Tag: Health Insurance

Blue States Enacting Individual Mandate Laws Requiring Purchase of Health Insurance

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

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The failure of Obamacare, I think, rests solely on the shoulders of Democrats. They created the program. They pushed it through. They made this legislation happen, and they need to own the failure of it. – Sarah Huckabee Sanders

FoxNews.com reports that

Last year’s sweeping Republican tax bill killed the federal tax penalty for individuals who refuse to get health insurance as mandated under ObamaCare. 
 
But as that penalty disappears for Americans in January, a growing number of liberal states are moving to enact their own individual mandates requiring residents to purchase health insurance – a last-ditch effort to preserve a critical part of former President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law.

Since Republicans passed the tax bill in December, New Jersey, Vermont and Washington, D.C., have passed laws enacting an individual mandate, joining Massachusetts, which famously enacted an individual mandate while Mitt Romney was governor in 2006.

 Conservatives are railing against the moves.

“Just when you think the move for government control of health care couldn’t get any worse, somehow it manages to,” Christopher Jacobs, a conservative health policy expert, said when the D.C. Council passed its individual mandate requirement in June.

Under Obama’s health care law, the individual mandate required most people to have health insurance meeting specific standards. The law imposed tax penalties for violations.

But under last year’s final tax-reform bill, people no longer face a penalty for noncompliance as of January 2019.

“We eliminated the individual mandate that said that people had to buy government-approved insurance,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News in a recent interview. “In a sense, it blew a big hole in ObamaCare.”

The idea behind the mandate was to make sure young and healthy customers are buying into the system, to offset the cost of taking on more sick and elderly customers. The looming rollback has triggered warnings of more disruptions to the market. 

 

…The D.C. Council in June passed its own individual mandate, which would require city residents to have health insurance coverage.

“Establishing an individual mandate here in the city will ensure that people will continue to have insurance,” D.C. Council member Vincent Gray said.

It comes as Democrats are embracing protecting ObamaCare – specifically the requirement to provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions — as an issue in the 2018 elections. Democratic leaders are also signaling that they will use it an issue in the upcoming battle over President Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee, though Republicans blame the law for rising premiums. 

Right. Democrats care so much about people that they are taking their freedom of choice away as to whether they will purchase health insurance or not.

Do the Liberals up in the Northeast not remember how Americans reacted to the Individual Mandate when that first tax season rolled around?

To the Wayback Machine, Sherman!

From The New York Times, originally posted on February 1, 2015…

Obama administration officials and other supporters of the Affordable Care Act say they worry that the tax-filing season will generate new anger as uninsured consumers learn that they must pay tax penalties and as many people struggle with complex forms needed to justify tax credits they received in 2014 to pay for health insurance.

The White House has already granted some exemptions and is considering more to avoid a political firestorm.

Mark J. Mazur, the assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy, said up to six million taxpayers would have to “pay a fee this year because they made a choice not to obtain health care coverage that they could have afforded.”

But Christine Speidel, a tax lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid, said: “A lot of people do not feel that health insurance plans in the marketplace were affordable to them, even with subsidies. Some went without coverage and will therefore be subject to penalties.”

The penalties, approaching 1 percent of income for some households, are supposed to be paid with income taxes due April 15. In addition, officials said, many people with subsidized coverage purchased through the new public insurance exchanges will need to repay some of the subsidies because they received more than they were entitled to.

More than 6.5 million people had insurance through the exchanges at some point last year, and 85 percent of them qualified for financial assistance, in the form of tax credits, to lower their premiums. Most people chose to have the subsidies paid in advance, based on projected income for 2014. If their actual income was higher — because they got a raise or found a new job — they will be entitled to a smaller subsidy and must repay the difference, subject to certain limits.

Little did they know what an unmitigated disaster Obamacare would turn out to be.

I can testify to the truth of the above statement.

I was one of those Americans who was penalized. From April through September of 2014, I was unemployed, due to having been laid off, because my employer did not have the money to pay me.

I attempted to get health insurance, first through my wife’s employer, which would have cost us $350 a month, which we could not afford.

Next, I went to healthcare.gov, and I went through the myriad of pages therein, seeking insurance rates. Guess what? Because my wife had a job, I was not eligible for Free Obamacare. Since it was all we could do at that time to tread water and to keep a roof over our heads, I could not afford the $450 per month for the policy which was available to me under State-run Healthcare.

Just as Liberals remain in a delusional state of denial over the legitimacy of the Trump Presidency, so they are about the failure of Obamacare.

Hence, the imposing of Individual Mandates in the “Blue States up North”.

Just like the mascot of their chosen political party, Liberal Democrats are stubborn and slow to learn.

You would think that the Far Left Democratic Party would have learned their lesson about attempting to force Americans to “buy” something that they did not want after their national embarrassment on the night of November 8, 2016.

And, as far as their political strategy to push Obamacare’s virtues in order to win the 2018 Mid-Term Elections…

Isn’t the definition of “stupidity” trying the same thing over and over again but  expecting a different result?

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

 

 

Americans Angry as Obamacare Tax Hits Their Pocketbooks

On By kingsjesterIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

ObamalyingThe Obama Administration is caught in a trap of their own making.

And, it’s name is Obamacare.

From the start, Obama and his minions in his Administration, the Congress, and the sycophantic Main Stream Media, have all lied about Obamacare. ..starting with the preliminary information posted, “back in the day”, on change.gov…

The Obama-Biden plan provides affordable, accessible health care for all Americans, builds on the existing health care system, and uses existing providers, doctors, and plans. Under the Obama-Biden plan, patients will be able to make health care decisions with their doctors, instead of being blocked by insurance company bureaucrats.

Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year. If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options.

Make Health Insurance Work for People and Businesses — Not Just Insurance and Drug Companies.

  • Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions so all Americans regardless of their health status or history can get comprehensive benefits at fair and stable premiums.
  • Create a new Small Business Health Tax Credit to help small businesses provide affordable health insurance to their employees.
  • Lower costs for businesses by covering a portion of the catastrophic health costs they pay in return for lower premiums for employees.
  • Prevent insurers from overcharging doctors for their malpractice insurance and invest in proven strategies to reduce preventable medical errors.
  • Make employer contributions more fair by requiring large employers that do not offer coverage or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of their employees’ health care.
  • Establish a National Health Insurance Exchange with a range of private insurance options as well as a new public plan based on benefits available to members of Congress that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage.
  • Ensure everyone who needs it will receive a tax credit for their premiums.

Reduce Costs and Save a Typical American Family up to $2,500 as reforms phase in:

  • Lower drug costs by allowing the importation of safe medicines from other developed countries, increasing the use of generic drugs in public programs, and taking on drug companies that block cheaper generic medicines from the market.
  • Require hospitals to collect and report health care cost and quality data.
  • Reduce the costs of catastrophic illnesses for employers and their employees.
  • Reform the insurance market to increase competition by taking on anticompetitive activity that drives up prices without improving quality of care.
  • The Obama-Biden plan will promote public health. It will require coverage of preventive services, including cancer screenings, and increase state and local preparedness for terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

A Commitment to Fiscal Responsibility: Barack Obama will pay for his $50 – $65 billion health care reform effort by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year and retaining the estate tax at its 2009 level.

Sounds wonderful, Huh?

Time for a REALITY CHECK!

The New York Times has the story.

Obama administration officials and other supporters of the Affordable Care Act say they worry that the tax-filing season will generate new anger as uninsured consumers learn that they must pay tax penalties and as many people struggle with complex forms needed to justify tax credits they received in 2014 to pay for health insurance.

The White House has already granted some exemptions and is considering more to avoid a political firestorm.

Mark J. Mazur, the assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy, said up to six million taxpayers would have to “pay a fee this year because they made a choice not to obtain health care coverage that they could have afforded.”

But Christine Speidel, a tax lawyer atVermont Legal Aid, said: “A lot of people do not feel that health insurance plans in the marketplace were affordable to them, even with subsidies. Some went without coverage and will therefore be subject to penalties.”

The penalties, approaching 1 percent of income for some households, are supposed to be paid with income taxes due April 15. In addition, officials said, many people with subsidized coverage purchased through the new public insurance exchanges will need to repay some of the subsidies because they received more than they were entitled to.

More than 6.5 million people had insurance through the exchanges at some point last year, and 85 percent of them qualified for financial assistance, in the form of tax credits, to lower their premiums. Most people chose to have the subsidies paid in advance, based on projected income for 2014. If their actual income was higher — because they got a raise or found a new job — they will be entitled to a smaller subsidy and must repay the difference, subject to certain limits.

I am one of those Americans who may be penalized. From April through September of this past year, I was unemployed, due to having been laid off, because my employer did not have the money to pay me.

I attempted to get health insurance, first through my wife’s employer, which would have cost us $350 a month, which we could not afford.

Next, I went to healthcare.gov, and I went through the myriad of pages therein. Seeking and insurance rates. Guess what? Because my wife had a job, I was not eligible for Free Obamacare. Since it was all we could do at that time, to tread water, and to keep a roof over our heads, I could not afford the $450 per month for the policy which was available to me under State-run Healthcare.

Last October, the Good Lord blessed me, and I am now working at a great job,in fact, the best job I have ever had, and that’s saying a lot.

This position has great insurance, which is being activated for me, even as I write this.

Why should I, like millions of other Americans, be punished by this President and his poorly-thought-out national health care plan, passed in the mid of the night, which the majority of Americans did not want in the first place? ?

Now, I realize that Obamacare was the Holy Grail to Brock Hussein Obama and all of his Democratic minions in Congress, who shared his vision turning the shining city on the hill into another socialist nation. However, perhaps they should have actually read the bill before they passed it, Nancy Pelosi notwithstanding.

Obamacare is proving to be just another failed plan, by a president who is in way over his head, and who believes that Marxist Theory has only failed in other countries, because it has never been properly implemented in America.

Anytime someone tries to punish innocent Americans, for fun and / or profit, they pay the price.

As the Democrats found out in November of last year, and we’ll find out in November of 2016…

You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Until He Comes.

KJ

Obamacare: Gruber, Graft, and Money-Grubbing Weasels

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

AFBranco Obamacare 11182014Remember when we found out in the 1980s that the Department of Defense had supposedly been buying $500 hammers and $600 toilet seats?

They were pikers.

FoxNews.com has the story…

“My job was just to see if the numbers added up,” Jonathan Gruber, the controversial architect of ObamaCare, told PBS two years ago.

And add up the numbers he did – at least in terms of Gruber’s consulting fees. A Fox News review of state and federal websites, as well as published reports, finds the MIT economist and his firm have secured millions in federal and state contracts stretching back over the last fifteen years.

Most famously, the Department of Health and Human Services retained Gruber in March 2009 to produce, as the contract stipulated, “a series of technical memoranda on the estimated changes in health insurance coverage and associated costs and impacts to the government under alternative specifications of health system reform.”

That contract netted Gruber $95,000, and an additional HHS contract, inked that June, added $297,600 to the deal – steering almost $400,000 to the creator of the Gruber Microsimulation Model. Still another contract with the agency, as reported here, was said to have exceeded $2 million in value since 2007.  

The National Institutes of Health clinched a deal for a like amount ($2.05 million), and the Department of Justice contracted with Gruber for nearly $1.74 million. DOJ? You might ask. Why would the Justice Department be hiring the architect of ObamaCare? Records show Gruber earned the DOJ fee for helping to develop viable incentives to be extended to the tobacco companies in order to dissuade them from targeting teen smokers.

Similarly, Gruber collected $103,500 from the State Department for his services as an expert witness, providing testimony in a NAFTA dispute with a Canadian tobacco firm.

Then there are the state governments. The Fox News review finds Gruber and his firm have consulted for, or provided computer modeling to, at least fifteen states. Glenn Kessler, the widely respected Washington Post columnist who writes under the moniker “The Fact Checker,” reported last week that “at least eight states” have hired Gruber to assist with the launching of their health care exchanges – and Kessler added: “It’s safe to say that about $400,000 appears to be the standard rate for gaining access to the Gruber Microsimulation Model.”

Fox News found that Gruber and his firm shared in a $481,050 contract with Michigan, a $400,000 deal with Wisconsin, and a contract with Minnesota worth nearly $330,000. Other contracts included deals with California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts – where Gruber notably worked with then-Gov. Mitt Romney – Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a longtime Gruber critic, told Fox News on Monday that the economist has never been as transparent as he should have been in divulging his consulting contracts to lawmakers when he was testifying before them. “This is not saying the amount of money he made was wrong,” Grassley said, “but when he’s testifying before Congress, there ought to be full disclosure of this so that you know if he’s got a non-biased opinion — or not.”

By all accounts, Gruber is among a handful of economists with top-tier expertise in developing the kind of models that HHS and other agencies depend upon in the formulation of massive initiatives like ObamaCare, and one expert in government contracting told Fox News the MIT professor has carved out a “lucrative” niche.

Let’s sum up what Citizen Gruber has related to us, through those off-the-cuff videos, which have surfaced during the last week…

In one of the videos that surfaced in recent days in which the man described by the Obama campaign as having helped to write Obamacare describes the many ways voters he calls stupid were easily misled about the bill by those pushing it, Gruber says the Cadillac tax will do exactly what the president pledged it would not — dissuade employers in general from providing insurance for its employees .

“Economists have called for 40 years to get rid of the regressive, inefficient and expensive tax subsidy provided for employer provider health insurance,” Gruber said at the Pioneer Institute for public policy research in Boston in 2011. The subsidy is “terrible policy,” Gruber said.

“It turns out politically it’s really hard to get rid of,” Gruber said.

Gruber said the only way those pushing for Obamacare could get rid of the tax subsidy for employer provider health insurance was to tax the more generous, or Cadillac, plans — “mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people when we all know it’s a tax on people who hold those insurance plans.”

The second way was have the tax kick in “late, starting in 2018” and have its rate of growth tied to the consumer price index instead of to the much higher rate of medical inflation. Eventually, the 40% tax on the more expensive plans would impact every employer-provided insurance plan.

“What that means is the tax that starts out hitting only 8% of the insurance plans essentially amounts over the next 20 years essentially getting rid of the exclusion for employer sponsored plans,” Gruber said. “This was the only political way we were ever going to take on one of the worst public policies in America.”

By 2018, Gruber said, those who object to the tax will be obligated to figure out how to come up with the trillion dollars that repealing the tax will take from the U.S. Treasury, or risk significantly adding to the national debt.

This is obviously exactly what Obama told voters in 2009 he had “taken off the table.” It is exactly a process to “eliminate the tax deduction that employers get for providing you with health insurance” that five years ago Obama noted would result in “a lot of employers then would stop providing health care, and we’d probably see more people lose their health insurance than currently have it.”

In other words, Obama and his fellow Liberal Weasels screwed us all.

The harsh reality of my future existence being controlled by a Federal Government, who cannot even properly construct a stinkin’ website, makes me glad I place my faith in God and not in a President.

Now, see if you can follow this:

I have actually been told by Liberals and “Fiscal Conservatives” (but, I repeat myself) that I am “selfish” in my concern that, as a lifelong severe asthmatic, I will not have an affordable, life-saving, health insurance plan available to me in 2014, after ObamaCare.

According to projections, which the Obama Administration itself issued back in July 2010, officials knew the devastating impact of ObamaCare 4 years ago.

Additionally, According to the Federal Register, its mid-range estimate was that by the end of 2014, 76 percent of small group plans would be cancelled, along with 55 percent of large employer plans.

The reason?

Current plans don’t meet the requirements of ObamaCare, which dictate that each plan must cover a list of essential benefits, whether people want them or not.

“Essential benefits” like Free Birth Control and Maternity Care.

Excuse me, Soooper-Geniuses…but, after a certain age, those “benefits” are not longer “essential”.

I am alive today, thanks to the American Healthcare System that your “messiah” and the rest of you Liberal idiots, on both sides of the political aisle, are trying to turn into a money-making arm of the Federal Government, not out of any altruism, but out of an unbridled lust for control of Americans’ lives from cradle to grave.

Now that the little. money-grubbing weasel has spilled the beans, as to how this Administration and their fellow weasels in Congress really feel about the people whom they are supposed to be serving…can’t you just see some of the Democrat Congresscritters, huddled in a Congressional Cloakroom?

We’ve got to protect our phony-boloney jobs, gentlemen! Hrumph!

German-American Political Theorist Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) once said,

The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.

And, since Obama and his Democrat minions had no clue as to what was actually in The Affordable Care Act”, and they did not want us to either, as Nancy Pelosi, herself, once quipped,

…we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it…

Now, that we have found out what is in it, Americans don’t want it.

And,  our entire nation, including Obama and the Democrats, are paying the price for all of their inefficient lies.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

Obama’s Obamacare Victory Dance: Figures Lie and Liars Figure

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

ObamalyingYesterday, President Barack Hussein Obama, in a scene which I’m sure was reminiscent of Lenin addressing the Bolsheviks after the murder of the Russian Royal Family, spiked the over-inflated football, known as Obamacare, over his own ever-moving goalposts. No small feat, that.

From the start, Obama and his minions in his Administration, the Congress, and the sycophantic Main Stream Media, have all lied about Obamacare. ..starting with the preliminary information posted, “back in the day”, on change.gov…

The Obama-Biden plan provides affordable, accessible health care for all Americans, builds on the existing health care system, and uses existing providers, doctors, and plans. Under the Obama-Biden plan, patients will be able to make health care decisions with their doctors, instead of being blocked by insurance company bureaucrats.

Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year. If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options.

Make Health Insurance Work for People and Businesses — Not Just Insurance and Drug Companies.

  • Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions so all Americans regardless of their health status or history can get comprehensive benefits at fair and stable premiums.
  • Create a new Small Business Health Tax Credit to help small businesses provide affordable health insurance to their employees.
  • Lower costs for businesses by covering a portion of the catastrophic health costs they pay in return for lower premiums for employees.
  • Prevent insurers from overcharging doctors for their malpractice insurance and invest in proven strategies to reduce preventable medical errors.
  • Make employer contributions more fair by requiring large employers that do not offer coverage or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of their employees’ health care.
  • Establish a National Health Insurance Exchange with a range of private insurance options as well as a new public plan based on benefits available to members of Congress that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage.
  • Ensure everyone who needs it will receive a tax credit for their premiums.

Reduce Costs and Save a Typical American Family up to $2,500 as reforms phase in:

  • Lower drug costs by allowing the importation of safe medicines from other developed countries, increasing the use of generic drugs in public programs, and taking on drug companies that block cheaper generic medicines from the market.
  • Require hospitals to collect and report health care cost and quality data.
  • Reduce the costs of catastrophic illnesses for employers and their employees.
  • Reform the insurance market to increase competition by taking on anticompetitive activity that drives up prices without improving quality of care.
  • The Obama-Biden plan will promote public health. It will require coverage of preventive services, including cancer screenings, and increase state and local preparedness for terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

A Commitment to Fiscal Responsibility: Barack Obama will pay for his $50 – $65 billion health care reform effort by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year and retaining the estate tax at its 2009 level.

Sounds wonderful, Huh?

Time for a REALITY CHECK!

Dailymail.co.uk reports that

A triumphant President Barack Obama declared Tuesday his signature medical insurance overhaul a success, saying it has made America’s health care system ‘a lot better’ in a Rose Garden press conference.

But buried in the 7.1 million enrollments he announced in a heavily staged appearance is a more unsettling reality.

Numbers from a RAND Corporation study that has been kept under wraps suggest that barely 858,000 previously uninsured Americans – nowhere near 7.1 million – have paid for new policies and joined the ranks of the insured by Monday night.

Others were already insured, including millions who lost coverage when their existing policies were suddenly cancelled because they didn’t meet Obamacare’s strict minimum requirements.

Still, he claimed that ‘millions of people who have health insurance would not have it’ without his insurance law.’

‘The goal we’ve set for ourselves – that no American should go without the health care they need … is achievable,’ Obama declared.

The president took no questions from reporters, but celebrated the end of a rocky six-month open-enrollment period by taking pot shots at Republicans who have opposed the law from the beginning as a government-run seizure of one-seventh of the U.S. economy.

‘The debate over repealing this law is over,’ he insisted. ‘The Affordable Care Act is here to stay.’

The president also chided conservatives ‘who have based their entire political agenda on repealing it,’ and praised congressional Democrats for their partisan passage of the law without a single GOP vote.

‘We could not have done it without them, and they should be proud of what they’ve done,’ Obama boasted, in a clear nod to November’s contentious elections in which Republicans are expected to make large gains on an anti-Obamacare platform because of the law’s general lack of popularity.

Yeah…they should….if they don’t try to replace it with a plan of their own.

The Republican Establishment needs to hammer the following information, courtesy of The New York Post, home…with a vengeance.

“As a result of the ACA, between 6 million and 7 million fewer people will have employment-based insurance coverage each year from 2016 through 2024 than would be the case in the absence of the ACA.”

ObamaCare’s key selling point was that it would give coverage to a significant number of the 30-plus million Americans who lack it. Now the CBO is telling the American people that a decade from now, 6 million-plus of their countrymen won’t get health care through their employers who otherwise would have.

Even more damaging is this projection: “About 31 million nonelderly residents of the United States are likely to be without health insurance in 2024, roughly one out of every nine such residents.”

Why? Because, in selling the bill to the American people in a nationally televised September 2009 address, President Obama said the need for ObamaCare was urgent precisely because “there are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.”

Now the CBO is saying that in 10 years about the same number of people will lack insurance as before. This, after new expenditures of as much as $2 trillion and a colossal disruption of the US medical system.

If that’s not startling enough, there’s also the telling projection about ObamaCare’s affect on employment — “a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024.”

Overall employment will rise, the report says, but not steady, secure, long-term assured employment. The possibility of securing government-provided healthcare without employment will give people a new incentive to avoid it. “The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply,” the report says.

Indeed, overall, between 2017 and 2024, the actual amount of work done in this country will decline by as much as 2 percent.

With their continuous lies about the triumphant nationwide coverage of Obamacare, the Democrats should be easy targets in the November Mid-Term Elections, if the Vichy Republicans echo the message of Senator Ted Cruz…

The bulk of the people who are signing up had health insurance to begin with — and, you know what? They probably had their insurance canceled because of Obamacare ’cause we know that over six million people had their health insurance canceled because of Obamacare. It is abundantly clear this thing isn’t working. It has caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, to be forced into part-time work, to lose their health insurance, or to see their premiums skyrocket. It is the essence of pragmatism to recognize this thing isn’t working. Let’s start over. Let’s repeal every word of it.

Common Sense. Isn’t that a breath of fresh air? It’s sorely needed given what Obama was shoveling yesterday.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obamacare and America’s “Yutes”: The Thrill is Gone

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

obamacareyouthAs President Barack Hussein Obama’s Signature Legislation, the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, continues to swirl down the ol’ porcelain receptacle, the Administration has targeted America’s young people. Obamacare was designed on the presumption that young Americans will go head over heels for the new Healthcare Exchanges, and, in turn, that will finance the plan.

Guess what? That ain’t happening, according to nydailynews.com,

Fears that insurance exchanges that are the linchpin of President Barack Obama’s federal health care overhaul wouldn’t attract the young, healthy people needed to make them financially viable are being heightened by the early results of signups in several states.

If it becomes a trend, that could lead to increases in insurance premiums and deductibles next year. Along with the paltry enrollment numbers released this week, officials in a handful of states said those who had managed to sign up were generally older people with medical problems — those with the greatest incentives to get coverage.

It’s unclear whether that will persist. Young, healthy people may be more inclined to procrastinate, especially given doubts about the law’s technically flawed online signup system. They have until Dec. 15 to sign up if they want to be covered on Jan. 1.

Insurers have warned that they need a wide range of people signing up for coverage because premiums paid by adults in the younger and healthier group, between 18 and 35, are needed to offset the cost of carrying older and sicker customers who typically generate far more in medical bills than they contribute in premiums.

The first set of enrollment data revealed that 106,000 people signed up for coverage nationwide, far short of the 500,000 initial sign-ups the Obama administration had expected. In states where officials discussed more detailed information, it also became apparent that the people who flocked to the exchanges after they opened Oct. 1 were those who were desperate for coverage.

In California, the state with the largest uninsured population, most of those who applied were older people with health problems. In Kentucky, nearly 3 of 4 enrollees were over 35. In Washington state, about 23 percent of enrollees were between 18 and 34. And in Ohio, groups helping with enrollment described many of those coming to them as older residents who lost their jobs and health coverage during the recession.

However, the administration is going to do whatever they can to force young Americans to participate in Obamacare, even those young folks who are still in college, as foxnews.com reports…

For decades, universities and colleges have offered students bare-bones policies. But because of the Affordable Care Act, those policies no longer cut it – and universities are forced to decide whether to offer significantly higher-cost plans or cancel coverage altogether.

The new rules affect a broad swath of American schools, especially the small ones.

At Bowie State University in Maryland, the cost of student health insurance policies went from roughly $100 a year to $1,800 a year.

The cancelled plan offered $5,000 worth of medical coverage to students for just $54 per semester. University administrators said an acceptable replacement under the Affordable Care Act would have cost $900 per semester, a 1,500 percent increase.

Students who need individual coverage are likely to find a better deal for themselves on the Maryland Health Connection insurance exchange, University spokeswoman Cassandra Robinson said.

In the end, the school decided to drop the policy for all of its 5,500 enrollees. Students were notified of the dropped coverage on the school’s website.

“Bowie State University has suspended offering health insurance for domestic students for the 2013-2014 academic year,” according to the school’s official website. “Due to new requirements of the Affordable Care Act which will go into effect on January 1, 2014, the cost of insurance for domestic students will increase to approximately $1800 per year.”

The sticker shock didn’t sit well with some students who spoke out against the price hike.

“You’ve haven’t done anything Obama and I am disappointed in you,” one student said. Another told Campus Reform, “We don’t have that money. We can barely afford books.”

Well, gosh, that doesn’t sound like the perception the White House has of America’s young people.

In fact, one would think that being a young American is all about promiscuity and alcoholism, according to the Obamacare Ads put out by the Obama Administration.

The first ad shows a pretty young thing, all excited and showing off the birth control pills which she received through Obamacare. At her side is a swarthy looking young man, with his shirt out and sports jacket on, trying his best to look like a young John Stamos, with an anticipatory ear-to-ear grin on his face.

The other ad involves three male college students. two of them each have the leg of the third, and are holding him above a keg  while he balances himself with both hands while hollding a hose coming from the keg in his mouth.

Talk about aiming to the lowest common denominator in an advertising campaign…

Evidently, the only contact the White House has with college age and young adult Americans, has come from hanging out with the OWSers and/or watching the Jerry Springer Program.

Anyway, it certainly appears that they overestimated Obamacare’s popularity with that demographic and underestimated young Americans’ intelligence.

Or, perhaps, like the rest of us, these yutes simply don’t like being lied to.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Pelosi Denies Obamacare Disaster

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

pelosigavelRemember the Victory March, which Democrats took on their way  to the signing of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare?

My, how things have changed. Democrats are running away from Obama and his Signature Legislation, like rats jumping off of a sinking ship.

But, hey. The House Minority Leader says, “Nothing to see here. Move along.”

Yesterday, on NBC’s Meet The Press, David Gregory interviewed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, concerning  the disaster that is Obamacare.

DAVID GREGORY: Why aren’t you concerned at this point that this is in grave danger of not being done right?

REP. NANCY PELOSI: Well, I’m very unhappy about the website, as you can just imagine the president is. But I know the makings of the legislation, and what it does for people. And, again, look, this Republican measure on Friday, what makes matters so worse, allows the marketplace to be deprived of people who should be there getting lower prices with better benefits and perhaps even a tax credit.

So that wasn’t a fix, it was a make matters worse. But they’re running a political arena and you expect that. But you can’t be knocked for a loop just because somebody’s playing politics. If that was the case, we would have never passed it in the first place.

DAVID GREGORY: Final point: Democrats won’t lose seats next year over Obamacare?

REP. NANCY PELOSI: I don’t think you can tell what will happen next year. But I will tell you this: Democrats stand tall in support of the Affordable Care Act. We have great candidates who are running, who are concerned about our economy, and are concerned that government was shut down because of a whim on the part of the Republicans, costing us $25 billion to our economy and 0.6% of our GDP growth.

They’re concerned that overwhelmingly the American people support immigration reform, support background checks, support ending discrimination against people in the workplace; all of these kinds of things are the concerns of the American people. Jobs will be the major issue in the campaign, as they always are.

And this is an issue that has to be dealt with, but it doesn’t mean, “Oh, it’s a political issue, so we’re going to run away from it.” No, it’s too valuable for the American people. What is important about it is that the American people are well served, not who gets reelected.

On March 10, 2010, Rep. Pelosi said the following, in a speech to the 2010 Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties…

You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.

But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.

On June 10, 2012, during a luncheon with Opinion Writers, including The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart, Rep. Pelosi tried to explain her now famous remarks,

“In the fall of the year,” Pelosi said today, “the outside groups…were saying ‘it’s about abortion,’ which it never was. ‘It’s about ‘death panels,’’ which it never was. ‘It’s about a job-killer,’ which it creates four million. ‘It’s about increasing the deficit’; well, the main reason to pass it was to decrease the deficit.” Her contention was that the Senate “didn’t have a bill.” And until the Senate produced an actual piece of legislation that could be matched up and debated against what was passed by the House, no one truly knew what would be voted on. “They were still trying to woo the Republicans,” Pelosi said of the Senate leadership and the White House, trying to “get that 60th vote that never was coming. That’s why [there was a] reconciliation [vote]” that required only a simple majority.

“So, that’s why I was saying we have to pass a bill so we can see so that we can show you what it is and what it isn’t,” Pelosi continued. “It is none of these things. It’s not going to be any of these things.” She recognized that her comment was “a good statement to take out of context.” But the minority leader added, “But the fact is, until you have a bill, you can’t really, we can’t really debunk what they’re saying….”

Despite Pelosi’s protestations, time has revealed to be true that Americans’ concerns about the Affordable Care Act, the legislation which was crafted to socialize the American Healthcare System, and which is designed to lead into a Government-run Single Payor National Healthcare System.

Norman Mattoon Thomas, six-time Socialist candidate for president, said in a 1944 speech, that,

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But, under the name of “liberalism,” they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation without knowing how it happened … The Democratic Party has adopted our (Socialist) platform.

Later, in 1961, Future United States President Ronald Reagan said,

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it.

What give me hope, though, is the backlash to the disastrous launch of Obamacare. Those Americans, who may have been supportive of Obamacare, at first, have now seen the reality of this misbegotten piece of legislation staring them in them face. The high premiums and lost insurance policies have been a cold slap in the face to Americans, who were expecting the legislation to be something quite difference due to the lies and manipulation of Obama, his Administration, Pelosi, Reid, and all of their sycophants in Congress.

Now that reality has set in, Obama and Pelosi’s protestations ring hollow with Americans.

There are two actions which are now paramount:

1. Repeal Obamacare fully.

2. Vote anybody who voted for it, out in 2014.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama and Obamacare: Obama Tries to Close Pandora’s Box

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

obamababyYesterday morning, the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, appeared before the American People in a hastily-called Press Conference, is a desperate attempt to undo the disastrous effects of his Signature Legislation, the Affordable Care Act.

Here are excerpts from his prepared statement, courtesy whitehouse.gov:

Already, people who have plans that predate the Affordable Care Act can keep those plans if they haven’t changed. That was already in the law. That’s what’s called a grandfather clause. It was included in the law. Today, we’re going to extend that principle both to people whose plans have changed since the law took effect, and to people who bought plans since the law took effect.

“The bottom line, President Obama said, is that “insurers can extend current plans that would otherwise be canceled into 2014, and Americans whose plans have been canceled can choose to re-enroll in the same kind of plan.”

“So we’re going to do everything we can to help the Americans who’ve received these cancellation notices,” President Obama said. “But there are also 40 million Americans who don’t have health insurance. And I am not going to walk away from 40 million people who have the chance to get health insurance for the first time.”

It took 100 years for us to even get to the point where we could start talking about and implementing a law to make sure everybody has got health insurance. And my pledge to the American people is, is that we’re going to solve the problems that are there, we’re going to get it right, and the Affordable Care Act is going to work for the American people.

Shortly after this Dog & Pony Show was over, the reality of Obama’s promises started to be questioned.

TheBlaze.com is among a lot of others who immediately asked the question…

Does Obama Have Legal Authority to Alter Obamacare, Laws Passed by Congress?

President Barack Obama pauses while speaking about his signature health care law, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2013, in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington. Bowing to pressure, President Barack Obama intends to permit continued sale of individual insurance plans that have been canceled because they failed to meet coverage standards under the health care law, officials said Thursday. (AP/Charles Dharapak)

“The short answer is no,” David Corbin, a professor of politics at King’s College in New York, told TheBlaze.

“However, the way he’s been operating on this bill is that he can make alterations as he goes along,” Corbin said. “And so far, he’s been allowed to get away with it.”

“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States…”

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Historically, the executive branch has not been allowed to alter laws passed by Congress, he said, adding that there is a constitutional argument to be made.

Corbin cited section one, article one of the U.S. Constitution: “‘All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.’”

“The president certainly has some regulatory and prosecutorial discretion in how he executes the law, but he has no legislative power,” Corbin said. “If his actions in this case (waiver, extensions, etc.) amount to him becoming a lawmaker rather than a law executor, they are unconstitutional.”

Though the Constitution is clear that “all legislative powers” belong to Congress, Corbin said it sometimes comes down to how those in power choose to “interpret” the law.

“I’m not sure he will be able to get away with it in this case because I think people are going to understand that if you are going to remove the law of any legal standing by having the enforcement mechanisms or the penalties stripped out, then what is the law?” the professor added.

Appearing on MSNBC on Thursday, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean reportedly questioned if Obama really has the “legal authority to do this” when discussing the proposed change to the law, Fox News’ Bret Baier tweeted.

During a briefing before the presidential press conference, officials reportedly told members of the press that the White House does have the authority to delay enforcement for a year.

“HHS will be using its enforcement discretion to allow for this transition,” the official said, according to the Washington Times. “Enforcement discretion can be used generally in transitions, as well as a bridge towards legislation. This is something that has been used, for example, with the deferred action for childhood arrivals policy, pending immigration reform.”

Here’s Obama’s other problem: What if the State Insurance Commissioners refuse to co-operate?

Like Washington’s State Insurance Commissioner, Mike Kreidler, for example?

Within two hours of President Obama’s news conference announcing the proposed administrative fix for Americans upset by their policy cancellations, Kreidler issued a statement rejecting the proposal.

“I understand that many people are upset by the notices they have recently received from their health plans and they may not need the new benefits [in the Affordable Care Act] today,” he said. “But I have serious concerns about how President Obama’s proposal would be implemented and more significantly, its potential impact on the overall stability of our health insurance market.”

“I do not believe his proposal is a good deal for the state of Washington,” Kreidler’s statement continued. “We will not be allowing insurance companies to extend their policies.”

Kreidler said his office estimated that 290,000 people in Washington will need to buy new coverage for 2014 and that at least half of them will qualify for a premium subsidy if they purchase a plan through the state’s online insurance exchange, Washington Healthplanfinder.

“I encourage anyone who is shopping for new health plans — whether you’ve been uninsured or have received a cancellation notice from your insurer — to look at all of your options,” he said.

I was reading accounts of Obama’s Press Conference at work yesterday. What they revealed was a flailing swimmer who should have stayed in the Kiddie Pool…a discombobulated President, rambling in such a desperate fashion, that it appeared that he was looking for something…anything…to save his Signature Legislature and the hopes of the Democratic Party in both 2014 and 2016.

The problem for Obama and the Dems is: they own this fiasco. Not a single Republican voted for Obamacare in the middle of that dark night.

Hopefully, the Vichy Republicans will not pull defeat from the jaws of victory by proposing their own version of Obamacare, as Senator Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, alluded to yesterday.

If your opponent is digging himself into a hole…stand back and let him finish.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obamacare: Better Health Through Over-Taxation

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

obamadoctor“Let me tell you how it will be, It’s one for you, nineteen for me.” – Taxman, The Beatles

Well, Obama’s wasting no time getting ready to fund his monstrosity known as Obamacare.

Reuters.com has the story:

The Internal Revenue Service has released new rules for investment income taxes on capital gains and dividends earned by high-income individuals that passed Congress as part of the 2010 healthcare reform law.

The 3.8 percent surtax on investment income, meant to help pay for healthcare, goes into effect in 2013. It is the first surtax to be applied to capital gains and dividend income.

The tax affects only individuals with more than $200,000 in modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), and married couples filing jointly with more than $250,000 of MAGI.

The tax applies to a broad range of investment securities ranging from stocks and bonds to commodity securities and specialized derivatives.

The 159 pages of rules spell out when the tax applies to trusts and annuities, as well as to individual securities traders.

Released late on Friday, the new regulations include a 0.9 percent healthcare tax on wages for high-income individuals.

Both sets of rules will be published on Wednesday in the Federal Register.

The proposed rules are effective starting January 1. Before making the rules final, the IRS will take public comments and hold hearings in April.

Together, the two taxes are estimated to raise $317.7 billion over 10 years, according to a Joint Committee on Taxation analysis released in June.

To illustrate when the tax applies, the IRS offered an example of a taxpayer filing as a single individual who makes $180,000 in wage income plus $90,000 from investment income. The individual’s modified adjusted gross income is $270,000.

The 3.8 percent tax applies to the $70,000, and the individual would pay $2,660 in surtaxes, the IRS said.

The IRS plans to release a new form for taxpayers to fill out for this tax when filing 2013 returns.

Here is a brief overview of the timeline for the implementation of Obamacare, from a pdf prepared by the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees on April 2, 2010.

2013

Payments to Primary Care Physicians. Requires that Medicaid payment rates to primary care physicians for furnishing primary care services be no less than 100% of Medicare payment rates in 2013 and 2014.

Administrative Simplification. Health plans must adopt and implement uniform standards and business rules for the electronic exchange of health information to reduce paperwork and administrative burdens and costs.

Encouraging Provider Collaboration. Establishes a national pilot program on payment bundling

Limiting Health Flexible Savings Account Contributions.

Increased Threshold for Claiming Itemized Deduction for Medical Expenses.

Medical device excise tax. Establishes a 2.3 percent excise tax on the sale of a medical device by a manufacturer or importer.

Limiting Executive Compensation.

Fee for patient-centered outcomes research.

2014

Reforming Health Insurance Regulations.

Eliminating Annual Limits.

Ensuring Coverage for Individuals Participating in Clinical Trials.

Establishing Health Insurance Exchanges. Opens health insurance Exchanges in each State to individuals and small employers. This new venue will enable people to comparison shop for standardized health packages.

Local hack politicians are lining up for jobs right now.

Providing Health Care Tax Credits.

Ensuring Choice through Free Choice Vouchers.

Promoting Individual Responsibility.

Small Business Tax Credit.

Quality Reporting for Certain Providers.

Health Insurance Provider Fee. Imposes an annual, non-deductible fee on the health insurance sector allocated across the industry according to market share.

2015

Continuing Innovation and Lower Health Costs. Establishes an Independent Payment Advisory Board to develop and submit proposals to Congress and the private sector aimed at extending the solvency of Medicare, lowering health care costs, improving health outcomes for patients, promoting quality and efficiency, and expanding access to evidence-based care.

Paying Physicians Based on Value Not Volume. Creates a physician value-based payment program to promote increased quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries.

2018

Excise tax on high cost employer-provided health plans becomes effective. Tax is on the cost of coverage in excess of $27,500 (family coverage) and $10,200 (single coverage), increased to $30,950 (family) and $11,850

As I noted earlier,the “Healthcare Exchanges” are supposed to be in place by 2012. Several states are refusing to co-operate. However, if they don’t, the president plans on punishing them,  as newsmax.com reports:

Residents of states that refuse to set up health insurance exchanges under Obamacare are set to be hit with higher premiums under new rules announced by the Health and Human Services Department.

Insurance companies will be charged 3.5 percent of any premiums they sell through the federal exchanges, the department announced Friday.

And insurers are likely to pass that surcharge on to clients, leading to higher premiums.

The only states to be affected are those that refuse to set up their own exchanges because of opposition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. They are almost certain to be those under Republican control. In those states, HHS will set up the exchanges.

GOP governors are taking a hard line against implementing any part of the healthcare law, which will mean insurers in their states will need to pay the monthly fee, The Hill reports.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announced this week that her state will not set up an exchange, calling the proposal “too expensive and too risky.” Her decision brings the total of states refusing to comply with the act’s provisions up to 17.

The exchanges were supposed to be up and running in all states by 2014. HHS plans to charge insurers 3.5 percent of the premiums for each plan they sell through the federal exchange.

There are still some states that haven’t yet decided whether to set up their own exchanges or use the federal exchange option, so it’s not yet known how much money the HHS will collect from insurance companies. In addition, HHS said it might change the user fees later on as more people enroll through the exchanges.

But exchanges that don’t attract enough insurers may make the companies carry larger percentages of unhealthy and thus expensive, patients, making them appeal even less to customers.

Why didn’t Obama and his minions try capitalism, instead of Marxism, as a solution for the high price of Health Insurance? All they had to do was rule that all Health Insurance Companies have to be available for consumers to purchase in every state.

Yes, Scooter. All 57 of them.

That would force them to lower their rates, in order to be competitive.

Affordable health insurance mandated by the free market system.

Imagine that. Sounds like an American Solution, doesn’t it?

Capitalism works. Marxism never has.

Until He Comes,

KJ