Bombshell: Federal judge suddenly green-lights lawsuit that could stop Obamacare in its tracks
A federal judge on Tuesday refused to dismiss a case that could fatally cripple the Obamacare health insurance law.
The Affordable Care Act forbids the federal government from enforcing the law in any state that opted out of setting up its own health care exchange, according to a group of small businesses whose lawsuit got a key hearing Monday in federal court.
The Obama administration, according to their lawsuit, has ignored that language in the law, enforcing all of its provisions even in states where the federal government is operating the insurance marketplaces on the error-plagued Healthcare.gov website.
Thirty-six states chose not to set up their exchanges, a move that effectively froze Washington, D.C. out of the authority to pay subsidies and other pot-sweeteners to convince citizens in those states to buy medical insurance.
But the IRS overstepped its authority by paying subsidies in those states anyway, say the businesses and their lawyers....
CBS: Healthcare.gov “dramatically underestimates costs” in new estimate feature
...Industry analysts, such as Jonathan Wu, point to how the website lumps people only into two broad categories: “49 or under” and “50 or older.”
Wu said it’s “incredibly misleading for people that are trying to get a sense of what they’re paying.”
Prices for everyone in the 49-or-under group are based on what a 27-year-old would pay. In the 50-or-older group, prices are based on what a 50-year-old would pay.
CBS News ran the numbers for a 48-year-old in Charlotte, N.C., ineligible for subsidies. According to HealthCare.gov, she would pay $231 a month, but the actual plan on BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina’s website costs $360, more than a 50 percent increase. The difference: BlueCross BlueShield requests your birthday before providing more accurate estimates.
The numbers for older Americans are even more striking. A 62-year-old in Charlotte looking for the same basic plan would get a price estimate on the government website of $394. The actual price is $634....
Revealed: How GPs are paid £50 bonus to put elderly on 'death lists'
GPs have been paid bonuses to put elderly patients on controversial ‘death lists’ in an attempt to save the NHS money by cutting the number of people who die in hospital.
They have been given £50 a time to draw up ‘end-of-life advanced care plans’ for patients they predict will pass away within a year.
The payments are designed to encourage doctors to start talking about death with elderly and seriously ill patients and to keep a record of where, ideally, they would like to die. ...
Thousands Of Consumers Get Insurance Cancellation Notices Due To Health Law Changes
...Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent....
'The Site Was Very Easy to Use'
..."The site was very easy to use," declares Deborah Lielasus, a self-employed quinquagenarian New Hampshire woman, who, according to the YouTube blurb, "will save hundreds of dollars each month" and "has better coverage, lower deductibles, and lower co-pays."
Did she really find the site "very easy to use"? We suppose this is subjective, and maybe she has preternatural patience or is some kind of computer savant. But National Review's Sterling Beard managed to track her down, and she "said it actually took her three days to enroll." The ad would be deceptive if it weren't so unbelievable to begin with.
There's another problem here: Lielasus is purportedly getting a free lunch: better coverage with lower premiums, deductibles and copayments than someone with her risk profile would be able to negotiate absent price controls. But people can get a free lunch only if other people pick up the tab. The technical term for those other people is "suckers." In the case of ObamaCare the suckers are young and healthy people who normally would be cheaper to insure. ...
...According to NR's Beard, however, McNaughton is not a typical 22-year-old. He has served as "the webmaster of his local Democratic party," as "the chairman of the Young Democrats of Lee County and as a delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention." In other words, he has a political motivation to participate in ObamaCare. If he's a sucker, he's like the sucker who joins a religious cult and gives it all his money.
But it turns out he isn't a sucker after all, for his lunch is, if not free, at least highly discounted. He says in the ad: "Getting coverage this good at this price, I'm thrilled." Beard reports McNaughton is receiving a $200-a-month subsidy from taxpayers on a $270 insurance plan. His premium may be enough to balance out some older person's price-controlled one, but it's paid for in part with money borrowed from the Chinese....
Obamacare seeks to segregate patients, doctors by race
...Obamacare’s spectacular flop of a rollout distracts from its crude calculus that encourages the allocation of healthcare resources along racial lines and a doctor-patient system splintered into ethnicities.
While the 2010 Patient Protecion and Affordable Care Act’s language on diversity sounds innocuous, a review of the frankly separatist thinking of the law’s ardent supporters indicates Obamacare is aiming for a health care system that puts political correctness above the struggle against illness and death....
