Three million seniors losing their prescription drug coverage, thanks to ObamaCare
Didn’t President Kick#ss tell us ad nauseum last year that if you liked your coverage and your doctor, you could keep them? Yeah, that was total bovine feces (but you already knew that). Add this to the growing list of Pelosi’s “Things we’ll find out after passing the bill”:
More than 3 million seniors may have to switch their Medicare prescription plan next year, even if they’re perfectly happy with it, thanks to an attempt by the government to simplify their lives.
The policy change could turn into a hassle for seniors who hadn’t intended to switch plans during Medicare’s open enrollment season this fall.
And it risks undercutting President Barack Obama’s promise that people who like their health care plans can keep them.
A new analysis by a leading private research firm estimates that more than 3 million beneficiaries will see their current drug plan eliminated as Medicare tries to winnow down duplicative and confusing coverage, in order to offer consumers more meaningful choices. Instead of 40 or more plans in each state, beneficiaries would pick from 30 or so.
“As a result of this policy, there are going to be fewer plans offered in 2011,” said Bonnie Washington, a senior analyst with Avalere Health, which produced the study. “There is still going to be robust choice for beneficiaries, but those who have to change plans could experience some disruption and inconvenience.”
That’s a loss of 25% of choices…in the first year of ObamaCare! But hey, I’m sure there won’t be any more of those plans disappearing after that, right?
Baucus: Nah, we didn’t read the ObamaCare bill. We hired “experts” to write the bill.
When he’s not busy trying to procure a U.S. Attorney job for his mistress, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) likes to spend his time passing socialist pieces of garbage that wreck our economy and health care system…all without even reading it. Details:
Judy Matott asked Baucus if he would work to improve Libby’s image, and then asked him and Sebelius, “if either of you read the health care bill before it was passed and if not, that is the most despicable, irresponsible thing.”
Baucus replied that if Libby residents assembled an economic development plan, he would do what he could to help, and he took credit for “essentially” writing the health care bill that passed the Senate.
“I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill. You know why? It’s statutory language,” Baucus said. “We hire experts.”
Exit question: Did these “experts” come from Canada, whose care is so good that their leaders come to the U.S. for their life-saving surgeries?
You MUST be kidding me! DOJ to hire “Ebonics expert”?
And the left wants us to keep them in charge for this?
The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.
A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media”
The DEA’s need for full-time linguists specializing in Ebonics is detailed in bid documents related to the agency’s mid-May issuance of a request for proposal (RFP) covering the provision of as many as 2100 linguists for the drug agency’s various field offices. Answers to the proposal were due from contractors on July 29.
Sometimes, the absurdity is just so glaring that there isn’t much else to say.
Exit question: Are there really linguists who specialize in Ebonics?
Philly requiring bloggers to obtain $300 business license
Note to self: “Don’t move to Philly! Not only will you be greeted by a Black Panther wanting to club you and your children to death on Election Day, you will have to pony up $300 to keep writing Crush Liberalism.”
Parody: “Money for Nothin’, Spread the Wealth”
Dire Straits? How about Dem Strait:
Dems’ new message for midterms: OK, we lied about ObamaCare’s cost savings
But you must re-elect them so that they can…um…fix the takeover of healthcare that they forced down the public’s throat against massive public opposition and of which they seriously (intentionally?) underestimated the cost and never actually read.
Liberals: moving the goalposts when necessary. Excerpt:
Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit and instead stressing a promise to “improve it.”
The messaging shift was circulated this afternoon on a conference call and PowerPoint presentation organized by Families USA — one of the central groups in the push for the initial legislation. The call was led by a staffer for the Herndon Alliance, which includes leading labor groups and other health care allies. It was based on polling from three top Democratic pollsters: John Anzalone, Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg.
The confidential presentation, available in full here and provided to POLITICO by a source on the call, suggests that Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. Instead, the presentation is designed to win over a skeptical public, and to defend the legislation — and in particular the individual mandate — from a push for repeal.
…
The presentation’s final page of “Don’ts” counsels against claiming “the law will reduce costs and deficit.”
The presentation advises, instead, sales pitches that play on personal narratives and promises to change the legislation.
Good luck with that message in November. “Yeah, we know you didn’t want it, and we shamelessly lied about its costs and negative impacts while dismissing your concerns. So how’s about putting us back in charge, huh?”
Next time you hear a leftist try to argue that ObamaCare is going to reduce costs, mention to the little pinko that not even the Democrats are making that argument anymore. They knew it was a lie when they jammed down our pieholes, and they’re now not even going to pretend anymore.
Another ObamaCare consequence: Some insurance companies no longer writing policies to cover kids
Yet another instance in a growing line of examples where Pelosi’s “We have to pass it to see what’s in it” warning was warranted. Details:
Some major health insurance companies will no longer issue certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday.
Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said several big insurers in his state will stop issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland said a couple of local insurers in her state are doing likewise.
In Florida, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Aetna, and Golden Rule — a subsidiary of UnitedHealthcare — notified the insurance commissioner that they will stop issuing individual policies for children, said Jack McDermott, a spokesman for McCarty.
…
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida issues about 9,000 to 10,000 new policies a year that only cover children. Vice president Randy Kammer said the company’s experts calculated that guaranteeing coverage for children could raise premiums for other individual policy holders by as much as 20 percent.“We believe that the majority of people who would buy this policy were going to use it immediately, probably for high cost claims,” said Kammer. “Guaranteed issue means you could technically buy it on the way to the hospital.”
Kammer said the company did not make the decision lightly. “We were looking at all our other individual policy holders who pay a lot for coverage, and we didn’t think it was fair to given them that kind of an increase to benefit a small population that receives a greater advantage than they do,” she said.
Turns out that when you make businesses incur signifantly higher costs, businesses always look for ways to avoid getting socked with said skyrocketing costs. Huh. Go figure. Who knew, right?
Exit question: Why do Democrats hate children?
Dems: The party of “No”
Hypocrisy, courtesy of the Washington Examiner:
It’s official: Obama sucks at running car companies
Considering that ObaMao hasn’t ever run so much as a lemonade stand, this comes as no real surprise:
President Obama’s auto task force pressed General Motors and Chrysler to close scores of dealerships without adequately considering the jobs that would be lost or having a firm idea of the cost savings that would be achieved, an audit of the process has concluded.
The report by Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program of the Treasury Department, said both carmakers needed to shut down some underperforming dealerships. But it questioned whether the cuts should have been made so quickly, particularly during a recession. The report, released on Sunday, estimated that tens of thousands of jobs were lost as a result.
“It is not at all clear that the greatly accelerated pace of the dealership closings during one of the most severe economic downturns in our nation’s history was either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the nation’s economic recovery,” the report said.
What kind of authority figures did President Kicking-Businesses’-#ss appoint? These kinds:
Barack Obama put Steve Rattner in charge of running his auto bailout program, a man who had just as much experience in the auto industry as Obama did: he drove a few cars. Rattner had to make a quick exit after just a few months when it became known that he was the target of a federal probe into questionable activities regarding the New York pension fund — and his replacement had just as much experience in the auto industry as Rattner did.
What was the main entry on Ron Bloom’s resume? He was a union negotiator.
Wow. It’s as if the government doesn’t know anything about business and stuff!
Pelosi’s strategy to retain the House: Hey, let’s run on the super awesome and mega-popular ObamaCare!
From The Hill:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is doubling down on healthcare reform, betting that it will do Democrats more good than harm in November’s elections.
She and her leadership team have seized on new polls that suggest healthcare overhaul’s popularity is rising, and they are urging members of Congress to use this week’s recess to tout the new law.
Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the party leadership have sent lawmakers back to their districts urging them to hold town hall-type meetings to highlight the law’s benefits, in the belief it could help Democrats avoid major losses in November.
Recent polls indicate a slow but steady uptick in the popularity of healthcare reform. (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? – Ed.) Despite Republican hopes that the law’s controversial passage will win them seats this fall, the Democrats’ actions show they still consider the issue a political winner.
If, by “a slow but steady uptick in the popularity of healthcare reform”, they mean “60% of voters favor repeal of ObamaCare”, then yeah…”a slow but steady uptick.”
I mean, we’ve seen over the last several days and weeks stories that (a) businesses are going to drop health care coverage for their employees because paying the fine is cheaper for them; (b) doctors are going to stop taking new Medicare and Medicaid patients, which will swell the size of emergency rooms; (c) taxes on medical supply companies are going up, which will be passed on to consumers; (d) high risk patients not being picked up in the new high risk pool; etc., etc., etc. So yeah, why wouldn’t there be an “uptick in the popularity of health care reform”?
Good luck with that strategy in swing districts, San Fran Nan.
Quote of the day, “Pelosi wants full unemployment in America” edition
If economic stupidity were painful, this wench would be comatose by now. Quote Speaker Botox, regarding federal unemployment compensation:
It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.
Oh. My. Stars. I don’t really need to point out the sheer, unadulterated lunacy of that statement, do I?
Night and Day, “Obama’s feelings on commissions” edition
Candidate Kick#ss in 2008:
Here’s Mr. Obama on September 18, 2008, not long after the economic collapse: “Senator McCain’s first answer to this economic crisis was – get ready for it – a commission. That’s Washington-speak for ‘we’ll get back to you later.’”
“Folks, we don’t need a commission to spend a few years and a lot of taxpayer money to tell us what’s going on in our economy,” he continued. “We don’t need a commission to tell us gas prices are high or that you can’t pay your bills. We don’t need a commission to tell us you’re losing your jobs. We don’t need a commission to study this crisis, we need a President who will solve it – and that’s the kind of President I intend to be.”
President Kick#ss in 2010:
President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is meeting today as part of its efforts to craft recommendations by December on how best to address America’s red-ink problem.
Mr. Obama established the commission in February, saying debt and deficits can “hobble our economy” and “saddle every child in America with an intolerable burden.”
A burden for which he and his party are mostly responsible.
Obama’s “oil spill commission” has technical experience in a lot of areas…other than oil spills
Each passing day, this country of ours suffers greatly by the massively incompetent Carter clone occupying the Oval Office. Details:
The panel appointed by President Barack Obama to investigate the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is short on technical expertise but long on talking publicly about “America’s addiction to oil.” One member has blogged about it regularly.
Only one of the seven commissioners, the dean of Harvard’s engineering and applied sciences school, has a prominent engineering background — but it’s in optics and physics. Another is an environmental scientist with expertise in coastal areas and the after-effects of oil spills. Both are praised by other scientists.
The five other commissioners are experts in policy and management.
The White House said the commission will focus on the government’s “too cozy” relationship with the oil industry. A presidential spokesman said panel members will “consult the best minds and subject matter experts” as they do their work.
…
The commission has yet to meet, yet some panel members had made their views known.Environmental activist Frances Beinecke on May 27 blogged: “We can blame BP for the disaster and we should. We can blame lack of adequate government oversight for the disaster and we should. But in the end, we also must place the blame where it originated: America’s addiction to oil.” And on June 3, May 27, May 22, May 18, May 4, she called for bans on drilling offshore and the Arctic.
“Even as questions persist, there is one thing I know for certain: the Gulf oil spill isn’t just an accident. It’s the result of a failed energy policy,” Beinecke wrote on May 20.
Two other commissioners also have gone public to urge bans on drilling.
…
When the White House announced the commission, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and others made compared it with the one that investigated the 1986 Challenger accident. This one, however, doesn’t have as many technical experts.The 13-member board that looked into the first shuttle accident had seven engineering and aviation experts and three other scientists. The 2003 board that looked into the Columbia shuttle disaster also had more than half of the panel with expertise in engineering and aviation.
Iraj Ersahaghi, who heads the petroleum engineering program the University of Southern California, reviewed the names of oil spill commissioners and asked, “What do they know about petroleum?” (They know two things about petroleum: jack and squat. – Ed.)
But hey, don’t you go thinking he’s some left-wing ideologue who is far more impressed with academic credentials than actual real-world accomplishments, outside the cocoon of the ivory tower idealism detached from reality that academia provides!
Yet another Obama lie: He’s now saying the individual mandate IS a tax!
This guy has accomplished something I didn’t think I would ever see in my lifetime: He’s proven himself to be a bigger liar than Bill Clinton ever was. And in a scant 19 months in office, no less. Bubba, you’re a rank amateur compared to President Kick#ss. Details:
In order to protect the new national health care law from legal challenges, the Obama administration has been forced to argue that the individual mandate represents a tax — even though Obama himself argued the exact opposite while campaigning to pass the legislation.
Late last night, the Obama Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the Florida-based lawsuit against the health care law, arguing that the court lacks jurisdiction and that the State of Florida and fellow plaintiffs haven’t presented a claim for which the court can grant relief. To bolster its case, the DOJ cited the Anti-Injunction Act, which restricts courts from interfering with the government’s ability to collect taxes.
Well, it’s not as if Sir Golfsalot tried doing the Clinton Shuffle on the meaning of the word “tax” or anything. Actually, it’s a lot like that:
OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, no, but…
OBAMA: …what you’re saying is…
STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.
OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we’re going to have an individual mandate or not, but…
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?
OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.
So the DOJ is trying to argue that the individual mandate in the Senate law is a tax, though the Senate law says it’s not a tax but is instead interstate commerce (and thus within the feds’ jurisdiction)? Granted, it IS a tax and forcing citizens to purchase a product in order to legally exist in this country is unconstitutional, as is the fact that if this IS a tax, then the law originated in the Senate, which violates the constitutional stipulation that all tax bills originate in the House. Either way, this is an amazing predicament in which B.O. finds himself: either he lied, or his AG is an incompetent and illiterate boob. Or both.
In closing:
Put another way, the administration is now arguing in federal court that Obama signed a massive middle-class tax increase, in violation of his campaign pledge.
For those of you who were supremely stupid enough to believe Hopenchange when he said he would lower your taxes, I’ve got some swampland I’d like you to see. Sweetheart deal you’ll get. Pinkie-swear.
Stupak: Sure, we can use BP escrow to fund health care!
When he’s not busy flushing his 100% pro-life lifetime rating down the crapper in order to pass ObamaCare, Stupunk likes to pass the time validating conservative criticism that BP’s $20 billion escrow is nothing more than a left-wing slush fund. From RCP (video at link):
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.): “I think we had to have someone say this is where you can go without limiting your criminal liability or civil liability.For instance, the question is brought up, pay for all of the health care for the people in the Gulf. No, but Ithink those who lost their job, then lost their health care would be legitimate.”
Federal bureaucracy stops oil skimmers in Louisiana
Big government…ya gotta love it. Or not.
Eight days ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state’s oil-soaked waters. Today, against the governor’s wishes, those barges sat idle, even as more oil flowed toward the Louisiana shore.
“It’s the most frustrating thing,” the Republican governor said today in Buras, La. “Literally, yesterday morning we found out that they were halting all of these barges.”
Sixteen barges sat stationary today, although they were sucking up thousands of gallons of BP’s oil as recently as Tuesday. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk.
“These barges work. You’ve seen them work. You’ve seen them suck oil out of the water,” said Jindal.
So why stop now?
“The Coast Guard came and shut them down,” Jindal said. “You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, ‘Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil.’”
A Coast Guard representative told ABC News today that it shares the same goal as the governor.
“We are all in this together. The enemy is the oil,” said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dan Lauer.
The Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.
Glad to see the Coast Guard’s got its priorities straight. They finally gave the green light, after more than 24 hours of delay.
With the feds bungling the oil spill response daily (if not hourly), doesn’t it warm the cockles of your heart knowing that they want to manage our health care with the same level of efficiency?
Report says ObamaCare will encourage small businesses not to grow or hire
Oh, goodie! Yet another surprise that we needed to pass ObamaCare to find out what would happen! Details:
A study by the National Center for Policy Analysis shows that tax credits in the new healthcare law could negatively impact small-business hiring decisions.
The new law provides a 50 percent tax credit to companies offering health coverage that have fewer than 10 workers who, on average, earn $25,000 a year. The tax credit is reduced as more employees are added to the payroll.
The NCPA study finds the reduction in tax relief to be a cost concern for companies looking to hire additional workers, but operate on slim profit margin yet still provide employee health coverage.
“You wouldn’t think this would have an impact, but at the margins, when they [business owners] decide to hire an extra worker, they’re not only going to be paying that worker’s salary, they’re going to have to absorb the cost of losing the tax credit,” Pamela Villarreal, NCPA Senior Policy Analyst and co-author of the report, told The Hill.
…
After the 13th worker the economics surrounding the credit change, the study says.
For employers with 15 workers, taking on an additional hire will reduce the credit by $1,400. For a company looking to expand from 20 to 21 workers, the credit will shrink by $3,733. And businesses will take a $5,600 reduction on the credit when hiring the 25th worker.
The credit phases out for companies with at least 26 employees.
Bill Rys, tax counsel at the National Federation of Independent Businesses, told The Hill that while demand is the primary driver for hiring decisions, costs related to new hires is a key factor.
“To the extent that a tax credit is related to the benefits that you’re paying your employees, it is going to be a factor in determining what is the cost of the employee,” he said. “The fact that you’re losing a portion of the credit because you brought in a new employee is going to have to factor into the cost of who you’re hiring.”
You know, it’s almost as if liberals were a bunch of drooling economic illiterates with no real comprehension on how things work in the real world! Almost, that is.
Pelosi redefines “entrepreneur”
I cannot wait until this socialist moonbat wench is no longer Speaker of the House. Quoth Speaker Botox:
We see it as an entrepreneurial bill, a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.
Uh…yeah. Just stop working and be a bum. That’s the message we need to be sending, right? Greece just called to say they think that’s a fine idea.
I thought an entrepreneur was someone who assumes a great deal of risk in order to launch a business. Apparently, the economic illiterates in the Democrap Party see losers who sit around and strum a guitar so poorly that no one will pay to hear their pablum, all while freeloading off of society’s producers, as the real entrepreneurs. Such ignorance goes a long way towards explaining their antipathy to real entrepreneurs in this country.
Exit question: Since the Dems already have the lazy good-for-nothing vote locked up, is Pelosi simply rallying the base here?
Obama: Too many information sources a threat to democracy
If only everyone watched MSNBC, then we’d get the straight scoop, right? Hell, if anyone watched MSNBC, it’d be a miracle. But I digress. Details:
US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media.
Obama, who often chides journalists and cable news outlets for obsessing with political horse race coverage rather than serious issues, told a class of graduating university students that education was the key to progress.
“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,” Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.
What? “All kinds of arguments”? Why, perish the thought!
He is right, though, about stuff in the media not “ranking all that high on the truth meter”. In related news, Dan Rather and Mary Mapes were unavailable for comment.
If nothing else, Barry’s good for an unintended chuckle.
“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” Obama said.
iPods, Xboxes, and Playstations are media sources that provide “information”? Oh, come on. I mean, it’s not like Xbox has been unsed for political campaigns or something. Oh, wait…my bad.
Seriously, putting more information out there for our consumption is neither empowering or emancipating? Really? Is that the argument you’re trying to make, you wimpy, whiny, Chicagoland thug?
But wait…there’s even more banality:
He bemoaned the fact that “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,” in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.
“All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”
Yes sir, it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to pooh-pooh blogs, a week after telling a different graduating class to get their info from the inmates running the asylum at the moonbat blog Huffington Post.
Obviously, our light-skinned prez with no Negro dialect (relax, moonbats, those are Harry Reid’s words, not mine) needs to control the 1% of media that the left doesn’t currently control. His thin skin and oversized ego both drive his totalitarian impulses.
Shocker: MA medical device companies laying off workers to pay for ObamaCare tax
You mean businesses won’t eat costs imposed on them by Big Government? Huh. Who knew? I mean, aside from me and everyone who isn’t a functional economic illiterate, who could have seen this coming?
Massachusetts medical-device companies say they’ll cut back on operational costs – and jobs – after a planned 2.3 percent tax on their products is implemented in 2013, according to a new survey.
The Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council, which held its annual meeting yesterday in Boston, said about 90 percent of the 100 medical-device firms said they would reduce costs due to the new tax tucked into the recently passed health-care reform bill.
The tax – imposed to help pay for the massive health-care industry overhaul and expansion – is “of the greatest concern” to a majority of its members, the survey found.
About 70 percent of the survey respondents said future innovation will be hurt by a new federal “physician sunshine bill.” The bill will require medical-device firms to report their marketing expenditures on physicians, and a recently passed gift-ban law in Massachusetts.
About 41 percent of the council’s members said the new health-care bill will help the industry by expanding the number of people getting health-care insurance.
But 42 percent said the new health-care reform bill won’t increase their business, the survey found.
Awesome. Nothing encourages innovation in medical technology quite like taxing the companies that produce said innovation.
Democrats on Obama’s fiscal commission: Hey, how’s about some “pro-growth” tax increases?
Oh. My. (Insert politically correct deity here). Details:
Two immovable facts face Democrats on President Obama’s fiscal commission: They don’t see any way to alleviate the country’s debt without raising taxes, and they know most voters hate the thought of any tax increase.
Leading Democrats on the commission tried during the first week of meetings to finesse their way toward a discussion of what they consider inevitable — by arguing that any tax hikes would be “pro-growth.”
“If we can put forward some practical proposals that control the rate of spending in the future and that raise revenues in a pro-growth way, I think we’ll get a hearing in the Congress,” said Alice Rivlin, a former White House budget director for President Jimmy Carter, who is one of 18 commission members.
The “pro-growth” tax increases can be found on Aisle 9, between the dry water and the sober Kennedys. Pixies that fart calorie-free chocolate are on the next aisle.
The only growth that tax increases spur is the growth of government. Eventually, though, the government runs out of other people’s money. But the more that taxes are put onto society, the more money that exits the hands of the private sector. And for those of you who are economic illiterates or liberals (pardon the redundancy), it is the private sector that fuels the economy, not the federal government.
You know why B.O.’s commission is doing this, don’t you? See, Oprompter promised in 2008 that none of your taxes of any kind would be raised (a promise he has repeatedly violated since then). He’s since tried to be Clintonesque by saying that he was talking about income taxes, not any other kind of taxes (which, of course, is a d#mned lie). By having this “fiscal commission” dedicated to trimming the deficit saying that tax increases are needed (because cutting spending is apparently never an option with the left), President Training Wheels can say “Well, I wasn’t going to raise taxes, but Bush’s economy sucked far worse than I thought, so I’m gonna have to take the advice of this commission and raise your taxes. Sorry about that.” You know, it’s not his idea, but the idea of the “non-partisan” fiscal commission.
How’s that Obama Kool-Aid tasting now, you libfools?
Pic of the day, “Obama stymies growth” edition
Unemployment and underemployment are in double digits these days. Michael Ramirez thinks he knows why:
Yeah, businesses are loathe to increase expenses like salaries when they’re being sodomized by the administration and the leftist Congress in terms of crippling taxes and expensive burdensome regulations. Businesses can be funny that way.
HHS actuaries’ report showing ObamaCare’s crippling costs was sat on until AFTER the vote was held!
Boy, it sure is a good thing we’ve got a media in this country that is entrusted to shine the light of truth on this kind of thing, as opposed to being the dog washers of the Democrats and the administration!
The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.
“The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote,” says an HHS source. “Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think.” (Yeah, that kind of IS the point of such a report. – Ed.)
The analysis, performed by Medicare’s Office of the Actuary, which in the past has been identified as a “nonpolitical” office, set off alarm bells when submitted. “We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff,” says the HHS staffer, “and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary’s office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report.”
Link to the report here (PDF file).
Liberals are impervious to facts, of course, so they didn’t need such a report giving them grief. A handful of Lap Dog Dems supported the bill under the bovine feces guise that the bill reduced costs and the deficit (parroting Oprompter’s talking points), and had this report seen the light of day before the vote, they would have had to look for a different excuse. Sure, they would have settled on a new excuse anyway, but they would have had a devil of a time explaining to their constituents why making health care and health insurance more expensive was a good thing. Why, it’s as if they had their minds made up in advance or something!
Quote of the day, “drunken sailor” edition
Arguably the best letter to the editor of all time! Screen cap:
NYT: Now that ObamaCare is law, how about we tell you the bad side effects?
Would’ve been nice for the Old Gray Hag to inform her remaining readers of this stuff before they cheerleaded the bill to passage, no? Excerpts:
New York’s insurance system has been a working laboratory for the core provision of the new federal health care law — insurance even for those who are already sick and facing huge medical bills — and an expensive lesson in unplanned consequences. Premiums for individual and small group policies have risen so high that state officials and patients’ advocates say that New York’s extensive insurance safety net for people like Ms. Welles is falling apart.
The problem stems in part from the state’s high medical costs and in part from its stringent requirements for insurance companies in the individual and small group market. In 1993, motivated by stories of suffering AIDS patients, the state became one of the first to require insurers to extend individual or small group coverage to anyone with pre-existing illnesses.
New York also became one of the few states that require insurers within each region of the state to charge the same rates for the same benefits, regardless of whether people are old or young, male or female, smokers or nonsmokers, high risk or low risk.
You mean charging everyone the exact same rates for different health needs, and requiring insurance companies to endure the heavy cost of covering someone with a pre-existing condition, results in staggeringly high rate increases? Go figure.
Healthy people, in effect, began to subsidize people who needed more health care. The healthier customers soon discovered that the high premiums were not worth it and dropped out of the plans. The pool of insured people shrank to the point where many of them had high health care needs. Without healthier people to spread the risk, their premiums skyrocketed, a phenomenon known in the trade as the “adverse selection death spiral.”
…
The new federal health care law tries to avoid the death spiral (yeah, right! – Ed.) by requiring everyone to have insurance and penalizing those who do not, as well as offering subsidies to low-income customers. But analysts say that provision could prove meaningless if the government does not vigorously enforce the penalties, as insurance companies fear, or if too many people decide it is cheaper to pay the penalty and opt out.Under the federal law, those who refuse coverage will have to pay an annual penalty of $695 per person, up to $2,085 per family, or 2.5 percent of their household income, whichever is greater. The penalty will be phased in from 2014 to 2016.
We’ve been saying that since the beginning. I am rarely sick, averaging a trip to see the doctor for anything other than an annual physical exam about once every 3 – 4 years. If my premiums get jacked up, I’m going to drop my health insurance. I’ll pay any penalties, which would necessarily be lower than my premiums, until I get really sick…at which point I’ll go buy insurance and the companies can’t tell me “No”, thus raising everyone’s rates. Once everyone else’s rates increase, then many of them will begin dropping their coverage, too, leaving fewer people in the pool and thus raising the rates on the saps who are still paying for their coverage.
This “premium increases – customer losses – premium increases” cycle will ultimately result in insurance companies going belly-up, i.e. the “death spiral.” That is the goal of the left, despite their assertions to the contrary. Once insurance companies all go out of business, then the feds will step in and fill the void with a single-payer government-run health insurance program. Get ready for health care with the efficiency of the DMV and the compassion of the IRS.
The NYT could have educated folks before ObamaCare passed, but obviously, they were too busy trying to get B.O. a signature win on his otherwise worthless presidency. Nope…no liberal media bias!
Congressional rocket scientists stripped themselves of their health insurance when they passed ObamaCare
Remember when San Fran Nan said they needed to pass the bill in order to find out what was in it?
Hey, Peloco: how does Obama’s @$$ taste now? Details:
The law apparently bars members of Congress from the federal employees health program, on the assumption that lawmakers should join many of their constituents in getting coverage through new state-based markets known as insurance exchanges.
But the research service found that this provision was written in an imprecise, confusing way, so it is not clear when it takes effect.
The new exchanges do not have to be in operation until 2014. But because of a possible “drafting error,” the report says, Congress did not specify an effective date for the section excluding lawmakers from the existing program.
Under well-established canons of statutory interpretation, the report said, “a law takes effect on the date of its enactment” unless Congress clearly specifies otherwise. And Congress did not specify any other effective date for this part of the health care law. The law was enacted when President Obama signed it three weeks ago.
In other words, Congress loses their health coverage until the law requires them to join the health insurance exchanges…that don’t exist until 2014. Hey, whatever happened to “If you like your plan, you get to keep your plan?” 
Congress apparently applied as much due diligence vetting this bill as Dan Rather applied to that memo in 2004.
A rhetorical question asked by the author:
The confusion raises the inevitable question: If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?
You know what’s the most stunning aspect of this story? Not that the functional morons in Congress didn’t read the bill and thus missed nuggets like this. No, it’s the fact that the NYT ran this story! What, was Bill Keller on vacation this week or something?
They missed the loophole that allowed kids with pre-existing conditions to be excluded. Then they forgot to include the provision to allow loser adult children to continue mooching off Mom and Dad’s insurance. It seems like each day, the feds are discovering their oversights and incompetence in the bill. But hey, what could possibly go wrong(er)?
Liberal Congresswoman: No, there is no “requirement” that you buy health insurance under ObamaCare
If you’re going to go all out for Chairman O’s health care “reform”, is it too much to ask that you be a little honest about what’s in the friggin’ plan? From CNS News:
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D.-Fla.) is insisting that the new health care law she voted for last month does not mandate that individuals buy health insurance, despite language in the law that plainly says otherwise.
At an April 5 town hall meeting in Fort Lauderdale (see video below), a constituent asked Wasserman Shultz where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandate that individuals buy health insurance. She responded that the new health care law did not require individuals to buy health insurance.
In a written statement to CNSNews.com on Wednesday, her press secretary, Jonathan Beeton, said it was true that the health care law did not mandate that individuals buy health insurance and that Wasserman Schultz stood by her assertion at the townhall meeting.
“We actually have not required in this law that you carry health insurance,” Wasserman Schultz said at the townhall meeting.
“Yes, this is accurate,” Beeton said in his statement to CNSNews.com. “You have a choice of insuring yourself with affordable coverage, or paying an assessment that will offset the burden you place on other insured Americans and taxpayers by not being insured.”
There’s just one little problem with that statement…it’s patently and provably false:
The actual law she voted for says otherwise. It contains a requirement that each person have health insurance, and assesses a penalty if they do not.
The bill amends the Internal Revenue Code, the nation’s tax law, adding a section entitled, “Requirement to maintain minimum essential coverage,” section 5000A.
“Subtitle D of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by adding at the end the following new chapter: ‘‘CHAPTER 48—MAINTENANCE OF MINIMUM ESSENTIAL COVERAGE ‘‘Sec. 5000A. Requirement to maintain minimum essential coverage.”Contrary to Rep. Wasserman Schultz’s claim, this section of the law requires that every individual certify to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that they have a government-approved level of health insurance coverage.
“REQUIREMENT TO MAINTAIN MINIMUM ESSENTIAL COVERAGE.—An applicable individual shall for each month beginning after 2013 ensure that the individual, and any dependent of the individual who is an applicable individual, is covered under minimum essential coverage for such month,” the law reads.
Individuals who fail to compy with this “requirement” are assessed a “shared responsibility payment”–a fine collected by the IRS.
“SHARED RESPONSIBILITY PAYMENT.— ‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—If an applicable individual fails to meet the requirement of subsection (a) for 1 or more months during any calendar year beginning after 2013…there is hereby imposed a penalty with respect to the individual in the amount determined under subsection (c).”
But yeah, if you just ignore Webster’s definition of the word “requirement”, and if you just ignore that the word “requirement” is actually used in multiple places in the law, then there is no requirement! Up is down, yes is no, black is white, etc.
But hey, it’s not like she read the bill she voted for, so how could she possibly know what was in it?
Dems to American business: Hey, could you please shut up about how ObamaCare is costing you a fortune
Caterpillar. John Deere. Verizon. Valero. 3M. The list of companies who will be socked with $100+ million tax bills grows every day, thanks to the passage of ObamaCare. These businesses are letting everyone know about the tax hits.
How are the Dems reacting? Why, by trotting these companies before Congress, of course! Details:
Here’s the story: one of the provisions in the new health care law forces companies to treat the current subsidies for retiree health benefits as taxable income. This strikes me as dumb policy; there’s not much point in giving someone a subsidy, and then taxing it back, unless you just like doing extra paperwork. And since the total cost of the subsidy, and any implied tax subsidy, is still less than we pay for an average Medicare Part D beneficiary, we may simply be encouraging companies to dump their retiree benefits and put everyone into Part D, costing us taxpayers extra money.But this is neither here nor there, because Congress already did it. And now a bunch of companies with generous retiree drug benefits have announced that they are taking large charges to reflect the cost of the change in the tax law.Henry Waxman thinks that’s mean, and he’s summoning the heads of those companies to Washington to explain themselves. It’s not clear what they’re supposed to explain. What they did is required by GAAP. And I’ve watched congressional hearings. There’s no chance that four CEO’s are going to explain the accounting code to the fine folks in Congress; explaining how to boil water would challenge the format.…Obviously, Waxman is incensed because this seems to put the lie to the promise that if you like your current plan, nothing will change. But this was never true. Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are basically going to see their generous benefits slashed, retiree drug benefits suddenly cost more and may now be discontinued, and ultimately, more than a few employers will almost certainly find it cheaper to shut down their plans. If Congress didn’t want those things to happen, it should have passed a different law.If Congress thinks that it made the right tradeoffs–or at least, justiiable choices–then our Congressmen should step up and accept responsibility for what they’ve done. At the very least, I think we can ask that they refrain from trying to force companies to join them in denying reality by threatening congressional investigation of any company who dares to notify investors that this thing is going to cost them money.
“Shut up”, he explained.
Los Grandes Nostrils has a lot of gall. American businesses have to use real-world accounting practices, whereas Congress does not. When these businesses inform us as to the actual results of socialized medicine, they are told to keep their cakeholes shut.
Ace thinks the same way I do:
In fact, Waxman doesn’t want an answer to that; what he wants is for companies to hide these new, embarrassing costs illegally, so that Democrats don’t have to answer questions about them. And he figures harassment and the threat of punitive legislative action should be enough to give other companies the hint.
Memo to the Dems: No! They do not have to keep the bad news to themselves! And come November, there are two things that the Dems can do about this: jack and squat.
An amazing analogy regarding ObamaCare
Doctor Zero absolutely nails this one out of the park. Here’s an excerpt, but do yourself a favor (unless you want to suck) and read it all:
Imagine a large condominium complex is meeting to consider a package deal with a cable TV company. Over eighty percent of the condo owners have their own satellite dishes, and are quite happy with the service. Some of them don’t bother to watch television at all, preferring to rent movies from Blockbuster or Netflix for entertainment. However, the condominium Board of Directors says they’re getting a lot of complaints from the residents who don’t have satellite dishes, demanding the condo association purchase a cable TV package, and fold its cost into the monthly homeowner dues.
The homeowners already pay extremely high dues, and they’re not happy with the quality of service they receive. They also notice that most of the people clamoring for cable television aren’t even homeowners – they’re renters, so they don’t pay the association fees directly. The condo owners already host regular movie nights at the clubhouse, which also has a well-stocked library, so no one is truly starved for entertainment. Still, the owners feel guilty that anyone has to make do without TV service in their home, so they invite a cable company to give them a sales pitch.
The cable company, BFD Communications, produces an incredibly complicated plan for providing cable television service to the community. The plan is thousands of pages long, and no one even claims to have read the whole thing. They spend the weeks leading up to the big board meeting pestering all of the residents with relentless advertising for their services, covering doorknobs and windshields with brochures. Their presentation at the board meeting is several hours long.
BFD Communications explains that purchasing their service will require a lifetime contract, which can never be broken. The condo residents will be required to deal exclusively with BFD for their entertainment needs – all satellite dishes must go, and even the library will fall under their control. The contract will include funding for a large corporate security force, which will ensure compliance by issuing fines for illegal satellite dishes, or attempts to smuggle rented movies into the development. As this feature of the contract is being explained to the homeowners, a large screen behind the BFD representatives is flashing slogans like “BFD Enhances Competition!” and “BFD Saves You Money!”
The cable TV contract will be fantastically expensive. Curiously, while it is a lifetime contract, the company refuses to discuss the fee schedule beyond the first ten years. An intrepid homeowner studies the contract and discovers the costs double after ten years… and this assessment was prepared by CBO Auditing, a firm which has underestimated the cost of every contract it has ever reviewed. The condo Board rules that only the ten-year projections matter, and the intrepid homeowner is asked to leave the meeting. …
Brilliant! Read it all.
So, you think “health care reform” is all about health care, huh?
Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) lets it slip what those of us on the right have been saying for years: socialized medicine is all about empowering government and controlling people, nothing more.
Dingell-berry was being interviewed by a Detroit talk radio show host about ObamaCare. He says this about his elation of the bill’s passage:
Let me remind you this [Americans allegedly dying because of lack of universal health care] has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.
Dick Durbin (D-IL) took time out from comparing our troops to Pol Pot and Stalin in order to weigh in, too. Joe Scarborough asked him if taxing employers and small businesses in the middle of a recession with double-digit unemployment was a good idea.
Yes, if you’re making over $200,000 a year, you’re going to pay slightly more in taxes. It’s the cost, I think, of having the kind of America we want to have.
The kind of America who wants to have? Big government statist authoritarians, naturally.
So the next time you hear what you think are wingnut paranoid conspiracy theories about how the feds want to control you via your health care, just remember the words of Dingell and Durbin, two Democrats who ushered in this monstrosity. Be sure to thank your local Blue Lap Dog Democrat who voted for it, too, and tell him/her that Dingell has let the mask slip off.
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