DL Open Thread Wednesday September 21 2022
Delawareans: Medicare is great!
Dems: Hey guys…Let’s privatize and fuck up Medicare.
Delaware’s Retirees Utterly Screwed By John Carney
The change to state pensioners’ health care plan caught both retirees and lawmakers off guard, which led to Democratic Senate leaders asking Gov. John Carney to push the implementation of the new Medicare Advantage plan.
The Carney administration has denied this request, citing contractual obligations among other reasons. Ultimately, according to a letter to lawmakers obtained by Delaware Online/The News Journal, the plan to replace retiree’s Medicare plan is already in motion and it’s too late to stop it.
The plan will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023.
Fuck CNN. “Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, ” Fuck you.
John Carney and Claire DeMatteis: ‘Democrats’ Who Screw Democrats. Of course, DeMatteis is a Democrat of convenience who worked with Castle. Carney belongs to that Concord Coalition cult. Meaning, neither has any empathy. Green eyeshade bottom-line obsessives.
A governor who will be most remembered for ‘budget-smoothing’, an idea that originated with Princeton preppy Ken Simpler.
By far, Delaware’s worst governor of modern times.
Actually the idea was “birthed” by Grover Norquist and embraced by Finance Secretary Rick Geisenberger, Delaware’s Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the DEFAC committee all with Carney’s (and former Gov. Markell’s) enthusiastic support
Rep. Kowalko
Yeah. He is fucking terrible. Even in this his talking point is the fall back..”My hands are tied.” What a dick.
BTW – “The change to state pensioners’ health care plan caught both retirees and lawmakers off guard,…(now) the plan to replace retiree’s Medicare plan is already in motion and it’s too late to stop it.”
Bullshit. Kowalko has been trying to raise the alarm on this for a year.
I read Kowalko’s editorial but then could not find any actual proposal on the table to make a Medicare change. I guess that obscurity was the plan. Well played Carney!
I am guessing retired cops are exempt from the Medicare Advantage switch?
Retired cops are not exempt. Good try Puck. All DE retirees.
I am not a state retiree so i dont follow the news on this, but what is the problem with the medicare plan for them?
From what I have gathered, instead of paying $0 and there being no oversight of provider claims or pre-authorization by their third party insurer for their medicare state subsidy. Now they pay $0 dollars and have to have their claims pre-authorized for medical necessity to access their state subsidy like every other government worker in the state and most government retirees throughout the country who use medicare. Apparently the state couldn’t afford to continue to blindly approve 100% of all retiree healthcare claims without any oversight. After a few retirees get tricked into having 4 MRIs in 2 weeks, I guess they figured they needed to put their foot down and try to control some costs.. …shocker.
Thanks “bane” of for-profit issuance co’s
As though doctors and Christiana Care aren’t “for profit”? You’re basically advocating for them to continue to charge anything they want to taxpayers. Blank check for the hospitals. “Keep charging $800 for a pack of bandaids. We love you”
General Assemby introduced numerous bills last year to protect black women from horrible medical practices in hospitals and when dealing with doctors. However, when involving seniors, Doctors are somehow all knowing, infallable, and beyond reproach? I swear some of you have your heads up your a$$es… and I’m sure some doctor is going to request 3 MRIs to find said head before they reccomend invasive surgery to remove it. Ha! All love though
I’m swayed. The poor abused insurance companies. How can they stand it?
How is that expense passed on to the state?
Alby, since most state government retirees, like my mom, have zero costs for their healthcare, nowhere near the cost of what healthcare is today, that gap in what medicare covers verses the true cost of services is passed onto active state employees in the form of higher premiums and through random direct infusions of tax payer dollars into the state’s health insurance program. This allows for nearly zero out-of-pocket expenses for retired state employees, but higher costs for state government and active state employees. With the cost of healthcare skyrocketing for the last 30yrs, this isn’t sustainable.
Legislators and Governors have preferred to kick the can and wait until the problem magically fixed itself, knowing that the current system was not sustainable for the long term. Espicially as people are living longer and the boomers start retiring in mass. Based on the NJ’s article, everyone had their heads in the sand until the credit rating bureau’s started threatening to reduce Delaware’s credit rating if they didn’t address this unfunded debt. In walks as El Som calls him, the “green eyeshade Governor” who never met a math homework assignment he didn’t like.
I had to do some research because my mom was understandbly concerned. So instead of charging her and other retirees more or eliminating benefits to fix this problem as most states have done, they are just requiring that BCBS take a stronger role in managing her care. Which is understandably why people are concerned, as nobody trusts insurance companies. They now have to be a watchdog over the hospitals and the doctors, like they currently do for active state employees. Since Highmark gets to have greater oversight over the claims, they can reduce the cost of the total plan. The same way they oversee my healthcare as a teacher, and every other state employee’s healthcare plan, where we have pre-authorization requirments. Obviously, doctors and hospitals don’t like people checking their work, but its the way of the future. Ironically, legislators and other employees have pre-authorization requirments with their existing state health insurance and nobody has died yet. I don’t see the distruction of healthcare in this. I see a broken system and folks putting bandaids on it to stop it from completely falling apart. Just my interpretation of teh situation.
I still don’t understand why the state is being charged for expenses covered by Medicare.
“that gap in what medicare covers verses the true cost of services”
A hackneyed but very effective marketing propaganda phrase. It means “…versus what we would LIKE to charge.” It reveals the need for de-privatization and more cost reform.
Colleges do the same trick, repeating “Your tuition only pays a part of your college costs” until it becomes embedded in our brains.
Speaking of Medicare Disadvantage would really like to know who was behind this sick game, and how were they paid for it? Probably more like a political “favor” or advancement for a bureaucrat. P.S. State workers will eventually hate Medicare advantage, and their doctors will hate it even more as it pays about 10% less to providers.
Can state employees go on strike? Seems crazy that they never do
Anyone can go on strike. See also… West Virginia teachers. No one needs to sign a permission slip.
Mother is a retired Vermont teacher and was switched at the beginning of the year. First $300 is all yours. Then you pay 20% of the next $1500, max out of pocket is supposed to be $600. If you go out of network you are doomed. It is very confusing. She does not remember getting any notice of the switch. EOBs are poorly worded and structured.
The State is saving money. How? By hiring a company to turn down thousands upon thousands of legitimate claims. Maybe you’ll eventually get your claim covered, maybe you won’t.
But Carney and DeMatteis pretty much unilaterally decided that reducing healthcare costs to the state would be done on the backs of retirees and pensioners.
And then lied about what they’d done. Carney makes Carper seem–almost human–by contrast.
The switch to Medicare Advantage is supposedly due to “unfunded liabilities” which have presumably been accumulating for decades. Our last four Dem governors were past Treasurers, Secretary of Finance (Carney) and Chairman of the Bond Bill Committee (Minner) and as far as I know never recommended actually FUNDING those liabilities, all the while basking in our annual AAA bond ratings.
The bond ratings agencies looked the other way on this fiscal irresponsibility because it was understood the old-boys club would one day renege on the obligation instead of funding it.
Carney of course waited to pull this as a lame duck, so we can’t even vote him out. And of course voting for the Republican would make health care even worse, and also everything else.
So the path forward is to make retiree health care an issue in Democratic primaries. And to keep electing progressive legislators who will fund those unfunded liabilities.
Well that’s a tidy little racket. Thanks for laying it out.
the ‘Check your zip code” bullshit ads by washed up celebs on cable are peddling this same crap. this is another time I’m glad I worked in the private sector1
Checking back on John Bloxom and the filing of Citizen for Thoughtful Government it is WHACK. I don’t understand it and believe it needs to be addressed by the dept. I will call tomorrow.
It declares
– zero starting balance
– zero receipts eg no donated funds
– $33,396.37 in expenditures
– end balance of negative $33,396.37
– Payee Central Grand $7,500.00
– Payee Rosen Berlin $13,096.37
– Payee Rosen Berlin
Madinah Wilson- Anton Representative
Eric Morrison Representative
$12,800.00
All payees at this address 1620 L Street NW 300a, Washington DC, District Of Columbia, 20036
WHAT THE REAL FUCK?
No donor identified and payee that includes the victims names of their smear campaign.
Bloxom works for the LLC company CSC. He is paid to set up an anonymous LLC and puts his name as the registered agent. Then he sets up the campaign entity and files this ridiculous report. WHERE IS THE MONEY FROM? Even if it is from the LLC, the report must state that.
Looks like a Darth Vader financier for manufactured home developers, commercial real estate interests, and the like:
https://www.morrisjames.com/people-John-Bloxom.html
The Dude isn’t poor. He shows a 2million plus residence in Rehoboth, a nice townhouse in Trolley and some commercial units in mid New Castle County. His client list could just maybe include a guy named Jerome who is looking for an apology:).
I don’t think this Pac is done dropping money this cycle!
The father is the Sussex realtor. Son is with CSC.
https://leadershipdelaware.org/teams/john-bloxom/
There are no Realtors in Sussex or anywhere for that matter named Bloxom
If we started harassing these people the way RWNJs harass everybody else, they’d quickly pass laws against it which could then be used against RWNJs. Something to think about.
nope, that is the father of the person involved with the LLC etc.
PERP here is this chap. https://leadershipdelaware.org/teams/john-bloxom/