The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a news release today announcing that President Obama’s health reform law has successfully increased enrollment and decreased premiums in Medicare Advantage over the last two years. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius noted that the program has seen a nearly 30 percent increase in enrollment and a 10 percent decrease in premiums since Obamacare’s passage, and projected that the positive trends will continue over the next year:

“Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, the Medicare Advantage and Prescription Drug programs have been strengthened and continue to improve for beneficiaries,” said Secretary Sebelius. “Since the law was enacted in 2010, average premiums have gone down, enrollment has gone up, and new benefits and lower drug costs continue to help millions of seniors and people with disabilities.”

For the third year in a row, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) used authority provided by the Affordable Care Act to protect beneficiaries from significant increases in costs or cuts in benefits. Access to supplemental benefits remains steady and beneficiaries’ average out-of-pocket spending remains constant.

Obamacare’s cost-containment provisions include phased payment cuts to providers in Medicare Advantage, part of a cost-saving strategy that Republicans mischaracterize as “robbing Medicare” despite the fact that it is intended to slow the program’s growth to prolong its solvency. Since the landmark health reform law’s passage, increased enrollment in Medicare Advantage and Administration officials’ stronger bargaining position with insurance providers have also helped lower the program’s costs.

HHS’s assessment of Obamacare’s impact on Medicare Advantage is confimed by health policy organizations like the Kaiser Family Foundation, whose June report found that the program’s enrollment rate rose by 10 percent while the average premium dropped by $4 during the first half of this year. Thanks to the ongoing implementation of the health reform law, low-income Americans should continue to see their Medicare Advantage premiums decrease over time, and they will soon have a wider array of quality-rated plans to choose from.

A new study out today may hurt efforts by America’s largest biotechnology company, Monsanto, to defeat a California ballot initiative that would require labels on genetically modified foods (GMOs). The French study found that rats who were either fed a lifetime diet of Monsanto’s genetically modified corn or exposed to the company’s popular herbicide, Roundup, developed tumors and organ damage.

Reuters reports that the group of rats who were exposed to Monsanto products experienced an increase in premature deaths due to their health complications:

Gilles-Eric Seralini of the University of Caen and colleagues said rats fed on a diet containing NK603 — a seed variety made tolerant to dousings of Roundup — or given water containing Roundup at levels permitted in the United States died earlier than those on a standard diet.

The animals on the GM diet suffered mammary tumours, as well as severe liver and kidney damage.

The researchers said 50 percent of males and 70 percent of females died prematurely, compared with only 30 percent and 20 percent in the control group.

The lead researcher has been a vocal critic of Monsanto, which holds most of the patents for America’s staple crops and herbicides. This study, more extensive than the group’s past research that found similar health risks associated with the company’s products, may weaken the biotech industry’s claim that eating GMOs is harmless. Monsanto has poured $7 million into a campaign to defeat California’s Proposition 37, which will ask voters to require labels on any products containing genetically modified ingredients — essentially, all processed foods. Europe, Japan, China and Australia already have this requirement, and 91 percent of Americans support GMO labeling.

Setting aside possible health issues, the pervasive use of herbicide-resistant crops in the US is perpetuating a rapidly escalating arms race with insects and weeds that develop a resistance to the industry’s potent poisons as they become more common. Monsanto’s herbicides are spreading quickly; Mother Jones reported this week that Roundup is the most heavily used liquid herbicide in New York City, even though it has been linked to neurological diseases and reproductive disorders.

But Monsanto is lobbying hard to prevent the USDA from considering studies like Seralini’s when approving new products. France currently bans GMO crops in spite of enormous pressure from Monsanto and the EU.

The goal of Obamacare is to expand access to health care by requiring all U.S. citizens and permanent residents to have health insurance. Through state health insurance exchanges and an expansion of Medicaid, the health care reform law will increase the availability of affordable coverage.

But millions of undocumented immigrants are barred from these programs, and federal officials also have announced that undocumented immigrants who are granted temporary legal status under the new deferred action policy still will not be eligible for insurance benefits like insurance subsidies under Obamacare:

Immigrants granted such relief would ordinarily meet the definition of “lawfully present” residents, making them eligible for government subsidies to buy private insurance, a central part of the new health care law. But the administration issued a rule in late August that specifically excluded the young immigrants from the definition of “lawfully present.”

At the same time, in a letter to state health officials, the administration said that young immigrants granted a reprieve from deportation “shall not be eligible” for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Administration officials said they viewed the immigration initiative and health coverage as separate matters. [...]

Nick Papas, a White House spokesman, said the deferred-deportation policy “was never intended” to confer eligibility for federal health benefits. The White House describes that policy as “an exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” allowing law enforcement officers to focus on immigrants who pose a threat to national security or public safety. Administration officials declined to elaborate as to why beneficiaries of the new immigration policy were ineligible for coverage under the new health law.

Immigration advocates and health policy experts are criticizing the decision to exclude the DREAM Act-eligible young adults who have qualified for deferred action. They argue that cutting people off from the programs that could help them gain affordable health coverage undercuts the goals of the health reform law. “We do not understand why the administration decided to do this,” Jennifer M. Ng’andu, a health policy specialist at the National Council of La Raza, told the New York Times. “It’s providing immigration relief to children and young adults so they can be fully integrated into society. At the same time, it’s shutting them out of the health care system so they cannot become productive members of society.”

Hispanic Heritage Month began on September 15, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced in a statement earlier this week that this month is an “opportunity to renew our commitment to promote health and wellness in the Latino community.” She added that millions of Latinos are benefiting from Obamacare already, and about 9 million will be eligible for Medicaid coverage and tax credits to offset health insurance costs.

But the thousands of undocumented young adults applying for deferred action so far — most of whom are Latino — won’t be eligible for Medicaid coverage or health care tax credits despite being protected from deportation if they qualify for temporary work permits. In all, about 1.7 million undocumented immigrants could apply to temporarily remain in the U.S. legally under the new federal policy. Preventing these young adults from accessing the coverage they need ultimately runs counter to Obamacare’s goal of increasing access to affordable health care across the country.

In April, the Alabama House approved a budget for 2013 that strained the General Fund and required deep cuts in public health and human services — particularly the state’s Medicaid program — in place of raising revenues. Although Gov. Robert Bentley (R-AL) wouldn’t support any revenue increases, he also called the proposed 30 percent cuts to Medicaid “irresponsible” and implored voters to find another solution to raise funds.

Fortunately, Alabama voted yesterday to approve a $437 million transfer from the state’s trust fund over to the state’s General Fund, which is the source of the funding for Alabama’s courts, prisons, and social services. The measure passed by a 2-to-1 vote. “I want to thank the voters for approving the state’s plan to temporarily borrow funds from our savings account to help get us through these difficult economic times without raising taxes,” Bentley said in a statement.

Yesterday’s decision is especially good news for the hundreds of thousands of low-income Alabama residents who depend on Medicaid for their health insurance coverage:

Most of the money will go to Medicaid, which provides health care for about 940,000 disabled and lower-income Alabamians, and the corrections department, which runs state prisons.

With the referendum’s approval, General Fund spending for Medicaid in fiscal 2013 is budgeted at $615.1 million, an increase of $39.7 million, 6.9 percent, from this year. [...]

Henry Mabry, executive secretary of the Alabama Education Association teachers’ lobby, said the yes vote protected Medicaid patients. “Hallelujah,” Mabry said. “Alabama voters chose to take care of God’s children.”

Democratic lawmakers in the state warn that, while transferring funds was a short-term solution to Alabama’s budget crisis, long-term economic solutions will require finding a way to replace the money that was borrowed from the trust fund. Without a departure from failed austerity policies and an agreement to raise taxes in the state, some politicians worry that Alabama is simply digging itself into a deeper budget hole.

Alabama House Minority Leader Craig Ford (D) said in a statement that while he was glad that Medicaid would not be cut, he is calling on the Republican-led legislature to work out a more tenable solution for balancing the state budget. “The problem has not gone away, and if we do not act soon, we will be right back here in three years,” Ford said. “We are also going to demand that the leadership propose a long-term solution to this problem.”

Kaiser Health News points to a poll conducted by the SCAN Foundation and UCLA Center for Health Policy Research showing that California residents are increasingly unable to afford nursing home care for themselves and loved ones. According to Kaiser, the rise in nursing home costs, combined with inadequate government aid and the projected doubling of Medicare-eligible California seniors over the next twenty years, spells out a future of even greater hardship for Californians:

The percentage of California voters who said they couldn’t afford more than three months of nursing home care increased to 73 percent from 66 percent in 2011, and 46 percent said they didn’t have the money to cover a single month in a nursing home, about $6,800 in California. [...]

After a hospital stay, Medicare will pay for 100 days of nursing home care, but after that, families are on their own or are forced to spend down their assets to become poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Latino voters in California, the poll found, were the most confused about Medicare: 31 percent assumed the federal program would pay for long-term, nursing home care – more than twice as many as white voters. [...]

Over the next two decades, the population of [California] seniors aged 65 and older is projected to double to 8 million. And Californians want their state government in Sacramento to find a solution.

The intersection of an aging population and rising care costs means that the nation’s largest entitlement programs, Medicare and Medicaid, will face extraordinary burdens in the coming years. Furthermore, if Congress fails to meet the requirements of last summer’s debt ceiling deal by the end of this year, the Medicare program will also face a round of automatic budget cuts to its providers.

Nursing home care providers are doing their best to protect the health care industry from further cuts that they say could compromise their patients’ quality of care. The American Health Care Association and nursing homes from around the country are banding together this week to launch an ad campaign aimed at encouraging Congress to prevent the automatic cuts to Medicare’s providers even in the absence of a deal, and to protect the Medicaid program — which is excluded from the sequestration agreement — from budget cuts in larger debt agreements. As the SCAN and UCLA poll shows, California seniors are already under considerable financial stress to ensure their nursing home care. If lawmakers do not prevent crippling budget cuts, vulnerable seniors in states like California will be the ones who pay the price.