It wasn’t just Obama: Ten Democrats who repeatedly lied about Obamacare.
Each one made the same false claim that no one would lose their doctor or health plan because of Obamacare.
Obamacare and the unstoppable project.
On multiple occasions over the past 18 years, I have been that IT consultant yelling “Stop!” to a client (sometimes a software developer, sometimes a customer) who very much does not want to hear that. In one instance, the executive vice-president in the charge of the project I had just spent a few months reviewing walked out of the meeting in which I was presenting my findings in order to track down and destroy all copies of the report containing those findings. Likewise, I’ve had a few engagements that have ended abruptly due to my insistence on honesty and reality, but I sleep well at night, so the trade-off is excellent.
Stick around till the end, because the Dilbert cartoon there encapsulates everything we know about how today’s federal government operates: “You should buy twice as much.”
You think their website is bad? The Obama administration has had to issue 254 corrections to its own Obamacare regulations.
The damage wasn’t limited to little-used regulatory language that needed to be fixed of careless mistakes. The medical loss ratio requirement has been hotly debated as a tool to limit insurance companies’ profitability. Billed by The Washington Post as the “provision that terrifies insurers,” the policy forces insurance companies to spend a mandated percentage of patient premiums on patient care in order to keep premiums artificially low. Twenty-four corrections were issued to the Medical Loss Ratio rule alone. Some parts of the regulations were “technically inaccurate and [conflicted] with language elsewhere,” according to Batkins. Some corrections had to be corrected again later on.
The report pointed to the real-world effects of mistakes in the dense regulations, specifically federal officials’ assumption that it would take 28 minutes to complete an online application via the federal exchange, which turned out to be drastically wrong. [emphasis mine]
Remember, the word “regulation” is really about control and power. One entity, the government, gets to regulate the behavior of others. The problem is that this particular government, whether run by Democrats or Republicans, is wholly incompetent.
President Obama’s new big lie.
The article, which outlines why Obama’s claim that all those canceled insurance plans are “substandard” is an outright lie, also had these two paragraphs scream out at me:
Cancer patients whose plans are cancelled are getting whacked the hardest. They are losing access to the specialized cancer hospitals and oncologists treating them. And they will get meager help, if any, paying for innovative cancer drugs that cost thousands of dollars.
The most troubling provision in Obamacare’s Section 1311 gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services blanket authority to control how doctors and hospitals treat patients. This is all in the name of improving “quality.” This could mean everything in medicine.
Ain’t it great how the Democrats have stood by this law from day one?
And then there’s this, “The transportation breakthrough America needs!”
A Republican bill to allow insurance companies to continue to offer their old policies is gaining Democratic support.
This bill once again proves that the Republicans are the stupid party. This bill is a travesty. It will not solve any problems, but will transfer the disaster to the federal budget. Under Obamacare the insurance companies can’t afford those old health plans since Obamacare now requires them to give insurance to everyone, even the sick who do not have insurance. Thus, they need to charge more to pay for those sick customers. If the old plans are forced on them, they will need significant subsidies from somewhere to stay in business, and this bill gives it to them out of the U.S. treasury. Moreover, the bill only adds more complexity and confusion to the whole mess.
If the Republicans had any brains, they would simply demand repeal at this moment. Repeal is the only real solution, so that we can start over and deal intelligently with the problems of the health insurance industry. It is also the smart political move. If the Democrats refuse to cooperate, they once again will be forced to endorse Obamacare as it collapses. If they go along, the Republicans get what the country needs, while winning politically.
And there’s this: It’s a trap!
In the “You like your plan you keep your plan” front: One million Californians have had their health plans cancelled.
The short article is fascinating in that it buries this important fact, focusing instead how one health insurance company is extending its plans for two months for one hundred thousand policies.
The same software guy who refused to certify the Obamacare website as secure is also the same guy who now says the website’s security problems are “limitless.”
He is also the same guy the Obama administration forced out of his job for saying so. As noted at the story above, the House should “subpoena this man.” He will have some very interesting things to say in public.
A federal appeals court has ruled that the Obamacare contraceptive mandate cannot be imposed on either religious or private organizations.
It offends me deeply, as someone who is not religious, that the Obama administration has tried to force its political opinions on religious individuals against their will or beliefs.
It is time to start considering the worst case scenario for Obamacare,
that the exchanges continue to malfunction, that plan cancellations go into effect, that insurers see the political winds shifting and stop playing nice with the administration, and that significant numbers of people are left stranded without coverage as a result. Rather than reforming the individual market, which was flawed but did work for some people, Obamacare will have destroyed it and left only dysfunction and chaos in its wake.
The article looks hard at the situation, and sees nothing but disaster. The policies that have been cancelled cannot be reinstated easily, if at all. The people whose policies have been cancelled cannot enroll in a new plan because of the failure of the Obamacare website. The result: Come January large numbers of Americans who once had catastrophic health insurance — to protect themselves against a sudden health emergency — will no longer have that insurance and will be exposed.
The Democrats wanted this, they created this, they demanded this, and now they have given us this. And in a sane world there would be no doubt that come November they would be fired for this. Sadly, I have doubts it is a sane world.
72 absurd items Obamacare requires your health insurance to cover.
Want to know why Obamacare has forced premiums to skyrocket? Besides forcing insurance companies to provide insurance to those already sick, the law also requires everyone to get the services listed in the article above, most of which no one wants.
I am so glad the Democrats forced this law upon us, and then shut the government down so that it would go into effect on time!
In the states where the Obamacare websites have been mostly functioning, they have only met 3% of their target enrollments.
The explanation is simple: When people, especially young people, see what these plans cost, they are saying no and refusing to enroll. The product stinks, and people don’t want to buy it.
The future: Getting rid of health insurance and paying your doctor direct.
The only good that might come from Obamacare is that it will so mess up the healthcare insurance industry that medical treatment will be forced to return to the simpler and more efficient system where the patient buys the doctor’s services direct and no insurance is involved.
Freedom in Modern America: Two Baptist chaplains are suing the Veterans Administration for demanding they stop naming “Jesus” in their prayers.
Two Baptist chaplains said they were forced out of a Veterans Affairs chaplain training program after they refused orders to stop quoting the Bible and to stop praying in the name of Jesus. When the men objected to those demands they were subjected to ridicule and harassment that led to one of the chaplains leaving the program and the other being ejected, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday.
New Mexico is being sued by the ACLU over a third case of an intrusive medical probe, this time without a warrant.
The ACLU is representing a New Mexico woman in her fifties who was subjected by federal agents to a two-handed (!) vaginal and anal examination, an involuntary X-ray and CAT scan, and was forced to defecate in front of strangers. The woman was suspected of being in possession of drugs, on the basis of a drug-dog alert at the Juarez/El Paso border-crossing. No drugs were found. The federal agents — it’s not clear what agency they were with — did not obtain a warrant. The doctors at University Medical Center in El Paso performed the procedures without the victim’s consent, including the CT scan, which subjects people to a high dose of potentially harmful radiation. [emphasis mine]
As I said earlier today, more victims of this abuse are going to be found.
Four things the U.S. government did faster than building the Obamacare website.
I’ll give you a hint: None of them were done during Obama’s administration. And all of them were far more challenging that writing the software for a webpage.
It appears that the police in Deming, New Mexico have done forced medical procedures on more than one person.
Armed with what police said was probable cause and a search warrant, officers took Young to the Gila Medical Center in Silver City, N.M. The name of the hospital may sound familiar because it’s the exact same hospital Eckert was taken for the invasive hunt for drugs in his body that lasted more than 12 hours. Young was then reportedly subjected to X-rays and an anal exam. They found no drugs. Young, just like Eckert, says he did not consent to any of the procedures, which were performed in a county not covered by the search warrant obtained by police.
I suspect that more victims of this type of police abuse are going to be found.
Finding out what’s in it: State and local governments cut workers’ hours to under thirty to avoid Obamacare.
The Obamacare website is a deadly security hole for anyone that uses it.
On his blog, professional software tester Ben Simo began tinkering with HealthCare.gov shortly after it launched and uncovered security holes almost immediately. At first, the site processed an application that he had begun filling out but did not submit—meaning the site took the personal information he had entered and forwarded it to a state agency without his authorization. Next, he tried changing the email address associated with his HealthCare.gov account. With most websites, when you change your email, they send a notice of the change to your old address, so that if your account has been compromised by a hacker who changes the email, you’ll be alerted. Instead, HealthCare.gov sent an email to Simo’s new address about the change—a redundant step that provides no security for users. When doing another bit of routine maintenance on his HealthCare.gov account, Simo found that the site was sending information about his username via unsecure HTTP protocols, rather than the encrypted HTTPS. As anyone even passingly acquainted with shopping on the Internet would realize, this is, as Simo put it, “a huge security flaw” because HTTP information can be intercepted by anyone who cares to look for it.
This single paragraph describes just a few of the security problems at the website, which essentially puts your private information in the hands of numerous third parties who really shouldn’t have it.
Now, tell me again: Who wrote this law? Who shut the government down to make sure it would go into effect on time? Who created this failure of a webpage? And who will you vote for next November?
Finding out what’s in it: Only 22% of those who are uninsured are interested in signing up for Obamacare.
And that number has plummeted in the last month from 44%. It seems that having seen what Obamacare is like, the uninsured are fleeing in terror.
As I have noted before, Obamacare was sold as a way to get everyone health insurance. In the end, it is likely going to destroy the health insurance industry so that no one has it.
Modern American freedom: The UC Berkeley student government has banned the term “illegal immigrant.”
And what happens if someone ignores this ban? Will they send them to a concentration camp?
Considering the overwhelming support for the ban (with only one abstention), I wouldn’t be surprised if that is exactly what these students would like to do. And I expect them to try in the coming years as they move into positions of power.
The lies keep coming: Even as President Obama issued a weak-kneed apology for his lie about keeping your health plan, he added a whole bunch of new lies and misstatements.
Update: Meanwhile, even today the White House official website still claims “if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them.”
The House committee investigating the IRS scandal issued a new subpoena yesterday.
In reading the article, it is very clear to me that the Democrats and the Obama administration are stonewalling the House committee, and that the so-called bi-partisan report being prepared in the Senate is likely to be a whitewash.
On the “If you like your healthcare plan, you get to keep your healthcare plan” front: 250,000 to lose their health plans in Colorado due to Obamacare.
A very good analysis of yesterday’s election results.
President Obama publicly promised that “If you like your plan you can keep your plan.” at least 36 times.
The compilation video at the link and below the fold also includes yesterday’s lie where Obama tried to make believe that all those other statements never happened.
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Heh. Obama now just learning that he is President!
“I mean, I knew I was in a position of high importance, but not like THE President and all. I’m just as shocked as you all!” said the President to reporters in the White House’s Rose Garden, Monday. “…A lot of people have been wondering how all these scandals and things could be happening under my watch and I not know about it…” Obama said. “Well, when you don’t know you’re in charge of all these agencies and people, how can you? Think about it. It’s not my fault.”
Read it all. I especially like his response to a gentle and supportive question from a CNN reporter.
“One thing that politicians caught in a firestorm such as the current one swirling around the president’s health-care plan can hope for is that the thing will quickly die down once the news value is exhausted,” Hume said. “Unfortunately for the president, that does not seem to be happening. First came the website fiasco, then the stories of hundreds of thousands of policy cancellations. That’s now followed by reports of people losing their doctors as well. Incidents are now beginning to surface of people who managed to log on to the Obamacare website, being shocked at the prices of available health plans or the size of deductibles, or both.”
In the last few days I have been reminded increasingly of the problems Nixon had during his Watergate scandal. Instead of hitting the news in one big swoop, Watergate dribbled out over years, and that slow dribble was what kept it in the news long enough for the entire population to eventually get educated about it. More than anything else, that was what destroyed Richard Nixon.
Obama has had numerous scandals during his five years in office. None has damaged him seriously, because each popped up quickly and than faded as fast (mostly due to the willingness of a loyal press to protect him). With Obamacare, however, that can’t happen. Step-by-step, this disaster of a law is going to impose itself badly on Americans, and every time it does, the lies Obama and the Democrats told to get it passed are going to once again be highlighted. This is Nixon all over again, and it is going to do incredible damage to the Democratic Party come election time.
Finding out what’s in it: An analysis across 49 states reveals that Obamacare cause premiums to rise by 41%.
Interestingly, a handful of blue states, where insurance is already the most heavily regulated, benefit from Obamacare, with their rates dropping. Most everyone else, however, gets creamed with higher costs.
