Don’t get so excited Jon, Rick Scott is covering his ass and probably profiting off this. First of all, he’s basically assured of getting his ass handed to him by Charlie Crist, when he’s up for reelection. So he’s handing us peons a few bones to help his reelection chances.

Secondly, the concession he got from the feds in regards to medicaid expansion have to do with privatizing it. In other words, he’s planning on putting the 28% in administrative costs associated with private insurance in his own pocket.

Conservatives, like Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Avik Roy, have shifting away from trying to repeal the ACA to promoting reforms to make it something they can live with.

And their concern for the health care that people need to actually live? About as evident as Marie Antoinette’s concern for starving peasants. Empathy is not only not conservatives strong point, for them it doesn’t exist. No help for the “undeserving”. Which of course is anyone that needs it. Because if you ever need it you’re one of those “takers” that refuses to take responsibility for their own lives.

Thanks for an excellent summary of the politics, JW.

But as to the details of what Scott has agreed to, according to the link you supply it’s only for the 3 years that the federal government picks up the tab, and as tuezday notes @ 1, those federal dollars will be privatized. Privatization is also what Holtz-Eakin and Roy are talking about, and if that trend catches on, any hope one might have had that Obamacare could be a stepping stone on the way to single-payer will be dashed.

Obamacare is corporate Fascism in pure form.

You have to pay a tax to a private entity now for the right to draw breath in the United States. That is nothing but slavery. Congratulations Democrats! You reinvented indentured servitude and removed any vestige of voluntary contractual agency from the citizen. A New Model Slavery for a New Century! Henceforth, all will be born to slave and to die for the finance insurance complex.

Republicans will be successful in making it more fascist, no doubt. Democrats adopted a REPUBLICAN corporate-fascist plan and passed it. When the Republicans come with industry-sponsored “tweaks” to the program, as you know they always will, Democrats will have to meet them halfway, as you know they always do.

Actually, the way the “Democratic” Party is now proudly the party of Reagan, Republicans will probably have to fight Democrats for place in the line to make the bad even worse.

Yes,no big surprise that the “concession” was to give more money and power to private insureres.

So stuff like this can happen:
October 2012

“Hundreds of Medicaid beneficiaries in St. Johns County [FL] are suddenly without access to medical coverage because the state Agency for Health Care Administration — which oversees Medicaid — failed to inform patients it was changing their HMOs.”

Private insurers have been looking forward to the Medicaid expansion since the ACA was passed (they wrote the bill after all) and pressuring states to participate.

Can we call Rick Scott a socialist now?

Privatize medicaid? Wasn’t that one of the good things about it? We could keep it out of the hands of the crooks. And these are the guys who are worried about cost. Private insurers have to earn profits and they pay income taxes and executive salaries and lobbyists and fancy seminars and cronies. what am I missing here?

Nobody can accuse the GOP of being on the cutting edge of progress.

It will likely be heavily altered and reformed…

What leads you to think so? I see nothing in recent legislative history that supports that opinion. Certainly nothing in Obama’s history going back to the Illinois senate that supports that opinion. Obama has always been status quo with a little decorative stitching around the edges. I was surprised at how regressive he became as president because before his ascension to the presidency, he really never showed a propensity to move decisively in any direction.

I do think this is a huge story that will be misunderstood by most of the press. But I don’t get the whole “privatization” thing. Since when does HHS or even preznit have power to allow the single-payer Medicaid structure to be essentially gutted by “privatization”? Is HHS turning Florida Medicaid into just one more Medigap or “Medicaid Advantage” plan? Who owns the stock in the corporate entity that will get that premium revenue?

“what am I missing here?”

My Medicaid eligible disabled adult daughter was briefly in a Medicaid HMO in Texas. There were very few doctors that would accept the Medicaid HMO’s. Far more are willing to accept “traditional Medicaid” but still no where near enough.

I am sure the HMO insurer’s get paid something for each enrollee regardless of whether or not the enrollee ever receives services. This is the insurance motherlode; receive the administrative payment without ever actually providing any services. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Relying on insurance companies has been the major flaw in Obamacare from the start. Insurance that you can’t use is not much better than no insurance at all.

It does,however, actually provide “provider protection insurance” for those previously uncompensated emergency room visits.

“…single-payer Medicaid structure to be essentially gutted by “privatization”? “

They are called “Medicaid Waiver Programs” and are ubiquitous.

Note that not all are bad. Some are designed to keep the disabled out of institutional care and in their homes. We are eligible for a home health aid for 40 – 60 hours per week at substantially lower cost than the per dium institutional cost.

As Coach Bill said, Medicaid delivery through privatized HMO’s isn’t new with the ACA, though the insurance companies are expecting it to expand.

Here’ a new feature enabled by the ACA:

“The managed-care industry is gearing up for the expansion. Three large insurers have purchased companies that insure Medicaid beneficiaries. For years, states have been moving Medicaid patients into managed-care plans, with mixed results. But this pilot represents a new market: It is the first large program that would pool Medicare and Medicaid benefits in a single, state-administered plan.”

I learn something everyday. I thought the new Medicaid was single payer. If it was,it won’t be for long. . Amendment on the way to privatize the whole thing. Count on it.

They don’t seem to need an “amendment,” they’re just doing it. They don’t seem to need an “amendment” to raise rates either.

“Millions of low-income people could be required to pay more for health care under a proposed federal policy that would give states more freedom to impose co-payments and other charges on Medicaid patients.

Hoping to persuade states to expand Medicaid, the Obama administration said state Medicaid officials could charge higher co-payments and premiums for doctors’ services, prescription drugs and certain types of hospital care, including the “nonemergency use” of emergency rooms. State officials have long asked for more leeway to impose such charges.”

That’s depressing.

ObamaCare is a cynical deceit.

This ‘Healthcare Bill’ is a joke, and will end up significantly denying people medical care and treatment, leading to preventable deaths.

The Healthcare Bill was created at the behest of the Insurance and Hospital Corporations with the intent of increasing already obscene profits, instead of actually providing healthcare. Actual competent medical care would threaten the Corporate bottom line, with medicine and drugs for proper treatment cutting into Corporate profits. Under Corporate law, this threat to the bottom line will not be tolerated under any circumstances.

How to participate in the new CSA (Corporate States of America) Healthcare system:

1) Open your wallet.

2) Show approved mandatory Insurance Corporation policy coverage card.
.1)Fail to provide mandatory Insurance Corporation policy coverage card.
.1.a)Be denied medical care. Await eventual arrival of IRS investigation team.
.1.b)Prepare to go to prison for failing to have mandatory Insurance Corporation healthcare policy.

3) Demonstrate ability to pay.
.1)Show that you have Government Welfare or Social Security.
.1.a)Be given absolute minimum medical treatment mandated by law.
.1.b) Go home, hope you recover on your own.

4) Receive treatment appropriate to your income and social status.

5) Receive prescription for medication, as provided by Pharmaceutical Corporation.
.1) Pay for prescription.
.2) Be unable to pay for prescription, prolonging recovery or treatment.
.2.a) Suffer possible relapse or continuation of condition, leading to further visits for treatment.

6) Receive bill.
.1)Pay bill.
.2)Attempt to pay bill, but fall behind on rent, mortgage, car payments, credit card payments, utilities payments.
.2.a)Go into bankruptcy. Lose everything you have worked for.

7) Receive notification from Insurance Corporation that, due to your requiring medical treatment, your premiums are being increased.
.1)Pay increased premiums.
.2)Be unable to pay increased premiums.
.2.a)Drop policy.
.2.b)Await arrival of IRS investigation team.
.2.c)Prepare for prison term.

The private health insurance system does not provide full private insurance coverage and full healthcare to most – not far above only 1/3 of roughly 300 million are fully privately insured. Roughly 1/3 have government-financed healthcare and not far below 1/3 are either uninsured or privately underinsured. The fully privately covered population fraction is becoming ever-smaller because the severely regressive financing is doing its part in causing premium and/or deductible/copay inflation to be significantly higher than general inflation to maintain whatever full coverage exists.

Toward universal what though? Universal slaves to the for profit health insurance corporatoins? Because nothing in this bill gets us closer to universal health care since it doesn’t provide care, it provides health insurance. Lots of people with insurance who won’t be able to afford care.

In case anyone is still following the thread, this post’s soft-pedaling the issue of privatization of the incoming federal dollars as the price of Scott’s agreement is a harbinger. I just watched the PBS News Hour’s segment on Scott’s decision, and it did not even mention that there was a string attached. (WaPo’s news story this morning confined the concession to a single paragraph near the end of the article.)

Some FDLer with knowledge of the issue should write a more comprehensive post, including just what the Obama administration agreed to with the other Republican governors who have accepted the program.

Obama is a Corporatist and his health insurance reform was designed to protect the profits of Big Insurers?

Do you have a link for the WaPo article you reference? Anyone? T/U.

Scott made a large portion of his fortune stealing from Medicare/Medicaid. He wasn’t going to allow an expansion without getting his cut.