Massachusetts Health Stats

Massachusetts AG Coakley, Citing 1995 Microsoft Ruling, Tells Partners' Settlement Judge to Butt Out

I presume that Attorney General Martha Coakley herself was otherwise tied up on Halloween when her staff filed its umpteenth legal document related to its proposed settlement with Partners Healthcare allowing Mass. General, etc. to acquire South Shore Hospital, a couple of other facilities north of Boston, and eventually Emerson. I also don't know much about how polite you have to be when addressing the judge that will decide for or against you. But it appears as if Coakley's staff pulled no punches in its response to Judge Janet Sanders whiny little butt-insky in her court on September 29:

“I’m sure there’s significance to it, particularly in the efficient delivery of high-quality health care, but where I have serious concerns is the impact the settlement has on Massachusetts, on the health care costs for all Massachusetts citizens.”

The AG's response says

"limits on the judiciary’s review of proposed consent judgments are compelled by separation of powers principles, as a court’s “authority to review the decree depends entirely on the government’s exercising its prosecutorial discretion by bringing a case in the first place.”"

RomneyCare "Architect" Suffers Major Defeat in "Massachusetts Wave" Election

One of Massachusetts many self-annointed "RomneyCare architects," a high-ranking Massachusetts State Senator from Central Massachusetts and a former Clinton-administration political appointee¹, lost to a young Republican in what in Massachusetts passes for a "wave election²." The State Senator had run for years with no or basically no opposition and when finally facing an election -- that actually had polling and everything -- fell back on asking for votes because of his creation of the half dozen 2005-2010 Massachusetts laws that are collectively called RomneyCare.

Did Massachusetts U.S. Senator Ed Markey Vote to Kick His Republican Opponent's Mother Off Her Medigap Insurance?

(For more on the national implications of health care reform on United States Medicare, and information on other Medicare issues, see theabcsofmedicare blog here.)

There is reportedly a strange ad running in the lightly contested Republican effort to unseat United States Senator Edward Markey of Massashusetts. Supposeldy the Republican's mother, who does not live in Massachusetts¹ but in Pennsylvania, lost her Medigap insurance because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, better known as Obamacare).

Vermont's Shumlin: Blood-Sucking Massachusetts Republican Charlie Baker Screws Seniors on Medicare

That blood-sucking, billionairre Massachusetts Republican governor candidate Charlie Baker screws thousands of seniors out of their Medicare coverage according to Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, chairman, and the rest of the Democratic Governors Association (DGA).

I was surprised to find (and very much doubt) that -- according to the Boston Globe on October 24 -- candidate Baker has opened up an almost 10-point lead in the Massachusetts governor race.

Number of People Insured by RomneyCare/Obamacare/Medicare in Massachusetts Now Exceeds Population of State

How much do you want to bet that before the day is out some far-left-wing web site will publish the just released Massachusetts Center for Healthcare Information and Analysis (CHIA) report on the number of people in Massachusetts with healthcare insurance as of July 2014 and claim that Massachusetts has reached total 100% insurance coverage.

What the hell; the news is better than that.

Massachusetts Goo Goos Appear to Take Healthcare Reform Propaganda To New Level of Nuttiness

There are variations of this Boston-University-radio-station story all over the Internet¹ claiming Massachusetts now allows we health-care consumers/patients in Massachusetts to "shop around" for health care. The reality behind the story seems to me to be totally misleading but I admit that what the Massachusetts state government says the new law covers is also so confusing that I cannot be sure if I'm right².

So far what the new law appears to mean is that my healthcare policy is now online (I thought it always was?).

Former Massachusetts "Traditional Medicare" Insurance Company Admits Bad Cost Accounting, Still Gets Massachusetts State Contract to Run MassHealth

(For more on the national implications of health care reform on United States Medicare, and information on other Medicare issues, see theabcsofmedicare blog here.)

With a little work I could really pull a Boston Globe and make my post's headline read as if the private insurance company that used to run¹ all of Original LBJ/Democratic-Party/"as we know it" Medicare in Massachusetts (and elsewhere in New England) was a crooked, blood sucking, for-profit bunch of billionairres apparently paying off state politicians with some kind of bribes (maybe just campaign contributions) to get a multimillion-dollar contract to provide terrible health-care administration services to the poor and downtrodden on Medicaid here in the Bay State.

But the news is less dramatic than the way left-wing newspapers such as the Boston Globe like to portray things.

Where's Waldo from the 1950s Rexall Drug Store Wants to Raise Massachusetts Senior-Citizen Drug Costs

(For more on the national implications of health care reform on United States Medicare, and information on other Medicare issues, see theabcsofmedicare blog here.)

A couple of leftists from PUTTS, which believe it or not is the name of the old 20th-century pharmacist monoploy, wants to drive drug prices for seniors on Medicare Part D back to 1950 price levels. This recent editorial position of the Springfield Republican newspaper explains what the leftist Republican (ironic, isn't it?), and the leftists its editors hang with in Congress want to do to us seniors. 

In my opinion Waldo at the local Rexall better go back to the 1950s where he came from. Have a frappe at the soda fountain while you're there, Waldo.

Boston Globe Story on Medicare Part B Is Incorrect, Misleading... but Good News

(For more on the national implications of health care reform on United States Medicare, and information on other Medicare issues, see theabcsofmedicare blog here.)

The good news for Massachusetts seniors is that Part B premiums will not increase in 2015. They have been the same for a few years. If you are in your 70s or 80s, thank the next baby boomer you meet at the senior center.

The bad news is that the far left wingers at the The Boston Globe and elsewhere are politicizing something that is likely totally tied to demographics but possibly tied to the work of George W. Bush and a Republican Congress over a decade ago.

Republican Beaton: Another Massachusetts Politician Who Can't Keep Medicare and Medicaid Straight

(For more on the national implications of health care reform on United States Medicare, and information on other Medicare issues, see theabcsofmedicare blog here.)

Nothing irritates me more than politicians who can't keep Medicare and Medicaid straight. It can be big shots like Democrat Joe Biden. It can be guys you never heard of like out-in-the-boonies Massachusetts Republican State Representative Matt Beaton. Beaton has written a letter to a half dozen Massachusetts rags complaining about how Obamacare was implemented in Massachusetts. But in the letter he says:

"During the transition, too, Massachusetts was required to provide temporary Medicare coverage to more than 250,000 people, and this happened without a thorough effort to ensure that everyone receiving those benefits was legally eligible to do so."

It's Medicaid, you hack, not Medicare. I was willing to give Beaton the benefit of the doubt that it was a mistake made by the Metrowest News but the word Medicare has appeared the same way in a half dozen other places on the Internet that I've seen (e.g., Patch, wickedlocal, other towns, and so forth). So the mistake was made by Beaton. I asked him about it, and he's unapologetic and apparently making no attempt to fix his error in all the many places it now appears.

He claims I don't get it. His reply was along the lines of Obamacare sucks so what does it matter that he can't keep the two largest government programs straight. And there was something about spending a lot of time at local senior centers. If so, and you live in his district, believe nothing he tells you.

(He also claimed that RomneyCare was great but I won't go there. To his credit, he did reply to me.)