Tag: Obama

Should Republicans again demand that the Obamacare individual mandate be delayed?

10:49 am

Should Republicans again demand that the Obamacare individual mandate be delayed?

I say, no. I say the Republicans should demand that Obamacare be repealed. Agreeing to delay the mandate only acts to cement other parts of the law into place, which is bad as there is literally nothing about this law that is good, for the country or for health care.

Moreover, agreeing to delay parts of Obamacare will then make the Republicans part of the problem. Better to force the Democrats to vote against repeal, even as the law unravels. The result in November can only be good, as this vote will provide conservatives with more ammunition during the election campaign.

Finally, by putting repeal up to a vote we might even be surprised and get enough votes to repeal. Obama would then veto that repeal, but the vote would set the precedent for further repeal votes down the line, when Obama is gone.

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“An apparent double standard in President Barack Obama’s unprecedented crackdown on unauthorized leaks.”

12:45 pm

“An apparent double standard in President Barack Obama’s unprecedented crackdown on unauthorized leaks.”

Disclosures by lower-level officials have been vigorously pursued. For example, seven Navy SEALs were reprimanded for disclosing classified material to the makers of a military video game. Moreover, the administration has prosecuted a record number of intelligence community personnel for leaking.

Rarely, however, has the administration taken criminal action against senior officials for leaking.

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The Obama administration has announced another eleventh-hour exemption to Obamacare.

9:35 pm

Chaos: The Obama administration has announced another exemption to Obamacare.

The Obama administration, in an 11th-hour change just before the holiday break, announced a major exemption in ObamaCare that will let people who lost coverage and are struggling to get a new plan sign up for bare-bones policies. The move Thursday to allow potentially hundreds of thousands of people to sign up for “catastrophic” coverage plans was blasted by the insurance industry as a shift that would cause “tremendous instability.”

I thought these “bare-bone” policies were “garbage plans” that only a few weeks ago Democrats were telling us we should be happy were cancelled.

It also appears from the above article as well as other sources that the insurance companies are very hostile to this announcement. (Read the second link especially. It outlines the many problems this new ad-hoc exemption causes.)

In a word, this law doesn’t work, it never has, and it should be repealed now.

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The Obamacare state exchanges are losing their directors.

11:35 am

The Obamacare state exchanges are losing their directors.

So far, 25 percent of officials in charge of the 14 state-run exchanges, plus Washington D.C., have been replaced, according to Forbes, which compares the turnover rate to professional sports coaching rosters. “More are sure to come as enrollment performance remains poor,” according to Forbes. New Mexico, Massachusetts, Idaho, Washington DC, Nevada and Colorado are posting dismal enrollment numbers, all less than 10 percent of what was expected, the magazine noted.

Gee, I wonder why? Could it be that Obamacare is a turkey that no one wants to buy?

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77% of the uninsured don’t want Obamacare.

9:33 am

But we’re here to help you! 77% of the uninsured — the very people Obama and the Democrats claimed they were trying to get insured — don’t want Obamacare.

Repeal is still the number one favored option of voters:

A majority said they would vote to have the new healthcare law repealed, if they were able, and they wish it had never passed and the old system was still in place, according to the poll taken Dec. 14-16 of 1,027 registered voters across the country.

The Fox News poll was one of two polls published Wednesday that showed the growing unpopularity of the law. The latest New York Times/CBS News poll also showed that a majority disapprove of the new health care law, even the uninsured, who are supposed to benefit from the law.

Obviously all these people are wrong! Obamacare is “the law of the land”, as the Democrats were so fond of telling us in October as they shut the government down to protect it.

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A judge has blasted the Obama administration for attempting to keep non-classified materials secret and ordered their release.

9:49 am

A judge has blasted the Obama administration for attempting to keep non-classified materials secret and ordered their release.

From the judge:

The government appears to adopt the cavalier attitude that the President should be permitted to convey orders throughout the Executive Branch without public oversight, to engage in what is in effect governance by ‘secret law.’

This is the second legal ruling this week that has ripped the Obama administration for its illegal willingness to abuse the law.

But hey, why is anyone objecting? Barbara Walters thought Obama would be the next messiah, so anything he wants to do should be okay with us!

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The Obamacare contraceptive mandate is struck down again, and here are six reasons why.

9:34 am

The Obamacare contraceptive mandate is struck down again, and here are six reasons why.

At the heart of this mandate is the amazing contempt the Obama administration and the left has for religious belief:

In an astonishing display of anti-religious sentiment, the administration argued that forcing religious organizations to designate a third party to provide contraception coverage to their employees isn’t a big deal (legally: de minimis) because it’s “just a form” to fill out, “a purely administrative task.” The district court rightly found that whether a violation of religious freedom is small or large isn’t for the courts to decide. It would be too easy to simply sweep away deeply-held religious beliefs under the claim that government action is merely “de minimis” infringement of rights.

I am not religious, but I will defend to the death the right of a religious person to practice their religion freely, even when we disagree, as long as they don’t act to limit me in my beliefs. Apparently, Obama believes it is okay to trample on those beliefs if they happen to contradict things he believes in.

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A campaign ad that says it bluntly: “You lied.”

12:09 pm

A campaign ad that says it bluntly: “You lied.”

It is… remarkable, the way that the Democrats were so bald-faced in that lie. It’s like they thought that the rules simply didn’t apply to them, or something. Apparently, the plan was to simply bull on through and expect nobody to call them on the fact that their entire policy position was based on things that everybody knew just weren’t so.

The Democrats must be called on these lies, strongly and often.

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Leftwing news photographer reveals he is no news photographer, ashamed he broke a big story revealing the ugly side of his hero Obama.

8:54 am

Leftwing news photographer reveals he is no news photographer, ashamed he broke a big story revealing the ugly side of his hero Obama.

This would be funny if it wasn’t so pitiful. Your job is to cover the news, to tell the public the real reality behind the propaganda politicians pump out, no matter what political party those politicians belong to. Instead, this guy wants everyone to look the other way in order to protect his political heroes on the left.

In other words, he ain’t a reporter, he’s a leftwing Democratic Party propagandist, disguised as reporter. Sadly, that description applies to almost all reporters today.

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As deadlines loom and the problems with the Obamacare website continue, the Obama administration has issued a number of illegal extensions to the law.

9:50 am

The law is such an inconvenient thing: As deadlines loom and the problems with the Obamacare website continue, the Obama administration has issued a number of illegal extensions to the law.

I hate the law, as any reader of this website knows. However, the law is the law. Obama and his bureaucratic minions don’t have the legal right to rewrite it at their pleasure, just because it doesn’t work. And they are discovering this, as increasingly insurance companies and state insurance boards are telling them that their so-called changes are invalid and cannot be obeyed.

It appears a growing number of Congressmen also agree: A resolution in the House demands Obama be brought to court for not faithfully executing the law.

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A survey of 400 chief financial officers finds that nearly half plan to cut back on employment because of Obamacare.

11:00 pm

A survey of 400 chief financial officers finds that nearly half plan to cut back on employment because of Obamacare.

And there’s also this:

Besides altering the makeup of their workforces, companies said they also plan to change the health benefit packages offered to employees. “Two-thirds of companies will change health benefits in response to ACA,” reads the Fuqua/CFO Magazine report summary. Forty-four percent of CFOs said they are considering reducing health benefits for employees. Thirty-eight percent said that employees and retirees may be forced to contribute more to their health plans.

“The inadequacies of the ACA website have grabbed a lot of attention, even though many of those issues have been or can be fixed,” said John Graham, Duke Fuqua School of Business finance professor and director of the survey, in a press release. “Our survey points to a more detrimental and potentially long-lasting problem. An unintended consequence of the Affordable Care Act will be a reduction in full-time employment growth in the United States,” the study says. [emphasis mine]

So, tell me again why the Republicans in Congress should not challenge the Democrats over Obamacare?

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A dead Nelson Mandala crashed an Obama Johannesburg appearance last week.

3:39 pm

A dead Nelson Mandala crashed Barack Obama’s Johannesburg appearance on Monday.

An international incident was touched off yesterday in Johannesburg, South Africa, when a goodwill appearance by President Obama was interrupted by an impromptu funeral.

Mr. Obama was generously posing for souvenir pictures of himself with fawning admirers at the FNB Stadium (Soccer City), when security people rolled in Nelson Mandela’s casket and demanded to have a memorial service. When questioned as to why they were disrupting Mr. Obama’s appearance, the security men offered no explanation aside from “we reserved the stadium last week for this.”

“This kind of thing is a constant problem for Mr. Obama” said one of his staff. “Everyone wants to bask in his sunshine, even the deceased.”

“Then again, it’s not surprising that the life-challenged are attracted to him as he was a fierce advocate for voting rights for the dead when he lived in Chicago.”

Read it all. And especially scroll down to read the comments. It is well worth it.

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The Connecticut Obamacare website gave the wrong information for every single insurance plan it offered, and it took a month to fix the problem.

1:48 pm

Good enough for the government: The Connecticut Obamacare website gave the wrong information for every single insurance plan it offered, and it took a month to fix the problem.

This example tells you how egregious the error was:

John Javaruski, a 62-year-old retired actuary from Farmington, said he received a letter dated Nov. 1 after he signed up for an Anthem plan with a $2,000 out-of-pocket maximum and zero deductible. According to the revised schedule of benefits attached to the letter, Javaruski’s plan jumped to $6,250 out of pocket and a $3,000 deductible.

Any private company that did this bad a job would go out of business very quickly. This is the government however, which means they stay in charge and you are required “to embrace the suck.”

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Yup, this sums it up nicely.

9:07 am

Yup, this sums it up nicely.

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has now accomplished the astonishing task of pushing House Republicans substantially to the left of the Senate GOP. His budget deal, announced Tuesday night, was achieved by shutting conservative Senate Republicans out of negotiations, by resorting to the old trick of spending now while claiming savings later, by ignoring a symbolically important budgetary red line, and by treating as Democratic “concessions” things to which even Democratic budgeteers already had agreed.

The chess equivalent of Ryan’s deal would be trading a castle for a mere pawn. No wonder conservatives are feeling rooked.

The absurdity of this deal is highlighted especially by the ongoing disaster of Obamacare. The Republicans have a very strong negotiating hand right now. They could have actually demanded a repeal of Obamacare in budget talks and thus pushed the Democrats into a corner for which there really is no escape. What would the Democrats do, shut the government down again so that more people could lose their health insurance?

Instead, Ryan behaved as if the Democrats have a Royal Flush and he only had a pair of twos. The stupid party strikes again!

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Trying to hide the disaster that is Obamacare.

8:56 am

Trying to hide the disaster that is Obamacare.

Most of Washington seems to have bought the White House claim that the 36 federal exchanges are finally working, and glory, glory, hallelujah. But if that’s really true, then what explains the ongoing secrecy and evasion?

On Wednesday the Health and Human Services Department continued its Victorian-era strip tease and allowed a glimpse into the Affordable Care Act’s “enrollment” for November. Out of respect for a free press, reporters ought to boycott these releases because they’re so selective that they reveal little about real enrollment.

Then there’s this:

In other nondisclosure news, the House Oversight Committee turned up letters Wednesday showing that [the Obama administration] ordered the private contractors partly responsible for the Healthcare.gov fiasco not to cooperate with congressional investigations or hand over documents.

Meanwhile, Obamacare has so far resulted in more than 4 million people having lost their health insurance, a number that includes those whom the Obama administration claim have at least selected an Obamacare plan.

As the writer above said, glory, glory, hallelujah!

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The Ryan budget deal includes a provision that limits the ability of the Senate minority to block tax increases.

10:49 pm

The stupid party: The Ryan budget deal includes a provision that limits the ability of the Senate minority to block tax increases.

The bill includes language from the Senate Democrats’ budget that voids senators’ ability to raise a budget “point of order” against replacing the sequester cuts with tax increases. The process is quite complicated, but in practice it grants Harry Reid the authority to send tax increases to the House with a bare majority, rather than the 60-vote threshold that would be required under a point of order.

In other words, another example of a Republican getting hosed in negotiations.

Though I have read several conservative reports about this deal that outline some of its positive benefits, on the whole it appears to be another defeat for the right.

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After two months, Obamacare has only enrolled less than 400,000 people, even as it has caused millions to lose their health insurance policies.

9:31 am

Fail! After two months, Obamacare has only enrolled less than 400,000 people, even as it has caused millions to lose their health insurance policies.

To get even these numbers the Obama administration is defining “enroll” as someone who went through the process of picking a plan, but hasn’t yet signed on and actually enrolled in it.

Though these low numbers are partly because of the inability of the Obamacare webpage to function, the real reason is sticker shock. Obamacare has raised the cost of health insurance so much that people simply can’t afford it.

Update: It appears that only 5 to 20% of these so-called enrollees have actually purchased Obamacare insurance.

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The IRS is now harassing the insurance broker who has helped people losing their insurance under Obamacare.

9:39 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS is now harassing the insurance broker who has helped people losing their insurance under Obamacare.

The man received a visit from a Treasury Department Inspector General who demanded personal information about the cancer patient the broker was helping. When this information was refused, the official instructed the broker

to resolve the issue with the IRS immediately, and that if he did not, “you may be visited again by other IRS representatives in your home and we do reserve the right to garnish your wages and lien your assets.”

How nice. Obey the orders of the Obama administration or they will use the IRS to destroy you.

Note also that this harassment is going on right now, six months after the scandal was revealed and Obama claimed he was outraged by it and would put a stop to it. He lied. As he revealed recently in his interview on MSNBC, he sees nothing wrong with this harassment.

I just realized that my post above left out one important detail: The cancer patient had appeared on Fox to describe how he had lost his health insurance because of Obamacare. Almost immediately thereafter both he and his broker received audit notices from the IRS.

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No, you can’t keep your medicines either under Obamacare.

9:42 am

No, you can’t keep your medicines either under Obamacare.

The article is long and detailed. It seems a lot of expensive but life-saving drugs might be excluded from many plans because of cost. Worse,

The biggest problem in all of this is that consumers will have a very hard time figuring out where they stand. In many cases, the health plans being offered in the Obamacare exchanges don’t make information about their drug formularies readily available. In some cases, it doesn’t seem to be published anywhere.

The government was supposed to mandate that plans made this information easily accessible. But that never happened.

In fact, state and federal regulators must have approved the health plans without reviewing final drug formularies. Many plans are also not publishing information about their networks of doctors, or when they do; the information is unreliable (listing, for example, doctors who argue that they aren’t part of the plans).

Aren’t you glad those brave Democrats and President Obama shut the government down in October to prevent those evil Republicans from making any changes to Obamacare?

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The latest IRS power grab.

12:38 am

The latest IRS power grab.

Why is the IRS regulating political activity at all?

The answer is that many Democratic politicians and progressive activists think new rules limiting political speech by nonprofits will benefit Democrats politically. Stymied by judicial decisions restricting direct government regulation of political speech, and by a Federal Election Commission whose bipartisan makeup prevents Democratic commissioners from forcing through partisan rules on a party-line vote, these politicians and activists have decided to dragoon the IRS into doing their work.

More precise terms to describe this kind of behavior are fascists and jack-booted thugs.

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Obamacare insurance plans are routinely excluding the world’s top hospitals.

8:16 pm

Finding out what’s not in it: Obamacare insurance plans are routinely excluding the world’s top hospitals.

Amid a drive by insurers to limit costs, the majority of insurance plans being sold on the new healthcare exchanges in New York, Texas, and California, for example, will not offer patients’ access to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, two top cancer centres, or Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, one of the top research and teaching hospitals in the country.

You pay more for the plan, pay higher co-pays and deductibles, and for these higher expenses you get fewer benefits and excess to fewer good doctors. Why is anyone complaining? Aren’t we all glad the Democrats and Obama are standing firm to defend this law?

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Obamacare, where the liberal dream crashes and burns.

4:44 pm

Obamacare, where the liberal dream crashes and burns.

The botched website was an unforced catastrophe. But that’s not the real problem with Obamacare. The real problem, as dozens of thoughtful commentators have concluded, is the law itself. Obamacare is a massive policy experiment that seeks to remake one-sixth of the U.S. economy – a body that’s so fantastically complex, with so many players and so many moving parts, that nobody can possibly understand how they all interact. Tweak one part, and other parts will behave in unpredictable ways. Pull on a thread and half the sweater may unravel. Even Max Baucus, the Democratic Senate finance chairman, has warned that implementing a law so complicated could be a “train wreck.”

Generally, the way leftists and liberals have succeeded in gaining power is to work incrementally, in very small steps. This way, the link between their actions and the problems those actions have caused is easily hidden. They can then point to these new problems and demand another small incremental increase in their control and power in order to solve those problems, which in turn causes new problems that they can then use to justify another incremental step. And so forth.

Obamacare, however, broke this pattern. Rather than being incremental, it tried to do it all in one big massive attack. The result is that the policy is very clearly the cause of the disaster, the left can’t hide it, and their entire agenda for the past century now stands exposed as the fraud it is. The only way I can see them surviving this disaster is to try to seize power illegally, another typical leftwing technique that they use often when reality starts to go against them.

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Without permission California’s Obamacare exchange distributed the contact information of tens of thousands of people who had visited their website.

8:31 am

O joy. Without permission California’s Obamacare exchange distributed the contact information of tens of thousands of people who had visited their website.

I love this quote from the guy in charge:

Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, acknowledged that these consumers did not ask to be contacted by the state or its certified insurance agents. But he said the outreach program still complies with privacy laws and it was reviewed by the exchange’s legal counsel. “I can imagine some people may be upset,” Lee said in an interview Friday. “But I can see a lot of people will be comforted and relieved at getting the help they need to navigate a confusing process.”

To be so cavalier about handing out people’s contact information without permission suggests that they are likely to be as cavalier about poking into people’s confidential medical information without permission.

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Seven out of ten doctors in California are refusing to participate in Obamacare.

2:02 pm

O joy: Seven out of ten doctors in California are refusing to participate in Obamacare.

It isn’t surprising the doctors are rebelling. California refuses to pay them realistic fees. The factoid, however, that is really startling from this article is this:

[The doctors] also pointing out that Covered California’s website lists many doctors as participants when they aren’t. “Some physicians have been put in the network and they were included basically without their permission,” Lisa Folberg said. She is a CMA’s vice president of medical and regulatory Policy. “They may be listed as actually participating, but not of their own volition,” said Donald Waters, executive director of the Alameda-Contra Costa Medical Association. [emphasis mine]

Par for the course. Everything about Obamacare has been fraud and deception. This just adds another layer to that dishonesty.

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