Open Thread
I don't usually do this, but it looks like the comment thread on the last post is too long to display, so I'll start an Open Thread. Lots to talk about -- more school shootings, NSA spying revelations, ACA web site problems, the World Series, post-shutdown observations, drones, drugs, polls ...
Have at it!
Have at it!
posted by JimK at 10:36 AM
167 Comments:
As technical failures bedevil the rollout of President Obama’s health care law, evidence is emerging that one of the program’s loftiest goals — to encourage competition among insurers in an effort to keep costs low — is falling short for many rural Americans.
Competition is not intense in rural areas and small towns, which have few carriers offering plans in the law’s online exchanges. Those places, many of them poor, are being asked to choose from some of the highest-priced plans in the 34 states where the federal government is running the health insurance marketplaces, a review by The New York Times has found.
Of the roughly 2,500 counties served by the federal exchanges, more than half, or 58 percent, have plans offered by just one or two insurance carriers, according to an analysis by The Times of county-level data provided by the Department of Health and Human Services. In about 530 counties, only a single insurer is participating.
The analysis suggests that the ambitions of the Affordable Care Act to increase competition have unfolded unevenly, and have not addressed the factors that contribute to high prices. Insurance companies are reluctant to enter challenging new markets, experts say, because medical costs are high, dominant insurers are difficult to unseat, and powerful hospital systems resist efforts to lower rates.
“There’s nothing in the structure of the Affordable Care Act which really deals with that problem,” said John Holahan, a fellow at the Urban Institute.
OK, here's what I tried to post on the other thread:
With a few minutes of research, it seems that, if my employer were to offer the same subsidy, that I would save about $100 per year if I were to sign up at healthcare.gov. It's basically a wash. I suspect the fact that my current coverage allows for pre-existing conditions explains the lack of difference. I've heard that people who weren't covered for such previously have increases in premiums under the ACA.
rrjr
"analysis suggests that the ambitions of the Affordable Care Act to increase competition have unfolded unevenly"
In the not quite four weeks since the website launched.
Single payer would lower costs for all of us.
"SINGLE-PAYER DEBATED AS POSSIBLE NEXT STEP IN HEALTH REFORM
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, OCT. 22, 2013…. Massachusetts might not be ready to adopt a single-payer health care system but advocates on Tuesday, including a number of progressive lawmakers, suggested it might only be a matter of time.
Sen. Jamie Eldridge, an Acton Democrat, testified before the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing in favor of two bills he has filed this session to implement a universal Medicare plan in Massachusetts (S 515), or to take the more incremental step of creating a public health insurance option (S 514) to give consumers a taste.
“As much as we’ve made great advances here in Massachusetts and covered nearly all people, there are still some deep flaws in our health care system,” Eldridge said. “A single-payer model is a more efficient system, better health care options and something employers prefer because they no longer have to provide health care.”..."
we don't have single payer because Dems knew Americans would never stand for it:
WASHINGTON — Emboldened by the intense public criticism surrounding the rollout of the online insurance exchange, Republicans in Congress are refocusing their efforts from denying funds for the health care law to investigating it.
In changing tactics, Republicans are tamping down public criticism of their previously fruitless attack on the Affordable Care Act, one that led to a short, partial government shutdown, by focusing on the problems with the law that they say they have warned the nation about, unheeded, for three years.
“I think the biggest part of Congress’s job is to provide proper oversight of the executive branch of government,” Speaker John A. Boehner said Wednesday at a news conference. “And when it comes to Obamacare, clearly there is an awful lot that needs to be held accountable.”
Beginning Thursday, the House will hold the first of a series of hearings across multiple committees to examine the problems with the troubled Web site, as well as the law’s exemption and waiver components, and the problems that some consumers are having accessing their doctors through the program.
The Energy and Commerce Committee will hold the first hearings, including one with Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services, next week. The Ways and Means and oversight committees are expected to follow.
“What we’re trying to figure out,” said Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, “is how did all this taxpayer money get wasted and what is their remedy?”
At the same time, Republican political groups are beginning to broadcast radio advertisements attacking the law — and the Congressional Democrats who passed it — in an attempt go back on offense and recast themselves as providers of needed oversight, after Democrats painted them as government obstructionists during the budget standoff.
“If the Web site glitches are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, “it’s only a matter of time before the law sinks and takes with it those Democrats who wrote it, voted for it and are proud of it.”
On Wednesday, nervous Democrats chided the Obama administration for the botched rollout of the online exchange. Millions of consumers have been frustrated when they have tried to see details of health plans on the federal Web site, HealthCare.gov. Federal officials opened the exchange even though parts had not been fully tested.
More Democrats called for a delay in a core element of the federal health law, with two senators blasting the Obama administration’s rollout of a health-insurance website.
Sen. Kay Hagan (D., N.C.) said in a Thursday statement that the $95 penalty on individuals who fail to enroll in a health insurance plan should be waived for two months. That penalty starts at $95 for 2014 tax returns.
A few hours earlier, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) said in a television interview that the U.S. needs to consider delaying the penalty, which as at the heart of the 2010 law designed to prod Americans without health insurance into buying coverage.
The two Democrats, who rarely break with the Obama administration, spoke Thursday in unusually harsh terms about the administration’s implementation of the law. Both said that the White House needs to be more open about what went wrong–criticisms that sound similar to those coming from Republicans.
“They haven’t leveled with the United States Senate,” Mr. Blumenthal said on MSNBC. “They haven’t briefed us on what they think are the underlying problems. They were supposed to do so yesterday and canceled the meeting. So I think there needs to be fuller, fairer, more straightforward and complete accounting for what’s going on.”
Ms. Hagan said that the Obama administration “must be fully transparent in their efforts to get the Web site working. Anything less than complete disclosure and accountability is not acceptable.”
More Democrats have been sounding off about the problems with the new online marketplaces. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.) earlier this week called for delaying penalties if the technology isn’t fixed. Within a day, Democrats in both the House and the Senate were starting to share those concerns.
Democrats are concerned that the botched rollout will undercut their coming election campaigns. The penalty is at the heart of a mandate that individuals buy health insurance. Without it, the risk is that healthier Americans will not sign up, prompting insurers to raise premiums to unaffordable levels.
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"Lots to talk about -- more school shootings, NSA spying revelations, ACA web site problems, the World Series, post-shutdown observations, drones, drugs, polls ..."
not to mention the biggest controversy of the week:
what was the rock and roll hall of fame thinking to nominate Hall and Oates
Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed. Press 1 if failure is not an option.
President Barack Obama pressed the wrong button. He got the Affordable Care Act passed and then rested on his laurels. How sad to see our tech-savvy commander in chief, who blew billions on a website that is worse than any state’s DMV, direct frustrated consumers to a 1-800 number, like an infomercial host on late-night cable.
His speech in the White House Rose Garden this week was supposed to stop the unhelpful weeks of hemming and hawing by his staff over the HealthCare.gov debacle. They had made light of the catastrophe, saying they were “scrubbing the site” of “glitches,” which is like calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground. Not being able to access the website was “a good problem to have,” and one that proved its popularity. They like it, Mr. President, they really like it.
“Nobody’s madder than me,” Obama claimed. We don’t need him to get mad, we need him to fix it. Leave the anger to the American public to whom he has promised to deliver health care for three years and who are now drowning in error messages, even in the middle of the night, when traffic is supposedly light.
He reverted to singing his own praises in getting the health-care law passed at all. “We did not wage this long and contentious battle just around a website,” Obama said. “That’s not what this was about.”
But this really is about a website, and it’s shocking the president doesn’t realize that. Bringing everyone into the risk pool is the essence of the ACA, the basic principle that makes insurance work and keeps companies from cherry-picking healthy customers and leaving the sick to fend for themselves.
The rollout of Obamacare had to be absolutely perfect. Obama needed to treat it like a 21st-century Manhattan Project, full of 20-something geeks pulling all-nighters and managed by geniuses from Apple Inc. and Google Inc. who can fill in that blind spot between the techies and end users. Instead, he took the pedestrian route and spent $400 million on a Canadian company that our Good Neighbors to the North once fired for incompetence.
That brings us to those determined to stop Obamacare. They’re happy to watch the president making excuses. They’re gloating now.
The website failure gives credence to those who warn that government can’t be trusted to get big things right, and that the market, not bureaucrats, should fix health care. It’s not just the crazies who doubt government now. According to the Pew Research Center, the competence of officialdom is on shaky ground, with only 19 percent of Americans saying they trust in government “just about always” or “most of the time.”
There are many things Obama can’t control -- the Middle East, the World Series, Senator Ted Cruz -- but he can control practical matters. We set him up as royalty, despite fighting the British to have a democracy. The other two branches of government still have to worry about the basement flooding and the lawn growing weedy, but the Leader of the Free World has to floss and not much else. He lives in a palace. He has an Air Force to fly him around. We want our presidents to be superheroes who can send a man to the moon and Osama bin Laden to his grave.
This was supposed to have been Obamacare’s moment of truth, when the president disproved bitter Republicans and showed that government could do something great. HealthCare.gov went live without a dry run, and just last week the computer code -- 500 million lines of which might have to be reconfigured -- contained place-holder language that is used in preliminary drafts. Yet contractors have been paid as if they performed.
Republicans may yet get their delay, not because they shut down the government, but because the president didn’t use his power to make his hard-fought legislation work.
After this, is there anything Obama wants government to do that can sail through Congress? Press 2 if you think Obama is going to win the fight to reinstate funds for food stamps cut from the farm bill. Press 3 if you believe he’s going to get immigration reform. Press 4 if you are madder than he is.
why so many logged on the first day:
"While the Affordable Care Act was making its way through Congress in 2009 and 2010, President Obama famously promised the American people over and over again that if you like your health plan, you can keep it.
“Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you,” Obama said at one rally in July 2009. “First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.”
But the president's promise is turning out to be false for millions of Americans who have had their health insurance policies canceled because they don't meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.
According to health policy expert Bob Laszewski, roughly 16 million Americans will lose their current plans because of Obamacare:
The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the Obama administration's regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. The rules are very complex. For example, if you had an individual plan in March of 2010 when the law was passed and you only increased the deductible from $1,000 to $1,500 in the years since, your plan has lost its grandfather status and it will no longer be available to you when it would have renewed in 2014.
These 16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break in coverage and comply with the new health law's benefit mandates––the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.
Kaiser Health News called up a few insurers around the country and found that hundreds of thousands of Americans have already received cancellation notices.
"The cancellation notices, which began arriving in August, have shocked many consumers in light of President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their plans if they liked them," according to Kaiser Health News reporters Anna Gorman and Julie Appleby.
"Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent," Kaiser reports. "Blue Shield of California sent roughly 119,000 cancellation notices out in mid-September, about 60 percent of its individual business. About two-thirds of those policyholders will see rate increases in their new policies, said spokesman Steve Shivinsky."
Speaking of single-payer:
Of the 52% of people claimed to oppose the ACA, 16 of those percentage points represent people who oppose because they want a single-payer system, or actual socialized medicine (such as the US military has). In other words, 64% of Americans support Obamacare or something more liberal.
Opposition to health care reform is such a losing proposition for Republicans. They've been misled by a misunderstand of their own poll results.
Of course, we really need to see how it works. There will be the rub.
Just so y'all know, when you cut-and-paste long articles from other sources, I generally don't read them. Does anyone?
Good points, Robert. Most people favor fixing the problems with health care in this country rather than letting them continue to fester, as all the unspun polls clearly show.
However, some people can only spin, and not see the facts right before them, like these:
CNN/ORC Poll (My condensed version of their findings follow, but this link will take you to the source.)
"5. We'd like to get your overall opinion of some people in the news. As I read each name, please say if you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of these people -- or if you have never heard of them. (RANDOM ORDER)
John Boehner
-28, that's 27% favorable, 55% unfavorable,
Harry Reid
-10, that's 30% favorable, 40% unfavorable
Nancy Pelosi
-10, that's 37% favorable, 47% unfavorable
Mitch McConnell
-19, that's 23% favorable, 42% unfavorable
Ted Cruz
-19, that's 23% favorable, 42% unfavorable
John McCain
+6, that's 48% favorable, 42% unfavorable
Hilary Clinton
+22, that's 59% favorable, 37% unfavorable
Democratic Party
-8, that's 43% favorable, 51% unfavorablle
Republican Party
-24, that's 30% favorable, 64% unfavorable
Tea Party Movement
-28, that's 28% favorable, 56% unfavorable
6. Do you think it is good for the country or bad for the country that the Republican Party is in control of the U.S. House of Representatives?
Good for the country 38%
Bad for the country 54%"
Two of the politicians they polled about are viewed positively, John McCain, who has fought against the Republican Party’s “wacko bird” crusade to destroy the Affordable Care Act by shutting down the government and threatening to default on our debts, and Hilary Clinton, who will be the next Democratic Presidential nominee if she wants it.
It's particularly interesting to see McCain speak about "wacko birds" when he's the one who elevated tea bagger, half Governor Sarah "death panels" Palin, into the political limelight. At least he seems to be one GOPer who can learn from his past mistakes.
"Of the 52% of people claimed to oppose the ACA, 16 of those percentage points represent people who oppose because they want a single-payer system, or actual socialized medicine (such as the US military has)."
How is the military plan "socialist"?
They offer their employees health insurance. How is that socialist?
"In other words, 64% of Americans support Obamacare or something more liberal."
So, your definition of "liberal" is favoring close government control of personal activities.
Thanks for clearing that up.
btw, ACA is too broad and contradictory to have a meaningful up or down vote.
Most people, for example, don't agree with the individual mandate or taxes discouraging medical research or extra taxes discouraging investment.
"Opposition to health care reform is such a losing proposition for Republicans."
They don't oppose health care reform. They believe different reforms will yield better results.
"They've been misled by a misunderstand of their own poll results."
I guess they won't let you into their secret strategy meetings any more if you can't keep it to yourself.
"Of course, we really need to see how it works. There will be the rub."
Even at this early stage, it's obvious Obamacare won't work.
"Just so y'all know, when you cut-and-paste long articles from other sources, I generally don't read them."
It's OK, Robert. We know many psycho-freaks suffer from attention deficit.
You're on the right track, baby, you were born that way!!
"Does anyone?"
Honestly, I don't think many people visit this site at all.
Jeanne Shaheen doesn't sound like a Democrat who just won a government-shutdown "victory." Ms. Shaheen sounds like a Democrat who thinks she's going to lose her job.
The New Hampshire senator fundamentally altered the health-care fight on Tuesday with a letter to the White House demanding it both extend the ObamaCare enrollment deadline and waive tax penalties for those unable to enroll. Within nanoseconds, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor had endorsed her "common-sense idea." By Wednesday night, five Senate Democrats were on board, pushing for . . . what's that dirty GOP word? Oh, right. "Delay."
After 16 long days of vowing to Republicans that they would not cave in any way, shape or form on ObamaCare, Democrats spent their first post-shutdown week caving in every way, shape and form. With the shutdown now over, the only story now is the unrivaled disaster that is the president's health-care law.
Hundreds of thousands of health-insurance policies canceled. Companies dumping coverage and cutting employees' hours. Premiums skyrocketing. And a website that reprises the experience of a Commodore 64. As recently as May, Democratic consultants were advising members of Congress that their best ObamaCare strategy for 2014 was to "own" the law. Ms. Shaheen has now publicly advised the consultants where they can file that memo.
In the Senate, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin is working on legislation to delay the individual mandate's enforcement for a year. CNN reports that all 16 Senate Democrats up for re-election are expected to support Ms. Shaheen's proposal. In the House, Democratic members are stacking up behind all of these ideas, and more.
Even House liberals have felt it necessary to reassure voters that they, too, are angry. "I'd like to see somebody lose their job over this. I think it's outrageous," complained New York Rep. Sean Maloney. "Somebody's got to man up here—get rid of these people," said Minnesota's Rick Nolan. This is presumably a call for a certain "somebody" to do something more than 1-800 commercials from the Rose Garden.
This Democratic freakout has been building for months, even if it was masked by the shutdown headlines and the way the media reported that event. Nationally, yes, the GOP took a drubbing on the shutdown. But next year isn't a national election. It's a midterm that will turn on key states, where polls all along have found disapproval of ObamaCare, the president and his party's handling of the economy.
According to RCP average of polls, only 40% of Americans approve of Obama's handling of the economy.
In other words, 60% of Americans oppose Obama or something more liberal.
Support for Obamais such a losing proposition for Democrats. They've been misled by a misunderstanding of their own press coverage.
Some start ups are rocky.
By the end of May 2012, [the month of its initial public offering, Facebook] stock lost over a quarter of its starting value, which led to the Wall Street Journal calling the IPO a "fiasco."
So what?
"Two of the politicians they polled about are viewed positively, John McCain, who has fought against the Republican Party’s “wacko bird” crusade to destroy the Affordable Care Act by shutting down the government and threatening to default on our debts,"
McCain is someone who reads the polls and tries to create a character that will work. He really doesn't have any convictions other than that military action is good no matter the cause.
"and Hilary Clinton, who will be the next Democratic Presidential nominee if she wants it."
please. she's the most recognizable face at current but frontrunners this far out rarely hold up.
I'll admit, she'd be better than Obama but that's not much of a bar. I actually expected more out of her when she was Sec of State and was disappointed. Benghazi would be a major campaign issue.
Democrats should go with Jerry Brown. He favors their viewpoint but always is thinking outside the box and has made the liberal agenda work in California.
Have a Scott Walker on the Repub side, who has made the conservative agenda work in Wisconsin, and we could have a rare election decided by ideas instead of personalities.
Let's all hope for that.
It's what America needs.
"How is the military plan "socialist"?
They offer their employees health insurance. How is that socialist? "
Which branch of the military did you serve in and how many military hospitals have you been in seeking medical treatment? None apparently.
Civilian employees of the military might get offered health insurance plans, but for military members and their families, there's only one place to go for medical treatment, which is provided to them free of charge via on-base hospitals and health clinics, all of which is paid for with our tax dollars.
So while they fortunately get free medical care, many lower rank military families also seek SNAP benefits so they can feed their families.
A few months ago, the DoD reported "Last year, $99 million in food stamps were cashed in at bases by military families, disabled vets and others with military identification, and more than $53 million in food stamps were cashed in this year through June, according to Defense Commissary Agency..."
"Civilian employees of the military might get offered health insurance plans, but for military members and their families, there's only one place to go for medical treatment, which is provided to them free of charge via on-base hospitals and health clinics, all of which is paid for with our tax dollars."
we pay for it because we are their employers
nothing socialist about it
"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it ... "
then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Obamacare legislation, March 9, 2010.
Not long after she uttered that infamous phrase, Pelosi got her way. She stampeded House Democrats to vote for a massive, complex Obamacare plan that few lawmakers in either party had time to understand. She and Democratic Senate leaders ramrodded Obamacare without a single Republican vote.
Democratic lawmakers voted for a bill without a clear idea of how well it would work.
Now they know.
Obamacare is faltering under its own bureaucratic weight. Massive computer problems are preventing people from signing up for coverage in the new online marketplaces. Worse, many people who finally manage to log in suffer sticker shock at high insurance premium or deductible prices.
Democrats are breaking ranks. And, predictably, there's a rising cry to fire people who are responsible for the mess, including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "Somebody's got to man up here, get rid of these people," said Rep. Rick Nolan, D-Minn., who didn't name names but characterized the president's response to the rollout as "weak." "There are people like myself who supported the Affordable Care Act, but I'm not oblivious to the fact that this layout has done harm and damage to the brand," he said.
The brand? Obamacare's got all the appeal of MySpace, Friendster or BlackBerry now.
On Thursday, government contractors who built the system told a House committee that they did not have enough time to test the system before its debut. We already knew that. The law piled thousands of pages of rules and regulations on employers, individuals, insurers. Those rules were still flowing out of the administration even as the exchanges were being readied to open.
Sebelius is set to testify next week. She's saying that President Barack Obama didn't know about the problems with the health insurance website before it went live.
Really? We know Obama's busy, but didn't he see those Government Accountability Office warnings that many technical hurdles needed to be overcome for the system to start on time?
Obama and Sebelius promise a "tech surge" to fix all the computer problems. But as Democrats now see, the problems with the law they passed aren't buried in a thicket of computer code.
•The promise that the law would deliver affordable care? Ask those Chicagoans who face deductibles that are thousands of dollars higher than their current coverage. The sticker shock is nationwide: People in some of the poorest rural areas must choose from some of the nation's highest-priced plans, The New York Times reports.
•The president's oft-repeated promise that you can keep your current coverage if you want to? Insurers are telling many Americans that their existing policies won't be renewed, so they'll have to shop for new ones.
•You can keep your doctors? In some plans insurers cut costs by offering people narrow networks, excluding some of the best physicians and hospitals.
Congress can start to fix this mess by delaying the mandate that everyone have insurance or pay a penalty. As it is now, people must sign up for insurance by March 31 to avoid penalties.
The feds already have granted a one-year reprieve on the companion mandate that employers provide insurance or pay fines. The administration has allowed any number of carve-outs for other special pleaders.
A delay in the individual mandate isn't a special break. It's simple fairness.
In the rush to pass Obamacare, Democratic leaders reassured lawmakers that Americans would love it, once they understood it.
Alas, we all understand it — better than the lawmakers who enacted it did.
just think how much grief this country would have been spared if Obama had agreed to delay the individual mandate on September 30
no shutdown
no embarrassing website failures
the world is laughing at us because we elected a fool like Obama
then, they are horrified as Obama rains drones down on innocent civilians, bugs the phones of our allies, let's Assad mock us, let's Iran make nukes:
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) called on President Obama to reconsider delaying individual enrollment in ObamaCare now that it likely holds majority support in the Senate.
In a letter to the president sent Thursday, Rubio said the half dozen Senate Democrats who have come out in support of a delay gives the proposal enough support to pass with a bipartisan majority.
“Given your own admission that the website’s problems cannot be 'sugar-coated,' I believe my legislation rests on common-ground between us despite our differences over ObamaCare as a whole, and is therefore deserving of your support,” he said.
“In fact, six Democratic senators have already announced their support for delaying the mandate, giving such a measure enough votes to pass with bipartisan support.”
No bubble head.
The fact is Ryan didn't win.
He and Romney were soundly defeated in an electoral college landslide in 2012 after running on defunding and dismantling the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
My understanding is that military members are treated by military doctors and healh-care personal at military treatment facilities, and at military-run hospitals, not by private insurance. Socialized medicine.
To be honest, I may be thinking about the VA.
My employer doesn't provide my medical care, they subsidize my private insurance. Not socialized medicine.
To be honest, my employer self-insures, I think, which makes sense with 23,000 employees, but they pay the health-insurance plans to manage it, and determine payments.
"My understanding is that military members are treated by military doctors and healh-care personal at military treatment facilities, and at military-run hospitals, not by private insurance. Socialized medicine."
doesn't make it socialist, Robert
it's just the system that employer has set up
a private employer of enough size could do the same
"No bubble head.
The fact is Ryan didn't win."
you're wrong, shriveled head
Ryan is winning today's battle
the individual mandate will be delayed
the shame is that if Obama had admitted that the system wasn't ready on October 1, the whole shutdown could have been avoided
then, we wouldn't have had to give government workers a paid three week vacation
but, at least, we saved 24 billion in unnecessary travel expenses
"He and Romney were soundly defeated in an electoral college landslide in 2012 after running on defunding and dismantling the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act."
you stupid liar
the ACA wasn't an issue because Romney had designed it
if it was the deciding issue, Obama would have lost
but, truthfully, as becomes clearer by the day, the real losers in the 2012 Presidential election were the American people
"you're wrong, shriveled head...you stupid liar"
What's that? Another couple of personal attacks?
Time to teach the fact that in July 2012, Romney sign[ed] pledge to repeal Obama’s health law
"Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney signed a pledge Wednesday to repeal, defund and otherwise thwart President Obama’s healthcare law.
Two conservative groups — Independent Women’s Voice and American Action Majority — are spearheading the “Repeal Pledge” effort.
Romney has consistently vowed to repeal “ObamaCare” if he wins the White House, but many conservatives have questioned his commitment to repeal because he signed a nearly identical healthcare law as governor of Massachusetts.
“Mitt Romney’s decision to put pen to paper, and sign The ObamaCare Repeal Pledge shows voters that, when it comes to healthcare, he gets it,” said Heather Higgins, president and chief executive of Independent Women’s Voice.
The pledge Romney signed states: “I would now and will for the duration of my presidency, promote and sign all measures leading to (the law’s) defunding, deauthorization, and repeal.”
Romney committed to pursuing full repeal as well as piecemeal measures."
House GOP Budget Would Repeal ACA, Voucherize Medicare
"In a replay of the 2012 presidential campaign, House Republicans today released a proposed budget for fiscal 2014 that would repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), partially privatize Medicare, block-grant Medicaid, and when all is said and done, reduce the federal deficit by $4.6 trillion over 10 years, leading to a balanced budget in 2023.
Congress has "to fix our entitlements and to grow our economy" to avoid a debt crisis, said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who chairs the House budget committee, in an introduction to the document...."
Bad anonymous said "According to RCP average of polls, only 40% of Americans approve of Obama's handling of the economy.".
Just a reminder that Bad anonymous has a history of lying about polls as was shown here at October 12, 2013 6:19 PM and October 12, 2013 7:59 PM
The truth is the polling on the shutdown was all bad news for Republicans and bad anonymous admitted here at October 18, 2013 1:12 PM the republicans were responsible for and choose to shutdown the government.
Bad anonymous said ”Which is why good ol’ “Bipartisan Barack” relished the chance to mock the GOP yesterday with his comment: “Don’t like a particular policy? ... Go out there and win an election.”"(editorial comment: Earth to Barry. Those [Republicans] you are talking to all won elections. That's why they had the power to shut down the government".
From the aforementioned poll:
"President Obama’s favorability ratings have stayed about the same, pretty much a dead heat with 48% approving of the job he’s doing and 49% disapproving. The numbers for the Republican party’s handling of the budget showdown? A whopping 77% disapproval and only 21% approval. And among registered voters, it’s 81% disapproval, with 62% strongly disapproving. Asked if they have a favorable or unfavorable view of the Republican party, 63% said unfavorable and only half, 32%, said favorable. Favorable/unfavorable for the Tea Party is at 59% negative and 25% positive.
And this is a very interesting question and result. When asked if they think President Obama “is more interested in doing what’s best for the country or what’s best for himself politically,” 52% said he does what’s best for the country and 46% say he does what’s best for him. Asked the same question about the Republicans in Congress, a staggering 77% said they act in their own political interests and against the best interests of the country, with only 20% saying they do what’s right.
And the numbers just keep coming. 81% disapproved of the government shutdown; 17% approved of it. And they blamed Republicans rather than Obama for it by a 53%-29% margin. 86% said that the shutdown damaged America’s standing in the world and 80% thought it damaged the economy."
New research shows that average summer temperatures in the Canadian Arctic over the last century are the highest in the last 44,000 years, and perhaps the highest in 120,000 years.
"The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is," Gifford Miller, a researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a joint statement from the school and the publisher of the journal Geophysical Researcher Letters, in which the study by Miller and his colleagues was published online this week. "This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."
"New research shows that average summer temperatures in the Canadian Arctic over the last century are the highest in the last 44,000 years, and perhaps the highest in 120,000 years."
really?
who cares
I personally lived through a good part of said century and found it mostly pleasant
btw, went to a high school football game tonight and it was colder than a witch's zit
""The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is," Gifford Miller, a researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said"
thanks for sharing, Gifford
good to know
and if your vodka is gone now, go buy another bottle
"This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability,"
well, Giff, the world is just full of things you don't know
"and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."
and why is that?
now, ten Senate Dems have come out against the individual mandate
it's clear now that Obama is to blame for the shutdown
Ten Senate Democrats sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Friday urging her to extend the ObamaCare enrollment deadline because of the problems plaguing the ObamaCare website.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) initiated the letter. Earlier this week, she emerged as the first Senate Democrat to publicly call for a delay to the healthcare law to accommodate consumers experiencing issues with the website.
“As long as these substantial technology glitches persist, we are losing valuable time to educate and enroll people in insurance plans,” the letter reads in part. “Our constituents are frustrated, and we fear that the longer the website is not functional, opportunities for people to log on, learn about their insurance choices, and enroll will be lost.”
Sens. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) also signed the letter.
“Given the existing problems with healthcare.gov and other state-run marketplace websites that depend on the federally-administered website, we urge you to consider extending open enrollment beyond the current end date of March 31, 2014,” the letter continues.
“Extending this period will give consumers critical time in which to become familiar with the website and choose a plan that is best for them. Individuals should not be penalized for lack of coverage if they are unable to purchase health insurance due to technical problems.”
The Affordable Care Act was signed by President Obama in 2010 and since then he has repeated one reassuring phrase: "If you like your insurance plan you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn't happened yet. It won't happen in the future."
But it is happening. The president's health care law raises the standards for insurance policies. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Americans whose policies don't meet the new standards are being told that their health plans are being cancelled.
Natalie Willes is a sleep consultant who helps parents in Los Angeles train their newborns to sleep. She buys her own health insurance.
"I was completely happy with the insurance I had before," Willes said.
So she was surprised when she tried to renew her policy. What did she find out?
"That my insurance was going to be completely different, and they were going to be replaced with 10 new plans that were going to fall under the regulations of the Affordable Care Act," she said.
Her insurer, Kaiser Permanente, is terminating policies for 160,000 people in California.
"Before I had a plan that I had a $1,500 deductible," she said. "I paid $199 dollars a month. The most similar plan that I would have available to me would be $278 a month. My deductible would be $6,500 dollars, and all of my care after that point would only be covered 70 percent."
well, what do you know
56% of Americans don't approve of how Obama is handling health care:
https://today.yougov.com/news/2013/10/24/poll-results-healthcare-handling/
The Affordable Care Act’s rocky rollout has put Democrats and the White House back on defense -- allowing Republicans who were under fire for the partial government shutdown to unite and focus on the failures of HealthCare.gov.
Not coincidentally, a number of Democrats up for re-election next year in swing and red states have broken ranks with the Obama administration.
New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen sent a letter to the president demanding an extension of the deadline to sign up, and almost immediately was joined by Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mary Pryor of Arkansas.
None of them was willing to delay or even negotiate ObamaCare a few weeks ago, in the heat of the budget impasse.
Pryor is perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat in the country. Conservative super PACs like the Club for Growth are pounding him. One such ad growls: "We know Mark Pryor supports ObamaCare but lately he's gotten even more extreme.”
Pryor voted against any delays in ObamaCare during the partial shutdown; he also voted against a Republican attempt to force members of Congress and other government officials onto the ObamaCare exchanges without extra subsidies.
Other Democrats who are not even up for re-election -- Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal and moderate West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin -- have also broken ranks with the White House to back a delay. Manchin is co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation with Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia to delay the individual mandate by a year.
There is some evidence suggesting Republicans were blamed in the polls for the partial government shutdown, but the refusal to negotiate by the White House and congressional Democrats coupled with the ObamaCare launch debacle have eclipsed much of that.
"You look at the 17 days of the shutdown and compare that to how many days we’re gonna be watching these critical ObamCare rollout stories -- something tells me the critical stories about ObamaCare rollout are going to last a lot longer than 17 days," University of Virginia Professor Larry Sabato said.
He said 2014 will be worse for Democrats and the administration. "That sixth-year election tends to unite the opposition because there are so many vulnerable spots for the incumbent president’s party, that's what brings them back together. There's nothing like the smell of victory in a lot of different places to pull a coalition together," Sabato said.
Both parties acknowledge that the House Republican majority is not significantly at risk in 2014. Democrats would need to pick up 17 seats to take over and given the nature of gerrymandered congressional districting, it does not appear right now that is likely.
In the Senate, Republicans need just six seats to capture the majority. The GOP has targeted Democratic incumbents and open seats in Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, North Carolina, Colorado, Michigan, Oregon, Montana and New Hampshire.
The GOP has a path to the Senate majority.
I didn't say socialist. I said "socialized medicine". My understanding of the latter phrase is a health-care system in which the providers are employed by a single agent (in this case the government), and patients go to the assigned provider. Is this not how health care works in Britain, which is the archtypal system of socialized medicine.
I would argue, while we're debating word meanings, that a similar system set up by a private company would, in this sense, still be considered socialized medicine.
I however, am not the final arbiter of all definitions; feel free to disagree. Nevertheless, the military and VA systems are similar to how government run health-systems are operated.
Note, I am discussing the operator, not the payer. My employer self-insures, but it still insurance, not socialized medicine. Do you see the distinction I'm making?
to me, your use of the phrase would only be valid if one considered employees to be "governed"
I just don't see it as an argument for taking away the freedom of Americans and dictating terms to them and every provider in the land
"WASHINGTON (AP) — It should be working well by the end of November 2014. That's the Obama administration's rough timetable for completing a long list of fixes to HealthCare.gov, the new, trouble-plagued website for uninsured Americans to get coverage.
Summarizing a week's worth of intensive diagnostics, the administration acknowledged Friday the site has dozens of complex problems and tapped a private company to oversee a lengthy period of fixes.
Jeffrey Zients, a management consultant brought in by the White House to assess the extent of problems, told reporters his review found dozens of horrible issues across the entire system. The site is made up of layers of components that are meant to interact in real time with consumers, government agencies and insurance company computers.
It will take a lot of work, but "HealthCare.gov is eventually fixable," Zients declared.
The vast majority of the issues will be resolved by the end of November 2014, he asserted, and there will be many fewer screen freezes. He stopped short of saying problems will completely vanish even then.
The troubles have been nightmarish for the White House, which had promoted enrollment to be as simple as making a purchase on Amazon.com. This week, President Barack Obama declared himself frustrated by the setbacks while still trumpeting the benefits of the health care law and encouraging consumers to apply by phone if the website proved a hindrance.
In his weekly radio and internet address Saturday, Obama vowed that "in the coming weeks, we are going to get it working as smoothly as it's supposed to." In the meantime, he encouraged the public to call 1-800-318-2596.
"We're only a few weeks into a new system, and everyone who wants insurance through the marketplace will get it someday," he said.
As part of its effort to repair the system, the administration said it is promoting one of the website contractors, a subsidiary of the nation's largest health insurance company, to take on the role of "general contractor" shepherding the fixes under his personal supervision."
The HealthCare.gov website is a disaster -- symbolic to Obamacare opponents, disheartening to supporters, and incredibly frustrating to people who just need to buy insurance. Some computer experts are saying the only way to save the system is to scrap the current bloated code and start over.
Looking back, it seems crazy that neither the Barack Obama administration nor the public was prepared for the startup difficulties. There’s no shortage of database experts willing to opine on the complexities of the problem. Plenty of companies have nightmarish stories to tell about much simpler software projects. And reporting by the New York Times finds that the people involved with the system knew months ago that it was in serious trouble. “We foresee a train wreck,” one said back in February.
So why didn’t the administration realize that integrating a bunch of incompatible government databases into a seamless system with an interface just about anyone could understand was a really, really hard problem? Why was even the president seemingly taken by surprise when the system didn’t work like it might in the movies?
We have become seduced by computer glamour.
Whether it’s a television detective instantly checking a database of fingerprints or the ease of Amazon.com’s “1-Click” button, we imagine that software is a kind of magic -- all the more so if it’s software we’ve never actually experienced. We expect it to be effortless. We don’t think about how it got there or what its limitations might be. Instead of imagining future technologies as works in progress, improving over time, we picture them as perfect from day one.
In the case of the health-care exchanges, advocates emphasized how simple they’d be. “Getting insurance through the marketplace is as easy as applying for a plan, finding out if you qualify for subsidies and then comparing competing health plans,” declared ObamacareFacts.com. It was a seductive idea.
But, like other forms of glamour, it hid the tradeoffs and difficulties involved. Such artificial grace is what makes glamour so dangerous and so persuasive. By concealing anything that might break the spell, it leads us to feel that the life we dream of exists, and to desire it even more: “To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending.” That sounds wonderful. As Captain Picard of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” would say, “Make it so.” But turning hopes into reality requires more than a command.
The health care law, the White House argues, “isn’t just a website.” True enough. But the software problems are representative of a larger rhetorical choice. Rather than argue that the new health-care law would require adjustments and sacrifices, and that the costs would be worth it to give more people health insurance, the president and other supporters assured the public that if they liked their insurance, they could keep it. There might be costs for industry, this rhetoric suggested, but individuals would be better off. It was a glamorous vision of reform, with the trade-offs -- in higher costs and less choice for some people, and the hardships of implementation -- concealed.
Glamour is a powerfully persuasive tool. Taken as a guide rather than the literal truth, it can lead to positive, sometimes life-changing, action. But it is also an illusion. In the real world, the hidden details matter.
Take your meds, Anon. Your OCD is showing.
"The Web site for America’s super secret spy agency, the National Security Agency (NSA), is down at the same that a Twitter account reputedly associated with the Internet action group Anonymous claims credit.
No word yet from the Republicans as to whether the NSA need now be defunded as their Web site doesn’t work...."
common logic from a stupid Democrat
no one is calling to defund because Obama mismanaged a website
Obamacare needs to be stopped because socialism doesn't work in America, and because, regardless of the tortured logic of John Roberts, it is unconstitutional to force people to buy something, and because it plain old won't accomplish what it says it will and bankrupt our financially oiverstretched economy
"The Web site for the National Security Agency is down at the same time that a Twitter account associated with the Internet action group Anonymous claims credit.
No word yet from the Republicans as to whether the NSA need now be defunded as their Web site doesn’t work...."
hey, look at the stupid liberal Democrat testing out some new spin
no, stupid liberal Democrat, the Obamacare site wasn't the victim of hackers
as has been documented, it didn't work because Obama didn't make sure it had been adequately tested before unleashing it on America
what an idiot we have for President!!
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Anon, there is nothing "socialist" about the ACA, and really if there was, what's wrong with that, if it works? The kneejerk reaction to the word was appropriate in the 1950's, I guess, when we were worried about nuclear war with the USSR, but most people really don't mind if the public goes in together on a project that helps everybody. It is not inherently evil for people to cooperate for the good of all.
It is obvious that you oppose ACA and everything about it because it has Obama's name associated with it. A lot of information is coming out this week about the overlap between the Tea Party and the Klan but we don't have to assume your motives are racist. Maybe you don't oppose Obama because he's black, maybe you oppose him because you are a simple-minded, us-versus-them, rightwing, anti-American partisan who would rather see the government fail in any way than to see the (black) President succeed at something.
To put this in perspective, right now there are some important web sites that don't work -- I mean, besides NSA. People want to sign up for healthcare and the computer systems were not well designed or well tested. It's pretty bad, but is par for the course for a big system that draws data from all over the place and has to run checks and filters and join tables from different databases at runtime. Let's say Obama was directly responsible for developing those systems: woops, that is bad, he would deserve some criticism for that. Not your snarky sarcasm, but whoever was responsible for developing and implementing the healthcare software really did screw up. (Hint: the President does not write use cases or code.)
Nobody forgets that your side's mindless partisanship brought the entire federal government down for two weeks, shut the whole thing down, locked doors, blocked government activities, almost ruined the credit of the country and brought about worldwide economic collapse. That is something to complain about. You seem to think that a web site that doesn't work right is somehow comparable to that, but it's not. Everybody knows the difference, no matter how much concern trolls like you and Fox news try to make this into an equivalent catastrophe.
The ACA will be up and running just fine in due time and Americans who have never had health insurance will be able to get it. In the meantime the tide has shifted as real on-the-street Americans realize that the GOP wants the country to fail. You can continue to do this, wave your arms and scream about everything being Obama's fault, but your guys already blew it.
The ACA was based on Republican proposals. If Republicans had brought forth the exact same ACA as Obama did bad anonymous would be defending it tooth and nail. For bad anonymous and Republicans, whether something is good or bad has nothing to do with what it is or how it affects people, its determined solely by who's promoting it.
"well, what do you know
56% of Americans don't approve of how Obama is handling health care:
https://today.yougov.com/news/2013/10/24/poll-results-healthcare-handling/"
Well what do you know, other than how to spin and blow more hot air into the bubble?
In that yougov.com poll you posted the URL to (see, you can do it!), we learn that 64% of Americans don't approve of how the Republicans in Congress are handling healthcare while only 53% of Americans don't approve of how Democrats in Congress are handling healthcare.
And then there's this last question on that poll:
"Who do you trust to do a better job handling health care?
President Obama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42%
Republicans in Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33%
Not sure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25%"
Americans trust President Obama significantly more than they trust Republicans in Congress to do a better job handling health care.
Nearly a month after its rollout, the Obama administration is still grappling with major problems on HealthCare.gov, the federal website through which Americans in 36 states can purchase insurance on the new Obamacare marketplaces.
The administration is now promising that the site's problems will be, for the most part, resolved by the beginning of December. Yet even if the glitches on HealthCare.gov are resolved, this week revealed that the new insurance marketplaces the site serves still need to overcome huge hurdles, both technically and politically, to succeed.
Medicaid vs. Private Insurance: Recipe for Disaster?
CBS News' Jan Crawford reports that a CBS News analysis shows that in many of the 15 state-based health insurance exchanges more people are enrolling in Medicaid rather than buying private health insurance. And if that trend continues, there won't be enough healthy people buying health insurance for the system to work.
As the Obamacare website struggles, the administration is emphasizing state-level success. President Obama said Monday, "There's great demand at a bunch of states running their own marketplaces."
But left unsaid in the president's remarks: the newly insured in some of those states are overwhelmingly low-income people signing up for Medicaid at no cost to them.
Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, said, "We're seeing a huge spike in terms of Medicaid enrollments."
He says the numbers have surprised him and state officials.
Did Election Delay HealthCare.gov Development?
CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson has been digging into the cause of the delays in preparing the website for the government's health insurance market and has learned was a major interruption in the months before President Obama's re-election. At the height of the 2012 presidential election campaign, it was crunch time for the Obama administration to release key instructions so contractors could work toward the October 2013 deadline.
But a Health and Human Services official who was closely involved says that in late summer, the administration stopped issuing proposed rules for the Affordable Health Care Act until after the election for fear Americans might object and show their feelings at the polls.
The result was what many viewed as a serious delay as contractors, states and insurance companies awaited crucial guidance to move forward.
Insurance Companies Dropping Customers
The president's health care law raises the standards for insurance policies. Thus, hundreds of thousands of Americans whose policies don't meet the new standards are being told that their health plans are being cancelled.
Gerry Kominski, director of public health policy at UCLA said: "About half of the 14 million people who buy insurance on their own are not going to be able to keep the policies that they had previously."
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Thousands of Californians are discovering what Obamacare will cost them — and many don't like what they see.
These middle-class consumers are staring at hefty increases on their insurance bills as the overhaul remakes the healthcare market. Their rates are rising in large part to help offset the higher costs of covering lower income people.
Although recent criticism of the healthcare law has focused on website glitches and early enrollment snags, experts say sharp price increases for individual policies have the greatest potential to erode public support.
"This is when the actual sticker shock comes into play for people," said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. "There are winners and losers under the Affordable Care Act."
Fullerton resident Jennifer Harris thought she had a great deal, paying $98 a month for an individual plan through Health Net Inc. She got a rude surprise this month when the company said it would cancel her policy at the end of this year. Her current plan does not conform with the new federal rules.
Now Harris, a self-employed lawyer, must shop for replacement insurance. The cheapest plan she has found will cost her $238 a month. She and her husband don't qualify for federal premium subsidies because they earn too much money, about $80,000 a year combined.
"It doesn't seem right to make the middle class pay so much more in order to give health insurance to everybody else," said Harris, who is three months pregnant. "This increase is simply not affordable."
Middle-income consumers face an estimated 30% rate increase, on average, in California due to the healthcare law.
Some may elect to go without coverage if they feel prices are too high. Penalties for opting out are very small initially. Defections will cause rates to skyrocket if a diverse mix of people don't sign up for health insurance.
Pam Kehaly, president of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said she received a recent letter from a young woman complaining about a 50% rate hike related to the healthcare law.
"She said, 'I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,'" Kehaly said.
Nearly 2 million Californians have individual insurance, and several hundred thousand of them are losing their health plans in a matter of weeks.
Blue Shield of California sent termination letters to 119,000 customers last month whose plans don't meet the new federal requirements. About two-thirds of those people will experience a rate increase from switching to a new health plan, according to the company.
HMO giant Kaiser Permanente is canceling coverage for about half of its individual customers, or 160,000 people, and offering to automatically enroll them in the most comparable health plan available.
Continued....
"The 16 million Californians who get health insurance through their employers aren't affected. Neither are individuals who have "grandfathered" policies bought before March 2010, when the healthcare law was enacted. It's estimated that about half of policyholders in the individual market have those older plans.
All these cancellations were prompted by a requirement from Covered California, the state's new insurance exchange. The state didn't want to give insurance companies the opportunity to hold on to the healthiest patients for up to a year, keeping them out of the larger risk pool that will influence future rates.
Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, said the state and insurers agreed that clearing the decks by Jan. 1 was best for consumers in the long run despite the initial disruption. Lee has heard the complaints — even from his sister-in-law, who recently groused about her 50% rate increase.
"People could have kept their cheaper, bad coverage, and those people wouldn't have been part of the common risk pool," Lee said. "We are better off all being in this together. We are transforming the individual market and making it better.""
2:22AM Comment Continued....
"...Republicans in Congress this week ratcheted up the pressure they're putting on the Obama administration to explain why the Obamacare website HealthCare.gov is so flawed, and in many instances, Democrats echoed their complaints. They've also, however, warned their GOP colleagues against taking the complaints too far.
The ongoing investigations have left Democrats in the uneasy position of criticizing the implementation of President Obama's signature law. This week left them acknowledging the major problems with HealthCare.gov, which serves 36 states, while at the same time complaining about partisan attacks.
In an open letter published this week, two Democrats on the House Oversight Committee chastised the committee's chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., for creating an "unsubstantiated narrative that White House officials were making technical decisions [about HealthCare.gov] based on political motivations."
"Unfortunately, this has become an unfortunate pattern with this Committee," wrote Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the top Democrat on the committee, and Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. "In the Committee's past investigations involving Operation Fast and Furious, the attacks in Benghazi, and the IRS review of applicants for tax-exempt status, your approach has been to leap directly to accusations against the White House and top Administration officials with no basis in fact.""
""Who do you trust to do a better job handling health care?
President Obama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42%
Republicans in Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33%"
to the fool who posted this:
the story is that the President's plan is not supported
since Republicans aren't running the country, they aren't "handling" health care at all and this poll actually misleads people
the big story, the significant development is that Obama pushed this on the American people against their express wishes, promising that we would love it when we see what he is forcing on us
all dictators say that
and he was flatly wrong
and he lied about a number of aspects
people's insurance policies are being cancelled
unless you're poor, everyone's premiums are going way up
according to the CBO, it will add hundreds of millions more to the deficit than Obama said
experts say it will leave about 30 million Americans without insurance
unable to get the website ready, Obama pushed it out anyway, leaving people's most personal information without adequate privacy protection
a few of the many negative truths about homosexuality is that it is sado-masochistic, exhibitionist, and randomly promiscuous
last week we saw the former confirmed when it was revealed that Daniel Radcliffe had to be instructed about the pain of gay sex to authentically portray Allen Ginsburg in a new film
now, the latter two confirmed:
"A gay student plans to lose his virginity live on stage -- all in the name of art.
Clayton Pettet, a 19-year-old art student at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London, plans to have gay sex in front of a crowd of 100 people in London on Jan. 25, 2014, for a project called "Art School Stole My Virginity." He and his anonymous partner will have sex until completion and then hold a Q&A with the audience afterward.
His aim is to explore the ideal of virginity.
"I've held on to my virginity for 19 years, and I'm not throwing it away lightly. Basically it's like I am losing the stigma around virginity," he said, per the Daily Star. "I want the audience to see if anything has changed between me and my partner. Since culturally we do hold quite a lot of value to the idea of virginity I have decided to use mine and the loss of it to create a piece that I think will stimulate interesting debate and questions regarding the subject."
""Who do you trust to do a better job handling health care?
President Obama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42%
Republicans in Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33%"
to the fool who posted this:
the story is that the President's plan is not supported
since Republicans aren't running the country, they aren't "handling" health care at all and this poll actually misleads people"
Dear Bubble head,
The poll didn't ask WHO is handling health care. It asked WHO DO YOU TRUST TO HANDLE HEALTH CARE.
You want to pretend there's misleading going on when a pollster asks people for their opinion, but misleading is all you can do when your only view of life is from inside the bubble.
Thanks again for yet another display of your inability to see the truth of how people feel about the GOP under the leadership of Speaker Cruz.
Poll after poll shows the beating the GOP has brought on themselves with their repeated moves of shutdown and brink of default stunts.
Brinkmanship is a poor substitute for real leadership as all the lastest polls clearly show.
what you don't understand is that Obama's dismal approval numbers are more significant than Americans views of Republicans
polls that pit an individual vs a group always favor the individual
it's Psych 101
the real stories though are that:
1. Obama's second term agenda has been halted and is unlikely to advance
2. the Tea Party has managed to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and reduce discretionary government spending 5% (which is historic)
3. Obama's most significant achievement is now such a disaster that Dems are beginning to test out talking points saying the Dems really wanted single payer and that Repubs really created Obamacare
maybe Obama will even find a way to blame George Bush
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, Oct 27 (Reuters) - A data center critical for allowing uninsured Americans to buy health coverage under President Barack Obama's healthcare law went down on Sunday, halting online enrollment for all 50 states in the latest problem to hit the program's troubled rollout.
The data center experienced a connectivity issue that caused it to shut down, affecting the federal government's already problem-plagued online marketplace Healthcare.gov and similar sites operated by 14 states and the District of Columbia, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Obama administration and company officials could not say how long it would take to fix the connectivity problem.
maybe by November 2014
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have already lost their health insurance due to Obamacare, and soon millions will have lost it. Commentators have noted that, from all that appears, more people have lost their health insurance than have signed up for plans in health insurance exchanges.
Their loss of insurance is not a flaw in Obamacare, however. It is an integral part of the overall design.
This was my main takeaway from Megyn Kelly’s interview with Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emanuel (that, and the fact that Emanuel is an unpleasant guy, at least in this context). Emmanuel expressed no regret that folks are losing their health insurance; to the contrary, he seemed pleased.
He defended this attitude on the grounds that the insurance available in the exchanges is much better than the plans that folks are losing, which don’t offer enough coverage to suit Emanuel. But this defense is untenable. If the Obama administration really believed in the overall superiority of the plans on the exchanges, it would allow people to choose between their current insurance plan and the plans being offered on the exchanges.
Emanuel is pleased that folks are losing their insurance not because their insurance isn’t good enough. He is pleased because folks will be driven to pay more for insurance which, in turn, will help subsidize the insurance of others.
Emanuel also argued that millions of people were already losing their insurance under the Bush administration because employers were terminating plans due to rising health care costs. But this, of course, is no reason to design health care reform legislation that exacerbates the trend.
Those who lost their employer-based health insurance during the Bush years had the option of buying health insurance that fit their needs or of buying no insurance, which they could do without being fined. Those who lose their insurance due to Obamacare must (to avoid being fined) buy more expensive plans that meet the needs of the “system,” not themselves.
To be sure, some of those who buy insurance on an exchange will receive subsidy payments. In some cases, they will come out ahead on the deal. There will be winners and losers, as with any redistributionist program.
And make no mistake, that is what Obamacare is, at root — a massive disruption of our health care system in the name of wealth redistribution.
As this reality dawns on Americans, it will likely redound to the disadvantage of Democrats. The winners under Obamacare will be a cohort that already votes overwhelmingly for Democrats. The losers will consist mainly of middle class Americans, whose party allegiance is currently split. Look for a massive middle class revolt against Obamacare.
“Sorry folks, not my problem.”
That’s Kathleen Sebelius. Amid the Obamacare website meltdown, KS has been anywhere but at the Department of Health and Human Services she runs, fixing the disastrous Obamacare website she created.
First, she went to a gala in Boston instead of testifying about the debacle before Capitol Hill lawmakers. Then she jetted off to Phoenix to assure America that she was working “24/7” to get her $634 million website up and running. (She didn’t say how she was managing that from 2,500 miles away.)
Amid calls for her ouster, Queen Seeb then flew over flyover country to parachute into — Austin, Texas, of all places. There, she highlighted the many ways “Texans can learn about the health insurance marketplace.”
“Sign up,” she said. “Don’t believe what you’ve heard. Just check it out, look at the prices, look at the plans.” Well, not on the website, of course, but fax us and we’ll shoot a message to your pager.
And about those calls for her resignation: “The majority of people calling for me to resign,” she said, “I would say are people who I don’t work for.”
Such an odd thing to say: Imagine Harry S. Truman saying, “The buck stops here — except for people I don’t work for.”
Meanwhile, Seebs went out of her way to say that President Obama had no idea — not an inkling — of just how bad the website was before it launched. This is an actual quote: “I think that we talked about having testing going forward, and if we had an ideal situation and could have built a product and, you know, a five-year period of time, we probably would have taken five years, but we didn’t have five years.”
Five years to set up a website? Absurd. But the Obama administration actually had 3½ years to build the site, and still it has been a mess.
While the secretary is saying the pathetic debut was not her fault — and it certainly wasn’t the fault of her boss, the president — the stellar mainstream media has so far failed to ask the one important question: “Uh, then whose fault was it?” Anyone? Bueller?
Still, House Republicans are demanding something insane — accountability. “The scope of the problem is so great that, were this a private company or military command, the CEO or general would have been fired,” a group of lawmakers wrote to the president. “We are, therefore, calling on you to hold Secretary Sebelius accountable for the fiasco that is HealthCare.gov and ask for her resignation.”
Actually, a company that dropped $634 million to create a woefully inadequate website would just go bankrupt — as it should. Everyone would get fired, without a severance package.
But never fear, Sen. Al Franken says that the website is “improving every day.” Even though the one-time comedian said that with a straight face, he surely had all around him ROFL.
Another negative truth about homosexuality: because of the pain associated with its practices, gays resort to drugs, mainly meth, to withstand it.:
Stephen Jimenez has unearthed a story that few people wanted to hear. And it calls into question everything you think you know about the life and death of one of the leading icons of our age.
Matthew Shepard, college student. Killed, at 21, for being gay.
Or was he?
Jimenez’s “The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard,” challenges every cultural myth surrounding Shepard’s short life and unspeakable death. After some 13 years of digging, including interviews with more than 100 sources, including Shepard’s killers, Jimenez makes a radioactive suggestion:
The grisly murder, 15 years ago this month, was no hate crime.
Shepard’s tragic and untimely demise was not fueled by his sexual orientation, but by drugs. For Shepard had agreed to trade methamphetamines for sex. And it killed him.
Heresy.
Why dredge this up now? Jimenez’s answer surprised me.
“As a gay man,” he said, “I felt it was a moral thing to do.”
Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, now doing life for murder, were not homophobes, writes Jimenez. Shepard was lured from a bar, then driven to the outskirts of Laramie, Wyo., where he was robbed. McKinney savagely pistol-whipped Shepard with the barrel of a .357 Magnum. The men then hung him, barefoot, freezing and barely alive, on a fence, in a pose resembling a crucifixion. He died six days later.
But McKinney was no stranger. Strung out on meth for a week before the slaying, writes Jimenez, McKinney had been Shepard’s gay, or bisexual, lover.
Activists, journalists, politicians and filmmakers who have based careers on Shepard’s murder are furious. But Jimenez insists he’s willing to trade Shepard’s irreproachable image for a serious talk about drugs. Meth, he said, is haunting the gay scene, bringing with it a plague of ultra-violence, and new HIV infection.
If this book saves one life, it’s worth it.
Jimenez, 60, a Brooklyn native who splits his time between New York and Santa Fe, NM, has been attacked by organizations from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to the Matthew Shepard Foundation.
The New York Times Magazine commissioned, then canceled, a piece from Jimenez in 2004. (The editor claims it wasn’t any good.) But ABC’s “20/20” ran with a story Jimenez produced, which won two major broadcasting awards. Yet the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog recently accused Jimenez of serving as a lapdog of “right-wing pundits, radio hosts and bloggers.”
In Washington, DC, gay activists pestered bookstores to cancel Jimenez’s appearances. So much for free speech.
“It’s offensive,” said Jimenez.
Jimenez is not the enemy. He’s just a man who told an uncomfortable truth, as he saw it.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/23352031-452/obamacare-jacks-up-her-insurance.html
LOL.
she gets what she deserves for being a liberal idiot.
Nobody should bother reading this edited without attribution right wing crap. The troll uses questionable sources so no wonder he hides them from readers here.
Today's crap included a Fox News opinion piece that actually started with:
"Imagine you’re on a jet, flying to Los Angeles. You look out the window to see the engine on fire. In fact, the entire wing is ablaze. In full panic, you look up the aisle to the cockpit door. There, you see the pilot pulling on a parachute.
“Sorry folks, not my problem,” he says, and leaps out the door...."
And another butchered cut and paste job the troll stole from some right wing blogger's "CONSERVATIVE RIGHT- "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." That blogger actually wrote about "Conservative commentators, not just "commentators" as the troll edited it down to a different meaning. The troll even edited out entire paragraphs farther down.
Here are some pertinent facts -- NOT SPIN -- the troll will never mention:
More than 50,000 Arkansans have enrolled in the "private option" for Medicaid expansion
"After just two weeks of enrollment, the Arkansas Department of Human Services announced today that 56,288 adults have informed DHS that they wish to enroll in the "private option" program; nearly all of them are now enrolled. That already puts DHS about a quarter of the way toward the total number of people projected to be in the program, which uses Medicaid funds via the federal Affordable Care Act to pay for private health insurance plans for low-income Arkansans on the Health Insurance Marketplace. ..."
WSJ reports: Meet One of the First Obamacare Enrollees
"How a Freelance Filmmaker Snagged a Policy for $62 a Month After Subsidies"
Washington Healthplanfinder: more than 35,000 have enrolled in 3 weeks
"Three weeks after its launch, Washington’s online insurance marketplace continues to set a strong pace for enrollment.
To date, more than 35,500 Washington residents have enrolled in coverage through the state’s online insurance marketplace, Healthplanfinder, according to data released Monday by the Washington Health Benefit Exchange. That figure is up about 10,500 from the week before.
Among those who have enrolled so far, about 31,000 have enrolled in Medicaid coverage, while more than 4,500 have enrolled in private health plans.
State officials say they are pleased with the high number of Medicaid enrollments. About two-thirds of those who have enrolled in Medicaid coverage are low-income adults who are newly eligible because of the state’s Medicaid expansion in 2014.
An additional 56,000 Washington residents have completed applications that are only missing the first premium payment, which is not due until December 23. That figure is an increase of nearly 20,000 over the week before...."
yep
kind of reminds me how the guy who invented the guillotine wound up getting his head chopped off
probably all the TTFers are in shock at how much their insurance is gonna cost
Obama is absolutely livid that he lost the sequester battle to the Tea Party:
"President Obama told FBI agents on Monday that he would fight to reverse sequester cuts.
"I'll keep fighting for those resources because our country asks and expects a lot.."
The president spoke at the installation ceremony for FBI Director James Comey, the former Justice Department official who took over the agency last month.
Since lawmakers struck an agreement to reopen the government earlier this month, Obama has taken to exploding in public to argue for more government spending. During a event at a school in Brooklyn last week, the president said that the country could afford to make spend a lot more on education.
“Don't tell me we can afford to shut down the government, which costs our government billions of dollars, but we can't afford to invest in our kids,” Obama said."
(Earth to Barry: the shut down saved us 24 billion; in your Orwellian world, not borrowing 24 billion is losing it but most Americans have the common sense to know that money borrowed has to be repaid-- with interest)
A House-Senate conference committee will meet this week for the first time to begin negotiations on a path forward on the federal budget. As of now, the Tea Party inspired sequester is law and can only be changed by an act of Congress.
Checkmate.
We won.
Get over it.
"President Obama told FBI agents on Monday that he would fight to reverse sequester cuts that have trimmed the agency's budget, declaring that the "least we can do" for those who put their lives on the line was make sure "operations are not disrupted because of the politics in this town.
"I'll keep fighting for those resources because our country asks and expects a lot from you, and we should make sure you've got the resources you need to do the job, especially when many of your colleagues put their lives on the line on a daily basis, all to serve and protect our fellow citizens," Obama said.
The president spoke at the installation ceremony for FBI Director James Comey, the former Justice Department official who took over the agency last month.
Since lawmakers struck an agreement to reopen the government earlier this month, Obama has taken to the bully pulpit to argue for more government spending. During a event at a school in Brooklyn last week, the president said that the country could afford to make investments in areas like education.
“Don't tell me we can afford to shut down the government, which costs our government billions of dollars, but we can't afford to invest in our kids,” Obama said.
A House-Senate conference committee will meet this week for the first time to begin negotiations on a path forward on the federal budget.
To avert another shutdown, Congress must pass another continuing resolution before Jan. 15. The nation also faces a Feb. 7 deadline for raising the debt ceiling.
Both Republican and Democratic leaders have said they are interested in getting rid of the sequester's automatic spending cuts, while downplaying hopes for a “grand bargain” deal that would cut into entitlements and reform the tax code.
In addition to calling for a reversal to sequester cuts, Obama praised Comey as someone well versed in everything from "traditional threats like violent and organized crime to the constantly changing threats like terrorism and cybersecurity."
Comey served as the No. 2 official in former President George W. Bush's Justice Department, handling high-level terror related issues. Before that, he was a prosecutor who took on organized crime and corporate corruption.
"It's just about impossible to find a matter of justice he has not tackled," Obama said.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/330929-obama-blasts-sequester-during-remarks-at-fbi#ixzz2j2zOrf5h
"kind of reminds me how the guy who invented the guillotine wound up getting his head chopped off"
It's much more like tea baggers screaming KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY MEDICARE!!!
“Don't tell me we can afford to shut down the government, which costs our government billions of dollars, but we can't afford to invest in our kids,” Obama said."
(Earth to Barry: the shut down saved us 24 billion; in your Orwellian world, not borrowing 24 billion is losing it but most Americans have the common sense to know that money borrowed has to be repaid-- with interest)
(Earth to TTFers: Barry understands the above perfectly well. He's a liar.)
Even the liberals out there are now whining. The middle class can't afford to pay more than double for insurance in order to cover free insurance for everyone else. They can barely afford the insurance they've got.
Barry knew this perfectly well and told everyone the cost of insurance would go down. He's a liar and, amazingly, despite this influx from charging people the cost of their insurance plus everyone else's, the deficit will still increase substantially as a result.
the whining liberals are like the guy that invented the guillotine
they thought they could make others pay more and cover the poor
never did they realize they'd be pitching in too
Where is Casey Stengel when we need him? In 1962 as the manager of the brand new and determinedly hapless New York Mets -- 40 wins, 120 losses -- he looked up and down his bench one dismal day and wondered, "Can't anybody here play this game?" That phrase kept coming at me recently as I watched the impressively inept performance of the Obama administration in both foreign and domestic policy. On a given day, this administration makes the '62 Mets look good.
This is a surprise. If Barack Obama has an image, it is of the infinitely cool, cerebral leader.
The man can give a rousing speech, but he is, at heart, a planner and a plodder. Both his presidential campaigns were exercises in micromanagement -- digital all the way.
Yet this same man has lately so mishandled both domestic and foreign policy that he is in mortal peril of altering his image. This unsettling incompetence became shockingly clear when Obama failed to come to grips with the Syrian civil war. I did not agree with the president's do-nothing policy, but at least it was both a policy and intellectually coherent. What followed, though, was both intellectually incoherent and pathetically inconsistent -- a "red line" that came out of nowhere and then mysteriously evaporated, and a missile strike that was threatened and then abandoned. It was a policy so wavering that if Obama were driving, he would be forced to take a breathalyzer.
The debacle of the Affordable Care Act's website raised similar questions about confidence. This was supposed to be Obama's Big Deal. Getting on Mount Rushmore takes achievement, a program -- something new and wonderful. The Affordable Care Act was supposed to be it.
Something went wrong. People could not sign up. Why? Not sure. Who's at fault? Apparently no one. An act of God. Something that could never have been foreseen. Another president might have had someone in the White House calling every day -- no, twice a day -- to make sure the program was going to work. But no, it was a shock to everyone, and when the White House rolled out its gigantic cake -- maestro, some music please -- no one jumped out.
Pathetic.
Here, I must mention that bit of theater in which various world leaders wax indignant about their telephone conversations being bugged by the National Security Agency. This is not Obama's doing since the program predated his time in office. But the decibel level of the outrage does suggest that in Germany, France, Brazil and elsewhere, Obama's standing is not what it once was. He and America are no longer held in either awe or respect and the bugging program, instead of seeming a necessary evil, looks both clumsy and silly. Bugging Angela Merkel's personal phone -- she who once said that when she thinks of Germany she thinks of "well-sealed windows" -- puts at risk the poor NSA listener. He must be catatonic by now.
But the reaction of the bugged has been nothing compared to the bleat of anger coming from the Middle East. The Saudis, who usually whisper their differences, have severely upped the volume and now talk dismissively of Obama and America. They didn't like the way we washed our hands of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, a steadfast and durable ally, and then dealt with the Syrian civil war in such a wobbly fashion. In recent days, the kingdom has rejected a seat on the U.N. Security Council and, in the person of its intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, has said the U.S.-Saudi relationship is strained. Bandar, a former ambassador to Washington, can hardly be dismissed as anti-American.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, and in the long run Riyadh and Washington were always going to make an odd couple. But the current spat is not about values but about reliability and performance. The Obama administration has botched Syria and, in the Saudi (and Israeli) view, cannot be trusted to deal firmly with Iran. An erratic presidency has made the world a bit less safe.
History will someday provide perspective and say, possibly, that Syria and Obamacare did not matter. I doubt it. At the least, they help validate the Republican charges of incompetence. A competent president would beware. As Casey Stengel might note, strike three is coming up.
"WASHINGTON—The United States may have bugged Angela Merkel’s phone for more than 10 years, according to a news report on Saturday that also said President Barack Obama told the German leader he would have stopped it happening had he known about it.
Germany’s outrage over reports of bugging of Merkel’s phone by the National Security Agency (NSA) prompted it to summon the U.S. ambassador for the first time in living memory, an unprecedented post-war diplomatic rift.
Der Spiegel said Merkel’s mobile telephone had been listed by the NSA’s Special Collection Service (SCS) since 2002 — marked as “GE Chancellor Merkel” — and was still on the list weeks before Obama visited Berlin in June...."
Who was President in 2002? Did Bush put Merkel on the NSA world leader eavesdrop list because Germany was not part of his coalition of the wiling? Will the majority party in the House majority, the GOP, ever bother trying to find out?
Happy Obamacare customers:
1. "Butch Matthews is a 61-year-old former small business owner from Little Rock, Arkansas who used to wake up every morning at 4 A.M. to deliver canned beverages to retailers before retiring in 2010. A lifelong Republican, he was heavily skeptical of the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. 'I did not think that Obamacare was going to be a good plan, I did not think that it was going to help me at all,' he told Think Progress over the phone.
But after doing a little research, Matthews eventually realized how much the law could help him. And on Tuesday, his local Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) provider confirmed that he would be able to buy a far better plan than his current policy while saving at least $13,000 per year through Arkansas' Obamacare marketplace.
[...]
"I still am a very strong Republican, but this... I'm so happy that this came along," he continued. "Our home is paid for, vehicle's paid for, this is our expense that we have. We have more expense on medical care than everything else put together, so this is going to be a great help for us.'""
2. "With so much controversy regarding Obamacare, you may be interested in our family's experience.
I am a retired engineer on Medicare, and my wife had long been insured by Cigna, under a group plan from my engineers' society. Because of minor pre-existing conditions, she could not leave that plan, because no other plan would insure her.
The Cigna premiums increased to $5,000 per quarter, or $20,000 per year, just for my wife. This year, Cigna canceled the entire plan, leaving her with no insurance.
So, we turned to Obamacare. She found it simple and easy to sign up through an agent in a 10-minute phone call. She obtained their best plan, providing much much better coverage than in the past, at a cost of $3,000 per quarter.
My wife would not have insurance coverage at all as of Jan. 1, if not for Obamacare. And, here's the kicker - we now are saving $8,000 per year, for a very much better plan.""
3. "Hartford resident Brendan Mahoney, 30, said signing up took him about 20 minutes. Mahoney, a third-year law student at the University of Connecticut, said that by filling out the application online, he discovered he was eligible for Medicaid. So, beginning next year, he won't pay any premium at all.
In 2011 and 2012, Mahoney said, he was on a school-sponsored health plan costing about $2,400 a year. That was too expensive, he said, so this year he took out his own coverage: a high-deductible, low-premium plan that cost about $39 a month through a UnitedHealthcare subsidiary.
By going through the application process Tuesday, he found that he wouldn't pay even that much. "
4. "Despite the snafus, Baker of Delaware said she's grateful for a chance to buy insurance on the marketplace. Previously, she had been paying $1,600 a month for a company insurance policy for her and her husband. But after her husband was approved for his own coverage, she had to find her own.
During her hunt, Baker was turned down three times because of what she called minor pre-existing health conditions. In the new marketplace, no one can be turned away because of a pre-existing condition.
In Baker's new plan, she will be paying $700 a month for individual coverage, almost $150 less than the cost of her previous coverage."
Happy Obamacare customers, continued
5. "Daniel McNaughton, a 22-year-old college student in Orlando, Fla., tried to enroll Tuesday, just when the marketplace opened for business. He tried three or four times the next day and was finally able to enroll Wednesday morning.
Currently, he has a catastrophic plan that pays for only three doctor visits a year.
On the federal exchange, he picked a gold-level plan, one of the most expensive options, and a premium of $270 per month. But after a large federal subsidy, his contribution will be $70 a month - the same amount that he is currently paying but for much broader coverage.
"I'm thrilled," he says. "To get something this good at that price? It was a complete surprise.""
6. "More than 77,000 people have visited the Hawaii Health Connector website since Oct. 1 to explore their options for getting affordable health care, but more people have successfully completed applications by phone so far than online.
Part of the reason may be the fact that plan rates were not available until Tuesday, but part of it may also be the difficulty of navigating the website and length of the application process, observers say.
So far, there have been 77,173 unique visitors to the Health Connector website, with 2,249 people starting an account and application..."
7. "Nearly 30,000 Applications Were Completed In Kentucky, And More Than Half Of Those Applications Have Made "New Affordable Health Care Coverage" Available To Individuals. According to the website of Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, more than 280,000 people visited the state's online exchanges, known as kynect, which received 5.8 million page views. At the same time, more than 247,000 people "conducted pre-screenings to determine qualifications for subsidies, discounts or programs like Medicaid." Citing statistics from the state's online healthcare connection, Kynect, the website further noted that as of October 24, 47,069 applications for health care coverage have been started, of which 33,742 are completed; 18,370 individuals are enrolled in new affordable health care coverage; 378 small businesses have started applications for health insurance for employees; and 66,978 calls have been managed by kynect contact center."
8. "A few states running their own insurance exchanges are touting high levels of interest from young people, leaving observers to speculate about the likelihood of attracting a demographic group widely viewed as the linchpin of the healthcare reform law's success. In an Oct. 11 update, Maryland Health Connection, the state's exchange, said the most common age group among its initial 25,000 verified accounts was 25 to 29 years old. Thirty-six percent of those 25,000 accounts were created by people under 35. 'Marylanders have continued to show tremendous interest in accessing quality, affordable health coverage,' officials said in the report."
Happy Obamacare customers, continued
9. "The New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange saved one Albuquerque small business owner $1,000 a month in insurance premiums Tuesday.
Michael Cadigan, president and owner of the Cadigan Law Firm P.C., said he signed up the firm's four employees Tuesday for an insurance policy and got a quote that was $1,000 less a month than he's currently paying.
"I was very pleasantly surprised. I thought it was going to be an administrative nightmare and it literally took me 15 minutes once I found everybody's birthdates, Social Security numbers and ZIP codes,' Cadigan, a former Albuquerque city councilor, said. 'They gave me a quote that would save me $1,000 over what I was paying at Pres [Presbyterian Health Plan], so I'm psyched."
Cadigan said he chose a gold level plan, which pays 80 percent of medal expenses, for the firm."
10. After quadrupling its server capacity, New York now says users aren’t experiencing major delays, and officials believe any technical issues have been fixed. The state says 58,283 people completed applications for health insurance through its exchange as of Wednesday morning.
“It speaks certainly to the amount of interest here,” said Donna Frescatore, director of the New York exchange. “For many New Yorkers, this was really the first time to sign up for coverage that was affordable.”
When the health-care law was passed in 2010, it envisioned most of the 50 states running their own health-insurance exchanges where uninsured people could shop for coverage. Instead, only 14, including New York, chose to fully run their own, leaving the federal government responsible for the other 36.
11. "Tulsa World: "Two Callers [To Rep. Markwayne Mullin's Town Hall] Said They Signed Up For Insurance Through The ACA." The Tulsa World reported that during a town hall with U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), callers explained their success in signing up for ACA:
Of the roughly two dozen callers who got through, none demanded the impeachment of President Barack Obama or seemed supportive of Republicans' continued demand for changes to the Affordable Care Act in exchange for a budget deal.
Two callers said they signed up for insurance through the ACA, commonly called 'Obamacare.' Another said co-workers had.
When Mullin tried to tell her that insurance enrollment through the online exchanges that went active on Oct. 1 'isn't happening,' she said, 'It absolutely is!'""
12. ""In The First Three Days, Healthsource RI Was Open, 26,039 Rhode Islanders Visited The Site, For A Total Of 30,416 Website Hits. And 580 People Made It All The Way Through The Process... About 3,000 People Created Account." USA Today reported on Rhode Island's experience with the ACA exchange: "In the first three days, HealthSource RI was open, 26,039 Rhode Islanders visited the site, for a total of 30,416 website hits. And 580 people made it all the way through the process. ... About 3,000 people created accounts -- or a user name and password -- but not everyone was able to get further because of the verification issue. On Day 1, the state site crashed for a couple of hours because of the 'enormous volume,' but it came back up the same day." "
Who was President in 2009-2013? Does he, even now, have any clue what's going on? Is he ever briefed by the NSA? Does he even know what they do? Does he wonder how they get all this great gossip in his daily briefing? Five years later, will he ever be accountable for the government he was elected to run? Or will George Bush continue to take responsibility from the ranch? Will he ever understand that incompetence is not an excuse?
Oh former President Bush understands incompetence is not an excuse all right and that's why he stays out of politics these days -- unlike former President Clinton, who remains highly regarded and sought after by Dems running for office.
Clinton has been campaigning all over Virginia for McAuliffe in the governor's race there, while Bush stays back on the ranch.
it's quite noticeable that no one ever defends Obama, other than to say "Bush"
Obama is in the fifth year of his presidency
he's incompetent
Clinton has a need for attention
he and McAuliffe are old partners in sleaze
Clinton was fairly incompetent until the country put him under the personal supervision of Newt Gingrich
you may remember his first two years when he and Hillary tried to set up national health insurance
Yes, and you may recall Obama has enacted the individual mandate and the Supreme court has found it constitutional. This is exactly what both Heritage Foundation and Newt Gingrich laid out back in the 1990s, at least according to what Mitt Romney said during Western Republican Leadership Conference Debate back in 2011.
GOP loved that idea back then, but now that Obama has enacted it, they don't love it any more.
ROMNEY: Actually, Newt, we got the idea of an individual mandate from you.
GINGRICH: That’s not true. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.
ROMNEY: Yes, we got it from you, and you got it from the Heritage Foundation and from you.
GINGRICH: Wait a second. What you just said is not true. You did not get that from me. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.
ROMNEY: And you never supported them?
GINGRICH: I agree with them, but I’m just saying, what you said to this audience just now plain wasn’t true.
(CROSSTALK)
ROMNEY: OK. Let me ask, have you supported in the past an individual mandate?
GINGRICH: I absolutely did with the Heritage Foundation against Hillarycare.
ROMNEY: You did support an individual mandate?
ROMNEY: Oh, OK. That’s what I’m saying. We got the idea from you and the Heritage Foundation.
GINGRICH: OK. A little broader.
ROMNEY: OK.
--http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2011/10/20/how-a-conservative-think-tank-invented-the-individual-mandate/
But they are NOT racist.
Go figure.
"Where do you go if you’re a “Deadliest Catch” kind of guy, manliest of manly men, but couldn’t fish for king crab because some jelly-bellied Republicans threw a tantrum 5,000 miles away and shut down the government?
What do you do if you’re a farmer in Kansas who could not put winter wheat in the ground or get this year’s cattle vaccine because your government agriculture office was deemed nonessential? Whom do you see about the home loan that was held up, the family restaurant near the federal building that couldn’t meet October’s payroll, the bookings lost at season’s end in dozens of national parks?
Real Americans, the wind-chapped toilers so often invoked by politicians in a phony froth, lost real money from the real pain inflicted on their livelihoods by the extortionists in Congress this month.
How much money? At least $24 billion was the estimate given by Standard & Poor’s. Small business was hit particularly hard. And it’s a rolling pain, affecting consumer confidence, that will be felt through a holiday buying season that can make or break many retailers.
“I am a small businessman in a big ocean with big bills,” said Captain Keith Colburn, an Alaska crab fisherman, in Senate testimony during the shutdown. “I need to go fishing.” But the skipper, who is featured in the reality TV show “Deadliest Catch,” said he was being held back by “a bunch of knuckleheads” who prevented marine regulators from doing their jobs.
So, who pays? For years, Republicans have been trumpeting the idea that when a government action hurts a private business, the government should compensate for the loss. This principle is based on a broad reading of the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment; it’s usually summoned as leverage against environmental regulation.
But in the case of the federal shutdown, of course, the economic hit on millions of Americans didn’t come from government — it came from one political faction in the House of Representatives. You could sue the Tea Party, but what is that? A bunch of costumed zealots on Fox are not responsible for anything that comes out of their mouths and lands in the porous mind of someone like Representative Ted Yoho of Florida....
"...You could sue Ted Cruz of Texas for initiating the calamity with a marathon of self-absorption. But the senator, like all members of Congress, has broad protection to pretty much say or do anything he wants inside the thick-walled refuge of the Capitol, a free speech guarantee that is warranted even when abused by vanity projects like Cruz.
What’s left is the ballot box. And here, Red State America can do a huge service for the rest of country. The states hit hardest by the shutdown, it now appears, were those where Republicans prevail. Virginia, with its wealth of government jobs and businesses that depend on those jobs, is Exhibit A. There, Republicans are likely to lose the governor’s race next week in part because their party disrupted so many lives in October’s meltdown.
The more difficult job will be ousting, from hardened, gerrymandered districts, the people who put ideology ahead of common sense and commerce. They seem faceless and buffoonish. They act as if they are immune from majority sentiment. But each of them is up for re-election a year from now, and the good news is that almost 75 percent of voters say most Republicans in Congress don’t deserve to be sent back to Washington.
In some districts, it will be civil war. What’s left of moderate Republicans are organizing to go after the crazies. “Hopefully, we’ll go into eight to 10 races and beat the snot out of them,” former Representative Steve LaTourette of Ohio told the National Journal. His group of fed-up Republicans, Defending Main Street, plans to raise $8 million to target the looniest of the loons.
Make Steve King of Iowa pay. As key government offices across the country were shuttered, as farmers in his district could not get their loans processed, King crowed, “We’re right!” He exists because political theater requires new players in clown makeup. The Des Moines Register recently suggested a slogan for King: “Send me back to Washington so I can continue to embarrass Iowa.”
Make Darrell Issa of California pay. Using the vast apparatus of his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he is going after National Park Service rangers. Having shut down the government, Issa wants to know why popular parks and monuments were closed. The audacity! During an earlier hearing, a fellow congressman provided an answer: He held up a mirror and aimed it at Republican lawmakers.
And certainly make Marlin Stutzman of Indiana pay. This congressman gave history the money quote on the shutdown. “We have to get something out of this,” he said. “And I don’t know what that even is.” A year from now, he can find out."
"How much money? At least $24 billion was the estimate given by Standard & Poor’s."
you are apparently ignorant of what the 24 billion represents
look it up and get back to us
On Monday, a "NBC Nightly News" segment said that 75 percent of Americans who currently buy private health insurance will lose their plans under Obamacare because the plans do not meet Obamacare standards. It said that the White House knew this as far back as 2010, even though President Obama had said that people can choose to keep their current plans.
The Obamacare rollout is leading to the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of health insurance plans nationwide, contradicting President Barack Obama’s repeated pledge that people who like their coverage can keep it.
The notices started to arrive in recent weeks, compounding the political headaches for the White House from the troubled start of its health exchange, the federal website created to give millions of people access to new plans by Jan. 1.
The cancellations come as a result of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which says that health insurance policies that fail to offer added benefits, such as prescription drug coverage and free preventive care, can’t be sold after this year even if they’re cheaper.
With the online site expected to face difficulties through November, Americans will have only weeks to find replacement coverage, and most will end up paying higher premiums.
“I keep playing that over and over in my head: that you can keep your health plan, period,” said Terri Flay, a Manassas, Virginia-area woman whose policy is being canceled, referring to Obama’s pledge. “But it isn’t ‘period.’ They put a gun to my head saying that I have to pay more because I need the health-care insurance.”
The health-care law eliminates “substandard policies that don’t provide minimum services,” said Jay Carney, a White House spokesman, in response to the cancellations.
Obama’s oft-repeated pledge was a central selling point of his health-care overhaul, aimed at calming consumers who feared being forced to give up policies and doctors they liked as the program expanded coverage to many of the nation’s 48 million uninsured.
Florida’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield, said about 300,000 members are affected while California’s Blue Shield and Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente will withdraw policies for a combined 280,000. Highmark Health Services of Pittsburgh said 40,000 customers will need to find new plans. CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield sent notices to more than 70,000 customers in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia that their current plans don’t comply with the law.
As many as 80 percent of people who don’t have a company-hosted plan or insurance through the Medicare or Medicaid government programs will have to find new health coverage, said Robert Laszewski, an insurance-industry consultant in Arlington, Virginia.
In California, the insurance shift affects 2.5 percent of Kaiser Permanente’s members, said Won Ha, a spokesman for the insurer. About 600,000 to 700,000 consumers with individual health plans will be affected, said Peter V. Lee, the director of Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange.
Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican, said his constituents are “frightened” by the news that their policies won’t be renewed.
“They are now being forced out of a health-care plan that they like,” Brady said. “The clock is ticking on a website that’s broken. Their health care isn’t a glitch.”
Federal officials should have worked more closely with insurers to better manage the long-coming shift to new coverage, said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
Instead, “the first thing you get that affects you personally is that you’ve lost your health insurance,” Gordon said in a telephone interview. “That approach is going to backfire politically.”
“Probably no pledge made to sell the bill was more disingenuous than this one,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, in an e-mail. “But it’s more than just a broken promise; it means a significantly higher health insurance bill for far too many.”
The law requires all Americans to be covered in 2014 or pay a penalty. It sets a floor of “essential benefits,” such as maternity and mental-health care, caps out-of-pocket costs and bans insurers from denying coverage based on medical conditions, all features that can push up the cost of policies.
For Ian Hodge, 63, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the issue is all about getting the same care from the same doctors. When he learned his policy was canceled his reaction was “surprise and disgust,” he said.
Hodge said he tried 10 times to get information about a new policy on Oct. 1, the day the online federal exchange went live. He’s still trying to figure out his options, he said in a telephone interview.
“The website is not very clear,” Hodge said. “I’m concerned about being able to get affordable health care that’s at least as good as what I had previously.”
Be sure to check back with Mr. Hodge of Lancaster, PA after he figures out his new policy.
It will be a more comprehensive policy and like my more comprehensive new Obamacare policy, will likely cost him less a lot less than he pays now.
Pennsylvania ranks among lowest in Obamacare health insurance premiums
"...[Pennsylvania's] average is $286 a month for a mid-range plan, not including out-of-pocket costs or tax credits that benefit lower-income families, the figures showed. That's below the $328 national average.
...Factoring in tax credits, a family of four in Pennsylvania with $50,000 in annual income will pay an average of $282 a month for a benchmark policy known as the second-lowest-cost silver plan. It would cost $675 without the credits. A 27-year-old in Pennsylvania making $25,000 a year will pay on average $145 per month for the same policy, or $187 before the tax credit.
The federal government is running Pennsylvania's marketplace because Gov. Tom Corbett declined to host a state-run exchange....
...Under the 2010 federal health care law, uninsured Americans required to have insurance in 2014 or else pay a penalty will be covered in one of two ways. Also, insurance companies may not increase prices for pre-existing conditions, or deny someone coverage because of one.
Many people, ranging from lower-income workers to the middle class, will qualify for tax credits to help buy a private plan. The government will send the money for the tax credit directly to insurers, and policyholders will pay any remaining premium.
One hitch in Pennsylvania is that it is likely that many childless adults and some others with incomes below 100 percent of the federal poverty level — $11,490 for a single person — will not be eligible for a tax credit or for Medicaid because Corbett and the state Legislature have not signed on to a Medicaid expansion that was envisioned by the 2010 federal health care law.
A recent study by Families USA, a group that supports the health care law, said nearly 900,000 Pennsylvanians would qualify for a federal tax credit.
Four levels of coverage will be offered on the exchange: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Bronze plans generally have the lowest premiums but cover less while platinum plans have the highest premiums and cover more.
If a 27-year-old Pennsylvania resident with $25,000 in annual income buys a bronze plan, he or she will pay $109 on average per month after the tax credit, $36 less than for a silver plan. A family of four earning $50,000 per year will pay $152, $130 less per month than for a silver policy.
A silver plan covers 70 percent of medical costs, so policyholders will pay the difference up to an annual out-of-pocket cap."
thanks for the anecdote
we already know a lot of people will be getting way below-cost insurance, subsidized by the doubling of middle class' already sky-high premiums
Obama lied
his agenda is to redistribute wealth any way he can
a lot of his supporters will be burned by these lies
Former "Three's Company" star Suzanne Somers thinks President Obama's Affordable Care Act is really just one big Ponzi scheme.
Somers took to The Wall Street Journal to offer up her opinion on what the Affordable Care Act will mean for retirees, and apparently the 67-year-old thinks it all equates to socialized medicine. She said she has observed the pitfalls of this in Canada (her husband, Alan Hamel, is Canadian), where animals supposedly get better care than humans and where she claims her sister-in-law had to wait two months to see a general practitioner.
She also posited that there really isn't anything "affordable" about the Affordable Care Act because "all you are hearing on the news is how everyone’s premiums are doubling and tripling." For retirees, she added, this "might work if you don’t get too old and you don’t get too sick, and you don’t live too long." After claiming Medicare dollars will be spent to cover the "skyrocketing cost" Obamacare, she concluded: "Boomers are smart. They see the train wreck coming … most I speak with think the Affordable Care Act is a greater Ponzi scheme than that pulled off by Bernie Madoff."
(CBS News) CBS News has learned more than two million Americans have been told they cannot renew their current insurance policies -- more than triple the number of people said to be buying insurance under the new Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
There have been estimates about hundreds of thousands of people losing coverage, CBS News' Jan Crawford reported on "CBS This Morning." CBS News has reached out to insurance companies across the country to determine some of the real numbers -- and this is just the tip of the iceberg, Crawford said. The people who are opening the letters are shocked to learn they can't keep their insurance policies despite President Obama's assurances to the contrary.
The White House is on the defensive trying to explain it, after Mr. Obama repeatedly said, "If you like your doctor or health care plan, you can keep it."
It's an unexpected reality of Obamacare being told through anecdotes in local papers and on social media. But the hard numbers reveal the evidence is far more than anecdotal. CBS News has confirmed with insurance companies across the country that more than two million people are getting notices they no longer can keep their existing plans. In California, there are 279,000; in Michigan, 140,000; Florida, 300,000; and in New Jersey, 800,000. And those numbers are certain to go even higher. Some companies who tell CBS News they've sent letters won't say how many.
Industry experts like Larry Levitt, of the Kaiser Family Foundation, say the insurance companies have no choice. "What we're seeing now is reality coming into play," he said.
Obamacare forces them to drop many of their plans that don't meet the law's 10 minimum standards, including maternity care, emergency visits, mental health treatment and even pediatric dental care.
That means consumers have to sign on to new plans even if they don't want or need the more generous coverage. Industry experts say about half the people getting the letters will pay more -- and half will pay less, thanks to taxpayer subsidies.
And for the people who've gotten the letters, the broken website is a real problem, Crawford added on "CTM." They don't know what to do. They don't know if they get subsidies. And then there are others getting the letters who have very good insurance but are being told they can't keep it. Industry experts CBS News talked to say for everyone, the best bet is to just call their insurance companies to get the information.
Since Obamacare made its debut, discussions have focused on the shockingly bad functionality of the Website itself. If current trends continue, the rollout may go down as the worst major product launch in history. But given the government's enormous resources, it's safe to say that the site itself will ultimately be fixed. But when it is finally up and running, the plan's many deeper, and more intractable, flaws will come into focus. That's when the fun will really begin.
Put simply the program is built on a mountain of false assumptions and is covered by a terrain of unanticipated incentives. Any cleared-eyed observer should conclude that it is perfectly designed to raise the costs of care and wreck the federal budget. However, like just about every other complicated problem that bedevils the nation, the public has become far too caught up in the politics and has ignored the horrific details.
Most people agree that the plan can only remain solvent if enough young and healthy people ("the invincibles") agree to sign up. They are the ones who are likely to pay more into the system than they take out. But now that insurance coverage is guaranteed to anyone at any time (at the same price -- even after they have gotten sick or injured), the only incentive for the invincibles to sign up will be to avoid the penalty (I think we can dismiss "civic duty" as an effective motivator). But as I detailed in a column last year, Justice John Roberts declared the law to be constitutional only because the penalties are far too low to actually compel behavior. Once young healthy people understand that they can save money by dropping insurance, they will. No amount of slick, cheerful TV ads will change that.
The good news for Obama is that the plan will get a large percentage of young people covered. The bad news is that many of those that do sign up will not help the bottom line. The youngest and healthiest of the group are under 26 and will now be able to stay on their parents' plans. This group will add nothing to the pool of premiums (but will use services). Among those older than 26, the ones who qualify for the largest subsidies will be more inclined to sign up. The way the plan is structured, individuals and families earning between 1.38 and 4 times the Federal poverty level will qualify for a subsidy. The government subsidy covers almost the entire premium for those near the bottom of that spectrum. These individuals will definitely sign up. But just like those under 26, they will be a net drain on the system.
From my estimations, private premium contributions don't surpass the government contributions until an individual or a family makes about 2.5 times the poverty level (which equates to about $28,000 for an individual and $55,000 for a family of 4). Since a very large percentage of young people earn less than that, many will sign up to get the benefit. But these people will likely be net drains to the system as well. Their total premiums paid may be more than the services they receive, but that may not be true when you look only at what they actually pay in.
Young women, who plan on using maternity care, may also be motivated. But they can cost more than they bring in. The real cash cows are the young men, not covered by parents, who make more than 4 times the poverty level. But their only incentive to sign up is to avoid the penalty. But at just one percent of income, the penalty just won't be a deciding factor. Most young men will save money by dropping insurance, paying the tax and incidental doctor visits out of pocket, and then only adding the insurance if and when something really bad happens.
The subsidies in Obamacare kick in and kick out very abruptly. People finding themselves on the wrong side of a dividing line will face difficult choices that hurt the plan's finances. The San Francisco Chronicle recently profiled a California couple in their early 60s making about $64,000 per year who would be able to qualify for a $14,000 annual subsidy by reducing their income by $2,000 dollars per year. It's easy to imagine such individuals reducing their hours or their pay to qualify. Of course this type of behavior modification has not been anticipated by preparing premium and budget projections. It is no accident that the government has offered no serious projections about how much in healthcare subsidies it should expect to pay out over the coming years
In truth, the premium levels themselves are based on nothing but assumptions. It is true that those lucky enough to actually get through the website's technological maze have seen (unsubsidized) premiums that are lower than similarly constituted plans in the private market. But those low prices are only possible because no one knows what the new pool of insurance holders will look like. They assume it will look like the pools that already exist. But they won't.
Of course, the incentives for the young and healthy to drop out, and for the sick, old and the heavily subsidized to drop in will mean that the post-Obamacare pool will have very different actuarial arithmetic than the current pools. But all of that is as yet unknown. The numbers we see now were put there just to make us feel good. But once the economics kicks in, look for them to rise quickly.
It is also ironic that high-deductible, catastrophic plans are precisely what young people should be buying in the first place. They are inexpensive because they provide coverage for unlikely, but expensive, events. Routine care is best paid for out-of-pocket by value conscious consumers. But Obamacare outlaws these plans, in favor of what amounts to prepaid medical treatment that shifts the cost of services to taxpayers. In such a system, patients have no incentive to contain costs. Since the biggest factor driving health care costs higher in the first place has been the over use of insurance that results from government-provided tax incentives, and the lack of cost accountability that results from a third-party payer system, Obamacare will bend the cost curve even higher. The fact that Obamacare does nothing to rein in costs while providing an open-ended insurance subsidy may be good news for hospitals and insurance companies, but it's bad news for taxpayers, on whom this increased burden will ultimately fall.
The real shock of Obamacare is not the unbelievable ineptitude in which it was launched, but the naiveté in which it was designed. The only thing worse than the product launch may be the product itself. But unlike other major entitlements, like Social Security and Medicare, that took years to produce red ink that was far in excess of original assumptions, the financial shortfalls in Obamacare should show up very quickly. Republicans should not miss that opportunity to destroy this monster that threatens us all.
CHRIS CHRISTIE: The real problem is that people weren't told the truth. You can remember they were told that they would be able to keep their policies if they like them, and now you hear hundreds of thousands of people across the country being told they couldn't. So, the White House needs to square that with what was told to the American people and told to the Congress beforehand, and it doesn't seem to square at the moment.
Anon, it is really odd to see how fervently you want to believe that the Affordable Care Act is failing.
I mean, look at this. You know why people's policies are being canceled, it was explained above. Insurance companies can't sell crap policies any more, they need to actually insure people -- there is a standard now. Most people who lose their policies are getting something better for less money.
But you are compelled to paint it as a failure. It is clear that you are not driven by any kind of objectivity, but only by hatred for the President of the United States and the power given to him by the Constitution. You want your country to fail.
There may be enough like you to undermine this law until it does fail. But I think that in a year it is going to be fun to remind of you of your comments here, complaining about President Huckabee, uh, I mean, the black guy.
a lot of Cadillac plans are also getting cancelled. Why is it a crap plan if it doesn't cover birth control and you in menopause ?
why is it a crap plan if you aren't married, are male, and it doesn't cover pregnancy ?
why is it a crap plan if you are solidly sure of your gender and don't anticipate needing gender reassignment surgery ?
these are some of the things getting plans disqualified.
Oh, by the way, what do you all think of pedophilia being added to the DSM as a "sexual orientation" ?
some of my facebook friends were suggesting that anyone in favor of this should be shot. I just referred them here and said you would probably defend it.
do you ?
"Anon, it is really odd to see how fervently you want to believe that the Affordable Care Act is failing."
Anonymous, you need to get a grip on reality. Obamacare is failing. You don't need to throw pixie dust and clap three times. The truth is out there.
"I mean, look at this. You know why people's policies are being canceled, it was explained above. Insurance companies can't sell crap policies any more, they need to actually insure people -- there is a standard now."
People who had those "crap" policies were happy with them. No one made an argument when Obamacare was being considered that the government needed to improve the quality of policies. The argument was that we needed to get the uninsured covered. And some vague verbiage that doing so would keep insurance costs done.
Reality has arrived. Tens of millions will remain uninsured. And everyone's costs is going up unless they are subsidized, in which case the costs is still going up. It's just someone else whose costs was already going up will pay even more.
"Most people who lose their policies are getting something better for less money."
Unless you're talking about those who are subsidized, this is a lie.
More benefits mean insurance companies have to charge more. Someone has to pay for that and it is the people who don't qualify for a subsidy. Obama hasn't created any magic to make those costs disappear. He merely tricked America into a pure socialist wealth redistribution.
Not that he pulled the wool over anyone's eyes. The American people were against it when it passed and still are. Not one Republican voted in favor of it.
A year from now, in the midst of the ruins, we will hold an election. Dems will own Obamacare and Repubs will be able to say they tried to save their country from it
"But you are compelled to paint it as a failure."
True. I find the facts compelling.
"It is clear that you are not driven by any kind of objectivity,"
True. I oppose socialism. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
"but only by hatred for the President of the United States"
I like him fine. Three years from now, if he's on DWTS, I'll vote for him. Just for old times' sake.
"and the power given to him by the Constitution."
I have no problem with the power given to him by the Constitution.
I wished he'd used it to run the program effectively. Hiring Sebelius was his decision. He should take responsibility for this poor decision.
"You want your country to fail."
No, I want it to succeed and democracy to work and the Constitution to be adhered to.
Obama doesn't agree. He wants America taken down a peg, shows contempt for the will of the people, and tries everything he can to get around the Constitution.
"There may be enough like you to undermine this law until it does fail."
I'm not causing the problems with the program. I'm only noting it.
The program will collapse due to its flaws.
Why would any young person above the subsidy level sign up?
The penalty is less and they are guaranteed they can sign up for insurance if they really get sick because they can't be turned down for pre-existing conditions.
And, unless such people sign up, the program is not economically viable.
It's not complicated. What kind of idiot didn't foresee it?
"But I think that in a year it is going to be fun to remind of you of your comments here, complaining about President Huckabee, uh, I mean, the black guy."
As always, one sure way you can tell the Dems think they're in trouble is when they randomly play the race card.
They do so dearly desire race tensions to exist and persist in America.
The White House has issued a clarification. When the president said if you like your insurance plan you can keep it, what he meant was you can keep it if he likes it.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans who are getting policy cancellation notices this month can't be as surprised as they pretend to be. President Obama made it clear at his 2010 health care summit what he thought of their taste in insurance.
"It's the equivalent of Acme Insurance that I had for my car. . . . It's basically not health insurance," he explained. "It's house insurance. . . .
"I'm buying that to protect me from some catastrophic situation; otherwise, I'm just paying out of pocket. I don't go to the doctor. I don't get preventive care. There are a whole bunch of things I just do without. But if I get hit by a truck, maybe I don't go bankrupt."
Notice his disdain for those who buy high-deductible policies to protect themselves only from unexpected and unmanageable health-care costs. They are too cheap or too dumb to reach into their own pockets for necessary care that isn't covered by their policy or triggers the deductible.
These customers might like their plan. Their plan might even be the best cure, as many experts believe, for what ails our health-care system, namely too much incentive for Americans to overconsume health care. But Mr. Obama doesn't like their plans so they can't keep them.
Democrats at least are consistent. Back in 1993, during the fight over HillaryCare, Mrs. Clinton explained Democratic reasoning to then-House GOP Leader Denny Hastert. If Americans are allowed too much discretion over how they spend their health-care dollars, Mrs. Clinton said, "We just think people will be too focused on saving money and they won't get the care for their children and themselves that they need . . .
"The money has to go to the federal government because the federal government will spend that money better."
Not only was it deliberate ObamaCare policy to make sure plans millions of Americans like would no longer be available, forcing them to buy more coverage than they want or need. NBC reports that the White House—as Mr. Obama was promising Americans they could keep their current plans—was estimating at least seven million people would not be allowed to keep their current plans.
In drafting rules to put ObamaCare into effect, the Health and Human Services department under Kathleen Sebelius tightened the grandfathering eligibility to make sure even more people would be forced to switch to the excessively costly policies that Mr. Obama wants them to buy. Mr. Obama says he cares about your incentive to get preventive care or tests that you may not get if they don't appear to involve a free lunch.
But the truth is, he wants you to pay for coverage you'll never use (mental-health services, cancer wigs, fertility treatments, Viagra) so the money can be spent on somebody else.
A nod goes to the Los Angeles Times, whose coverage of the inequities of ObamaCare has been exemplary. On Monday, it set the political world afire with a story about thousands of Californians losing coverage. "This is when the actual sticker shock comes into play for people," UCLA health-care researcher Gerald Kominski told the paper. "There are winners and losers under the Affordable Care Act."
The press stinks at covering abstractions, which the health-care debate was until a law was enacted and put into effect. With real-world results now to unpack and examine, NBC News gave airtime to a 62-year-old North Carolina man whose monthly premium just jumped $800: "I'm sitting here looking at this, thinking we ought to just pay the fine and just get insurance when we're sick. Everybody's worried about whether the website works or not, but that's fixable. That's just the tip of the iceberg. This stuff isn't fixable."
The Affordable Care Act was never going to make care more affordable, except for those receiving a big subsidy at the expense of taxpayers or other insurance buyers. A non-listening press might have known better if it had paid attention in the most admirable moment of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, when the candidate disabused a generation of liberal reporters by saying that covering the uninsured might be desirable for other reasons, but health-care costs would be driven out of sight once the government began subsidizing another large group of Americans to overconsume.
ObamaCare probably won't succeed in covering even a majority of the uninsured. It will succeed, though, in forcing millions of Americans to buy more expensive insurance than they need or want, because that's the insurance Mr. Obama likes and will let them keep.
bait and switch, baby
bait and switch
For all of the Affordable Care Act's technical problems, at least one part is working on schedule. The law is systematically dismantling the individual insurance market, as its architects intended from the start.
The millions of Americans who are receiving termination notices because their current coverage does not conform to Health and Human Services Department rules may not realize this is by design. Maybe they trusted President Obama's repeated falsehood that people who liked their health plans could keep them. But Americans should understand that this month's mass cancellation wave has been the President's political goal since 2008. Liberals believe they must destroy the market in order to save it.
***
Until this month, consumers who weren't insured through their jobs were allowed to buy insurance that provides the best value based on their own needs. One of every 10 private policies is sold through the individual market, covering about 7% of the U.S. population under age 65.
Some states have ruined this market through regulation and price controls, and in others costs can be high. But the individual market works well for millions of people, who can choose from many plans—from Cadillac coverage to cheaper protection against catastrophic illness.
The political problem for the White House is that these choices are a threat to ObamaCare. If too many people keep these policies instead of joining the government exchanges, ObamaCare could fail. HHS has thus reviewed the decisions of people in the individual market and found them wanting. HHS believes as a matter of political philosophy that everyone should have the same kind of insurance, and in the name of equity it wrote rules dictating the benefits that all plans must cover and how they must be financed.
In most cases these mandates are more comprehensive and thus more expensive than the status quo, but the ObamaCare refugees aren't merely facing higher costs. The plans they want and are willing to pay for have been intentionally outlawed. Ponder that one.
Liberals claim the new insurance should cost more because it's better, at least as defined by liberal paternalism. But the real reason they want policies to cost more is to drive as many people as possible out of this market and into the subsidized ObamaCare exchanges.
The exchanges need these customers to finance ObamaCare's balance sheet and stabilize its risk pools. On the exchanges, individuals earning more than $46,000 or a family of four above $94,000 don't qualify for subsidies and must buy overpriced insurance. If these middle-class ObamaCare losers can be forced into the exchanges, they become financiers of the new pay-as-you-go entitlement.
The political press corps is reporting this as a shocking discovery, and we suppose it is if you believed Mr. Obama's promises. NBC News even reports as a "scoop" that the White House knew all along that millions would lose their policies. But HHS's trail of purpose has been there for anyone willing to look.
The text of the Affordable Care Act said that none of its language "shall be construed to require that an individual terminate coverage" that existed as of March 23, 2010, or the date the law was enacted. But as early as June 2010 HHS published a regulation reinterpreting this "Preservation of Right to Maintain Existing Coverage" to obviate that promise.
Even minor policy changes, such as increasing a copay by as little as $5, means that a plan cannot be renewed without rewriting it to obey all of ObamaCare's regulations. In HHS's "regulatory impact analysis" published in the Federal Register, the department estimated that between 40% and 67% wouldn't qualify as a permitted plan, and this was the point—to prevent such policies "from being bought and sold as a commodity in commercial transactions." HHS knew that lightly regulated policies might be popular, especially compared to the restricted choices in the exchanges.
Next, HHS applied very prescriptive mandates to all plans, including those sold outside the exchanges. The law's 10 very broad categories of statutory benefits like hospitalization, prescription drugs or maternity care were construed so that 79.6% of current individual plans didn't meet the targets, according to HHS's own analysis. The rule even put floors under cost-sharing to prevent consumers from paying out of pocket.
HHS wrote that the purpose was to offer merely "a small number of meaningful choices." Letting people make tradeoffs for themselves "would have allowed extremely wide variation across plans in the benefits offered" and "would not have assured consumers that they would have coverage for basic benefits." Forced equity again trumped individual choice.
Hard to believe, but at the time liberals complained that this HHS "essential health benefits" rule wasn't restrictive enough. Pediatric services stop being required at age 19, not 21, and what about speech therapy, medical foods or lactation services?
Liberals needn't have worried. Once customers are herded into the exchanges, HHS has the power to further standardize benefits, further limit choices by barring certain insurers from selling through selective contracting, and generally police the insurers to behave like the government franchises they now are. The state-run exchanges in Vermont and the District of Columbia have already barred individual coverage outside their exchanges.
***
None of this is an accident. It is the deliberate result of the liberal demand that everyone have essentially the same coverage and that government must dictate what that coverage is and how much it costs. Such political control is the central nervous system of the Affordable Care Act, and it is why so many people can't keep the insurance they like
“I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.” ― Margaret Thatcher
WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. government's Obamacare data hub was 'experiencing an outage' on Tuesday evening, the Connecticut state healthcare exchange, "Access Health CT", announced. It was the second outage in three days.
The data hub operator said it was doing maintenance on the system.
"Access Health CT was informed by CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) that the Federal Data Services Hub is currently experiencing an outage," a statement from the Connecticut state exchange said.
A similar outage on Sunday halted online enrollment on the federal Healthcare.gov website as well as similar state sites.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) declined comment on the development.
The data services hub links online health insurance marketplaces with numerous federal agencies and can verify people's identity, citizenship, and other facts.
"We are now undertaking infrastructure maintenance, which should be complete overnight." said a statement from the service provider.
I have been broadcasting for 31 years and writing for longer than that. I do not recall ever saying on radio or in print that a president is doing lasting damage to our country. I did not like the presidencies of Jimmy Carter (the last Democrat I voted for) or Bill Clinton. Nor did I care for the "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush. In modern political parlance "compassionate" is a euphemism for ever-expanding government.
But I have never written or broadcast that our country was being seriously damaged by a president. So it is with great sadness that I write that President Barack Obama has done and continues to do major damage to America. The only question is whether this can ever be undone.
This is equally true domestically and internationally.
Domestically, his policies have gravely impacted the American economy.
He has overseen the weakest recovery from a recession in modern American history.
He has mired the country in unprecedented levels of debt: about $6.5 trillion dollars in five years (this after calling his predecessor "unpatriotic" for adding nearly $5 trillion in eight years).
He has fashioned a country in which more Americans now receive government aid -- means-tested, let alone non-means tested -- than work full-time.
He has no method of paying for this debt other than printing more money -- thereby surreptitiously taxing everyone through inflation, including the poor he claims to be helping, and cheapening the dollar to the point that some countries are talking another reserve currency -- and saddling the next generations with enormous debts.
With his 2,500-page Affordable Care Act, he has made it impossible for hundreds of thousands, soon millions, of Americans to keep their individual or employee-sponsored group health insurance; he has stymied American medical innovation with an utterly destructive tax on medical devices; and he has caused hundreds of thousands of workers to lose full-time jobs because of the health care costs imposed by Obamacare on employers.
His Internal Revenue Service used its unparalleled power to stymie political dissent. No one has been held accountable.
His ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were murdered by terrorists in Benghazi, Libya. No one has been blamed. The only blame the Obama administration has leveled was on a video maker in California who had nothing to do with the assault.
In this president's White House, the buck stops nowhere.
Among presidents in modern American history, he has also been a uniquely divisive force. It began with his forcing Obamacare through Congress -- the only major legislation in American history to be passed with no votes from the opposition party.
Though he has had a unique opportunity to do so, he has not only not helped heal racial tensions, he has exacerbated them. His intrusions into the Trayvon Martin affair ("If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon") and into the confrontation between a white police officer and a black Harvard professor (the police "acted stupidly") were unwarranted, irresponsible, demagogic and, most of all, divisive.
He should have been reassuring black Americans that America is in fact the least racist country in the world -- something he should know as well anybody, having been raised only by whites and being the first black elected the leader of a white-majority nation. Instead, he echoed the inflammatory speech of professional race-baiters such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
He has also divided the country by economic class, using classic Marxist language against "the rich" and "corporate profits."
Regarding America in the world, he has been, if possible, even more damaging. The United States is at its weakest, has fewer allies, and has less military and diplomatic influence than at any time since before World War I.
One wonders if there is a remaining ally nation that trusts him. And worse, no American enemy fears him. If you are a free movement (the democratic Iranian and Syrian oppositions) or a free country (Israel), you have little or no reason to believe that you have a steadfast ally in the United States.
Even non-democratic allies no longer trust America. Barack Obama has alienated our most important and longest standing Arab allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Both the anti-Muslim Brotherhood and the anti-Iran Arab states have lost respect for him.
And his complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq has left that country with weekly bloodbaths.
Virtually nothing Barack Obama has done has left America or the world better since he became president. Nearly everything he has touched has been made worse.
He did, however, promise before the 2008 election that "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." That is the one promise he has kept.
Rand Paul Plagiarized Speech From Wikipedia, Rachel Maddow Says and Rachel has the evidence to prove it.
Hey Anon, here's a free resource for you and your tea bagger buddy and fellow plagiarist, Paul Rand.
Best Grammar & Plagiarism Checker
No need to thank me.
You're welcome!
the sources I copy from would be happy to know their thoughts are disseminated to disabuse the victims of liberal wackos
and you couldn't care less about "plagiarism"
you simply can't think of any defense of the liberal agenda
much to the chagrin of the liberal losers in America, if we hear a good idea, we repeat it
They've got your number, Bubbles.
“Rate shock”: The GOP’s shameful new Obamacare lie
Conservatives -- with no concern for making healthcare better -- have made arguing about Obamacare a waste of time
"...The disruption we’re seeing in the individual insurance market is mostly by design. And it’s mostly a good thing. Until October, the individual market existed to sell insurance to people who needed it least. Rates were low for healthy people precisely because their old, sick neighbors were priced or locked out of the system. They were also low because many of the policies on the market didn’t actually fulfill the function of insurance, which is to hedge against financial catastrophe.
Obamacare eliminates each of these enormous flaws by 1) regulating insurance so that it covers lots of stuff and genuinely protects people from medical bankruptcy, 2) making plans available and affordable to the ill and elderly by banning price discrimination against sick people, and only allowing insurers to charge the elderly three times as much as the young for equivalent coverage, 3) providing subsidies to the poor and middle class to make coverage affordable.
The first change makes insurance costlier. The second turns the individual market into state-based group plans, like the one you probably participate in at work, where the young and healthy cross-subsidize the old and infirm. The third reduces impact of the first two for most, but not all, of the individuals affected by them.
Taken together, the changes create winners and losers, but almost by definition more winners than losers. That doesn’t make it perfect by any means. We could reduce the impact of cross-subsidization on young, healthy people by making subsidies more generous or stretching the age band or loosening minimum essential coverage standards or some combination of the three. We could also create a public option! One of the ironic silver linings around having such a kludgey, complex system is that it’s theoretically easier to adjust at the margin.
But conservatives didn’t have any interest in helping the remainder when the law was being drafted, and the only solutions they’ll entertain for the remainder now are ones that void protections for everyone else. Their tremendous outpouring of grief for young, middle-class people now comes couched in the false premise that the only available solution is complete repeal. You could counter that by any moral standard the system the Affordable Care Act creates is preferable to the one we had before, which subsidized the Ted Cruz family to the tune of thousands of dollars a year and left 50 million people without any coverage at all. But dollars to doughnuts their response will be off-point screeching about how Obama lied. Rinse repeat."
"Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on Tuesday officiated at the marriage of Jeff Trammell and Stuart Serkin, joining Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the only two justices (past or current) to perform a wedding for a same-sex couple.
The ceremony was held in the lawyer’s lounge at the Supreme Court building because, as Trammell told BuzzFeed, “that’s where [O'Connor] was.”
O’Connor was introduced to Trammell while serving as chancellor at The College of William & Mary, where he is a rector.
“It was a regular, very traditional ceremony,” Trammell said, calling it “a testament to all those folks up there who worked very hard to make marriage sort of a normal, routine matter for the community, in many states in this country.”"
"Now this is exactly the type of junk insurance Obamacare is meant to do away with"
see this is the problem
it may that the insurance policies being cancelled are not very good
but the Dems didn't argue that the quality of insurance needs to be improved
they argued that we needed to find a way to get all Americans insured
most now agree that 30 million will remain uninsured under Obamacare
Forbes released its list of the 100 most powerful today
for the first time, the U.S. President is not number one
another low for Obama
WASHINGTON — Defending President Barack Obama's much-maligned health care overhaul in Congress, his top health official was confronted Wednesday with a government memo raising new security concerns about the trouble-prone website that consumers are using to enroll.
The document, obtained by The Associated Press, shows that administration officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services were concerned that a lack of testing posed a potentially "high" security risk for the HealthCare.gov website serving 36 states. It was granted a temporary security certificate so it could operate.
Security issues are a new concern for the troubled HealthCare.gov website. If they cannot be resolved, they could prove to be more serious than the long list of technical problems the administration is trying to address.
"You accepted a risk on behalf of every user...that put their personal financial information at risk," Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius during questioning before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "Amazon would never do this. ProFlowers would never do this. Kayak would never do this. This is completely an unacceptable level of security."
The site has a temporary certificate, known in government parlance as an "authority to operate." Sebelius said a permanent certificate will only be issued once all security issues are addressed.
A security certificate is required before any government computer system can process, store or transmit agency data. Temporary certificates are sometimes allowable, but only under specific circumstances.
The Sept. 27 memo to Medicare chief Marylin Tavenner said a website contractor wasn't able to test all the security controls in one complete version of the system.
"From a security perspective, the aspects of the system that were not tested due to the ongoing development, exposed a level of uncertainty that can be deemed as a high risk for the website," the memo said.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/30/report-white-house-pressured-insurance-execs-to-keep-quiet-about-obamacare/
HOW DO YOU DEFEND THIS ?
I at least thought we would agree that we don't want our country to turn into RUSSIA.
But maybe we don't. I misjudged you all along.
I thought you were americans and believed in freedom. stupid me.
theresa
Theresa, you are upset about something you read on Glenn Beck's web site, as if it were true? Srsly?
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's approval rating has sunk to a record low, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday night, amid deepening concern over U.S. spying and Obamacare.
Increasing disaffection with Obama goes beyond the government shutdown he caused.
"The NBC/WSJ pollsters argue that no single reason explains Obama’s lower poll standing," writes NBC senior political editor Mark Murray. "Rather, they attribute it to the accumulation of setbacks since the summer -- allegations of spying by the National Security Agency, the debate over Syria’s chemical weapons, the government shutdown and now intense scrutiny over the problems associated with the health care law’s federal website and its overall implementation."
Obama's approval rating now stands at 42 percent -- a low in NBC/WSJ's polling. It had hovered in the mid-to-high 40s since April and was 47 percent in early October.
WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats facing reelection next year aren't just fretting about a balky website and President Barack Obama's misleading campaign statements on health care. Now they've begun worrying about another deadline a year away.
According to an Affordable Care Act timetable established by administration officials, early next October insurance companies will announce their new menu of health care plans for the ACA marketplaces -- plans that may be more varied and numerous than those offered this year, but that almost certainly will come with higher prices.
The likely price hikes will hit the individual and small-business insurance markets only weeks before Election Day on Nov. 4, 2014.
"What genius came up with that timetable?" asked one key Democrat, who declined to be quoted by name because he is involved in private White House talks.
The concern about the 2014 timetable highlights a fundamental political reality of Obamacare: The success or failure of the program depends largely on the kindness of strangers -- the insurance companies -- and whatever happens in the marketplace will be ascribed to President Obama and the Democrats, since Republicans refused to vote for the law or cooperate in efforts to make it work.
The president's job approval rating is already down to 42 percent in the new NBC poll, the lowest of his presidency in that survey.
oh, Obama's become unpopular
what a shame!
A majority of Americans – 52 percent – believe the health care law needs either a major overhaul or to be completely eliminated, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds.
Forty-four percent think it either needs minor modifications or that it’s working fine as is.
(editor's note: these people need help)
The Obama administration acknowledges major problems.
“In these early weeks, access to Healthcare.gov has been a miserably frustrating experience for Americans,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday in testimony on Capitol Hill.
Support for the law has slipped with women, who traditionally rank health care as a higher priority than men, and who are seen as an important plank in selling the law.
Americans called it a bad idea by a 47-37 percent margin – a shift from 43-38 percent earlier this month. But among women, a group President Barack Obama won by 11 points in 2012, just 38 percent think it’s a good idea, while 45 percent do not. That’s down from early October, when most women said the law was a good idea by a 41-39 percent margin.
A reader remarked last week that Barack Obama is running out of human shields. With the father of ObamaCare unavailable to explain the greatest fiasco of his presidency to Congress, the American people had to settle Wednesday for his surrogate, Kathleen Sebelius.
Let us try to understand clearly what is happening now with the Obama presidency. On display to everyone watching this week is not merely the failure of a federal website or a software program or Ms. Sebelius's management skills. This is the failure of the very idea of progressive government. Not liberal government. Progressive government.
What is happening this week to ObamaCare and the political class that created it is historic. Forty years from now, the millennials who in 2008 and 2012 believed in and voted for the progressive ideal—limitless, mandated, state-led goodness—can tell their grandchildren they watched it fall apart in 2013. This is the glitch that failed.
In the 1990s, the American left, burdened with 90 years of unfortunate left-wing metaphors, rebranded itself in the U.S. as the "progressive movement." Teddy Roosevelt invokes cheerier memories than Leon Trotsky. In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, the left rode to power with Barack Obama.
Mr. Obama is, without embarrassment, a man of the left. American progressives saw their win with Mr. Obama as the overthrowing of the postwar Democratic liberalism that culminated with the Clintons, a liberalism willing most of the time to coexist with markets, property and private enterprise. Progressives hated these accommodations. They were purer than that. He was purer than that. Together, they created ObamaCare.
What made ObamaCare an exemplar of progressive politics and policy is precisely what has been on view this week in news stories and the Sebelius hearing. It's not that the health program was to be administered by the state or that it promised benefits to all. Liberalism did that for decades. What made it peculiarly progressive were the mandates. And not just the law's individual and business mandates to purchase their insurance. The essence of modern Democratic progressivism is: "You will participate in what we have created for you, and you will comply with the law's demands."
Nothing could have been more crystal clear than the explanation for all the canceled insurance policies from the White House's Jay Carney, the bland face of progressive coercion: "What the president said and what everybody said all along is that there are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act to create minimum standards of coverage, minimum services that every insurance plan has to provide. So it's true that there are existing health-care plans on the individual market that don't meet those minimum standards and therefore do not qualify for the Affordable Care Act."
If this White House and its progressive ecosystem have a political motto, it's this: Get over it.
American progressivism is politics by cramdown. Ask Jamie Dimon. Ask the coal miners the EPA is putting out of business. Ask the union workers waiting for jobs on the Keystone XL pipeline. Ask Boeing in South Carolina or the harmless tea party groups from towns no one has ever heard of that were shut down by the IRS, or the 20,000 inner-city parents and students who marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest obliteration of their charter schools by New York's progressive mayoral candidate, Bill de Blasio.
Up to now, most of the events of the Obama presidency have passed in and out of the news as just politics. But with ObamaCare and its details touching so many people all at once, it has become impossible not to recognize that the Affordable Care Act is an offensive ideological exercise, not merely an entitlement program. By Mr. Obama's own admission, this law is the way he wants the world to work in the U.S.—whether in health, education, energy, infrastructure or finance. And what Americans now riding through the ObamaCare hurricane of canceled policies, disappearing doctors and rebooted promises have to be asking themselves is: Do I want to live with this level of personal enforcement in the U.S.?
Perhaps the better question is, will the political class help them understand what ObamaCare is, or wanted to be? Most Republican politicians aren't particularly comfortable doing ideology. But the left revels in it. Mr. Obama bellows it in every speech. And absent someone shouting that the progressive emperor suddenly isn't wearing any clothes, they will win with it again.
Barack Obama may have spent a lifetime failing up, but eventually it's just failure. He has presided over five years of sickly economic growth, inadequate job creation, a doubling of the food stamp population and now this—ObamaCare.
Progressive government has failed in the U.S. Most fascinating to behold will be whether the Democratic presidential candidate who follows this meltdown will embrace it, fake it or move on
I wonder if Obama will resign
or put the country through three more years of disintegration?
and to think, just a couple of weeks ago the Republicans were doomed..DOOMED
then, they found a very sincere pumpkin patch and the Great Pumpkin left them a gift:
Obamacare
I was thinking about Anonymous and his attitudes towards LGBT people this morning, and I realize I should have some sympathy for him. I was taught as a child to think that queer people were wrong, and that thinking followed me far into my adult years, despite the obvious reasons for my changing my views. Given that slow, delayed change in myself, I should understand that some people learn these ideas, and it takes a long time and a lot to change deeply held beliefs.
That said, the things he says about lgbt people reflect some fairly widely held views that are very damaging to our youth, both gay and straight. He should rething this.
My father once said prejudice is like a scar on a person's personality: they can be a lovely, reasonable person about most things, then you come across this ugly, anomolous aspect that is deeply ingrained, that disfigures them. He said not to judge people only by their prejudices.
“President Barack Obama has done, his policies, He has overseen, He has mired, He has fashioned, He has no method, he claims to, With his, he has made it impossible, he has stymied American medical innovation with an utterly destructive tax on medical devices, he has caused hundreds of thousands of workers to lose full-time jobs...
In this president's White House, the buck stops nowhere.”
You can relax now, you’re safe. On this blog you can pretty much spew as much factless crap and baseless hate as you want.
Welcome.
oh, Obama's become unpopular
what a shame!
If you think "what a shame" about Obama's "42 percent [favorability rating] in the new NBC poll, the lowest of his presidency in that survey," we can only imagine the incredible shame you must feel about the fact that Gallup reports Republican Party Favorability Sinks to Record Low
"WASHINGTON, D.C. -- With the Republican-controlled House of Representatives engaged in a tense, government-shuttering budgetary standoff against a Democratic president and Senate, the Republican Party is now viewed favorably by 28% of Americans, down from 38% in September.
This is ***the lowest favorable rating measured for either party*** since Gallup began asking this question in 1992...."
Yep, that bears repeating. The GOP's favorability rating is the lowest Gallup has EVER measured -- 28%.
It sounds so familiar.
Oh yeah!
Somebody has had such a low favorability number before!
April 11, 2008
Bush Job Approval at 28%, Lowest of His Administration
Only Nixon and Truman have had lower job approval ratings
hate to break it to you but the Republican don't have a national election
even if they did, people vote for individuals and issues, not parties
and since you're a poll reader, you must know that on most issues, Americans agree with Republicans
those who console yourself about Obama's failures but pointing out that Republicans are unpopular are missing the boat
Obama's second-term agenda is dead
“I thought you were americans and believed in freedom. stupid me.
Theresa”
Congratulations on finding the courage to sign your comment.
Was this your first comment in the thread?
“Obama's second-term agenda is dead”
God it must burn you people to not be able to call him a “nigger” out loud.
What we “stupid liberals” don’t get is how you could possibly think that you’re fooling anyone into thinking your hatred has anything to do with policy or “agenda.”
"it must burn you people to not be able to call him a “nigger” out loud"
you people are really getting desperate when you attribute criticism of a President by members of the opposition to racism
wonder how you compartmentalize the fact that Obama's opposition isn't trying to impeach Clarence Thomas
or never attacked Condoleeza Rice
or once favored Herman Cain for President
your mind must have a lot of locked up compartments
that's right, Patrick!!
I wonder why Condi never ran for president.
“Obama's approval rating now stands at 42 percent -- a low in NBC/WSJ's polling. It had hovered in the mid-to-high 40s since April and was 47 percent in early October.”
For a terrorist sympathizing Muslim atheist communist socialist fascist Government-shutter-downer whose only goal is to destroy life on Earth with his “death-care,” I’d say a 42% approval rating is pretty good.
Roger (paraphrased): “Prejudice is like a scar on a person's personality: they can be a lovely, reasonable person about most things, then you come across this ugly, anomalous aspect that is deeply ingrained, that disfigures them.
Don’t judge people only by their prejudices.”
Thanks for the paradigm shift, Robert. A similar concept has been going through my mind of late about seeing through to someone’s “friendliness.” Your dad’s sage words solemnize it. The prejudice/scar analogy will stick with me.
I may not be in the best mood to practice it today but it’s swirling around and ripping out some toxic roots. I really needed to hear it like that.
That's right. The GOP has 3 token African Americans, Condi, Cain, and Thomas, who hold no elective office, and don't anybody forget it!
Anon seems to have forgotten the GOP also has Senator Tim Scott, who actually holds elective office, one he was appointed to by GOP SC Governor Nikki Haley.
Of course the GOP lost Colin Powell's support. Powell endorsed and voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Obama won his seat twice, in nationwide elections, something the GOP can't do even with all that Citizens United money.
Everybody outside the bubble knows what happened in Southern States almost immediately after the Supreme Court overturned portions of the Voting Right Act. While the majority of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court's VRA decision, southern states quickly moved to get minorities off state voter roles for the upcoming election, showing their true colors.
Two Hours After The Supreme Court Gutted The Voting Rights Act, Texas AG Suppresses Minority Voters
Supreme Error: North Carolina’s new voter suppression law shows why the Voting Rights Act is still necessary
After Ruling, States Rush to Enact Voting Laws
Southern states are moving to tighten voting rules
Rather than heed the advice of RNC chief Reince Prebus' autopsy report and try "to reinvent itself and officially endorse immigration reform," the GOP decided to double down on discrimination.
slam dunk
12-yr-old takes on NC Governor re. voting rights
Thune: 'Everyone knows' that HealthCare.Gov will eventually be fixed
"Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said Thursday he expects HealthCare.gov will be fixed.
“The website rollout is one thing, and they’ll get that fixed,” Thune said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Everybody knows that eventually.” ...
...Thune added, “We’re just all very grateful to the President and the Democrats that now that the shutdown is over, we’re talking about something else.”
A majority of Republican members fought to defund ObamaCare in this fiscal year’s budget, which led to the 16-day shutdown of the government.
In his Thursday appearance, Thune suggested Republicans need to take a step back in their fight, after being asked if the GOP will continue to push for the law’s repeal..."
Patrick Fitzgerald: "Roger"
Sorry, Robert, that was careless of me.
CNN is reporting that the white house is exhorting massive pressure on the insurance industry to keep quiet.
so again, how do you feel about living in Russia ?
http://www.thelibertypaper.org/2013/10/31/breaking-white-house-threatens-insurance-companies-who-speak-out-against-obamacare/
Theresa
Here's the smoking gun. Obama knew going in that about 93 million plans would be cancelled under Obamacare rules. Keep in mind that this was all supposed to be done to cover the uninsured. No one talked about changing the requirements we already had. And, certainly, no one talked about us all chipping in to pay for free contraceptives and gender reassignment surgery.:
Obamacare’s disruption of the existing health insurance market—a disruption codified in law, and known to the administration—is only just beginning. And it’s far broader than recent media coverage has implied.
If you read the Affordable Care Act when it was passed, you knew that it was dishonest for President Obama to claim that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” as he did—and continues to do—on countless occasions. And we now know that the administration knew this all along. It turns out that in an obscure report buried in a June 2010 edition of the Federal Register, administration officials predicted massive disruption of the private insurance market.
On Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney attempted to minimize the disruption issue, arguing that it only affected people who buy insurance on their own. “That’s the universe we’re talking about, 5 percent of the population,” said Carney.(5 percent of the population happens to be 15 million people, no small number, but let’s leave that aside.)
An article by Chad Terhune of the Los Angeles Times described a number of Californians who are seeing their existing plans terminated and replaced with much more expensive ones. “I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,” said one.
A second article, by Lisa Myers and Hanna Rappleye of NBC News, unearthed the aforementioned commentary in the Federal Register, and cited “four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act” as saying that “50 to 75 percent” of people who buy coverage on their own are likely to receive cancellation notices due to Obamacare.
The administration’s commentary in the Federal Register did not only refer only to the individual market, however, but also the market for employer-sponsored health insurance.
Section 1251 of the Affordable Care Act contains what’s called a “grandfather” provision that, in theory, allows people to keep their existing plans if they like them. But subsequent regulations from the Obama administration interpreted that provision so narrowly as to prevent most plans from gaining this protection.
“The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34,552 of the Register. All in all, more than half of employer-sponsored plans will lose their “grandfather status” and get canceled. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 156 million Americans—more than half the population—was covered by employer-sponsored insurance in 2013.
Another 25 million people, according to the CBO, have “nongroup and other” forms of insurance; that is to say, they participate in the market for individually-purchased insurance. In this market, the administration projected that “40 to 67 percent” of individually-purchased plans would lose their Obamacare-sanctioned “grandfather status” and get canceled, solely due to the fact that there is a high turnover of participants and insurance arrangements in this market. (Plans purchased after March 23, 2010 do not benefit from the “grandfather” clause.) The real turnover rate would be higher, because plans can lose their grandfather status for a number of other reasons.
How many people are exposed to these problems? 60 percent of Americans have private-sector health insurance—precisely the number that Jay Carney dismissed. As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans.
Will these canceled plans be replaced with better coverage?
President Obama’s famous promise that “you could keep your plan” was not some naïve error or accident. He, and his allies, knew that previous Democratic attempts at health reform had failed because Americans were happy with the coverage they had, and opposed efforts to change the existing system.
Now, supporters of the law are offering a different argument. “We didn’t really mean it when we said you could keep your plan,” they say, “but it doesn’t matter, because the coverage you’re going to get under Obamacare will be better than the coverage you had before.”
But that’s not true. Obamacare forces insurers to offer services that most Americans don’t need, don’t want, and won’t use, for a higher price. Bob Laszewski, in a revealing blog post, wrote about the cancellation of his own health coverage. “Right now,” he wrote, “I have ‘Cadillac’ health insurance. I can access every provider in the national Blue Cross network—about every doc and hospital in America—without a referral and without higher deductibles and co-pays.”
But his plan is being canceled. His new, Obamacare-compatible plan has a $500 higher deductible, and a narrower physician and hospital network that restricts out-of-town providers. And yet it costs 66 percent more than his current plan. “Mr. President,” he writes, “I really like my health plan and I would like to keep it. Can you help me out here?”
yep and I am one of them.
Our premiums went from 333.00 to 475 a month, while every co-pay went way up as did every deductible.
copays from 30 to 40 and deductible 200 to 300 for the individual, 600 to 900 for the family.
OOP maximums also went up, 6000 to 7500
the company newsletter put the blame squarely on obamacare.
the rates have never gone up anywhere close to this much in one year before.
here's a fun story:
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has been a firm supporter of President Barack Obama's health law in the past. But that changed Wednesday when he took to CNBC to describe what he sees as a law that's gone "off the rails."
“Unfortunately, in this kind of situation, execution trumps strategy. It might be a great strategy, but the execution is really flawed. It’s off the rails,” Schultz told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo. “What the country needs now is real honesty and transparency and truth about what’s really going on.”
Schultz had been a booster of Obamacare as recently as September.
“We have been providing comprehensive health insurance to all our employees, including part-time people who work 20 hours a week, for over 20 years,” Schultz said. “So our plan is actually better [than Obamacare].”
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Here's the REAL story:
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz: Obamacare Has Gone 'Off The Rails
"Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has been a firm supporter of President Barack Obama's health law in the past. But that changed Wednesday when he took to CNBC to describe what he sees as a law that's gone "off the rails."
The controversy surrounding the health law, also known as Obamacare, centers predominantly around HealthCare.gov, the glitch-ridden federal portal for Obamacare coverage. A senior adviser to President Barack Obama claimed last Friday that the site will work smoothly by late November, but that didn’t stop Schultz from expressing his disappointment with the first month of the law's implementation.
“Unfortunately, in this kind of situation, execution trumps strategy. It might be a great strategy, but the execution is really flawed. It’s off the rails,” Schultz told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo. “What the country needs now is real honesty and transparency and truth about what’s really going on.”
Schultz's comments came on the same day Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took the blame for what she described as the site's “miserably frustrating experience."
Schultz had been a booster of Obamacare as recently as September, when he described it as a “good thing for the country” in a separate interview with Bartiromo. The CEO additionally said in an August interview with Reuters that he would not use the law as an excuse to reduce the hours or health insurance benefits of its workers, a stance he reiterated Wednesday.
“We have been providing comprehensive health insurance to all our employees, including part-time people who work 20 hours a week, for over 20 years,” Schultz said. “So our plan is actually better [than Obamacare].”"
Just got back from a meeting with a Maryland health care navigator and my 22 year old independent daughter.
My daughter qualifies for 37 plans that run from a platinum policy with zero deductible and low out of pocket costs for $211.00 per month to a bronze policy with both higher a deductible and out of pocket limit for just $19.00 per month.
This is all based on her age of 22, good health and a 2012 income of $19,000.
She could not be more pleased to be covered and is relieved the costs are so low.
shouldn't she be on your plan?
there's no doubt this is all great for low income people who have insurance
it's basically a wealth transfer scheme
your daughter would be better off paying the penalty though
if she gets sick, she can sign up at any time for insurance and can't be disqualified for pre-existing conditions
I am still curious what the views are here.
Pedophilia is now classified as a sexual orientation by the DSM.
do the TTF'rs approve ?
Jim, what's your view ?
Patrick, what's yours ?
Previous anon with the 22 year old daughter, what's yours ?
right on topic for this blog.
approve or disapprove ?
Theresa
Theresa
Theresa, the American Family Association and the American Spectator have said that pedophilia has been redefined as an orientation in the DSM, but it is not true.
That's all. Not true.
You really need better sources.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithonthecouch/2013/10/does-the-new-dsm-call-pedophilia-an-orientation/
so if you "think" about molesting children it is an orientation but if you act on those thoughts it is a disorder.
Unreal.
the usa is run by crazy people.
so there IS some truth to it, sounds like. It's an orientation if you think about it - if you don't act on it.
theresa
Let's go to another always-excellent source, today's Washington Times: APA to correct manual: Pedophilia is not a ‘sexual orientation’
Pedophilia is not a “sexual orientation,” and erroneous use of that phrase will be corrected soon in its new manual on mental illnesses, the American Psychiatric Association said Thursday.
The APA’s statement came in response to media inquiries, including from The Washington Times, about items circulating on the internet claiming that the APA had designated pedophilia as a sexual orientation in its new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as DSM-5 or DSM-V.
The APA said in its statement that “‘Sexual orientation’ is not a term used in the diagnostic criteria for pedophilic disorder and its use in the DSM-5 text discussion is an error and should read ‘sexual interest.’”
“In fact, APA considers pedophilic disorder a ‘paraphilia,’ not a ‘sexual orientation.’ This error will be corrected in the electronic version of DSM-5 and the next printing of the manual,” the organization said.
"The APA said in its statement that “‘Sexual orientation’ is not a term used in the diagnostic criteria for pedophilic disorder and its use in the DSM-5 text discussion is an error and should read ‘sexual interest.’”
sounds to me like the APA put out a trial balloon and it failed. so they are retracting.
let's try this another way.
do TTF users believe that pedophilia is a disorder or an orientation ? regardless of how the DSM does or does not classify it ?
I am not sure what a "TTF user" is. Teach the Facts does not have a position on the uses of the words disorder and orientation to describe pedophilia or any other thing. "Disorder" sounds a little more judgmental, but "orientation" is usually used to describe the sex of the object of one's attraction, not their age.
so, is it judgmental to judge folks that want to have sex with children as morally distressed ?
Or do you believe in "morals" at all, as it applies to ANYTHING, anything at all ?
wow, I guess I get why I don't get you all. I should have seen it all along. I believe in right and wrong and you don't. not at all.
is it inherently wrong for an adult to have sex with a child, child defined as under 10, adult as over 21, regardless of the circumstances (excluding coercion of the adult).
Is that inherently WRONG ? Yes, no, or maybe ? Just trying to establish a baseline of whether it is even possible to rationalize with you crazies.....
Theresa
so, is it judgmental to judge folks that want to have sex with children as morally distressed ?
Or do you believe in "morals" at all, as it applies to ANYTHING, anything at all ?
wow, I guess I get why I don't get you all. I should have seen it all along. I believe in right and wrong and you don't. not at all.
is it inherently wrong for an adult to have sex with a child, child defined as under 10, adult as over 21, regardless of the circumstances (excluding coercion of the adult).
Is that inherently WRONG ? Yes, no, or maybe ? Just trying to establish a baseline of whether it is even possible to rationalize with you crazies.....
Theresa
Theresa, to be clear here. If someone has sex with a child then I think the parents are justified in killing that person. If they choose not to, then I think society should imprison that person for a long time.
That is not to say that child molesters are normal people who make bad decisions. I think they are probably usually people who have something wrong with them. Either way, if a person has sex with a child they should be removed from society so it won't happen again. Maybe they will and maybe they won't learn a lesson, but it cannot be tolerated.
Does that answer your ridiculous question? Liberals to not approve of child molesting. Liberals have morals, and they are pretty much the same morals that you have. If someone has really been harmed, we are against it. When it is just something that is hard to understand, like gay people marrying, where no harm is done, liberals tend to believe that they should be free to express their love. It is a morality that maybe you don't understand, but it is definitely not an absence of morals.
"Theresa, to be clear here. If someone has sex with a child then I think the parents are justified in killing that person."
thank you. I agree. that was about the ONLY thing my very liberal neighbors and I agreed on. if someone hurt our children (who are still best friends) we were going after them TOGETHER. and the police just best get there first.
It was somewhat surprising, given their anti-torture, anti-gun status on everything else, that we had complete agreement on this.... if our kids disappeared, we AS A TEAM would go after the perpetuators with no holds bared. Using of course all fire arms available.
It is kinds of interesting how you justify one kind of action when it potentially involves your kids and another when it doesn't. IE, if you would kill a person that harmed your child why can't you justify torturing someone to retrieve the location of someone else's child ?
theresa
"Theresa, to be clear here. If someone has sex with a child then I think the parents are justified in killing that person."
thank you. I agree. that was about the ONLY thing my very liberal neighbors and I agreed on. if someone hurt our children (who are still best friends) we were going after them TOGETHER. and the police just best get there first.
It was somewhat surprising, given their anti-torture, anti-gun status on everything else, that we had complete agreement on this.... if our kids disappeared, we AS A TEAM would go after the perpetuators with no holds bared. Using of course all fire arms available.
It is kinds of interesting how you justify one kind of action when it potentially involves your kids and another when it doesn't. IE, if you would kill a person that harmed your child why can't you justify torturing someone to retrieve the location of someone else's child ?
theresa
One reason given often for opposing torture is that it doesn't provide good information. People being tortured will say anything to end it, not necessarily the truth.
so, you're OK with torture as long as it works, Robert?
On the issue of torture, while I would agree the information produced is not always reliable, it may be if the questioned party knows there is a way to confirm the information. In such cases, I would imagine Robert would heartily endorse the use of torture.
Torture is also a very effective means of behavior modification. In some countries, it has been proven to control deviant homosexual activity and even to lessen preferences to pursue such activity.
it's encouraging to see brave individuals like Robert and Yuri stand up for widely maligned torture practices
a nice surprise heading into the weekend
In my opinion, in a moral sense it is not right to torture your neighbors when you don't know where someone else's kids are. This may be a point that liberals and conservatives disagree on.
Get a grip, Theresa. Single clicking suffices.
To the Anons worried about people losing their existing policies, do you support the Ryan budget? How many people would lose their health insurance policies if it were the law of the land, as the House GOP voted for it 40+ times?
Several Ryan budget "proposals passed through the House with unanimous Republican support and were, in 2012, a basis of the Republican presidential platform. Those budgets called for dramatic funding cuts to Medicaid. If Republicans had swept into power and enacted such changes, according to projections prepared by Urban Institute scholars and published by the Kaiser Family Foundation, between 14 and 20 million Medicaid recipients would lose their insurance. And that doesn’t even include the people who are starting to get Medicaid coverage through Obamacare’s expansions of the program. That's another 10 to 17 million people."...
--Guess Who Really Wants to Take Away Your Insurance: Republicans
Adding more people to the ranks of the uninsured is the GOP's plan under the Ryan budget. The nation voted that plan down and endorsed Obamacare in the 2012 election.
From the data I've found, it appears 98.1% of all Massachusetts residents and 99.8% of all Massachusetts children (nationally, the figure for children is 92.6 percent) are now covered by a health insurance plan which has not bankrupted the state. In fact, "Murphy, Romney’s secretary of HHS, says that the subsidized program “has worked out fairly fine,” and as expected. “I still think that the state sends too much to hospitals and community health centers for people who say that they’re not insured,” he says. But overall, “from a state budgeting perspective, anybody who makes any type of comment that this is busting the bank, this is a runaway train, this is a failure, flat-out doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Simple as that.”
--‘RomneyCare’ Facts and Falsehoods
If Romneycare covered more children in Massachusetts, we should all applaud the fact that Obamacare will insure more children nationwide -- unless of course you prefer children to go without insurance for some ungodly reason....
And for those of you who claim Obamacare redistributes wealth, please show us how the wealth in Massachusetts has been redistributed since Romneycare went into effect in 2006.
Show us the decrease in the very rich and very poor classes there, as well as the consequential rise in the middle class, but you won't find data supporting such changes to income inequality in Massachusetts. In fact, income inequality in Massachusetts has worsened since 2006 when Romneycare was enacted.
June 6, 2012
... Massachusetts
Gini coefficient: 0.475
Median income: $62,072 (6th highest)
Households earning $200,000 a year or more: 9.0 percent (4th highest)
Population living below the poverty line: 12 percent (13th lowest)
Massachusetts has the fourth-worst income inequality in the U.S. -- worse than its 10th place in 2009. Median income has increased considerably from $59,373 in 2009, while the proportion of households earning more than $200,000 remained in fourth place. More households have slipped below the poverty line as the poverty rate has increased from 10.3 percent in 2009. Massachusetts’ top ranking in the country with the highest percentage of individuals over 25 holding a bachelor degree may exacerbate the income disparity.
--The states with the widest gap between rich and poor
Darling, there is no "proof" that torture changes sexual orientation. It's also a disgusting idea. What are you thinking?
Theresa asked:
“is it inherently wrong for an adult to have sex with a child, child defined as under 10, adult as over 21, regardless of the circumstances (excluding coercion of the adult).
Is that inherently WRONG ? Yes, no, or maybe ? Just trying to establish a baseline of whether it is even possible to rationalize with you crazies.....”
O.K, so I haven’t been around much lately because I have far more better things to do than toy with idiot conservatives, but this one takes the cake Theresa, especially coming from someone who considers herself so smart.
Rationalize this, baby:
NO ONE condones the abuse, sexual or otherwise, of children, except of course, pedophiles and child abusers. PERIOD.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a liberal, greenie, “socialist,” atheist, a Jane, a Jew or a Zoroastrian.
Just because someone is “liberal” doesn’t mean they are somehow more inclined to let child abuse slide. In fact, looking at news stories over the last few years, the biggest child abuse scandals have come out of the most conservative churches, like Catholics, Mormons, and even Amish and Mennonite.
I know you think it’s part of your “moral crusade” to paint “godless liberals” as immoral as you possibly at every opportunity, but I’m going to unusually blunt here. If you really think “liberals” in anyway condone child abuse, you are a f*#$|^g retard.
Have a nice day,
“Rational Crazies”
The last paragraph need a couple of corrections:
I know you think it’s part of your “moral crusade” to paint “godless liberals” as immoral as you possibly [can] at every opportunity, but I’m going to [be] unusually blunt here. If you really think “liberals” in anyway condone child abuse, you are a f*#$|^g retard.
[And I sincerely apologize to anyone who has mental disabilities if you are offended by my lumping you in with the likes of Theresa.]
Cynthia
Maryland has enrolled 82,473 people in Medicaid expansion coverage, which accounts for 96 percent of total enrollment. Maryland’s exchange, the Maryland Health Connection, has enrolled 3,186 residents.
HHS Works to Fix Drug Plan Woes
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
President Bush's top health advisers will fan out across the country this week to quell rising discontent with a new Medicare prescription drug benefit that has tens of thousands of elderly and disabled Americans, their pharmacists, and governors struggling to resolve myriad start-up problems...
...Even as federal leaders touted the enrollment figures, state officials and health care experts continued to report widespread difficulties, especially for the poorest and sickest seniors who were forced to switch from state Medicaid programs to the new Medicare plans on Jan. 1. Nearly two dozen states have intervened, saying they will pay for medications for any low-income senior who is mistakenly rejected. The District, Maryland and Virginia have not intervened.
Saying "it is time for us to take care of our own," Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said California will spend as much as $150 million to provide medications to as many as 1 million low-income seniors who have been turned away by pharmacists or overcharged co-payments because of glitches in computer databases.
"Right now, the new Medicare Part D prescription drug program is not working as intended," the governor said in a release.
In a letter to Bush, 14 Democratic governors wrote that, "while well-intended, the new Medicare drug benefit has caused confusion, mismanagement, and a bureaucratic nightmare."
Leavitt conceded that HHS caseworkers have responded to tens of thousands of complaints by seniors, pharmacists and others who could not get the correct medications at the correct price. But he promised to "fix every problem as quickly as possible."
To do that, HHS has hired thousands of customer service representatives and set up special phone lines for pharmacists. It also has notified insurers that if a drug is not going to be covered, the plans must provide a 30-day "transitional" supply until the patient's physician can recommend a comparable medicine that is covered....
"the Maryland Health Connection, has enrolled 3,186 residents." between October 1 and November 1, 2013.
"...The main reason for low enrollment will be that people don't sign up for health insurance programs right away. They wait until the last minute. This is true of public insurance and this is true of private insurance. And while you've heard people (including me) say this for months, this is one of those cases when numbers tell the story better than words. And there are some numbers very few people have seen.
The numbers are from Massachusetts, the state whose health reforms became the template for the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion. The place to look is within what’s known as the “Commonwealth Care” program, which is where people getting private insurance subsidies shopped for plans—in other words, an analogous structure to the new federally run exchanges.
Raw statistics on enrollment are already in circulation. They show that the majority people didn’t sign up right away and a the biggest rush came at the end, when people realized they would owe a financial penalty for going without insurance. But even the raw numbers don’t fully capture the timing of enrollment, because they include large numbers of people whom Massachusetts officials automatically transferred from a “free care” pool the state had operated previously. If you want to get a real sense of enrollment patterns among people choosing to shop and buy plans, it’s better to exclude the people getting free care. (In the Massachusetts plan, that would mean people who ended up enrolling in what were called “Type I” and, with some exceptions, “Type IIA” plans.)
Number of premium-paying enrollees in Massachusetts Commonwealth Care plans, February through December 2007:
After one month: 123
After two months: 2,289
After eleven months (until imposition of penalty): 36,167..."
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115309/obamacare-enrollment-massachusetts-statistics-suggest-it-will-be-slow
Yuri Pavlov: "On the issue of torture, while I would agree the information produced is not always reliable, it may be if the questioned party knows there is a way to confirm the information.
(The “questioned” party? You mean the torturee? I’ll assume that’s a typo.)
Seriously? Of course it could be reliable "if the question[ing] party knows there is a way to confirm the information," the only problem is you’d have to torture the person first to get that information -- information needed to determine whether or not there even is a way to confirm it.
Yuri Pavlov: Torture is also a very effective means of behavior modification. In some countries, it has been proven to control deviant homosexual activity and even to lessen preferences to pursue such activity."
A little limp wristed of a solution, don’t you think? If you going to approve of torturing people for your every “ew gross” whim and fancy, why not just sanction genocide to treat the problem? Not even God would blame you.
Even if you’re not a believer, or not a believer in Christianity, just hold up that Bible and hide right behind it. Surely if you believe in murder, lying about being a Christian should be of no conscience.
Part 1
Theresa: “so if you "think" about molesting children it is an orientation but if you act on those thoughts it is a disorder. … so there IS some truth to it, sounds like. It's an orientation if you think about it - if you don't act on it.”
an Anon: ""…orientation" is usually used to describe the sex of the object of one's attraction, not their age.”
That’s the difference, Theresa. In other words:
“Sexual orientation” is used to describe the gender one is attracted to, not their age. Sexual attraction to an age group would be a sexual "preference."
Furthermore, a compulsion to rape, anyone, is clearly a disorder.
Theresa: “right on topic for this blog.”
Smear Campaign: A smear campaign is an intentional, premeditated effort to undermine an individual's or group's reputation, credibility, and character.
Exhibit A:
Theresa: “Or do you believe in "morals" at all? … I believe in right and wrong and you don't. not at all.
Is that inherently WRONG ? Yes, no, or maybe ? Just trying to establish a baseline of whether it is even possible to rationalize with you crazies..…”
From your last few comments, it doesn’t seem like your equating us with child molesters via the APA’s mistaken/unclear labeling was a full out premeditated and malicious attack. It seems to me though, that in your mind, you think there may be a connection between a homosexual “sexual orientation” and the inability to tell right from wrong and/or you want there to be.
So be it, but you’ve been hearing to the contrary for years, personally, politically, policy-wise, etc. Our arguments revolve around the increased need for social justice -- equitable treatment under the law -- for all.
As abhorrent as Jesus’ teachings may be to you, do you honestly think WE are not sincere about their importance? The Golden Rule -- do unto others as you would have done unto you? AKA the never ending effort to maximize freedom for the maximum amount of people whilst maintaining equal opportunity for all? Etcetera.
If so, say so, because we can’t be arguing about policies or answering to your vilifyingly prejudicial questions when your prejudice, the prejudice behind the question, is the elephant in the room, and thus, the real topic.
--
To anyone but a child predator, child abuse is torture. Liberals are generally against torturing even foreign enemies yet you’re shocked to find that liberals love and want to protect the most vulnerable among us, the children, and instead choose to think the opposite of everything you know to be true about what liberals believe in.
(Did it even occur to you that liberals and gay people have children too?)
Why do you think you choose to believe about us what you do? What do you think it is that lies behind the motive to choose something.
--
Theresa: “if you would kill a person that harmed your child why can't you justify torturing someone to retrieve the location of someone else's child ?”
No offense intended, but that’s revoltingly simplistic. That question leads to more questions than answers. Not that I’m condoning anything, but acting on knowledge is one thing, as for the rest, you must know how many mistakes are made at the accusational level.
To turn it around, If you’re ok with “torturing someone to retrieve the location of someone else's child”, are you also willing to live with finding out you tortured the wrong person and all of the consequences (potentially fatal for the child) of getting and pursuing the wrong information because of it?
Would it also be acceptable to you to be found at the wrong time at the wrong place with the right description and be tortured with no hard feelings after being sentenced to life in prison, or worse?
Part 2, conclusion
Theresa: "right on topic for this blog."
It’s not. You have a sexual orientation too, so this applied to you just as much as it did to anyone else on Earth -- this blog is NOT an exception.
I’m open to correction, but as I see it, you brought this effluvial stank in here because you want to believe that homosexuality is, in it’s entirety, about sex, and not at all about being the opposite of heterosexuality -- but a perversion of it.
And that is where the hatred and bigotry lie. Arbitrarily believing homosexuality is sinful is not necessarily hateful, some of those people believe that missing mass on Sunday is a sin, as though God requires a physical location from whence you worship and prayer should originate.
Homer Simpson as a missionary after building a stone-hut type church for the natives on a tropical island: "I may not know that much about God, but I have to say we built an awfully nice cage for him."
The mere appreciation of the beauty in nature is a form of worship. Recognizing the amazing beauty of the symmetrical intricacies of a snowflake, or ‘Jack Frost’ on your windows is a form of worship, and it’s pure because it’s involuntary and automatic. It may only last a split second, but moments like that are soul deep, and soul deep moments linger and make impressions. No building or preacher can evoke such a lush distillery of adoration.
But I digress. This is about thinking something is bad, wrong and evil versus WANTING to think something is bad, wrong and evil, and I think you think this is "right on topic for this blog" because you want to see anyone who is LGBT cast in the same light as child predators so you can justify continuing to hate, and spread hate for all things gay.
None of which even hints at how personally insulting it is to me and every other lover of Teaching The Facts here. Point being, it seems to me that you were looking to draw blood. This APA “pedophilia is an orientation” kerfuffle just gave you another excuse to express you disdain and disgust under the guise of legitimacy.
Similar to what I said before, and this is important because I believe this is the point:
A child can be brought up to believe they are superior to another subset of fellow human beings and not be hateful -- they don’t know any better. I don’t know what your “everybody should hate gay people as much as I do” story is, but you now know better than all those things you were taught. What kind of a monster must you think I am to ask if I approve or disapprove of raping kids?
GET IT?!? --- ONLY A MONSTER WOULD HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION.
Tell me something else, that lesbian couple (not married) down the street are raising a son. He’s eight now and his name is Jason -- referred to by you, in your circles, as “that turkey baster kid.” You are also aware that he considers himself to be transgendered, wants gender reassignment surgery (a sex-change operation, eventually), and that his mothers fully support him on that. He goes missing and it’s all but certain to be a case of child predation.
Does your heart ache with compassion for his moms with the immediacy that it would if one of your heterosexual neighbors' kids was abducted?
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