Tag: regulation

Maryland’s Obamacare exchanges will not be functional until December.

9:15 am

Fail: Maryland’s Obamacare exchanges will not be functional until December.

A week into its launch, the Maryland exchange had reportedly enrolled only 326 people. A week later, the number had improved to just a little over 1,000, and O’Malley told reporters it could be six weeks before the exchange website was working smoothly. “My sense of it is, probably for the next month or so, month and a half, we will be working out glitches in the portal,” he said.

Maryland was enthusiastic about Obamacare and attacked the problem from the beginning. The result is still pitiful. Even though you are required to get a health plan under Obamacare, you might have no way to do it before the deadline arrives next year.

Which is why the real conservatives in Congress had a shutdown battle: They want to repeal Obamacare, but were willing to offer a compromise whereby the mandate was delayed one year. Considering the problems Obamacare is having, what is so unreasonable about that?

And then there’s this: Insurance companies complain that the ObamaCare website is providing them faulty data, even with its low success rate in enrolling anyone.

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A long and detailed assessment of the present technical problems of the Obamacare exchange website.

9:41 pm

A long and detailed assessment of the present technical problems of the Obamacare exchange website.

It is worth the long read. The author appears to have asked the right questions of a lot of the right people, and appears to have approached the issue honestly. Key quote:

In a couple of ways, then, the severe user-interface problems at the front end of the federal exchange has actually had some advantages from CMS’s point of view, because by keeping enrollment volume low it has kept some other huge problems from becoming instantly uncontrollable.

But that low volume is mostly a very bad thing for Obamacare, of course, since the viability of the exchanges depends on a certain size and demographic mix which cannot be attained unless these problems are resolved very quickly. I couldn’t get enrollment numbers from any of the people I spoke with, but I was told that the uptake model that HHS built (using CBO projections) to predict how the exchanges would work made a low-end estimate that just under half a million people would enroll nationwide by October 31st, and that enrollment would then accelerate dramatically between November 15 and December 30th. The October 31 target, which was thought to be modest, now looks essentially impossible to reach, but their bigger worry is that period in November and December.

If the problems now plaguing the system are not resolved by mid-November and the flow of enrollments at that point looks like it does now, the prospects for the first year of the exchanges will be in very grave jeopardy.

As I said, read the whole thing. Whether you support or oppose Obamacare, this article appears to give an honest appraisal of the present situation, which is not good.

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Bankrupt Detroit has dumped the health insurance of all its retirees, forcing them into Obamacare.

4:46 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Bankrupt Detroit has dumped the health insurance of all its retirees, forcing them into Obamacare.

Effective Jan.1, retired city workers under age 65 will no longer receive full coverage from the state and will instead receive a $125 stipend to shop in Michigan’s health-care exchange under the newly-rolled out Affordable Care Act.

The stipend does not come close to paying for the cost of any insurance plan.

These were all government employees in a blue state in a very blue city. Thus, almost all of them were likely Democrats who voted for and strongly supported Obama. Well, they are now finding out what that support has gotten them. For one thing, just because they like their health plan they aren’t getting to keep it.

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Want to send your child to school with a lunch you prepared yourself? The federal government now forbids it, unless you get a doctor’s note.

4:39 pm

Want to send your child to school with a lunch you prepared yourself? The federal government now forbids it, unless you get a doctor’s note.

When I was a kid it was assumed your parents would provide you the lunch you liked. Today, every kid is fed by the federal school lunch program. And it appears that this federal program has decided that only it knows what is good for your child.

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Some comments from people trying to use the Obamacare website.

3:25 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Some comments from people trying to use the Obamacare website.

Note this important point by the author of the post:

As with our last visit to the HealthCare.gov Facebook page, I’ve tried to avoid all ideological objectors and instead present only comments from people who seem to be genuinely trying to purchase insurance from the website.

As tea party and conservatives noted in 2009, Obamacare was putting the equivalent of the DMV in charge of the health insurance business. It appears that this prediction was right on the money. The comments are horrifying. No private business would dare operate a website this poorly designed.

I repeat: Obamacare was what the government shutdown was all about. The Republicans wanted to revise or repeal it, the Democrats refused to consider any changes at all. Which do you think was the better policy position for the American people?

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The major news networks blamed the shutdown on Republicans 41 times, Democrats 0 times.

12:48 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: The major news networks blamed the shutdown on Republicans 41 times, Democrats 0 times.

In Congress the shutdown was a team effort, involving both parties. To pin the blame on one party is to reveal your partisanship.

But then, this really isn’t news. The major news networks have been unabashed Democratic Party operatives for years. This detail just provides another one of thousands of illustrations that prove it.

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A House hearings yesterday, the partisan tactics of the director of the National Park Service was clearly illustrated by comparing what this government official did during the Occupy Wall Street protests versus his actions during the government shutdown.

10:27 am

Working for the Democratic Party: A House hearings yesterday, the partisan tactics of the director of the National Park Service were clearly illustrated by comparing what this government official did during the Occupy Wall Street protests versus his actions during the government shutdown. Watch:

The man should be fired. But he won’t be. Obama’s outrage over such activities is pure theater. He actually likes what Jarvis did, as it wholly supports the agenda of the Democratic Party.

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Obamacare might well be imploding.

8:44 am

Obamacare might well be imploding.

In other words, the elites in Washington might have signed a corrupt budget deal, but meanwhile the cause of the shutdown, Obamacare, continues to show itself to be an abject failure, justifying the efforts of the more honest Republicans to try to stop it.

The Democrats endorsed this law again during the budget standoff. Had they be willing to even consider minor changes the shutdown could have been averted. Instead, they stood firm as a party, supporting this unworkable law, as it stands.

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“Let’s don’t confuse nobody with the facts.”

9:03 am

A Democratic Congresswoman speaks her mind: “Let’s don’t confuse nobody with the facts.”

But don’t worry: I guarantee she will be re-elected forever. She is a black representative, in a black district. What matter that she appears to be as stupid as a brick, she’s black!

When your only criteria for voting for someone is their race, then you are the bigot. And sadly, this description appears to apply to too many blacks voters today.

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“I wanted the Affordable Health Care Act. The problem is, is it’s not affordable,”

9:24 pm

An Obama supporter finds out what’s in it: “I wanted the Affordable Health Care Act. The problem is, is it’s not affordable.”

I would laugh except that I am crying. Moreover, the article is from a San Francisco media outlet, which is as surprised as this Obama supporter at the cost of Obamacare. Too bad these liberals all considered conservatives and tea party people terrorists, murderers, and hate-filled killers of small children and therefore not worth listening to back in 2009. Had they listened, they would have found out about the unworkable nature of this law then, instead of now, and the law would never have been passed.

They should maybe consider this reality and recognize that this is why there are Republicans putting up a fight now to delay or defund the law.

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Tennessee and North Carolina have agreed to reopen Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

3:23 pm

Tennessee and North Carolina have agreed to reopen Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Like other states, they will pay the operating costs of the National Park Service, then get reimbursed when the government shutdown ends.

I wish they weren’t paying anything. They could have made sure the parks were open and available to all using state resources, and let the National Park Service throw a temper tantrum when it discovered it couldn’t control the parks.

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A company that employes a large number of temporary workers is now going to have to drop health insurance for all of its employees, because of Obamacare.

1:07 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A company that employes a large number of temporary workers is now going to have to drop health insurance for all of its employees, because of Obamacare.

Aside from its full-time staff, the company also manages about 400 temporary workers, and is hoping to add another 200 in the next year. Those employees can buy into a separate health insurance program North Georgia Staffing signed up with. Under new ObamaCare rules, many of those “temps” will count toward the Underkoffler’s full-time staff. Larry Underkoffler calculates their full-time employee count will instantly surge from 18 to around 200. They will go from boutique operation to “major employer” overnight.

And that means, under the health care law, they’d have to provide insurance coverage to all, or pay a $2,000-per-worker fine. In the Underkofflers’ case, the fine might be the more affordable option. “We would have to provide the same program for all the employees — including the temps — to everyone employed by us. And we just couldn’t do that,” Larry Underkoffler told Fox News. They argue that providing insurance to all the employees would bankrupt the company. Instead, they’ll eat the cost of the fine, and dump the employees they can’t cover into Georgia’s federally run health insurance exchange.

“It looks like we will have to just pay the penalties,” Debbie Underkoffler told Fox News. Those penalties could add up to $400,000 in just the first year. That comes right off their bottom line. Still, it’s a fraction of what providing health care could cost them. That tab could top $2 million per year. What’s more, because ObamaCare does not allow separate plans for the full-time employees and the temporary workers they manage, their full-timers will lose their current benefits.

The cost of the fines themselves is so high that I expect that they will soon begin destroying business left and right. Get prepared for the arrival of a large underground black market, working illegally under the radar to avoid the unbearable financial burdens of Obamacare.

Meanwhile, the CEO of Aetna insurance moans the complete failure of the Obamacare website to function.

Asked if he would have delayed the launch of the exchange given its earlier problems, Bertolini said, “I would have, if I’d been in their seat.”

But don’t worry, the Democrats have your back! Having Obamacare the law of the land now is so important to them that they are willing to shut down the government, for as long as necessary.

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A Catholic priest at a military base has been prohibited from even volunteering to run Mass and was told that if he violated that order he would be arrested.

8:52 am

Shutdown fascism: A Catholic priest at a military base has been prohibited from even volunteering to run Mass and was told that if he violated that order he would be arrested.

Even more amazing, “Protestant services continue to take place. Only Catholic services have been shutdown.”

A lawsuit has been filed.

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Thousands of Americans have stormed the World War II memorial, as well as other barricades monuments in DC.

10:50 am

Occupy America! Thousands of Americans have stormed the World War II memorial today, as well as other barricaded monuments in DC.

More here. The first link above says that there was some “pushing and shoving” between protesters and the police at one location. This is not confirmed however. This story says the protesting vets were carrying the barricades to the White House.

Update: It appears the veterans are bringing barricades from all over and are using them to “barricade the White House.”

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“Obama lied, my health care died.”

10:30 am

“Obama lied, my health care died.”

Remember the presidential talking point? If you like your current health plan, Barack Obama and his allies repeated over and over again, you would get to keep it. There would be no change. Things would go on as before even if Obamacare became the law of the land. The letter that came Thursday put the truth to the president’s lie. I would not be allowed to keep my current plan because it did not conform to the dictates of the new law and it was going away. And there was nothing I could do about it save enroll in a new plan because, as the letter also said, “you will be required to select a new ACA-compliant plan in order to continue your coverage.”

There are no two ways about it: Barack Obama stood up in front of the Congress of the United States and lied the nation into a new health care insurance system. Given that, it is now clear what the origins of the current contretemps between the executive and the legislative branches clearly are.

By insisting the Congress give him a continuing resolution to sign that includes funding for Obamacare, and by willing to engage in a phony shutdown of the federal government to make his point, President Obama is trying to undo nearly 10 centuries of the democratic process – going all the way back to the Magna Carta – to regain the power of the purse for the executive. Though the current crisis may, to some, seem silly or petty, it has as its basis a critically important point. The U.S. House of Representatives is the representative of the people of the United States, the same people in whom the U.S. Constitution invests national sovereignty. And they have determined that Obamacare should not be funded.

Note again that Obama and the Democrats have shut the government down in order to make sure Obamacare goes into effect.

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Privatize the National Park Service.

8:12 am

Privatize the National Park Service.

This recommendation will anger NPS employees. Well, for that, they can thank White House schemers for overplaying their heavy hand and unwittingly shedding ominous light on the abusive possibilities of this agency. That’s not a sentiment that the president and allies intended to foster when they began agitating and orchestrating their shutdown campaign. Rather than convincing us of the alleged evils of congressional Republicans, they’ve unveiled the roguish tendencies of some federal employees who blindly follow orders. Let’s respond by taking power away from those employees, so this cannot happen again. Easily maneuvered into providing propaganda for a president or party, these NPS workers have proven themselves unworthy of the mission entrusted to them. They are the embodiment of the dangers of unaccountable, big government.

To this I say amen! I spend a lot of time visiting the national parks, and more often than not have been consistently disgusted with the National Park Service and its possessive and dictatorial attitude. In the past two decades the park service has changed. Once it considered its job that of a mere custodian, administering these parks for the benefit of the American public, the parks’ real owner. Today the park service instead sees the parks as their private little playground, and the public as annoying trespassers whose access should be limited as much as possible.

It is time to fire these thugs and give the job to someone else.

Note also the ease in which state governments are taking over operations of the major parks out west. For less money too. This illustrates how bloated and unnecessary most of the park service actually is. It can be replaced.

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The Republican leadership folds.

7:56 pm

The Republican leadership folds on the government shutdown. Key quote:

In exchange for meeting, at least momentarily, all of Obama’s demands, the House GOP is seeking a “framework” for future negotiations.

They get a repeal of an Obamacare tax on medical equipment, but lose everything else, plus give up some of the sequester cuts that have actually produced the first real reduction in the size of government in decades.

And the Republican leadership wonders why they keep losing elections? With incompetent friends like this, who needs enemies.

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When surveyed, more than 70 percent of all doctors and practices say they will not participate in the Obamacare health exchange insurance plans.

10:11 am

Knowing what’s in it: When surveyed, more than 70 percent of all doctors and practices say they will not participate in the Obamacare health exchange insurance plans.

The doctors cite a fear of complex administrative and regulatory requirements as well as the exchanges’ low reimbursement rates.

Note how this wonderful government health insurance plan is providing doctors with less pay and more paperwork while charging patients more for fewer benefits. Doesn’t that combination warm the cockles of your heart?

But remember! The Democrats have your back! They are going to keep Obamacare the law no matter what!

Posted from Texas.

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Not only did Sarah Hall Ingram illegally share confidential taxpayer information with White House officials, she met with White House officials 165 times.

7:22 am

Working for the Democratic Party: Not only did Sarah Hall Ingram illegally share confidential taxpayer information with White House officials, she met with White House officials 165 times.

Of Ingram’s 165 White House meetings with White House staff, a staggering 155 of them were hosted by deputy assistant to the president for health policy Jeanne Lambrew, according to a June Watchdog.Org analysis of White House visitor records. Ingram exchanged confidential taxpayer information with Lambrew and White House health policy advisor Ellen Montz, according to 2012 emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

I notice that Obama’s so-called outrage over the IRS scandal has not caused him to remove Hall as the person in charge of the IRS’s implementation of Obamacare.

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One man’s Obamacare nightmare.

6:48 am

Finding out what’s in it: One man’s Obamacare nightmare.

In sum: Obama lied. His health plan died. He can’t keep his doctors. He couldn’t sign up in 10 minutes for health care. He’s being steered toward a government plan he doesn’t qualify for or want. And he can’t get his personal information back from the online Obamawreck black hole.

And then there’s this: A disabled mother finds she is forced to chose between food or Obamacare premiums.

But don’t worry: The Democrats think Obamacare is so great that they have forced a government shutdown to make sure it goes into effect immediately!

Posted as we circle Little Rock, Arkansas.

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Utah has forced an agreement with the federal government to reopen its national parks.

6:02 am

Utah has forced an agreement with the federal government to reopen its national parks.

The article says that Utah negotiated this agreement, but the only way I can imagine Utah got the Obama administration to agree to this was to tell them that Utah was going to open the parks one way or the other, and that the Obama administration would look really bad if it resisted local authorities as they protected citizens who wished to visit these parks.

Update: More information here. It appears the Obama administration is backing down across the board. They have not only announced that they will let the parks open if the states pay for their operation, they have removed the barricades at Mount Rushmore, as well as in the Great Smoky Mountains.

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“Look at these radicals who are blatantly defying the federal government by having a stroll and eating lunch in a CLOSED PARK.”

10:26 am

“Look at these radicals who are blatantly defying the federal government by having a stroll and eating lunch in a CLOSED PARK.”

Click on the link. Lots of hilariously captioned pictures of evil tourists defying their righteous government which is so sincerely trying to protect its property from those disgusting “little people.”

Posted as we pass Knoxville, Tennessee.

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“The Obama Administration’s behavior during the first week of the shutdown has been the best argument against Obamacare anyone has ever made.”

7:43 am

Another reasonable thought: “The Obama Administration’s behavior during the first week of the shutdown has been the best argument against Obamacare anyone has ever made.”

The American people do not want Obamacare, and they are demanding that Washington act to protect them from the harmful effects of this unfortunate law. The president’s response has been to ignore them, allow the government to shutdown, and then use his power to close national parks and monuments, stop paying veterans’ benefits, and cut off cancer research. This is exactly why we should not expand the government’s power over our health care choices. What power the government has, it will use – and misuse – to advance its own interests, even if that means punishing the American people along the way. [emphasis mine]

Just think what any power-hungry politician, from either party, might do if he or she had unfettered access to your personal health records. If you express any opposition to them, they might even use that information to attack and destroy you.

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The Obamacare website — that doesn’t work and probably never will — was originally supposed to cost $93.7 million and ended up costing more than six times more, $634 million.

6:42 am

Government marches on! The Obamacare website — that doesn’t work and probably never will — was originally supposed to cost $93.7 million and ended up costing more than six times more, $634 million.

Gee, this is almost as good as the James Webb Space Telescope, which is probably going to end up cost nine times more than originally budgeted.

And obviously, this disaster must be the fault of either George Bush or the tea party!

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More defiance of the Obama administration’s attempt to lock Americans out of public lands.

5:59 am

Occupy America: More examples of defiance of the Obama administration’s attempt to lock Americans out of public lands.

The most telling quote from this story, however, is this statement by a park service spokesman about the first amendment exception they have instituted at the World War II memorial:

Michael Litterst, a National Park Service spokesman, said the First Amendment exception applies only to several Washington and Philadelphia parks related to the government and its history, “due to these parks’ long history of hosting First Amendment events, their expansive outdoor grounds, and their location in major metropolitan areas. You could not host a First Amendment rally at Chaco Culture, Grand Canyon, Manassas or any one of the 395 other parks where such activities are prohibited during the shutdown. They can be held only at the National Mall and Memorial Parks, the areas of the White House administered by the NPS, and Independence National Historical Park,” he said. [emphasis mine]

Since when is freedom of speech limited to only certain places, and those places are determined by the government?

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