Medicaid News

Latest Update: The big Medicaid news on everyone’s minds is the long and short-term effects of the health care reform process. With a bill in the House and another in the Senate, it looks as if we are in the final stages of an historic health care sea change. I have decided to have gift baskets delivered to all my colleagues who have worked so hard and diligently on the new health care reforms. I did a search for gift baskets and found a great site. I haven’t quite decided between gourmet gift baskets or the wine gift baskets. Perhaps the champagne basket with the flutes would be the most celebratory, but those other gift baskets look quite amazing and would be impressive to receive. I can even add additional personalized items such as a Bettoni pen engraved with the name of the health care bill and the date, if I wish. On the other hand maybe an engraved Lewis & Clark compass with the date on it would be more appropriate, since we really don’t know where all this change will lead to!

While I was working on the gift baskets, my daughter told me about an online site that sells silver earrings and other jewelry, which she had found while searching for some gorgeous sterling silver rings for an art performance piece she creating. She actually needed lots of cool glittery rings for this project. The e commerce site she discovered, called SterlingForever, offered numerous rings appropriate not only as engagement or wedding rings, but also just as reasonably price “bling” rings. Most of their rings are set with various cuts of cubic zirconia. Cubic zirconia is that man made gemstone that looks like diamonds, but is so much more reasonably priced. And apparently cubic zirconia also is available in other colors like yellow, pink, blue, and green, in addition to the clearless type. She thought I would like the site and she was absolutely right on. An added surprise of a sterling silver ring tucked in among the other delicious food items would round out the gift baskets rather nicely. I’m now thinking even considering sending a sterling silver ring to my wife. When she was looking at the sterling silver jewelry website with me, she dropped a few hints!

What does this mean for Medicaid?

• Some of us who are familiar with Medicaid have been wondering (more and more loudly as time goes on) about the constantly-quoted numbers of people who aren’t getting health insurance. After all, wasn’t that the whole point of Medicaid (and Medicare) — to provide health care for those that can’t afford it? One might think we could save a lot of time and money (and non-stop weary debate) if existing programs were expanded and made more effective.

• We think that it’s very simple: expand eligibility to cover people who cannot afford insurance or do not have access to employer-assisted insurance. Much of the infrastructure of the program is already in place, which would save plenty of money right there…and a handful of creativity and motivation could easily streamline both the funding and application processes.

• Like a lot of people, we lament the failure of Congress to support a public option in the existing reform. We’re also a little uneasy about the prospect of mandated insurance — it seems as if the main beneficiaries of reform will be insurance companies rather than people who do not get proper health care. However, many people seem to have lost sight of the fact that a certain amount of ‘public option’ does exist already, and provides services with significantly more efficiency and effect than nearly any health insurance business.

• Ultimately, we feel that the debate has drifted a little too far toward the topic of insurance. This is ‘health care reform’, not ‘insurance reform’ (though that would be a great topic!). The whole point is to get medical care for people who need it, not force insurance on everyone.

All this is suppose to help cover the cost of health care, but when it doesn’t you can be sacrificing your mortgage payments for health bills, get help at Nationwide Biweekly Administration (www.ExperienceNationwideBiweekly.com).