since the beginning of the Obama presidency in January 2009, could be asked respond as upcoming effects of the law unfold, and she may very well have to explain her previous comments about its impact. In fact, she voiced support for health-care reform on the basis that health-care costs would rise for small businesses without the law. “From my visits with doctors and nurses, to seniors on Medicare, to recent college graduates struggling to afford coverage, to dozens and dozens of small business owners who are scared to death that they are not going to be able to continue in their business because of the rising cost of health care, it has become clear to me that the time for reform is now,” she said in 2009.

She also dismissed critics of the law who warned of it causing higher premiums, saying they were telling “a pathetic lie meant to derail the bill.”

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Expanded Medicaid’s fine print holds surprise: ‘payback’ from estate after death

As thousands of state residents enroll in Washington’s expanded Medicaid program, many will be surprised at fine print: After you’re dead, your estate can be billed for ordinary health-care expenses. State officials are scrambling to change the rule.

More things hidden in the ACA?

As fine print is wont to do, it had buried itself in a long form — Balhorn’s application for free health insurance through the expanded state Medicaid program. As the paperwork lay on the dining-room table in Port Townsend, Prins began reading.

She was shocked: If you’re 55 or over, Medicaid can come back after you’re dead and bill your estate for ordinary health-care expenses.

The way Prins saw it, that meant health insurance via Medicaid is hardly “free” for Washington residents 55 or older. It’s a loan, one whose payback requirements aren’t well advertised. And it penalizes people who, despite having a low income, have managed to keep a home or some savings they hope to pass to heirs…

…Now many more low-income residents will qualify for Medicaid, called Apple Health in Washington state.

But if they qualify for Medicaid, they’re not eligible for tax credits to subsidize a private health plan under the ACA, which requires all adults to have health insurance by March 31…

…Why was this provision only for people age 55 and older? Why should those insured by Medicaid have to pay back health expenses from their estates when people with just a bit more income who get federal subsidies don’t?

… even those trained to help people sign up for insurance under the ACA weren’t aware of this provision, nor were some government officials.

Around the country, the issue has sizzled away in blogs and commentaries from both right and left. The National Women’s Law Center noted the ACA and its regulations prohibit age discrimination in programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the politically conservative Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, writing in the The Washington Times, called the recovery provision “a cash cow for states to milk the poor and the middle class.”

“People will think this is wonderful, this is free insurance,” Orient said in an interview. “They don’t realize it’s really a loan, and is secured by any property they have.”

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