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Mediaite.com:
Charles Krauthammer doesn’t believe seven million people have actually enrolled in Obamacare, telling Bill O’Reilly
Tuesday night that the White House is throwing out “phony numbers” by
broadening their standards in order to attain a personal victory.
Both men agreed that the goal of Obamacare was to eventually convince
the country to shift to full government control of the health care
system, with Krauthammer saying it at least would have been clearer than
“this insane mishmash” in the middle. He then charged that President Obama and the White House is not being honest when it says that a little over seven million people have signed up.
“These numbers that they are touting are phony numbers…
That’s like saying anybody who goes on Amazon, orders a nifty stereo
set, puts it in the shopping cart, has purchased the stereo set. I
assure you it’s not going to show up at your house until you pay for
it.”
Krauthammer charged that the goal from the beginning was to make
health care, “the great liberal objective,” a reality by any means
necessary. And he found it laughable for Democrats to keep asserting
it’s the law of the land, because “nothing that’s written in the law
matters, they decide what the law is every Wednesday morning.”
RELATED: Limbaugh: ‘How Many People Are Signing Up’ for Obamacare Out of Fear?
Townhall.com:
A new poll
shows a majority of New York voters oppose tuition assistance for
illegal immigrants. The data, collected by the Siena College Research
Institute, comes days after a version of the Dream Act, doing just that,
failed to pass the New York Senate. The bill provides an estimated $20
million through TAP (Tuition Assistance Program) to undocumented
students:
OSC estimates that TAP awards to undocumented students would have cost $20 million
if the New York State DREAM Act were in effect in the current year
based on the conservative assumptions that all full-time students would
apply for TAP and receive the maximum award.
The poll itself
shows that, of the 56% that oppose the Dream Act, a majority of
moderates, 18 to 34 year olds, and people in an "other" party also
oppose the bill.
This revelation should signal to serious lawmakers that the time has come to oppose laws that favor law-breaking over legal, tax-paying citizens. When 76% of legal New York State college students do not have access to tuition assistance, does it make sense to spend more
money on "undocumented" students? The tide of discontent among U.S.
taxpayers should send a signal to idealistic, left-wing politicians that
think the rights of undocumented immigrants should supersede those of
the American citizen.
RELATED: DHS giving illegal immigrant ‘petty’ criminals second chance in waiver application process
HotAir.com:
With many political debates, I try to give opponents the benefit of
the doubt on intentions. Sure, raising taxes is a bad thing, but some
politicians and pundits believe higher taxes will benefit society. Some
people think we need to spend more, and others really fear climate
change.
When it comes to the HHS abortifacient/contraception/sterilization
mandate, however, I’ve almost stopped being that generous with the
left’s media and thought leaders. This New York Times Magazine editorial
is a prime example as to why. Almost from start to finish, the piece
misleads and misdirects readers about the mandate, its opponents, and
religious freedom.
Here are several examples:
First, the editorial says “for-profit corporations will ask the
Supreme Court to take a radical turn and allow them to impose their
religious views on their employees” by not providing contraception
coverage as required by the mandate. This is a falsehood for at least
two reasons: For one, the individual insurance market is an option for
coverage, and colleges, high schools, Wal-Marts, and many other
organizations provide birth control for free or very low prices.
Furthermore, most employees are “at-will” employees, meaning they can
leave anytime they wish. If they want employer-covered contraception,
plenty of companies will provide it.
In other words, many options exists for employees — and I haven’t
even mentioned abstinence yet, which is 100 percent effective at
preventing pregnancy.
Next, the editorial says exemptions from the mandate “would
significantly harm other people.” This is clearly not true, as pointed
out above, because options abound.
Third, the editorial makes the claim that a Supreme Court decision
against the mandate “would flout the First Amendment, which forbids
government from favoring one religion over another — or over
nonbelievers.” In fact, the mandate gives special treatment
to those who believe contraception, abortion drugs, and sterilization,
and puts those who disagree with the mandate at a distinct First
Amendment disadvantage with regards to speech and religion.
The editorial also argues that the mandate does not include coverage of abortion-inducing drugs:
The companies’ owners remain free to worship as they
choose and to argue (incorrectly) as much as they want that some of the
contraceptive drugs and devices on the F.D.A.’s list actually induce
abortions.
It has been proven time and time again that the mandate covers
abortion drugs. For just two examples of this, check out what Live
Action’s Drew Belsky and I wrote a couple of months ago, or check out this incredibly thorough analysis of that question by Just Facts.
Finally, the editorial states that “the government plainly has a
“compelling” interest in reducing the number of unintended pregnancies
and abortions, and in furthering women’s health and equality.” Actually,
women’s health would benefit from fewer contraceptives, and contraception use only lowers the abortion rate after increasing it dramatically.
And if the editorial board wants fewer “unintended pregnancies,” it
should start with encouraging abstinence. Pregnancy is a fairly common
result of engaging in sexual relations, after all.
There are other statements in the editorial that need to be debunked,
but this is just a sampling of the misleading and outright falsehoods
it possesses.
RELATED: Four Years of Obamacare Failures Is Long Enough
Mary Landrieu Is Paying—and Getting Paid Big—for Her Stance on Global Warming
Dad Who Fathered 98 Kids Offers Free Sex
Cruz: GOP Should ‘Continue to Defend Life’ and ‘Defend Traditional Marriage’
Giuliani: de Blasio Turning New York City in Wrong Direction
If It's Sunday, The Washington Post Is Promoting Fellatio In the Movie 'Nymphomaniac'
Nate Silver: GOP Has 60 Percent Chance to Take Senate in 2014
Colorado House To Consider Controversial Vaccination Law
Jimmy Carter Thinks The NSA Monitors His Emails
Drudge, White House in Twitter Spat over Obamacare Mandate Payment
FOXNews.com:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is being hammered by Republican
lawmakers after he claimed on the Senate floor that all the ObamaCare
"horror stories" being circulated are untrue.
Reid tried to clarify his remarks late Wednesday by saying he was
only referring to the “vast majority” of stories featured in ads funded
by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group, and not the
complaints of everyday Americans. However, he added fuel to the fire by
continuing to slam the group’s backers, the Koch brothers, calling them
“un-American.”
Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips, in response, said
Reid had effectively "attacked the character and integrity of every
American who had the courage to share how they're being hurt by the
president's health care law."
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., called Reid's original remarks "astounding and offensive."
Reid said Wednesday morning on the Senate floor that he believes
Americans for Prosperity hires actors in their ads to tell fake stories
about canceled policies, higher premiums and ruined lives under
ObamaCare.
“There’s plenty of horror stories being told,” Reid said. “All of them are untrue. But they’re being told all over America.”
It was an apparent reference to, among other instances, an AFP ad
that featured a woman with cancer who claimed her health care became
unaffordable under the law. Her story was called into question by
critics, but she and AFP are standing by the ad.
The outcry over Reid's comments from Republican lawmakers was
swift. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said he is demanding Reid apologize to
those who have felt ill effects from ObamaCare.
“The majority leader, and any Democrat who agrees with him, owes an
apology to all Americans who are suffering under this disastrous law and
whose personal stories he has dismissed as ‘untrue,’” he said.
RELATED: Cancer Patient Who Lost Insurance Due to Obamacare Demands Apology from Harry Reid
The Congressional Budget Office’s warning that the Affordable Care Act will cause employment to fall by the equivalent of 2.5 million full-time workers is just the latest of Obamacare’s negative surprises. Unfortunately, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s statement that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” is proving to be depressingly accurate.
The law’s defenders legitimately argue that it is not sufficient merely to criticize the Affordable Care Act; responsible action requires proposing an alternative. Fortunately, Republicans have a good one, and it’s been hiding in plain sight for the past seven years. The plan was first described in President George W. Bush’s 2007 State of the Union Address, but it remains timely. This plan would remedy most of the major problems that exist in America’s health care system and cause less destruction with fewer adverse consequences than Obamacare.
There are two main problems associated with health care in the United States today. First, it is expensive. Health economists, among them Daniel Kessler at Stanford, have shown convincingly that the United States spends a larger share of its gross domestic product on health care than other countries (for example, about one-and-a-half times what Switzerland spends per capita) because of inappropriate incentives to use care efficiently. Patients who have insurance or rely on state funds to cover their expenses bear little of the cost of any treatment received, which causes them to use health resources as if they were almost free. This means that health care is overused and the scarce resources do not always go to those who need them most. Part of this is a result of a Tax Code that subsidizes expensive plans, which have low co-payments and overly extensive coverage. The second problem is the large number of uninsured Americans who do not have reasonable access to health care and who obtain the health care that they do receive in inefficient ways, such as using emergency rooms for minor ailments.
So what would the ideal alternative to Obamacare look like? It should provide cost-effective care and the quality treatment that Americans deserve. Effective reform should discourage over-insurance that results from the subsidy of so-called Cadillac plans that pay for basic, inexpensive and predictable proceduresand have patient co-payments that are too low. Reform should encourage consumers to use America’s scarce health resources efficiently by inducing them to get tests and treatments that are justified instead of those that are selected because they are almost free to the decision-makers. Finally, reform should make health insurance available to the vast majority of Americans, some of whom cannot afford insurance without help.
The Bush 2007 plan achieves these goals. The basic structure is to offer all Americans a standard tax deduction, in 2007 set at $15,000 for families and $7,500 for individuals. The deduction would apply to payroll tax — both employee and employer contribution — as well as to income tax. Importantly, the size of the deduction would be independent of the amount spent on the plan. Any taxpayer who has a plan that includes catastrophic coverage gets the full deduction, irrespective of the plan’s cost. That is important because it creates the incentives to choose efficiently. A family that wanted to spend less on the plan than the value of the deduction would pocket the difference. A family that wanted to spend more on a plan than the value of the of the deduction would bear the additional cost out of pocket. As a consequence, consumers would reap the full benefit of keeping the cost of their plan low, which prompts them to shop and choose effectively. If the extra coverage offered by a $10,000 plan over an $8,000 one is not worth at least $2,000 to the consumer, he will not purchase it.
Under the current system, part of the cost is borne by others because the tax system does not treat employer-provided health insurance as income. As a consequence, a dollar spent by the employer or worker costs less than a dollar to that worker. The Bush plan would eliminate that distortion, replacing the non-taxed status of employer-provided health insurance with the standard deduction. By eliminating the link to employers, health insurance becomes more like auto insurance, where the consumer has appropriate incentives to shop around. Other features of the Bush proposal include allowing the purchase of plans across state lines to enhance competition and reform of medical liability to reduce the amount of defensive medicine.
RELATED: HEALTH CARE: Latinos lag in Obamacare enrollments
Archindy.org:
Marianne Anderson recently drove with her mother past the Planned
Parenthood facility at 86th Street and Georgetown Road in Indianapolis,
the state’s largest provider of abortions.
“I told my mom, ‘To think that that building exists for no other
reason than to kill unborn babies.’ I still get a knot in my stomach
when I drive by there.”
The knot returns despite the fact that Anderson hasn’t worked at
the Planned Parenthood facility since July of 2012. Prior to that, she
worked for two-and-a-half years as a nurse at the abortion center.
The mother of two and grandmother of one has begun to talk about her experiences at the abortion facility.
Anderson, who now works as a nurse at Community North Hospital, shared her story at two recent events sponsored by the Great Lakes Gabriel Project,
which offers help and support to women in crisis pregnancies. Many
Catholics across central and southern Indiana are involved in this
pro-life initiative.
The following are excerpts from a recent interview she had with The
Criterion, during which Anderson revealed her experiences at the
Planned Parenthood facility and the support she received from members of
the Great Lakes Gabriel Project in her efforts to leave.
Q. When and why did you start working for Planned Parenthood?
A. “I started working for Planned Parenthood in
2010 to start up their conscious sedation program [which allowed clients
to purchase mild to moderate sedatives to be given intravenously before
an abortion]. Plus the job was very close to my house.”
Q. Did you know what they were about, what they did?
A. “I did. And I must admit I was kind of on the
fence about abortion. I think a lot of it came from working at Wishard
[Hospital], and seeing girls that had attempted abortion themselves and
ended up with hysterectomies, or boyfriends beating them because they
were pregnant. My thought was, ‘Well, you need a safe place [for an
abortion]. People shouldn’t be doing it on their own. And people are
going to be doing it anyway, so why not provide them a safe place to do
it?’ ”
Q. When did you start having qualms or misgivings about working for Planned Parenthood?
A. “I started feeling uneasy working there when
people came from [the] national [office] in New York City to teach us
the conscious sedation process. It was disgusting. These two ladies had
this chant they would do: ‘Abortion all the time!’ I thought, ‘I’ve got
to get out of here.’ That was about six to eight months after I started.
“Those women from New York acted like an abortion was a rite of
passage. They were like, ‘How can you not offer abortion to women? It’s
their body. They should be able to do whatever they want. How can you
force them to have a baby? Abortion should be free to anybody, anytime.’
”
Q. How many abortions are done at the Georgetown facility per day?
A. “In the upper 20s to low 30s, including medical
abortion by pill. Abortions are done there every Tuesday and Friday,
and then they alternate between Thursday and Saturday.”
Q. Were there ever any difficulties with the abortion procedures?
A. “Several times, there were difficulties with
abortions while I worked there, where they had to call the hospital to
come pick the woman up.
“One girl almost bled out. She was passing clots, her blood pressure was dropping.
“A lot of the cases we had were from excessive bleeding or reactions to the sedation.
“When we had to call 911 for an ambulance, we were told never to
say the word ‘abortion’ because they don’t want that broadcast. They
knew that the calls were recorded, and could be made public.”
Q. What was it like working there?
A. “It was a money-grubbing, evil, very sad, sad place to work.
“We would get yelled at if we didn’t answer the phone by the third
ring. They would tell us we’d be fired [if we didn’t] because they
needed the money.
“They would remind us in our weekly staff meeting that we need to
tell everyone [who called to schedule an appointment] to avoid ‘those
people’ [the sidewalk counselors] because we need the money. We were to
tell them, ‘Don’t make eye contact with them, and don’t stop in the
driveway. If you make eye contact with them or if you stop and roll down
your window, they’re going to try their darnedest to talk you out of
it.’
“You have to have so many [abortions] a month to stay open. In our
meetings they’d tell us, ‘If abortions are down, you could get sent home
early and not get as many hours.’
“They would allow girls to have ultrasounds that were obviously way
too far along [the legal limit for having an abortion in Indiana is 13
weeks and six days]. They said, ‘If they want to be seen, you just put
them through, no problem,’ just taking advantage to make money.
“I was always getting in trouble for talking too long to the girls, asking if they were sure they wanted to do this.
“It was absolutely miserable going in there.”
Q. What experiences stick with you?
A. “One young girl came in with her mom. She was
about 16. Her mom had made the appointment. That’s not supposed to be
how it works. It’s supposed to only be the patient who makes the
appointment. I checked her in, and she thought she was there for a
prenatal checkup. The mom was pushing it. She blindsided her own
daughter.
“This guy brought in a Korean girl. I had no doubt in my mind this
girl was a sex slave. This guy would not leave her side. They could
barely communicate. He wanted to make all the arrangements.
“During the ultrasound, she told one of the nurses that there were
lots of girls in the house, and that the man hits them. She never came
back for the abortion. I always wondered what happened to her. One of my
co-workers said, ‘You’re better off to just let it go.’
“These girls would start crying on the table, and Dr. [Michael] King
[the abortion doctor for whom Anderson worked] would say, ‘Now you chose
to be here. Sit still. I don’t have time for this.’
“One doctor, when he was in the POC [products of conception] room,
would talk to the aborted baby while looking for all the parts. ‘Come
on, little arm, I know you’re here! Now you stop hiding from me!’ It
just made me sick to my stomach.
“The sound the suction machine made when it turned on still haunts me.”
Q. Did you ever interact with the sidewalk counselors?
A. “One day I was coming in, and I’d written out a
note to one of the [sidewalk counselors] that said, ‘I’ve worked here
for a little over two years. I’m actively looking for something else.
Please pray for me. I don’t want to be here.’ All I could do was hand it
to her. She tried to give me a pamphlet, but I told her no, I had to go
because there are cameras that watch the drive.”
RELATED: Obama boosts budgets for Planned Parenthood, other assistants of health care enrollment
Breitbart.com:
During a visit to Thomas Jefferson’s estate Monticello in
Charlottesville, Virginia on Monday, President Obama joked to French
President Hollande that he can "do whatever I want."
Tangi Quemener, the White House Correspondent for Agence France
Presse, sent a message to Peter Velz, a press assistant at The White
House, telling of Barack Obama and French President Hollande’s tour of
Monticello.
According to Quemener, the two men
strolled in front of the pool with Leslie Bowman, president of the Monticello Foundation. From the report:
Looking at a terrace she said that Jefferson loved to admire the
landscape from there. POTUS said that he'd like to take a look and
seemed delighted to "break the protocol.” "That's the good thing as a
President, I can do whatever I want" he quipped, walking to the terrace with his guest and Ms. Bowman.
Jefferson would be so proud of his successor.
RELATED: Lawless: Obamacare and the Imperial Government
Mediaite.com:
A bombshell Congressional Budget report released this week indicated
that the Affordable Care Act will result in the equivalent of 2.5
million workers voluntarily leaving the workforce by 2024, all taking
their productivity with them. The report is politically devastating for
ACA supporters, and they know it. Their flailing reaction to that report
speaks to the adverse impact it could have on Democrats’ political
position ahead of the 2014 midterms.
The last 48 hours have produced some of the finest, most rarified
examples of spin the political universe has been privy to in some time.
It’s been a veritable windfall for consumers of political discourse who
enjoy observing painful rhetorical contortions.
The majority of those recklessly twisting this impending economic
disaster into a welcome development have generally tried to focus on the
expanded “opportunity” that will result from creating publicly-funded
incentives for people not to work.
“Many workers, however, will see not having to ‘work for the man’ to get health coverage as liberation,” wrote liberal columnist Froma Harrop, channeling David Crosby.
She went on to label as “anecdotal” the prediction that “some
employers may reduce worker’s hours to avoid paying the employer
mandate,” a function of the ACA that has not even taken effect yet. In
the following paragraph, however, she said the opportunity provided by
not working will allow others to “start the business they’ve always
dreamed of,” or allow parents to “spend more time with their children.”
Some anecdotes appear are more equal than others.
The more thoughtful E.J. Dionne took a stab at spinning the news himself.
On Thursday, Dionne offered up his own anecdote, one about a
64-year-old looking to work less to spend more time with the kids. “Many
on the right love family values until they are taken seriously enough
to involve giving parents/workers more control over their lives,” he
wrote. I take back what I said about being thoughtful.
“And it’s sometimes an economic benefit when some share of the labor
force reduces hours or stops working altogether,” Dionne added. “At a
time of elevated unemployment, others will take their place. The CBO was
careful to underscore — the CBO is always careful — that ‘if some
people seek to work less, other applicants will be readily available to
fill those positions and the overall effect on employment will be
muted.’”
At least that’s an argument, one that can be summed up as
essentially: Unemployment will remain virtually as high as it is today
when the equivalent of 2.5 million productive workers perform a simple
cost/benefit analysis and determine it is in their best interest to cut
back on their working hours. Even Dionne might concede that it’s an
argument of dubious political utility for Democrats.
He’s not alone in making the claim that a vast exodus of able workers from the labor market might be a good thing. In U.S. News & World Reports, Danielle Kurtzleben, bravely wrote what she claims we’re all afraid to say:
What the truth might be, and what few politicians would dare say, is there might simply be some value in lower economic growth.
(Pause to allow for the reader to regain their composure.)
She, too, invoked a “64-year-old” for anecdotal purposes, though this
one is a “manufacturing worker” who just might be able to “retire a
little early” because of the ACA. This “manufacturing worker” has it
better than the employees of IBM or AOL, two large firms which announced
this week that they were limiting their contributions to their employees’ 401(k) retirement plans as a direct result of the increased operating costs associated with compliance with the ACA.
After assuring herself that the healthcare reform law will have
“zero” impact on productivity over the long run, Kurtzleben asserts that
the added happiness and contentment that the ACA will provide the
anecdotal figures in her head makes it all worthwhile.
Then you have Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI), who appeared
virtually incoherent Thursday on MSNBC while trying to explain away
“pathetic” Republicans accurately quoting the CBO.
After insisting that 10 million have benefited from the ACA — a figure that is impossible to verify and leads one to conclude she simply made it up — Moore went on to paraphrase the New York Times editorial board which called the federally-funded incentives for people not to work and be supported by those who do “liberating.”
“You could say people don’t want a promotion, because if they make
more money they’ll have to pay more taxes,” Moore said in false
equivalence. This makes sense only to those who do not currently pay
income taxes on their wages – which may, in fact, be her intended
audience.
A raise, an incentive to work or a reward for hard work, is the
precise opposite of a disincentive to work, like being provided
taxpayer-funded subsidies which terminate after reaching a certain
income threshold. Furthermore, getting a raise that bumps one to a
higher income tax bracket does not mean the recipient of that raise will
lose money. It means their new earnings and only the new earnings are
taxed at a higher rate. This hypothetical person will always make more
money after a raise.
“The Republicans are just so determined that they would come up with
any stupid economic argument they can,” she concluded with a bit of
psychological projection.
RELATED: Obama admin looking at extending “administrative fix” for noncompliant individual plans — for three years?
What Mitt Romney
warned us about:
Obamacare will push the equivalent of about 2 million workers out of
the labor market by 2017 as employees decide either to work fewer hours
or drop out of the job market altogether, according to estimates
released Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office.
The analysis set off a furious debate in Washington. The White House
argued that the reduction is positive because it means Americans will
forgo jobs or extra work to stay home with their children or strike out
on their own as entrepreneurs. Republicans, however, said the report
amounted to an “I told you so” moment and that subtracting the
equivalent of 2 million workers can’t be good for the economy.
The CBO said the number of workers dropping out of the labor force will grow from 2 million in 2017 to 2.5 million by 2024.
Although
part of those numbers are attributed to job cuts, the vast majority
represent workers who decide it makes more sense to stay home or work
fewer hours, weighing the higher taxes they pay in the workforce versus
their qualifications for benefits if they drop out.
“CBO
estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on
net, by about 1.5 to 2 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024,
almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor — given
the new taxes and other incentives they will face and the financial
benefits some will receive,” the nonpartisan tax agency said in its
economic outlook.
RELATED: Romney: Dishonesty in selling Obamacare is ‘rotting’ base of president’s 2nd term
Mediaite.com:
Pastor Robert Jeffress sat down with Bill O’Reilly Monday night to argue that President Obama
is laying the groundwork for the rise of the Anti-Christ because he is
“conditioning” people to rely on government support. He said there will
be a “future world dictator before Christ returns who’s going to usurp
people’s personal rights, and “change God’s laws… without any
opposition” so “people will have been conditioned long before the
Antichrist comes to accept government overreach, and that’s what you’re
seeing with President Obama.”
He said, “I’m not saying President Obama is the Anti-Christ. In fact,
I’m sure he’s not, because the Anti-Christ is going to have higher poll
numbers.”
He argued that in addition to Obamacare creating a culture of
dependency, Obama is sowing the seeds for the Anti-Christ with the
contraception mandate and “abortion-inducing drugs,” as well as the
“redefinition of marriage.” He argued that gay marriage is simply a
“counterfeit” of real marriage, and “whenever you say marriage is
whatever you want it to be… people say why bother getting married at
all.”
RELATED: Exemptions from the ‘contraception mandate’ threaten religious liberty
Mediaite.com:
Michael Moore marked the start of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate Wednesday with a blistering op-ed in The New York Times in which he admits something he says “many liberals” have been too scared to say out loud before now: “Obamacare is awful.”
“That is the dirty little secret many liberals have avoided saying
out loud for fear of aiding the president’s enemies,” Moore writes, “at a
time when the ideal of universal health care needed all the support it
could get.” But now that the law has been implemented, Moore evidently
feels free to speak out against it’s major flaw.
He blames Obamacare’s “rocky start” on one central fact:
The Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan
implemented by a president who knew in his heart that a single-payer,
Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go. When right-wing critics
“expose” the fact that President Obama endorsed a single-payer system
before 2004, they’re actually telling the truth.
At the same time, Moore calls Obamacare a “godsend” for people who
were in danger of losing their coverage under the old system. But rather
than “take a victory lap,” Moore urges progressives to keep fighting
for “what we deserve: universal quality health care.” He looked ahead to
2017 when Vermont plans to implement a single-payer system that has the
potential to “change everything.”
“Obamacare can’t be fixed by its namesake,” he writes. “It’s up to us to make it happen.”
Arguably, it was Moore’s 2007 documentary Sicko
,
which compared America’s health care systems to more cost effective
systems around the world, that was responsible for jump-starting the
national conversation about this issue in the first place.
RELATED: ‘Rate Shock’? ObamaCare launch brings renewed concern over insurance tax
Newsmax.com:
Roman Catholic Church-affiliated organizations on Tuesday obtained
last-minute court injunctions that give them temporary exemptions from a
part of the Obamacare healthcare law that requires employers to provide
insurance policies covering contraception.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor granted a temporary
injunction to Baltimore-based Little Sisters of the Poor and
Illinois-based Christian Brothers Services, plus related entities.
Sotomayor is giving the government until Friday morning to respond to her decision.
Two different appellate courts had granted stays in three other cases
that were pending at the high court, filed by various organizations,
including Catholic University of America and non-profits in Michigan and
Tennessee, said a lawyer representing the groups. The lower-court
actions meant the Supreme Court did not need to act in those cases.
The groups were all asking the courts to exempt them temporarily from
the so-called contraception mandate while litigation continues. The
mandate, which was to take effect for the organizations on Wednesday, is
already in place for many women who have private health insurance.
The organizations accuse the federal government of forcing them to
support contraception and sterilization in violation of their religious
beliefs or face steep fines.
The 2010 Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, requires employers to
provide health insurance policies that cover preventive services for
women, including contraception and sterilization.
The law makes an exception for religious institutions such as houses of
worship that mainly serve and employ members of their own faith, but not
for schools, hospitals, and charitable organizations that employ people
of all faiths.
As a compromise, the administration agreed to an accommodation for
nonprofits affiliated with religious entities, which was finalized in
July.
Newsbusters.org:
In an earlier post today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog),
I noted that reporters at Politico and CNNMoney.com seemed mystified at
a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll showing that 68 percent of
Americans believe the economy is in poor shape, and that over half
believe it will still be that way a year from now.
One reason for their incredulity is that, perhaps deliberately, they
haven't been paying attention to household income data compiled monthly
by ex-Census Bureau workers at Sentier Research.
Sentier's latest report covering November came out today. It shows that
annualized inflation-adjusted median household income is still more
than 7 percent below where it was when Barack Obama took office in
Janaury 2009, and that it's gone nowhere in the 23 months since December
2011. At an index value of 92.7, November's figure is virtually the
same as it was in December 2011 (92.8).
To its credit, the Washington Post's Wonkblog
found Sheila Bair, who "served as Chair of the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation from June 2006 through June 2011." Ms. Bair calls
the following her favorite graph of the year:
This is why Ms. Bair chose the above graph (bolds are mine):
... for a large number of American households, there has been no economic recovery.
Caught in a vice of chronic unemployment and falling wages, real median
household income (excluding capital gains and losses but including cash
government benefits) has declined 4.4% since the “recovery” began in
2009. For many households, the drop has been more severe. For
African-American households, it is 10.9%. For those under 25 years old,
it is 9.6%. For single females with children, it is 7.5%. Indeed, the
only households to experience an increase in real income are those 65 to
74 years old.
So as the investor class celebrates the stock market’s bubbly
25% gain in 2013 courtesy of quantitative easing, let’s not forget the
plight of those Americans who work for a living. And in 2014, let’s face
up to the ineffectiveness of monetary policy to help them and the
desperate need for fiscal leadership to generate real, sustainable
growth.
Bair was appointed by George W. Bush in 2006. From the title of one of her her blog posts
(e.g., "Time to abolish Fannie and Freddie who now account for 75% of
the mortgage market, virtually all taxpayer backed" and ), it appears
that she isn't a slavish adherent to Keynesianism. On the other hand,
she doesn't fully appreciate the gravity of our financial situation. In
January, she tried to explain "Why Republicans need to help Obama."
Obama is not interested in their help at all, Sheila.
Unfortunately, Bair's guest post is only one of three items returned in a Google News search on Sentier Research's firm name for the past week. The other two refer to older data.
It's remarkable that the press, to the extent that it has noticed
stagnant incomes at all, has rarely if ever assigned the blame to Obama
administration economic and regulatory policies. That certainly was not
the case during the George W. Bush administration, when median income
was generally only flat and not stuck at the bottom of a crater.
Instead, the press has allowed itself to be co-opted by Obama's
speechifying about "income inequality," which happens to have deepened
on his watch, and arguably because of his administration's policies.
RELATED: Obamacare Website Official Retires, Sebelius Stays
Politico.com:
Obamacare’s rollout dented the Department of Health and Human
Services in just the first month. Up next year: the Internal Revenue
Service.
A key piece of the health care law gives Americans making
less than 400 percent of the poverty line subsidies to buy insurance.
But if buyers don’t alert the insurance exchanges to big life changes
throughout the year — like a divorce, promotion or new job for them or a
spouse— they could wind up with sticker shock at tax time.
It’s a new responsibility for this group — many of whom are just struggling to sign up.
The IRS, for its part, must make sure consumers don’t get blindsided —
or it will face a bunch of angry taxpayers who didn’t realize they
would owe Uncle Sam money back, tax experts said.
“If I were the IRS, I would be very concerned that I’m going to be
viewed as the villain when people have to pay back money the government
gave them for health insurance,” said Chris Condeluci, who was Senate
Finance Committee GOP tax counsel during drafting of the Affordable Care
Act.
There is time. Potential “repayments” to the government will not come
due until 2015, when recipients file next year’s taxes. But the new
rule for reporting these life changes begins this January.
RELATED: MSNBCers Wonder Whether Troubled Obamacare Will Be Vindicated by History
HotAir.com:
Let’s start with the newsiest based on giant news that broke just hours before the press conference and move on from there.
1. Hey, from where do you derive the legal
authority to change large parts of this law passed by Congress? And, if
you believe you have the legal justification for it, what’s to stop a
future president from simply deciding he won’t enforce large parts of
it?
2. How exactly does the hardship exemption work? Do
you have a ballpark number for how many Americans might be eligible? Is
there an enforcement mechanism? For instance, will the IRS or someone
demand to see a cancellation letter and proof a family couldn’t afford a
new plan? If they don’t have the proper evidence would they later face
any consequences?
3. Does the administration have the authority to
exempt people from certain taxes on an ad hoc basis? From where does it
derive this power? Are there other taxes from which people could be
exempted by the president’s decree?
4. The demographic make-up of the group enrolled in
the exchanges is extremely important to making the law work and avoiding
a death spiral, or adverse selection. HHS has been extremely stingy
with numbers and specifics about those demographics. Do you have them?
Are you getting reports or any sense of what the pool looks like?
Colorado, for instance, is enrolling large numbers of 45+ citizens. Does
that suggest to you that the health of the pools is in danger? And,
could we get some assurances from you that the administration will be
transparent about these numbers as we move forward?
5. A report today reveals that Teresa Fryer, chief
information security officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services (CMS), thought HealthCare.gov was so full of security holes it
should be denied its “Authority to Operate” certification but was
overridden. Your HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has said she had no
knowledge of security concerns yet Fryer has reportedly told Congress
members she briefed Sebelius and others. Were you aware of any security
concerns before the launch? Are you at all confident Americans who are
submitting sensitive information to the site are safe? Will the federal
government be transparent about breaches when and if they happen?
Follow up: There have already been two “high-risk” security findings
found as the site has been operating over the past months, along with
several medium and low-risk findings. Are you kept abreast of these
findings? How did the site launch with these security issues unresolved?
Should it have been delayed until they were fixed?
6. Today, just hours before we came to this press
conference, the HealthCare.gov website was down. It had a note on it
referring to the crash as “scheduled maintenance.” Was it scheduled
maintenance today or just another crash? And, if it was scheduled
maintenance, why was maintenance scheduled just days before the extended
deadline for enrollment?
7. Given the high number of cancellation notices
that have gone out—estimates are rough, but some think it may be in the
millions if you add up data available to us state by state—combined with
the persistent problems with the website, isn’t it possible that the
net number of insured will actually go up in the new year?
As the
formerly insured add to the uninsured pool because they cannot afford a
new plan, or they can’t get through the process on HealthCare.gov, or
take this latest exemption as a reason to put off purchasing altogether,
wouldn’t that destroy this law’s raison d’etre? What does it mean if
ACA, which was meant to get the uninsured insured, is a net negative in
terms of insured Americans in 2014?
8. CMS/HHS officials have testified that the portion
of HealthCare.gov that would actually pay insurance companies has not
yet been built. HHS has said it will use a “workaround” that involves
having insurance companies estimate what they are owed in subsidies and
later resolving differences. How is it possible a payment mechanism for
subsidies was not built into the original site, as launched. When will
it be built? Do you feel confident the federal government can transfer
subsidies via this workaround? Given the complexity of the subsidy
formula, are you confident insurance companies even know where to begin
in calculating what they’re owed? How will we know tax money is not lost
on overestimations?
9. Many insurance companies have reported getting
bad data and duplicative data from HealthCare.gov about enrollees. They
also fear they are missing some data entirely. Is there a possibility
that some of the Americans who were able to get through HealthCare.gov’s
enrollment process might think they’re enrolled but they’re not? How
can those people protect themselves from this possibility?
10. Your announcement about the hardship exemption
to ACA’s rules allows those who feel they cannot afford a new
exchange-eligible plan with all the Essential Health Benefits to avoid
penalty for not being insured or to buy a catastrophic plan that was
supposed to be for young people. Is the acknowledgement of this
“hardship” an acknowledgment that the ACA has more problems than a
broken website and bad publicity? That it has substantive problems too,
such as unaffordability?
In doing this, your administration has deemed the ACA itself “an
unexpected natural or human-caused event.” In other words, it is a
hardship, is it not?
11. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, longtime supporter and reporter on the Affordable Care Act, wrote today that your hardship exemption is the “first crack in the individual mandate.”
He also warned that it might make it harder for you and Democrats in
Congress to resist calls to extend the exemption to others. How do you
justify exempting those who were formerly insured but now cannot afford a
plan but not those who never were insured because they couldn’t afford
plans? Why not do what some have suggested and delay the individual
mandate for everyone?
And, finally, since the press loves so much to talk about the politics and feelings of things instead of the actual news causing millions to lose their insurance, I offer this one.
12. You are about to embark on a two-week Hawaiian vacation. While no one begrudges the president Christmas with his family, are
you aware that two state-level Obamacare exchange directors have
resigned over taking ill-timed tropical vacations within the last two
weeks? Are you sending the wrong message by leaving for so long
while your legacy law is in pretty great peril, while Americans are
still reeling from cancellations and the prospect of being uninsured?
What will you be doing from Hawaii to ensure HealthCare.gov’s problems
are resolved? Should we anticipate any other law changes while you’re
gone?
And, while we’re on the subject of resignations and such, let’s make this a baker’s dozen:
13. Thus far, not one person has been fired for the
roll-out of ACA you yourself have called “screwed up.” Why not? Has
anyone been disciplined? If not, why not? Will anyone lose their job
over this now three-month-long calamity?
It is rare that the White House press corps asks exactly what I want
it to ask, but today’s display, with a few notable exceptions, was truly
irresponsible. Not only would critics of Obamacare like to know how
Obama proposes to fix it, but I’m sure the law’s liberal champions would
appreciate some more information and assurances as well.
RELATED: Jonathan Karl Asks Obama: ‘What Has Been Your Biggest Mistake’ This Year?
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