Medicaid

If you think Bluetooth is a rare dental condition and an app is what you eat before the entree, you might not be a candidate for today's high-tech, whiz-bang smart phones. Instead, you might be happier with a mobile phone geared toward seniors. Those phones typically don't have Web-surfing capability, GPS maps and video games. Instead they have large buttons, oversized digital readouts and hearing-aid compatibility, along with a relatively simple calling plan. Although senior-friendly phones aren't new, their lower prices and variety are. A recent price skirmish among wireless companies means seniors can get an easy-to-use cellphone and cheap service to go with it, said Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy for the independent and nonprofit Alliance for Generational Equity.

Healthcare companies are tripping over themselves to profit from a flood of government contracts for treating the poor and disabled, and a family-run company in Long Beach with nearly $5 billion in revenue is trying to stay ahead of the pack. Amid the growing competition,Molina Healthcare Inc.is facing new hurdles. It has lost two key state contracts in Ohio and Missouri and its shares have tumbled 23% in recent weeks. J. Mario Molina, the company's 53-year-old chief executive, said that these are temporary setbacks and that the company remains in expansion mode.

In one of the largest expansions of health coverage to the uninsured, Los Angeles County is enrolling hundreds of thousands of residents in a publicly funded treatment program and setting the stage for the national healthcare overhaul. The county hopes to register as many as 550,000 patients and is assigning them to medical clinics for services at no cost to them. At the same time, the county is transforming its healthcare system to be less focused on acute care and more on primary care.

Actor Noah Wyle followed in George Clooney's footsteps Monday, becoming another "ER" alum to hit Washington, D.C., for a political protest, only to leave in handcuffs, arrested. Wyle, 40, showed up to Capitol Hill on Monday with ADAPT, a grass-roots organization seeking to stop cuts in Medicaid. The "Falling Skies" actor was arrested with some 100 others who were fighting against budget cuts that the group says would reduce in-home medical services for the elderly and disabled, which in some cases head off the need for full-on nursing-home care.  "As soon as everybody saw me being led away, they let up a big whooping cheer, which made me feel really good," Wyle said while waiting to be processed in the basement of the building where the protest took place.

One of the most striking take-aways from this week's U.S. Supreme Court hearings on the healthcare reform law was the steadfast insistence on the part of Republicans to deny affordable and accessible medical treatment to as many people as possible. The party is determined to maintain the status quo of healthcare being a privilege and not a right - putting us at odds with just about every other developed nation on the planet and, not coincidentally, resulting in about 50 million people being uninsured.

Not all health insurance is created equal: Dentists are far less willing to treat children with public health insurance than they are for children with private health coverage, according to a new study. The findings, published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics, found that children on Medicaid were 38 times more likely to be denied any appointment by dentists who were not enrolled in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program -- and were still 18 times more likely to be rejected by even those dentists who did accept Medicaid insurance.

The vast expansion of Medicaid in the 2010 healthcare reform law put Washington on a collision course with cash-strapped state governments, which have been scrambling to reduce the cost of the joint federal-state insurance program for the poor and disabled. That conflict reaches the Supreme Court on Wednesday, when lawyers for 24 states will seek to bar Congress from adding millions of Americans to the program's rolls. Meanwhile, the House is considering a Republican budget proposal that would cap Medicaid spending and hand over control to the states.

Ever since the Democratic Congress passed President Obama's healthcare law, critics have focused their ire on the requirement that all Americans have health insurance beginning in 2014. But some legal experts believe - and progressives worry - the Supreme Court's conservatives will instead target another mandate in the new law: the requirement that states expand the Medicaid rolls and provide subsidized healthcare for as many as 17 million more low-income people. On Wednesday, the third day of oral arguments on the law, 26 Republican-led states will argue that the federal pressure to expand Medicaid to all low-income Americans violates states' rights.

While most of the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has focused on its requirement that most Americans have health insurance, the Supreme Court takes up another explosive issue Wednesday afternoon as the justices consider whether states can challenge the law's dramatic expansion of Medicaid. Twenty-six Republican-led states are arguing that federal pressure in the law to expand Medicaid to all low-income Americans violates states' rights. And some legal experts believe that this expansion - which is expected to provide subsidized healthcare for as many as 17 million more low-income people over the next decade - could be a ripe target for conservatives on the court.

Dear Liz: My mom has BP stock. Currently she is moving toward applying for Medicaid to pay for nursing home expenses, and I was advised to put the stock in my name. Now I am watching her stock (and savings) plummet. It's gone from a $100,000 savings to about $40,000 currently. Do I take it out, or do you think it will come back and I should leave it alone? Answer: You may want to cash out at least some of the stock to hire a good elder law attorney who can advise you about the Medicaid look-back rules.

One of the most striking take-aways from this week's U.S. Supreme Court hearings on the healthcare reform law was the steadfast insistence on the part of Republicans to deny affordable and accessible medical treatment to as many people as possible. The party is determined to maintain the status quo of healthcare being a privilege and not a right - putting us at odds with just about every other developed nation on the planet and, not coincidentally, resulting in about 50 million people being uninsured.

The Supreme Court's conservative justices took aim Wednesday afternoon at a final key piece of President Obama's healthcare law, suggesting it was unconstitutional to require states to expand their Medicaid programs to cover more poor Americans. The states have "no realistic choice," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, effectively accepting the argument by 26 states challenging the law that they are being unjustly forced to administer a massive Medicaid expansion. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. echoed Kennedy's concerns, signaling their willingness to invalidate yet another part of the healthcare overhaul Obama signed two years ago. “It is significant authority we are giving the federal government,” cautioned Roberts, whose court now appears poised to strike down a major piece of domestic legislation for the first time since the Great Depression.

While most of the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has focused on its requirement that most Americans have health insurance, the Supreme Court takes up another explosive issue Wednesday afternoon as the justices consider whether states can challenge the law's dramatic expansion of Medicaid. Twenty-six Republican-led states are arguing that federal pressure in the law to expand Medicaid to all low-income Americans violates states' rights. And some legal experts believe that this expansion - which is expected to provide subsidized healthcare for as many as 17 million more low-income people over the next decade - could be a ripe target for conservatives on the court.

The U.S. Supreme Court is tackling the question of whether an expansion of Medicaid under the healthcare law violates states' rights. More specifically, does it violate Republican-led states' rights? That's the crux of the case, seeing as 26 Republican-led states are the main ones challenging the law . But when it comes to Medicaid, you have to wonder what their beef really is. The United States has about 50 million people without health insurance -- a shameful and costly statistic.

The Supreme Court's hearings on the 2010 healthcare reform law wrapped up Wednesday with the issue of whether the law's vast expansion of the Medicaid program coerced states to do something Congress couldn't order them directly to do. Former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who's representing officials from the 26 states challenging the law, had barely uttered one sentence Wednesday afternoon when Justice Elena Kagan asked what strikes me as...

While most of the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has focused on its requirement that most Americans have health insurance, the Supreme Court takes up another explosive issue Wednesday afternoon as the justices consider whether states can challenge the law's dramatic expansion of Medicaid. Twenty-six Republican-led states are arguing that federal pressure in the law to expand Medicaid to all low-income Americans violates states' rights. And some legal experts believe that this expansion - which is expected to provide subsidized healthcare for as many as 17 million more low-income people over the next decade - could be a ripe target for conservatives on the court.

Adults with Medicaid use more medical services, have less financial stress related to health and, overall, feel healthier than those without insurance. So says a first-of-its-kind study on the effectiveness of the government insurance plan.  The findings make intuitive sense, yet the study is the first to directly compare similar adults with Medicaid and with no insurance at all. Hundreds of other studies have examined differences between those with and without insurance, but are always limited in conclusion by the inherent differences in the two groups, such as income and employment.

The Obama administration on Tuesday announced new initiatives to boost the quality of medical care that Americans receive, laying the foundation for what many experts think could be one of the most far-reaching benefits of the new healthcare law. The 10-year, $10-billion effort ? which proponents hope can reduce hospital-acquired infections, help ensure seniors take their medications, and more ? has garnered far less attention than the politically charged debate about repealing the law. But the quality-improvement campaign is quietly winning the support of corporate leaders, consumer groups, doctors and healthcare experts across the political spectrum.

The vast expansion of Medicaid in the 2010 healthcare reform law put Washington on a collision course with cash-strapped state governments, which have been scrambling to reduce the cost of the joint federal-state insurance program for the poor and disabled. That conflict reaches the Supreme Court on Wednesday, when lawyers for 24 states will seek to bar Congress from adding millions of Americans to the program's rolls. Meanwhile, the House is considering a Republican budget proposal that would cap Medicaid spending and hand over control to the states.