Reality In California: Obamacare Sucks!

Today in Washington, D.C. - Feb. 9, 2015:
The Senate will reconvene on at 3 PM today. At 5 PM, the Senate will take up the nomination of Michael P. Botticelli to be Director of National Drug Control Policy. At 5:30, the Senate will vote on confirmation of the Botticelli nomination.

The House reconvened at 1 PM to receive messages and admin item and then recessed 1:05 PM until Feb 10 at Noon.

In the News, California is among the states where Democrat officials were the most enthusiastic about taking part in and implementing Obamacare, but it continues to be one of the states where the problems inherent in this unpopular law are most apparent.

According to a report in the Contra Costa Times, “Julie Moreno felt lucky to be among more than 2.7 million previously uninsured Californians to be added to Medi-Cal, the state's health care program for the poor. Until she needed cataract surgery.

“For three months after her November 2013 diagnosis, the 49-year-old Mountain View resident said, she tried to get an appointment, but each time she called, no slots were available. Desperate and worried, she finally borrowed $14,000 from her boyfriend's mother to have the procedure done elsewhere last February.

“One year into the explosive, health law-induced growth of Medi-Cal, it appears one of the most alarming predictions of critics is coming true: The supply of doctors hasn't kept up with demand. One recent study suggests the number of primary care doctors in California per Medi-Cal patient is woefully below federal guidelines.”

The story elaborates, “By mid-2016, more than 12.2 million people -- nearly a third of all Californians -- will be on Medi-Cal, state health officials say. Those officials continue to insist that the current delays to see a doctor and crowded emergency rooms are all part of to-be-expected growing pains. But many experts say the problems are so widespread they shouldn't be ignored.

‘California did a good job of getting people signed up, but they basically stuck their heads in the sand and assumed that California physicians would just jump right on board and want to take more Medi-Cal patients,’ said Dr. Del Morris, president of the California Academy of Family Physicians, which represents many of the first-line doctors who treat Medi-Cal patients. ‘It's unacceptable to say, “We are not ready for you yet, you'll just have to suffer with your disease.”’

“Morris and other experts say the situation is about to get worse, in part because of Medi-Cal's health care reimbursement rates.

“For years, the rates paid by Medi-Cal -- called Medicaid in the rest of the country -- have been among the nation's lowest. A provision of Obamacare hiked the rates for primary care doctors to the substantially higher Medicare rates for two years, but those increases ended on Dec. 31. A second blow came last month when the state cut the Medi-Cal reimbursement rate by another 10 percent, a reduction approved by California lawmakers in 2011 but delayed in a court battle that doctors ultimately lost.”

And the difficulty patients have in finding doctors who take Medi-Cal [Medicaid] is having ripple effects throughout California’s health care system, as the Contra Costa Times explains. “Even before the latest cuts, Medi-Cal doctors -- particularly specialists -- in California's rural areas often seemed nearly impossible to find. And the shortage of Medi-Cal physicians appears to be causing spikes in the number of Medi-Cal patients being treated in hospital emergency rooms around the state. Data from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development show that in the first three quarters of 2014, ‘treat and release’ visits to emergency rooms by Medi-Cal patients jumped 30 percent from the same period the year before.

“At least once a week at the MayView Community Health Center in Mountain View, the clinic is so swamped that it is forced to send Medi-Cal patients to hospital emergency rooms ‘because they cannot go anywhere else,’ clinic operations director Harsha Mehta said. . . . ‘We had a shortage of primary care doctors before this flood (of Medi-Cal enrollees) came about,’ said Dr. Steven Harrison, a veteran primary care doctor who directs a residency program for such physicians at Natividad Medical Center in Salinas. ‘Now we have a dire shortage.’”

And while California patients struggle to get appointments and find doctors who accept the low Medi-Cal reimbursement rates, the costs to the state keep growing, despite the assurances of Obamacare proponents that it would “bend the cost curve down.”

The Contra Costa Times notes, “While acknowledging that California has ‘very low’ Medi-Cal reimbursement rates, Gov. Jerry Brown last year told this newspaper that the state's Medi-Cal costs had increased by $2.5 billion in an 18-month period -- to more than $30 billion in the current fiscal year. ‘Will the doctors be there?’ Brown asked. ‘We are watching that very carefully. But it's hard to come up with more providers, I have to tell you that.’”

In an editorial expressing frustration with Obamacare, he Press-Enterprise of Riverside, CA, points out Covered California, the Golden State’s Obamacare exchange, “is already projecting a $78 million deficit for fiscal year 2015-2016, now that $1 billion in federal funding has been exhausted.”

A month ago, the Los Angeles Times reported that “state costs [for Medi-Cal] have also been growing, and faster than expected.” And the AP noted last fall, “California's exchange said it was setting aside $184 million in federal money to fight off projected budget shortfalls through 2016.”

Meanwhile, The Press-Enterprise laments, “It is bad enough that taxpayers are forced to pay for the expensive government health care exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act – not to mention those who must pay fines for not being insured – but taxpayers in California are hit doubly hard by the hefty advertising budget used to promote the convoluted system. The state’s health care exchange, Covered California, announced in September that it was dedicating $94 million to promote itself during the open enrollment period, which ends Feb. 15.”

The Obama administration is fond of citing enrollment numbers for Medicaid expansions, but with  patients having difficulty accessing care and state budgets that are beginning to groan under the strain, once again it’s clear that Obamacare cannot live up to the lofty promises made by Democrats about it.

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