Medicaid Stimulus Provides South Dakota over $19M to Promote Electronic Health Records

We're still having trouble persuading Governor Dennis Daugaard to expand Medicaid to help South Dakota's working poor. All that Obamacare money is just too unreliable to dirty South Dakotans' hands.

But Governor Daugaard has had no problem handing out an extra $19,340,218.57 in extra Medicaid money from President Obama to South Dakota hospitals, doctors, and other caregivers. That's the amount of federal money, as of August 7, that the South Dakota Department of Social Services disbursed through its Electronic Health Record Incentive Payment Program. This money comes to South Dakota courtesy of the HITECH Act of 2009, which Congress folded into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—yes, our friend the 2009 stimulus.

So far 29 of South Dakota's 50 hospitals have received EHR incentive payments as a reward for adopting, implementing, and/or upgrading computerized record-keeping methods. Such rewards are money well-spent: electronic health records are good medicine, as demonstrated by the pioneering Veterans Health Administration.

The spreadsheet I received yesterday from DSS also shows 216 individual health care providers who have received EHR incentive payments. They include:

• 76 physicians
• 68 pediatricians
• 37 nurse practitioners
• 5 certified nurse midwives
• 7 dentists
• 24 physician assistants.

The first payments DSS lists went out on March 23, 2012, to the Mobridge hospital ($646,400), two physicians, ten pediatricians, and two NPs. A steady stream of disbursements has followed, including, on May 2, 2013, a payment of $21,250 to Annette Marie Bosworth.

Yes, the Annette Marie Bosworth who, one month and one day later, let leak her first public mention of her intent to run for Senate as a Republican determined to fight government involvement in health care.

Republicans from Governor Daugaard to candidate Bosworth understand the GOP drill: fulminate against federal money, but take all the money Uncle Sam offers.

Bosworth Needs Reporter to Tell Her Challenger's Name

Pat Powers promotes Annette Bosworth for two reasons:

1. Giving Bosworth any positive attention fosters the notion that she is a serious, viable candidate, further divides the anti-Mike Rounds vote, and boosts the chances that Pat's guy Mike wins the primary.
2. The tips he gets from Bosworth's scheming husband Chad Haber give Pat an excuse to accuse me of going Mission Impossible on an imaginary desk.

But wait: let me take a deep breath of this fresh Black Hills air. Aaaaahhh. Let me gaze out on the inspiring Spearfish landscape, houses giving way to the Canyon and Spearfish Peak. Aaaaahhh... 

All is right with the world! I see the good in my fellow man! Pat isn't a first-class ass. He's simply keeping his promise as an honest Republican journalist (I beat down the snarky urge to cry double oxymoron!) not to take sides in the GOP Senate primary. He's presenting campaign news as is. But because he thrives on the synergy of good blogs, he's secretly teeing up the ball for me to swing away at Bosworth...

[Shakes head, comes to senses...]

The latest Powers Bosworth flogging further reveals Bosworth's cluelessness. Bosworth's "scoop" is taking a picture of Mark Venner at a Siouxland Republican Taliban Women's meeting. But the unmentioned scoop is that in her original tweet, Bosworth said the speaker was Larry Venner, Sr. Intrepid reporter David Montgomery needed to correct her (Pat's next headline: Montgomery Scolds Bosworth, Proves He's Shilling for Weiland).

Why does this matter? Only because Mark Venner has said publicly he may challenge Bosworth and the serious candidates for the GOP Senate nomination. Only because any serious candidate would be briefing Venner out, figuring out who his donors and voters are, developing strategies to steal his supporters. 

But the ever-politically clueless Bosworth doesn't even know the name of her potential rival.

I suppose Team Venner could take that as a sign that their name recognition stinks. Maybe Bosworth was deliberately misnaming him as a snide insult. 

Hang on: let me take an other breath of that Black Hills air... aaaahhh... thoughts cleared.

Nope. There's no deliberation on Team Bosworth. She's just clueless.