Obamacare is giving a big boost to Georgia's health IT industry. "Politically, Georgia is fighting the health law at every turn. Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, has chosen not to expand Medicaid, and the state's insurance commissioner publically vowed to obstruct the Affordable Care Act. But that doesn't mean Georgia isn't seeing a financial benefit from the law. Take the company called PreMedex. Founder and president Van Willis knows that just a few years ago, a company like his would've been a hard sell -- impossible, even. The two-year-old company contracts with hospitals and doctors' offices to call patients after they're discharged. Under the Affordable Care Act, hospitals are penalized if Medicare patients are readmitted within a month for several specific illnesses." Jim Burress in Kaiser Health News.
Maryland's plan to upend healthcare spending. "The Obama administration is set to announce Friday an ambitious health-care experiment that will make Maryland a test case for whether aggressive government regulation of medical prices can dramatically cut health spending. Under the experiment, Maryland will cap hospital spending and set prices -- and, if all goes as planned, cut $330 million in federal spending. The new plan, which has been under negotiation for more than a year, could leave Maryland looking more like Germany and Switzerland, which aggressively regulate prices, than its neighboring states. And it could serve as a model - or cautionary tale - for other states looking to follow in its footsteps." Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post.
Medicaid is nearly free health care. Will people move for that? "[S]hould we expect a widespread migration from the states who fail to expand Medicaid into those that are participating? New research suggests it's unlikely: Previous expansions of the public program, coupled with the geographic clustering of non-expansion states, suggest that cases like Workman's will be the exception rather than the rule..."The takeaway, I think, is that as states are considering whether to expand Medicaid it's unlikely they'll see an influx of beneficiaries if they expand," says Aaron Schwartz, a doctoral candidate at Harvard who published the new paper in the journal Health Affairs. "Based on past experience, we don't see any effects on migration."" Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post.
Survey: Most of the uninsured haven't been to HealthCare.gov yet. "The survey from Enroll America, a nonprofit with close ties to the Obama administration that is aiming to sign people up, found seven out of 10 uninsured people in the United States haven't visited an ObamaCare online exchange yet...In addition, 81 percent said they didn't know March 31 is the open enrollment deadline, after which they would be subject to the individual mandate penalty, if they remain uninsured. Sixty-nine percent said they weren't aware that tax subsidies and financial help might be available for them, and 59 percent said they didn't know anything about plans that may be available in their state." Jonathan Easley in The Hill.
Obamacare will cover breast-cancer drugs. "Certain medications that are intended to prevent breast cancer will be fully covered under Obamacare, in new guidance set to be issued by the Department of Health and Human Services Thursday morning. Women at increased risk of breast cancer can receive so-called chemoprevention drugs, including tamoxifen and raloxifene, without a co-pay or other out-of-pocket expense." Amanda Terkel in The Huffington Post.
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The above chart reveals why Obamacare works fabulously well for women who tend to vote more often than men and who already tend to vote more Democratic than men.