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You are here: Home / Archives for Past Elections / Election 2017

Election 2017

Another Day in the Third Year After the End of the American Century

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I’m sure Stephen Miller’s and Kirstjen Nielsen’s parents are so proud…

Open thread!

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Schrodinger’s Coverage

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Here is a koan for Balloon Juice:

If you do not know you are insured, are you insured?

Maine is in the process of expanding Medicaid.  The new Governor-Elect, Janet Mills (D), has promised to expand Medicaid on her first day in office.  She wants to make the coverage retroactive to July 2, 2018.

A Maine judge has ordered the current Maine governor to expand Medicaid with claims payment retroactive to July 2, 2018.

In most states, Medicaid has an individualized retroactive eligibility processes.  Someone who is uninsured will interact with the medical system.  The medical service provider will ask several standardized questions to determine if the uninsured patient is highly likely to be eligible for Medicaid.  If they determine that the patient is likely to be eligible, they can file a claim and an eligibility determination.  If the beneficiary is deemed eligible, some state Medicaid programs will pay both the index claim that initiated the eligibility determination process and claims in the three previous months if the benefeciary would have been eligible for Medicaid if they had applied.

The trigger event is a claim which means the trigger is an encounter with the healthcare system.  Most people who are eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled don’t interact with the healthcare system in any given month because most people don’t interact with the healthcare system in any given month.

Retrospective eligibility is a safety net for both the patient who will not be faced with crippling medical bills and healthcare providers who will get reasonably timely payment that is most likely more than the net present value of the minimal cash stream that uninsured and Medicaid eligible patients can and will pay.

Retrospective eligibility is highly likely to occur for either pregnancy or major medical events that require hospitalization.  More common and lower cost events like a primary care physician visit are less likely to generate a claim and retrospective eligibility determination because that appointment will either not be made by the beneficiary or the appointment will be denied by the provider once they are sure that they won’t get paid.

Maine is going to be doing something very different.  It will be declaring that all claims on or after July 2 will be eligible for retroactive payments if the beneficiary would have been Medicaid eligible (either for legacy or expansion).

Now this is where I have a question.

Will we see changes in provider and beneficiary behavior in anticipation of a Medicaid Expansion?  Did they increase the number of determination assessments that they submitted that would fail for legacy Medicaid but pass for Medicaid Expansion in July, August and September?  Are providers pre-emptively opening up appointment blocks for people who are uninsured but Medicaid Expansion eligible?  Are people who are Medicaid Expansion eligible making appointments in anticipation of retroactive eligibility?

How do people behave when they are covered if they are not sure that they are covered?

 

I don’t know but I think that this is one hell of a question.

 

 

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Good news in Maine

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The Maine Medicaid Expansion will be moving forward. Here is the relevant part of the court order:

IV. Conclusion
The Court Orders the Commissioner to submit a state plan amendment to the United
States Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
ensuring MaineCare eligibility for people under 65 years of age who qualify for medical
assistance pursuant to 42 United States Code, Section 1396a(a)(10)(A)(i)(VIII) by June 11, 2018.

A State Plan Amendment is the most straightforward way for a state to expand Medicaid. It tells HHS/CMS that a state is modifying the standard Medicaid provisions that the state accepts and it will want the appropriate matching money. There will be some lag between an SPA and the first enrollment but people should be getting on Expanded Medicaid sometime this year.

Good job Maine!

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Yes Virginia, there is a Voter-claus

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And with that, it looks like the Virginia House of Delegates is now a 50-50 split as the Democrats will have picked up a net of 16 seats during the November election.

So let’s hear it for all the door knockers, phone bankers and post card writers.

Open thread

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Monday Evening Open Thread: Comic Interlude

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I suspect Dr. Stein has always fantasized being Lillian Hellman (as played by Jane Fonda) in front of an unsympathetic HUAC committee, and now she’s got her big chance.

The top congressional committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election has set its sights on the Green Party and its nominee, Jill Stein, according to a former campaign employee.

Dennis Trainor Jr., who worked for the Stein campaign from January to August of 2015, says Stein contacted him on Friday saying the Senate Intelligence Committee had requested that the campaign comply with a document search.

Trainor, who served as the campaign’s communications director and acting manager during that time, told BuzzFeed News that he was informed of the committee’s request because during his time on the campaign, his personal cell phone was “a primary point of contact” for those looking to reach Stein or the campaign. That included producers from RT News, the Russian state-funded media company, who booked Stein for several appearances, Trainor said…

Trainor, who has done on-and-off work for Stein since formally leaving the campaign in 2015, said he is inclined to cooperate with the committee’s request but wants to first seek legal counsel. He said he believes Stein plans to comply as well and post the documents on her own website “in an effort to show complete transparency and kind of wage her own war against […] what I imagine she thinks is an overblown investigation into collusion.”

Stein did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the committee’s chairman, declined to comment.

Stein has not previously been a major focus during the Russia investigations on Capitol Hill, but her name has surfaced occasionally. The Senate Judiciary mentioned her in a letter to Donald Trump Jr. in July, requesting copies of “all communications to, from, or copied” to the president’s son that related to Stein and a long list of other, more prominent figures in the investigations…

The Senate Intelligence Committee has to ask, because Stein spent her 2016 campaign putting the “idiot” in the time-tested Soviet term “useful idiot”. I very sincerely misdoubt she has anything useful to offer, on this or any other topic, but I expect her interview to be second only in {face-palm} worthy moments to that of Carter Page.

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Late Night Repub Venality Open Thread: Roy Moore Goes Back to Full-Time Grifting

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I’d wondered whether Roy Moore was endangering his established Christianist-bubble “calling” by keeping the media’s attention focused on his failed campaign, but then I’m not a professional grifter. Looks like he’s gonna keep looking for the missing birth certificate — I mean, the 20,000 “fraudulent” Doug Jones voters…

Roy Moore’s campaign announced Friday that it is seeking donations for an “election integrity fund” following the former judge’s unsuccessful bid for an Alabama Senate seat….

The campaign is seeking to meet a deadline to report cases of voter fraud before Alabama’s secretary of State certifies the vote. The election will be certified between Dec. 26 and Jan. 3.

In a letter sent out to supporters, the campaign said its budget “ran through” on Tuesday, the night of the Alabama special election, and asked supporters to help raise another $75,000 to collect reports of “voter fraud and other irregularities at polling locations throughout the state.”

“My campaign team is busy collecting numerous reported cases of voter fraud and irregularities for the Secretary of State’s office,” the statement said…

Rally on, “Judge” Moore… the more you posture, the worse your claims look to the loosely political non-Deplorable voting population. Give us Democrats a chance to make you and your chaos-muppet buddy Steve Bannon the face of the GOP for 2018!

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Where are dem votes

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I am not a mathematician. However, on most days I can count to at least eleven with my shoes on. ‘

Where are the votes and why do Democrats have an incentive to provide any votes?

The House Freedom Caucus is sufficiently large to deny any continuing resolution (CR)a Republican only majority. If they vote against a CR because of Cost Sharing Reduction subsidy appropriations (CSR), then the continuing resolution needs Democratic votes in the House to pass. Any CR needs at least 8 Democratic votes in the Senate (probably more as several Republican Senators voted against the short term CR).

If Democrats supply votes to pass a CR with CSR funding, they increase the probability that the tax bill passes while making the subsidized insurance buyers worse off.

Why would they do that?

Where are the dem votes for a deal that advances any of their interests?

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Your Money Was Well Spent

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This is how it’s done:

The grassroots organizing in black communities by groups like local NAACP chapters was more muscular than it had even been in the 2016 general election. In the lead-up to Tuesday’s contest, voting-rights groups registered people with felonies, targeted awareness campaigns at people who might not have had proper ID, and focused specifically on knocking down the structures in place that keep black voters away from the polls. Their efforts immediately become a case study in how to do so in a region that has, since the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision curtailing the 1965 Voting Rights Act, become a bastion of new voter-suppression laws, including new voter-ID laws.

This thread explains in detail how the Mobile County NAACP worked in tandem with the Jones campaign to turn out voters.

The money you donated to the Jones campaign helped pay for this effort. We had a good candidate, with enough money and enough sense to spend that money on the right things. There will be more Roy Moore caliber candidates running for “safe Republican seats” in 2018 – we need to field Jones quality efforts to beat them.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Things Get Better, Eventually

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What’s on the agenda, as we start an unexpectedly bright day?
***********

From the Washington Post:

Doug Jones’s odds-defying victory in Alabama — handing Democrats a vanishingly rare Senate win in the Deep South — scrambles President Trump’s legislative agenda for the coming year, threatens to heighten Republican infighting and sounds an alarm for the GOP’s prospects in November’s midterm elections.

Any dent in the two-seat advantage Republicans hold in the Senate would carry major governing consequences, but the loss of what had been considered one of the party’s safest seats carries a special sting for the GOP.

One consequence is Democrats’ much more plausible path to the Senate majority next year. The 2018 map was widely seen to favor Republicans, with 10 Democrats seeking reelection in states President Trump won last year and only two Republican seats clearly at risk…

Some Republicans view the Alabama seat once held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions as the first casualty in an internecine GOP battle that has pitted establishment Republicans personified by McConnell against populist insurgents led by former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon.

“It should be a hurricane siren for every Republican,” said Josh Holmes, a former top aide to McConnell. “This is what the death of a party looks like, and without an immediate course correction and rejection of the Steve Bannon view of the world, you can lose races in states like Alabama.”…

Barring a new effort at bipartisan dealmaking that has been largely absent so far under the Trump administration, the GOP appears on track to head into the November midterms with only one major accomplishment to tout: a tax-cut bill that has polled poorly and delivers most of its direct benefit to corporations and the wealthy…

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Early Morning Musical Interlude Open Thread

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NYMag, “Roy Moore Won’t Concede, Tells Supporters to ‘Wait on God’”:

… [I]n an entirely unsurprising development, Moore refused to accept defeat, and told supporters that God still isn’t done with the Alabama Senate race. “Realize when the vote is this close that it’s not over,” Moore told his supporters in Montgomery, Alabama.

He went on to suggest that there would be a recount, adding, “we also know that God is always in control.” After quoting Psalms 40, he said, “That’s what we’ve got to do is wait on God and let this process play out.” Then he sent his supporters home, explaining he couldn’t have them waiting around all night for the final tally.

In reality all precincts have reported, and Jones received 49.9 percent of the vote to Moore’s 48.4 percent. Under Alabama law, there’s an automatic recount at the state’s expense if the results are within half a percentage point. But the gap between Jones and Moore is 1.54 percent, or about 20,715 votes…

CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill if there’s any chance that Jones won’t ultimately win the race. “I would find that highly unlikely to occur,” he said. “There’s not a whole of mistakes that are made.”

“The people of Alabama have spoken tonight,” Merrill added. “They’ve made their voice heard loud and clear. The most important thing to remember now is the process needs to be followed to ensure that the integrity, the safety and security of the election is preserved.”…

Background: Justin Guarani conceded to Kelly Clarkson in the first season of American Idol, back in 2002.

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Late Night Gloating Open Thread: Moore Is A Losing Luzer Who Loses

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To be honest, I’m actually curious how many votes were tipped — or just not cast — after Moore’s Big Barn Burning Hate Fest last night. Sure, it pleased Moore’s base, and no doubt the small-dollar donors who provide his steady income, so he’s got no reason to regret the show. But it’s gotta sting that so many out-of-state Repubs are suddenly seized with the urge to “refudiate” Judge Roy, like he was some shoeless drifter snuck under their big tent and stank up the joint…

show full post on front page

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Open Thread: And There Will Be Much Rejoicing!

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CONGRATULATIONS, SENATOR JONES!

… The upset delivered an unimagined victory for Democrats and shaved Republicans’ unstable Senate majority to a single seat.

Mr. Jones’s victory could have drastic consequences on the national level, snarling Republicans’ legislative agenda in Washington and opening, for the first time, a realistic but still difficult path for Democrats to capture the Senate next year. It amounted to a stinging snub of President Trump, who broke with much of his party and fully embraced Mr. Moore’s candidacy, seeking to rally support for him in the closing days of the campaign.

Sue Bell Cobb, a former chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court, said Mr. Jones had overcome a culture of “toxic partisanship,” reaching out to Republicans and electrifying restive Democrats.

“Never has there been this level of civic engagement,” said Ms. Cobb, who is planning to run for governor next year. “Never has it happened.”

She was drowned out by a raucous cry from her fellow Democrats, and clasped her hands to her face as she saw on a massive projection screen that Mr. Jones had pulled ahead. Mayor Randall Woodfin of Birmingham, a newly inaugurated Democrat standing just feet away, beamed as returns from his city helped put Mr. Jones over the top….

The election is a painful setback for Republicans in Washington, who have already struggled to enact policies of any scale and now face even tougher legislative math. Mr. Moore’s success in the Republican primary here, and the subsequent general-election fiasco, may deter mainstream Republicans from seeking office in 2018 and could prompt entrenched incumbents to consider retirement.

But there is also a measure of relief for some party leaders that Mr. Moore will not join the chamber, carrying with him a radioactive cloud of scandal. A number of Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, had indicated that Mr. Moore would face an ethics investigation if he were elected, and possibly expulsion from the Senate….

Yeah, I’m not buying that line, either. If you read the whole article, there’s an obvious tension between the genuine reporters and the NYT head office’s determination to stenograph the new GOP talking points — that they had Moore forced upon them by that parvenu Trump, who isn’t even really a Republican, after all. It’s not gonna convince many Democrats, and somehow I suspect Republican voters aren’t liable to be persuaded, either.

But tonight is OURS!

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Oh, mama, can this really be the end?

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All tied up and here’s good rundown of what’s left from my go to guy for this stuff.

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Alabama Special Election Open Thread

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Some early tweets –

That’s approval/disapproval.

Watch it to the end.

The New York Times has those dial things again. I can’t bear to watch them.

The polls close at 7 Central Time. I’m sort of determinedly neutral, don’t want to hope for too much. But I will be watching.

 

 

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