In California, Obamacare will increase individual health insurance premiums from 64% to 146%.
The article is a very detailed response to the claims made last week by California that Obamacare is lowering rates.
Like your health insurance? You may be losing it because of Obamacare.
I like this quote best:
“You’re going to be forcibly upgraded,” said Bob Laszewski, a health care industry consultant. “It’s like showing up at the airline counter and being told, ‘You have no choice, $300 please. You’re getting a first-class ticket, why are you complaining?'”
Sadly, I don’t think it will be this good. Many will decide the first class plan is simply unaffordable, and will instead opt out, paying the IRS fine instead. The result, fewer people having health insurance.
The future? A Maine doctor has stopped accepting any insurance, posts his prices online, and is doing fine.
the decision to do away with insurance allows Ciampi to practice medicine the way he sees fit, he said. Insurance companies no longer dictate how much he charges. He can offer discounts to patients struggling with their medical bills. He can make house calls. “I’m freed up to do what I think is right for the patients,” Ciampi said. “If I’m providing them a service that they value, they can pay me, and we cut the insurance out as the middleman and cut out a lot of the expense.” Ciampi expects more doctors will follow suit. Some may choose to run “concierge practices” in which patients pay to keep a doctor on retainer, he said.
Coming: A two-tiered health care system.
As the article notes, this process is only being accelerated by the implementation of Obamacare, and is the result of third-parties interfering in the relationship of doctors and patients. Obamacare, however, will finish the process, condemning most Americans to bureaucratic medicine. slow, inefficient, and badly done.
O goody: The IRS has created eight different offices, as well as an undetermined number of enforcement teams, to enforce the Obamacare regulations.
An early sign of Obamacare’s impending collapse?
Finding out what’s in it: More labor unions balk at the consequences of Obamacare.
Many UFCW members have what are known as multi-employer or Taft-Hartley plans. According to the administration’s analysis of the Affordable Care Act, the law does not provide tax subsidies for the roughly 20 million people covered by the plans. Union officials argue that interpretation could force their members to change their insurance and accept more expensive and perhaps worse coverage in the state-run exchanges.
O goody: The woman who had been in charge of the IRS office when it targeted conservatives beginning in 2010 now heads the IRS office that will enforce Obamacare.
Her name is Sarah Hall Ingram. Remember it, you will hear that name again. Meanwhile, the man who announced his resignation from the IRS today, Joseph Grant, had been her deputy until 2012. He only took over her office after that date, which means most of the scandal occurred during her tenure.
What could go wrong? In order to enforce Obamacare, the federal government, led by the IRS, is creating the largest federal database ever of the personal tax, income, and health records of American citizens.
Known as the Federal Data Services Hub, the project is taking the IRS’s own records (for income and employment status) and centralizing them with information from Social Security (identity), Homeland Security (citizenship), Justice (criminal history), HHS (enrollment in entitlement programs and certain medical claims data) and state governments (residency).
The data hub will be used as the verification system for ObamaCare’s complex subsidy formula. All insurers, self-insured businesses and government health programs must submit reports to the IRS about the individuals they cover, which the IRS will cross-check against tax returns.
A small business owner explains the hard facts of Obamacare to his employees.
And it ain’t pretty.
Did the writings of a prominent Catholic professor, critical of Obama and Democratic Party policies, cause the IRS to audit her? Key quote:
Her writings for the Catholic Advocate soon ceased because, Hendershott admits, the IRS audit silenced her. If her suspicions are true, this may have been its chilling intention. “I haven’t written for them since the audit, because I was so scared,” she said (records show her last article for the organization was on July 10, 2010 — the same month the IRS audit unfolded).
So far, she has only shared her story with friends and those close to her, but in light of the recent IRS scandal, she has decided to speak out. “It was clear they didn’t like me criticizing the people who helped pass Obamacare,” she said of the audit,” later adding, ”The IRS is very frightening.”
The IRS now faces a class action lawsuit over the illegal seizing of the medical records of 10 million patients.
In this case, the seizure, while illegal, was not for political reasons. It appears that in executing a search warrant for specific financial information, the 15 IRS agents also improperly grabbed the medical records.
Finding out what’s in it: The IRS scandal and the fact that Obamacare uses the IRS for enforcement now has the public increasingly frightened.
What could go wrong? No one at the IRS would ever target you and your healthcare coverage because of your politics. Such things never happen in America!
The myth of the scientific liberal.
The core trait of a scientific mind is that when its commitments clash with evidence, evidence rules. On that count, what grade do liberals deserve? Fail, given their reaction to the latest evidence on universal health care, global warming, and universal preschool.
The author then delves into each of these topics and shows how the liberal community refuses to deal with the evidence.
Finding out what’s in it: Seventeen of the nation’s largest healthcare insurance companies now say premiums will rise from 100 to 400 percent under Obamacare.
The key reasons for the surge in premiums include providing wider services than people are now paying for and adding less healthy people to the roles of insured, said the report.
Now ain’t that a surprise? The rates go up when you require insurance companies to provide more services while simultaneously requiring them to insure more sick people! Who wudda thunk it?
Actually, every Republican and conservative in the nation, as well as millions of Americans at townhall meetings in 2010, were screaming these basic facts of reality to the Democrats. They just refused to listen.
The state of Obamacare in Hawaii: “We’re not going to have any health care.”
The article is a compilation of stories from Hawaii about the train wreak that is Obamacare and the difficulties it is causing to the healthcare industry there.
House Republicans have refused to recommend anyone to the Obamacare Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), labeled “the death panel” by some.
“We believe Congress should repeal IPAB, just as we believe we ought to repeal the entire health care law,” the Boehner and McConnell letter reads.
Finding out what’s in it: Head Start teachers now expect Obamacare to severely impact their work and income.
What’s not to like? Obamacare’s got everything: Complex regulation, big fines, and high cost, all rolled up in a single package that just keeps surprising us.
The Obama administration has given up trying to force a bible publisher to pay for contraceptives under Obamacare.
At the government’s own request, a federal appellate court Friday dismissed the Obama administration’s appeal of an order that stopped the president from enforcing the HHS birth control mandate against a Bible publisher. The administration’s retreat marks the first total appellate victory on a preliminary injunction in any abortion pill mandate case.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing Tyndale House Publishers say the administration is apparently nervous about trying to defend its position that a Bible publisher is not religious enough for a religious exemption to the mandate. “Bible publishers should be free to do business according to the book that they publish,” said Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “The government dismissed its appeal because it knows how ridiculous it sounds arguing that a Bible publisher isn’t religious enough to qualify as a religious employer.”
Finding out what’s in it: Because of Obamacare Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennesee will raise premiums to its customers 3 to 30 percent in 2014.
