Common Core May Suck, But It's Unfairly Blamed for Politicized Public School Lessons
...The specific complaint this time is about fifth-grade English worksheets which ask students to edit sentences including: "Government officials' commands must be obeyed by all" and "An individual's wants are less important than the nation's well-being." ...
Sunday, November 10, 2013
C.I.A. Is Said to Pay AT&T for Call Data
WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. is paying AT&T more than $10 million a year to assist with overseas counterterrorism investigations by exploiting the company’s vast database of phone records, which includes Americans’ international calls, according to government officials.
The cooperation is conducted under a voluntary contract, not under subpoenas or court orders compelling the company to participate, according to the officials. The C.I.A. supplies phone numbers of overseas terrorism suspects, and AT&T searches its database and provides records of calls that may help identify foreign associates, the officials said. The company has a huge archive of data on phone calls, both foreign and domestic, that were handled by its network equipment, not just those of its own customers. ...
... Because the C.I.A. is prohibited from spying on the domestic activities of Americans, the agency imposes privacy safeguards on the program, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because it is classified. Most of the call logs provided by AT&T involve foreign-to-foreign calls, but when the company produces records of international calls with one end in the United States, it does not disclose the identity of the Americans and “masks” several digits of their phone numbers, the officials said.
Still, the agency can refer such masked numbers to the F.B.I., which can issue an administrative subpoena requiring AT&T to provide the uncensored data. The bureau handles any domestic investigation, but sometimes shares with the C.I.A. the information about the American participant in those calls, the officials said. ...
WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. is paying AT&T more than $10 million a year to assist with overseas counterterrorism investigations by exploiting the company’s vast database of phone records, which includes Americans’ international calls, according to government officials.
The cooperation is conducted under a voluntary contract, not under subpoenas or court orders compelling the company to participate, according to the officials. The C.I.A. supplies phone numbers of overseas terrorism suspects, and AT&T searches its database and provides records of calls that may help identify foreign associates, the officials said. The company has a huge archive of data on phone calls, both foreign and domestic, that were handled by its network equipment, not just those of its own customers. ...
... Because the C.I.A. is prohibited from spying on the domestic activities of Americans, the agency imposes privacy safeguards on the program, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because it is classified. Most of the call logs provided by AT&T involve foreign-to-foreign calls, but when the company produces records of international calls with one end in the United States, it does not disclose the identity of the Americans and “masks” several digits of their phone numbers, the officials said.
Still, the agency can refer such masked numbers to the F.B.I., which can issue an administrative subpoena requiring AT&T to provide the uncensored data. The bureau handles any domestic investigation, but sometimes shares with the C.I.A. the information about the American participant in those calls, the officials said. ...
Obama to Cantor in 2010: 8 to 9 million Americans will lose coverage
President Barack Obama admitted in 2010 that 8 or 9 million Americans would lose their existing health insurance plans under Obamacare.
“The 8 to 9 million people that you refer to that might have to change their coverage — keep in mind out of the 300 million Americans that we’re talking about — would be folks who the CBO, Congressional Budget Office, estimates would find the deal in the exchange better,” Obama said to Rep. Eric Cantor at a February 25, 2010 White House summit on health insurance regulation....
Access shock a bigger problem for Obama than lost insurance
...That’s why it isn’t Obama’s repeated pledges that people could keep their health care plans that are likely to cause him the most political headaches. It’s his other promise.
As he formulated it in a 2009 speech to the American Medical Association: “[N]o matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.”
Ultimately, if the tech problems plaguing the rollout of Obamacare are fixed, and Americans are able to obtain affordable health insurance through the law’s new exchanges that allow them to keep their doctors, the current uproar over lost insurance plans will simmer down.
But if Americans also lose their doctors, the political problems confronting the president and Obamacare will only deepen.
In the face of media reporting on the high cost of Obamacare-compliant insurance plans, defenders of the law have typically noted that the Congressional Budget Office expected them to be even more expensive.
But one of the main ways insurers contained costs was by stripping down the number of hospitals and doctors that are covered by their plans....
...In August, Modern Healthcare reported on a McKinsey & Co. analysis of 955 Obamacare plan offerings in 13 states, which found that almost half were of “the narrow-network type,” meaning enrollees' choices were restricted and that they would “have limited or no coverage if they seek care outside their plan network.”
A survey of 409 doctors by the Medical Society of the State of New York found that 44 percent weren’t participating in any health plan offered on the state’s exchange, 33.5 percent weren’t sure if they were participating in any plans and just 6.4 percent said they were participating in more than five plans....
President Barack Obama admitted in 2010 that 8 or 9 million Americans would lose their existing health insurance plans under Obamacare.
“The 8 to 9 million people that you refer to that might have to change their coverage — keep in mind out of the 300 million Americans that we’re talking about — would be folks who the CBO, Congressional Budget Office, estimates would find the deal in the exchange better,” Obama said to Rep. Eric Cantor at a February 25, 2010 White House summit on health insurance regulation....
Access shock a bigger problem for Obama than lost insurance
...That’s why it isn’t Obama’s repeated pledges that people could keep their health care plans that are likely to cause him the most political headaches. It’s his other promise.
As he formulated it in a 2009 speech to the American Medical Association: “[N]o matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.”
Ultimately, if the tech problems plaguing the rollout of Obamacare are fixed, and Americans are able to obtain affordable health insurance through the law’s new exchanges that allow them to keep their doctors, the current uproar over lost insurance plans will simmer down.
But if Americans also lose their doctors, the political problems confronting the president and Obamacare will only deepen.
In the face of media reporting on the high cost of Obamacare-compliant insurance plans, defenders of the law have typically noted that the Congressional Budget Office expected them to be even more expensive.
But one of the main ways insurers contained costs was by stripping down the number of hospitals and doctors that are covered by their plans....
...In August, Modern Healthcare reported on a McKinsey & Co. analysis of 955 Obamacare plan offerings in 13 states, which found that almost half were of “the narrow-network type,” meaning enrollees' choices were restricted and that they would “have limited or no coverage if they seek care outside their plan network.”
A survey of 409 doctors by the Medical Society of the State of New York found that 44 percent weren’t participating in any health plan offered on the state’s exchange, 33.5 percent weren’t sure if they were participating in any plans and just 6.4 percent said they were participating in more than five plans....
Saturday, November 09, 2013
Most US Station All-Time Record Maximum Temperatures Were Set Prior To 1940
There are 863 USHCN stations which have been continuously active since at least 1930. The majority of them recorded their all-time record maximum temperature prior to 1940....
...Since 1999, NASA and NOAA have tried to delete the hot 1930′s from the US temperature record, because it doesn’t suit their agenda....
There are 863 USHCN stations which have been continuously active since at least 1930. The majority of them recorded their all-time record maximum temperature prior to 1940....
...Since 1999, NASA and NOAA have tried to delete the hot 1930′s from the US temperature record, because it doesn’t suit their agenda....
White House Official Website Still Features Video "Debunking" the "Disinformation" That People Will Lose Their Coverage; Features Obama Promising Twice "If You Like Your Insurance, You Can Keep Your Insurance"
...UPDATE: As part of our effort to push back on the misinformation about health insurance reform, we've launched WhiteHouse.gov/realitycheck. It's full of videos and tools you can use to share the facts with your friends and family. Check it out.
Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things."
Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.
In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to "eliminate" private coverage, when the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
For the record, the President has consistently said that if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them. He has even proposed eight consumer protections relating specifically to the health insurance industry....
...UPDATE: As part of our effort to push back on the misinformation about health insurance reform, we've launched WhiteHouse.gov/realitycheck. It's full of videos and tools you can use to share the facts with your friends and family. Check it out.
Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things."
Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.
In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to "eliminate" private coverage, when the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
For the record, the President has consistently said that if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them. He has even proposed eight consumer protections relating specifically to the health insurance industry....
The Drift toward Despotism
...Officers decided that they didn’t like the tight clench of his buttocks, a subject on which New Mexico’s constabulary is apparently expert, and determined that it was because he had illegal drugs secreted therein. So they arrested him, and took him to Gila Regional Medical Center in neighboring Hidalgo County, where Mr. Eckert was forced to undergo two abdominal X-rays, two rectal probes, three enemas, and defecate thrice in front of medical staff and representatives of two law-enforcement agencies, before being sedated and subjected to a colonoscopy — all procedures performed against his will and without a valid warrant.
Alas, Mr. Eckert’s body proved to be a drug-free zone, and so, after twelve hours of detention, he was released. If you’re wondering where his lawyer was during all this, no attorney was present, as police had not charged Mr. Eckert with anything, so they’re apparently free to frolic and gambol up his rectum to their hearts’ content. Deming police chief Brandon Gigante says his officers did everything “by the book.” That’s the problem, in New Mexico and beyond: “the book.”
Getting into the spirit of things, Gila Regional Medical Center subsequently sent Mr. Eckert a bill for $6,000. It appears he had one of what the president calls those “bad apple” plans that doesn’t cover anal rape. Doubtless, under the new regime, Obamacare navigators will be happy to take a trip up your northwest passage free of charge. That’s what it is, by the way: anal rape. The euphemisms with which the state dignifies the process — “cavity search” — are distinctions that exist only in the mind of the perpetrator, not the fellow on the receiving end. Fleet Street’s Daily Mail reports that this is at least the second anal fishing expedition mounted by local authorities. Timothy Young underwent a similar experience after being fingered by the same police dog, Leo, who may not be very good at sniffing drugs but certainly has an eye for a pert bottom. At the time of Mr. Young’s arrest, Leo’s police license had reportedly expired a year-and-a-half earlier, but why get hung up on technicalities?...
...Meanwhile, an unarmed woman was gunned down on the streets of Washington for no apparent crime other than driving too near Barackingham Palace and thereby posing a threat to national security. As disturbing as Miriam Carey’s bullet-riddled body and vehicle were, the public indifference to it is even worse. Ms. Carey does not appear to be guilty of any act other than a panic attack when the heavy-handed and heavier-armed palace guard began yelling at her. ...
...Did I mention she was African American? When a black teen dies in a late-night one-on-one encounter with a fellow citizen on the streets of Sanford, Fla., it’s the biggest thing since Selma. But when a defenseless black woman is gunned down by a posse of robocops in broad daylight on the streets of the capital, the Reverend Jackson and the Reverend Sharpton and all the other bouffed and pampered grievance-mongers are apparently cool with it.
This isn’t very difficult. When you need large numbers of supposedly highly trained elite officers to kill an unarmed woman with a baby, you’re doing it wrong. In perhaps the most repugnant reaction to Ms. Carey’s death, the United States Congress expressed their “gratitude” to the officers who killed her and gave them a standing ovation....
...Officers decided that they didn’t like the tight clench of his buttocks, a subject on which New Mexico’s constabulary is apparently expert, and determined that it was because he had illegal drugs secreted therein. So they arrested him, and took him to Gila Regional Medical Center in neighboring Hidalgo County, where Mr. Eckert was forced to undergo two abdominal X-rays, two rectal probes, three enemas, and defecate thrice in front of medical staff and representatives of two law-enforcement agencies, before being sedated and subjected to a colonoscopy — all procedures performed against his will and without a valid warrant.
Alas, Mr. Eckert’s body proved to be a drug-free zone, and so, after twelve hours of detention, he was released. If you’re wondering where his lawyer was during all this, no attorney was present, as police had not charged Mr. Eckert with anything, so they’re apparently free to frolic and gambol up his rectum to their hearts’ content. Deming police chief Brandon Gigante says his officers did everything “by the book.” That’s the problem, in New Mexico and beyond: “the book.”
Getting into the spirit of things, Gila Regional Medical Center subsequently sent Mr. Eckert a bill for $6,000. It appears he had one of what the president calls those “bad apple” plans that doesn’t cover anal rape. Doubtless, under the new regime, Obamacare navigators will be happy to take a trip up your northwest passage free of charge. That’s what it is, by the way: anal rape. The euphemisms with which the state dignifies the process — “cavity search” — are distinctions that exist only in the mind of the perpetrator, not the fellow on the receiving end. Fleet Street’s Daily Mail reports that this is at least the second anal fishing expedition mounted by local authorities. Timothy Young underwent a similar experience after being fingered by the same police dog, Leo, who may not be very good at sniffing drugs but certainly has an eye for a pert bottom. At the time of Mr. Young’s arrest, Leo’s police license had reportedly expired a year-and-a-half earlier, but why get hung up on technicalities?...
...Meanwhile, an unarmed woman was gunned down on the streets of Washington for no apparent crime other than driving too near Barackingham Palace and thereby posing a threat to national security. As disturbing as Miriam Carey’s bullet-riddled body and vehicle were, the public indifference to it is even worse. Ms. Carey does not appear to be guilty of any act other than a panic attack when the heavy-handed and heavier-armed palace guard began yelling at her. ...
...Did I mention she was African American? When a black teen dies in a late-night one-on-one encounter with a fellow citizen on the streets of Sanford, Fla., it’s the biggest thing since Selma. But when a defenseless black woman is gunned down by a posse of robocops in broad daylight on the streets of the capital, the Reverend Jackson and the Reverend Sharpton and all the other bouffed and pampered grievance-mongers are apparently cool with it.
This isn’t very difficult. When you need large numbers of supposedly highly trained elite officers to kill an unarmed woman with a baby, you’re doing it wrong. In perhaps the most repugnant reaction to Ms. Carey’s death, the United States Congress expressed their “gratitude” to the officers who killed her and gave them a standing ovation....
Seniors lose insurance and doctors under Obamacare
Retired chemist Edward Schokowitz was incredulous when he received a letter from Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey early last month saying his Medicare Advantage Plan, which had no premium, would be eliminated next year.
“They took all the senior citizens and threw us out of the plan. They now want to give us the same plan for $153 [per month],” he told the Daily Caller. “The President said you can’t be kicked out of your plan. He lies.”
Schokowitz is one of many Medicare beneficiaries now learning that — like Americans who buy insurance on the individual market — they are losing their insurance, and in some cases their doctors, under Obamacare....
Retired chemist Edward Schokowitz was incredulous when he received a letter from Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey early last month saying his Medicare Advantage Plan, which had no premium, would be eliminated next year.
“They took all the senior citizens and threw us out of the plan. They now want to give us the same plan for $153 [per month],” he told the Daily Caller. “The President said you can’t be kicked out of your plan. He lies.”
Schokowitz is one of many Medicare beneficiaries now learning that — like Americans who buy insurance on the individual market — they are losing their insurance, and in some cases their doctors, under Obamacare....
Global warming 'pause' may last for 20 more years and Arctic sea ice has already started to recover
Study says warmer temperatures are largely due to natural 300-year cycles
Actual increase in last 17 years lower than almost every prediction
Scientists likened continuing pause to a Mexican wave in a stadium
The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover, according to new research.
A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics – by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt – amounts to a stunning challenge to climate science orthodoxy.
Not only does it explain the unexpected pause, it suggests that the scientific majority – whose views are represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases. ...
Study says warmer temperatures are largely due to natural 300-year cycles
Actual increase in last 17 years lower than almost every prediction
Scientists likened continuing pause to a Mexican wave in a stadium
The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover, according to new research.
A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics – by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt – amounts to a stunning challenge to climate science orthodoxy.
Not only does it explain the unexpected pause, it suggests that the scientific majority – whose views are represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases. ...
Health Consumers Finding Out They Were Sold a Lemon
...U.S. cost-sharing is actually low, by international standards; just 23 percent of our private health spending comes from out-of-pocket expenditures by the consumers of health care. We like being insulated from costs, and we’re rich enough to demand it. Assuming that the Cadillac tax goes into effect (though I’m still sort of skeptical), a whole lot of those in the 80 percent category are going to lose a plan they liked because the government made it too expensive for companies to keep delivering it. Yes, of course, companies already cancel plans quite frequently. But these cancellations are going to happen all at once, because the law demanded it. ...
...In this, read the future of U.S. policy-making. Not just because Obamacare means that we can now join the rest of the “civilized” world in spending most of our political energy quarreling about the health-care system, but also because we have reached the end of the era when you can have a policy that’s mostly benefits. Social Security, Medicare, Medicare Part D -- these programs gave people a new benefit, with very little taken away from them. The same can be said about Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. But the rest of the program -- the part that took up most of the legislation and legislative energy -- tries to remake the benefits that the majority of the country is already enjoying. And so far, they’re not enjoying it.
...U.S. cost-sharing is actually low, by international standards; just 23 percent of our private health spending comes from out-of-pocket expenditures by the consumers of health care. We like being insulated from costs, and we’re rich enough to demand it. Assuming that the Cadillac tax goes into effect (though I’m still sort of skeptical), a whole lot of those in the 80 percent category are going to lose a plan they liked because the government made it too expensive for companies to keep delivering it. Yes, of course, companies already cancel plans quite frequently. But these cancellations are going to happen all at once, because the law demanded it. ...
...In this, read the future of U.S. policy-making. Not just because Obamacare means that we can now join the rest of the “civilized” world in spending most of our political energy quarreling about the health-care system, but also because we have reached the end of the era when you can have a policy that’s mostly benefits. Social Security, Medicare, Medicare Part D -- these programs gave people a new benefit, with very little taken away from them. The same can be said about Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. But the rest of the program -- the part that took up most of the legislation and legislative energy -- tries to remake the benefits that the majority of the country is already enjoying. And so far, they’re not enjoying it.
Is The Tea Party Really All About Alger Hiss?
...But Professor Sunstein does have a point. The Hiss case was not a cause of the Tea Party, or even of the anti-intellectual tradition in American politics that Richard Hofstader analyzed in the early 1960s. It was, however, a prominent manifestation of the class snobbery and intolerance that so often shapes elite liberal responses to political events and that so frequently fills so many Americans with loathing and disgust.
For a generation after Alger Hiss was convicted on two counts of perjury, American liberals went on to defend him as a plumed knight and a martyr. They slimed his accusers as knuckle dragging know-nothings and McCarthyite enemies of freedom. They never forgave Richard Nixon for helping Whittaker Chambers. As the evidence against Hiss mounted, they fought a long rear-guard defense. ...
...After decades of vicious invective and bile-spewing, liberals find the whole Hiss subject dull and don’t want to think about the case anymore—but they just hate it when other people don’t appreciate their selfless dedication to the public good....
...But Professor Sunstein does have a point. The Hiss case was not a cause of the Tea Party, or even of the anti-intellectual tradition in American politics that Richard Hofstader analyzed in the early 1960s. It was, however, a prominent manifestation of the class snobbery and intolerance that so often shapes elite liberal responses to political events and that so frequently fills so many Americans with loathing and disgust.
For a generation after Alger Hiss was convicted on two counts of perjury, American liberals went on to defend him as a plumed knight and a martyr. They slimed his accusers as knuckle dragging know-nothings and McCarthyite enemies of freedom. They never forgave Richard Nixon for helping Whittaker Chambers. As the evidence against Hiss mounted, they fought a long rear-guard defense. ...
...After decades of vicious invective and bile-spewing, liberals find the whole Hiss subject dull and don’t want to think about the case anymore—but they just hate it when other people don’t appreciate their selfless dedication to the public good....
Journalists Receive Specialized Training From Group Led by Former Health Adviser to the President
As the month of October has rolled on and stories regarding the train wreck that is Obamacare mount, one has to wonder when the President's media allies will come to the rescue and skew reality on health care reporting.
The answer may be ... now.
The Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) is once again teaming up with a private U.S. foundation known as the Commonwealth Fund. The Fund, a self-described ‘progressive’ organization, is currently led by David Blumenthal, former senior health adviser to the Obama campaign. The group makes little to no secret of their support for Obama's universal health care plan.
The Commonwealth Fund's relationship with an organization that deals with supposedly objective journalists is a rather cozy one, offering specialized teletraining to reporters at the SABEW, as well as thousands of dollars in grants for meetings designed to train reporters on how to properly cover the Affordable Care Act....
Report: Is Big Labor about to get some of its doggedly sought-after ObamaCare relief after all?
...Weeks after denying labor’s request to give union members access to health-law subsidies, the Obama administration is signaling it intends to exempt some union plans from one of the law’s substantial taxes.
Buried in rules issued last week is the disclosure that the administration will propose exempting “certain self-insured, self-administered plans” from the law’s temporary reinsurance fee in 2015 and 2016.
That’s a description that applies to many Taft-Hartley union plans acting as their own insurance company and claims processor, said Edward Fensholt, a senior vice president at Lockton Cos., a large insurance broker....
You Also Can't Keep Your Doctor
...My grievance is not political; all my energies are directed to enjoying life and staying alive, and I have no time for politics. For almost seven years I have fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2% after diagnosis. I am a determined fighter and extremely lucky. But this luck may have just run out: My affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.
My choice is to get coverage through the government health exchange and lose access to my cancer doctors, or pay much more for insurance outside the exchange (the quotes average 40% to 50% more) for the privilege of starting over with an unfamiliar insurance company and impaired benefits. ...
...Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team. The company pays a fair price to the doctors and hospitals, on time, and is responsive to the emergency treatment requirements of late-stage cancer. Its caring people in the claims office have been readily available to talk to me and my providers.
But in January, United Healthcare sent me a letter announcing that they were pulling out of the individual California market. The company suggested I look to Covered California starting in October....
...Before the Affordable Care Act, health-insurance policies could not be sold across state lines; now policies sold on the Affordable Care Act exchanges may not be offered across county lines.
What happened to the president's promise, "You can keep your health plan"? Or to the promise that "You can keep your doctor"? Thanks to the law, I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan. The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician....
As the month of October has rolled on and stories regarding the train wreck that is Obamacare mount, one has to wonder when the President's media allies will come to the rescue and skew reality on health care reporting.
The answer may be ... now.
The Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) is once again teaming up with a private U.S. foundation known as the Commonwealth Fund. The Fund, a self-described ‘progressive’ organization, is currently led by David Blumenthal, former senior health adviser to the Obama campaign. The group makes little to no secret of their support for Obama's universal health care plan.
The Commonwealth Fund's relationship with an organization that deals with supposedly objective journalists is a rather cozy one, offering specialized teletraining to reporters at the SABEW, as well as thousands of dollars in grants for meetings designed to train reporters on how to properly cover the Affordable Care Act....
Report: Is Big Labor about to get some of its doggedly sought-after ObamaCare relief after all?
...Weeks after denying labor’s request to give union members access to health-law subsidies, the Obama administration is signaling it intends to exempt some union plans from one of the law’s substantial taxes.
Buried in rules issued last week is the disclosure that the administration will propose exempting “certain self-insured, self-administered plans” from the law’s temporary reinsurance fee in 2015 and 2016.
That’s a description that applies to many Taft-Hartley union plans acting as their own insurance company and claims processor, said Edward Fensholt, a senior vice president at Lockton Cos., a large insurance broker....
You Also Can't Keep Your Doctor
...My grievance is not political; all my energies are directed to enjoying life and staying alive, and I have no time for politics. For almost seven years I have fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2% after diagnosis. I am a determined fighter and extremely lucky. But this luck may have just run out: My affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.
My choice is to get coverage through the government health exchange and lose access to my cancer doctors, or pay much more for insurance outside the exchange (the quotes average 40% to 50% more) for the privilege of starting over with an unfamiliar insurance company and impaired benefits. ...
...Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team. The company pays a fair price to the doctors and hospitals, on time, and is responsive to the emergency treatment requirements of late-stage cancer. Its caring people in the claims office have been readily available to talk to me and my providers.
But in January, United Healthcare sent me a letter announcing that they were pulling out of the individual California market. The company suggested I look to Covered California starting in October....
...Before the Affordable Care Act, health-insurance policies could not be sold across state lines; now policies sold on the Affordable Care Act exchanges may not be offered across county lines.
What happened to the president's promise, "You can keep your health plan"? Or to the promise that "You can keep your doctor"? Thanks to the law, I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan. The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician....
Media skip disclosure of paid Obamacare shill
MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, who had a closed-door meeting with President Obama in Boston last week to discuss Obamacare, has resurfaced to defend the Affordable Care Act; but neither he nor the media that have given him a platform disclosed the $400,000 he was paid by the Department of Health & Human Services in 2009.
Gruber, who was on CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and was the subject of an article in the New Yorker this past week, has emerged as the go-to-voice for reporters looking for an academic view on Obamacare in recent years.
None of these news organizations disclosed Gruber’s ties to HHS.
Gruber’s HHS contract was not incidental to once paid for “technical assistance in evaluating options for national healthcare reform,” according to a copy of his contract from the General Services Administration. The government paid Gruber a cool $297,600 in that contract, and he made $95,000 from another HHS contract that same year....
Expert: At least 129 million will ‘not be able to keep’ health care plan if Obamacare fully implemented
If Obamacare is fully implemented, 68 percent of Americans with private health insurance will not be able to keep their plan, according to health care economist Christopher Conover.
Conover is a research scholar in the Center for Health Policy & Inequalities Research at Duke University and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In an interview with The Daily Caller, he laid out what he estimates the consequences of Obamacare’s implementation will ultimately be.
“Bottom line: of the 189 million Americans with private health insurance coverage, I estimate that if Obamacare is fully implemented, at least 129 million (68 percent) will not be able to keep their previous health care plan either because they already have lost or will lose that coverage by the end of 2014,” he said in an email. ”But of these, ‘only’ the 18 to 50 million will literally lose coverage, i.e., have their plans entirely taken away. This includes 9.2-15.4 million in the non-group market and 9-35 million in the employer-based market. The rest will retain their old plans but have to pay higher rates for Obamacare-mandated bells and whistles.”...
Obama’s health-care promise that people can keep their insurance comes back to haunt him
...Rather than straightforwardly acknowledging that the regulations will help drive coal plants out of business — and arguing that the damage to the industry will be outweighed by environmental and public health benefits — administration officials have insisted that these are achievable standards that will maintain the nation’s diverse energy mix.
Obama’s reassuring sales pitch on health care represented an effort to avoid the political pitfalls that others encountered when trying to overhaul the system in the past.
In 1994, for instance, the Clinton administration’s effort to insure the 15 percent of the population lacking coverage foundered because of the fear that the proposal generated in the 85 percent who had insurance.
Obama “was sort of overlearning the lessons of Hillary Clinton’s time on health care. What destroyed Hillary Clinton’s plan was that people became convinced they were going to lose their health care,” said Elaine Kamarck, who was a White House aide at the time and now heads the Brookings Institution’s Center for Effective Public Management.
“The one lesson that was learned about messaging was that you had to guarantee people that nothing will change,” she said....
Text: Obama’s Speech on Health Care Reform
...Published: June 15, 2009
So let me begin by saying this: I know that there are millions of Americans who are content with their health care coverage – they like their plan and they value their relationship with their doctor. And that means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what. My view is that health care reform should be guided by a simple principle: fix what's broken and build on what works....
Obama promised on Sept. 26 that people in individual market would keep their plans
...And so today, I want to speak plainly, clearly, honestly, about what it means for you and for the people you care about.
Now, let’s start with the fact that even before the Affordable Care Act fully takes effect, about 85 percent of Americans already have health insurance -– either through their job, or through Medicare, or through the individual market. So if you’re one of these folks, it’s reasonable that you might worry whether health care reform is going to create changes that are a problem for you — especially when you’re bombarded with all sorts of fear-mongering.
So the first thing you need to know is this: If you already have health care, you don’t have to do anything. ...
Obamacare works by chaining Americans to local providers
...The Obamacare-compliant health benefit plans usually only pay for services within each citizen’s local region, said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former government health care official and an expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
Throughout 2014, the small regions will help regulators and executives narrow the variety, quality, number and cost of medical services available to at least three million Americans who already had plans on the individual market and are now being forced into Obamacare.
“They’re very narrow plans, they’re a throwback to the 1980s-style HMOs,” Gottlieb said.
“The majority of plans do not offer care beyond their regions,” said Yevgeniy Feyman, an expert at the New York-based Manhattan Institute.
“What this effectively does is limit the quality of care that some people are able to get,” Feynman said. “The more rural you get, the worse it is going to be,” he added....
MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, who had a closed-door meeting with President Obama in Boston last week to discuss Obamacare, has resurfaced to defend the Affordable Care Act; but neither he nor the media that have given him a platform disclosed the $400,000 he was paid by the Department of Health & Human Services in 2009.
Gruber, who was on CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and was the subject of an article in the New Yorker this past week, has emerged as the go-to-voice for reporters looking for an academic view on Obamacare in recent years.
None of these news organizations disclosed Gruber’s ties to HHS.
Gruber’s HHS contract was not incidental to once paid for “technical assistance in evaluating options for national healthcare reform,” according to a copy of his contract from the General Services Administration. The government paid Gruber a cool $297,600 in that contract, and he made $95,000 from another HHS contract that same year....
Expert: At least 129 million will ‘not be able to keep’ health care plan if Obamacare fully implemented
If Obamacare is fully implemented, 68 percent of Americans with private health insurance will not be able to keep their plan, according to health care economist Christopher Conover.
Conover is a research scholar in the Center for Health Policy & Inequalities Research at Duke University and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In an interview with The Daily Caller, he laid out what he estimates the consequences of Obamacare’s implementation will ultimately be.
“Bottom line: of the 189 million Americans with private health insurance coverage, I estimate that if Obamacare is fully implemented, at least 129 million (68 percent) will not be able to keep their previous health care plan either because they already have lost or will lose that coverage by the end of 2014,” he said in an email. ”But of these, ‘only’ the 18 to 50 million will literally lose coverage, i.e., have their plans entirely taken away. This includes 9.2-15.4 million in the non-group market and 9-35 million in the employer-based market. The rest will retain their old plans but have to pay higher rates for Obamacare-mandated bells and whistles.”...
Obama’s health-care promise that people can keep their insurance comes back to haunt him
...Rather than straightforwardly acknowledging that the regulations will help drive coal plants out of business — and arguing that the damage to the industry will be outweighed by environmental and public health benefits — administration officials have insisted that these are achievable standards that will maintain the nation’s diverse energy mix.
Obama’s reassuring sales pitch on health care represented an effort to avoid the political pitfalls that others encountered when trying to overhaul the system in the past.
In 1994, for instance, the Clinton administration’s effort to insure the 15 percent of the population lacking coverage foundered because of the fear that the proposal generated in the 85 percent who had insurance.
Obama “was sort of overlearning the lessons of Hillary Clinton’s time on health care. What destroyed Hillary Clinton’s plan was that people became convinced they were going to lose their health care,” said Elaine Kamarck, who was a White House aide at the time and now heads the Brookings Institution’s Center for Effective Public Management.
“The one lesson that was learned about messaging was that you had to guarantee people that nothing will change,” she said....
Text: Obama’s Speech on Health Care Reform
...Published: June 15, 2009
So let me begin by saying this: I know that there are millions of Americans who are content with their health care coverage – they like their plan and they value their relationship with their doctor. And that means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what. My view is that health care reform should be guided by a simple principle: fix what's broken and build on what works....
Obama promised on Sept. 26 that people in individual market would keep their plans
...And so today, I want to speak plainly, clearly, honestly, about what it means for you and for the people you care about.
Now, let’s start with the fact that even before the Affordable Care Act fully takes effect, about 85 percent of Americans already have health insurance -– either through their job, or through Medicare, or through the individual market. So if you’re one of these folks, it’s reasonable that you might worry whether health care reform is going to create changes that are a problem for you — especially when you’re bombarded with all sorts of fear-mongering.
So the first thing you need to know is this: If you already have health care, you don’t have to do anything. ...
Obamacare works by chaining Americans to local providers
...The Obamacare-compliant health benefit plans usually only pay for services within each citizen’s local region, said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former government health care official and an expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
Throughout 2014, the small regions will help regulators and executives narrow the variety, quality, number and cost of medical services available to at least three million Americans who already had plans on the individual market and are now being forced into Obamacare.
“They’re very narrow plans, they’re a throwback to the 1980s-style HMOs,” Gottlieb said.
“The majority of plans do not offer care beyond their regions,” said Yevgeniy Feyman, an expert at the New York-based Manhattan Institute.
“What this effectively does is limit the quality of care that some people are able to get,” Feynman said. “The more rural you get, the worse it is going to be,” he added....
Colorado Woman Who Championed Obamacare Loses Insurance Plan
...Wagner and her husband retired early. She was a nurse for 35 years and championed Obamacare, until she received a letter from her insurance company saying it was canceling her policy.
“I was really shocked … all of my hopes were sort of dashed,” Wagner said. “’Oh my gosh President Obama, this is not what we hoped for, it’s not what we were told.’ “
She was shocked further to learn that for the same coverage she would pay 35 percent more and have a higher deductible.
“Our premium for next year is going up to over $1,000 a month for two of us and we’re two fairly healthy individuals,” Wagner said....
...Wagner and her husband retired early. She was a nurse for 35 years and championed Obamacare, until she received a letter from her insurance company saying it was canceling her policy.
“I was really shocked … all of my hopes were sort of dashed,” Wagner said. “’Oh my gosh President Obama, this is not what we hoped for, it’s not what we were told.’ “
She was shocked further to learn that for the same coverage she would pay 35 percent more and have a higher deductible.
“Our premium for next year is going up to over $1,000 a month for two of us and we’re two fairly healthy individuals,” Wagner said....
Sunday, November 03, 2013
Aides Debated Obama Coverage Promise
...One former senior administration official said that as the law was being crafted by the White House and lawmakers, some White House policy advisers objected to the breadth of Mr. Obama’s “keep your plan” promise. They were overruled by political aides, the former official said. The White House said it was unaware of the objections....
...Richard Kirsch, the former national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, which pushed for the 2010 health law, said the words were reassuring—and true—for the vast majority of the people, and so his group never raised concerns about that claim. Adding an asterisk to note that people who had “shoddy insurance” might need to change plans was not practical, he said....
...One former senior administration official said that as the law was being crafted by the White House and lawmakers, some White House policy advisers objected to the breadth of Mr. Obama’s “keep your plan” promise. They were overruled by political aides, the former official said. The White House said it was unaware of the objections....
...Richard Kirsch, the former national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, which pushed for the 2010 health law, said the words were reassuring—and true—for the vast majority of the people, and so his group never raised concerns about that claim. Adding an asterisk to note that people who had “shoddy insurance” might need to change plans was not practical, he said....
Virginia Democrat Calls For Forcing Doctors To Accept Medicare And Medicaid Patients
You would think that when your party is burying a hole that is getting harder and harder to get out of, you wouldn't want to that hole get deeper faster. But here is Kathleen Murphy, Democrat running for the House of Delegates against Barbara Comstock, telling a forum in Great Falls that she believes it should law to force doctors to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients. Forced by government decree, mind you. ...
Policy cancellations, higher premiums add to frustration over Obamacare
...But people across the country are finding out they're losing their existing insurance plans under Obamacare because requirements in the law, such as prenatal and prescription drug coverage, mean their old plans aren't comprehensive enough.
In California, Kaiser Permanente terminated policies for 160,000 people. In Florida, at least 300,000 people are losing coverage.
That includes 56-year-old Dianne Barrette. Last month, she received a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield informing her as of January 2014, she would lose her current plan. Barrette pays $54 a month. The new plan she's being offered would run $591 a month -- 10 times more than what she currently pays.
Barrette said, "What I have right now is what I am happy with and I just want to know why I can't keep what I have. Why do I have to be forced into something else?" ...
Krauthammer: Carney, Obama arguing Americans too stupid to choose for themselves
...It’s precisely why historically centrally-planned economies don’t work. The Soviets had a plan for this much steel and this much concrete and it had no response to what was out there in the market and they overproduced. So, they had a lot of production numbers and they had an economy that was unworkable. Here these people are deciding if you’re a single male in your 60s, you don’t need the maternal care, you don’t — you’ve never smoked dope, you don’t need the substance abuse stuff. You want a catastrophic plan which is very rational, but Jay Carney is saying, you know, ‘you’re too stupid to understand what you want.’ Once you eliminate the market response, which is a lot of people decide I know what I want better than the bureaucrat and they’re eliminating this. That’s the essence of what’s happening and that’s why it’s not going to work....
You would think that when your party is burying a hole that is getting harder and harder to get out of, you wouldn't want to that hole get deeper faster. But here is Kathleen Murphy, Democrat running for the House of Delegates against Barbara Comstock, telling a forum in Great Falls that she believes it should law to force doctors to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients. Forced by government decree, mind you. ...
Policy cancellations, higher premiums add to frustration over Obamacare
...But people across the country are finding out they're losing their existing insurance plans under Obamacare because requirements in the law, such as prenatal and prescription drug coverage, mean their old plans aren't comprehensive enough.
In California, Kaiser Permanente terminated policies for 160,000 people. In Florida, at least 300,000 people are losing coverage.
That includes 56-year-old Dianne Barrette. Last month, she received a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield informing her as of January 2014, she would lose her current plan. Barrette pays $54 a month. The new plan she's being offered would run $591 a month -- 10 times more than what she currently pays.
Barrette said, "What I have right now is what I am happy with and I just want to know why I can't keep what I have. Why do I have to be forced into something else?" ...
Krauthammer: Carney, Obama arguing Americans too stupid to choose for themselves
...It’s precisely why historically centrally-planned economies don’t work. The Soviets had a plan for this much steel and this much concrete and it had no response to what was out there in the market and they overproduced. So, they had a lot of production numbers and they had an economy that was unworkable. Here these people are deciding if you’re a single male in your 60s, you don’t need the maternal care, you don’t — you’ve never smoked dope, you don’t need the substance abuse stuff. You want a catastrophic plan which is very rational, but Jay Carney is saying, you know, ‘you’re too stupid to understand what you want.’ Once you eliminate the market response, which is a lot of people decide I know what I want better than the bureaucrat and they’re eliminating this. That’s the essence of what’s happening and that’s why it’s not going to work....
Why Won’t The GOP Let Us Have a Normal Debate? Why!?
...Well, let’s see if we can lift the veil of mystery. For starters, Obama’s statements were not ”narrowly untrue.” They were broadly, knowingly and entirely untrue. He repeated them over and over again, often straight into the camera. It’s nice that Greg Sargent concedes now that the president “could have been clearer.” But “could have been clearer” implies that he was a little clear about how this would work and just didn’t clarify enough. The truth is the complete opposite. He wasn’t even deliberately unclear. He was clearly dishonest. Obama was stridently deceitful. Seriously, watch this video compilation of Obama’s repeated and vociferous statements about “keeping your plan” and tell me he was just failing to be sufficiently clear that millions of people wouldn’t be able to keep their plans...
...I agree that everyone in wonkland knew it was b.s. But what does it say about the liberal wonks that they either never said so when the legislation was being debated or said so very quietly under their breaths. I’m genuinely curious, did Sargent or his colleagues at the Washington Post report that what Obama was saying — never mind the impression he was leaving — was a lie, or even “narrowly untrue”? I mean did they report it when it might have hurt the law’s chances of passage, not afterwards when all lies are retroactively absolved as the price for social progress.
Indeed, what is so infuriating to many of us is that now that it’s the law of the land, Obamacare supporters act as if all of the lies were no big deal and no serious person believed them anyway. But as anyone can tell you, if Obama had been honest about the trade-offs in his signature piece of legislation, it would never have become his signature piece of legislation. So please, don’t tell me the lies don’t matter....
...And now, when the Democrats’ lies are proving politically inconvenient, we’re told that if Republicans were smart, they’d accept the law and engage in a sober conversation about the very real trade-offs in the law liberals lied about for years.
I’m not arguing that the GOP shouldn’t capitulate to the law simply out of spite (though spite is underrated in this circumstance if you ask me). But I fail to see why Republicans should simply accept that the law is here to stay and get into wonky discussions about how to improve it at the margins at the exact moment the wheels are coming off the bus. The president and the Democrats lied us into a bad law. The Right opposed the law on principle. A single party — the Democrats — own this law in a way that no party has had complete ownership of any major social legislation in a century. They bought this legislation with deceit and the GOP said so....
...Well, let’s see if we can lift the veil of mystery. For starters, Obama’s statements were not ”narrowly untrue.” They were broadly, knowingly and entirely untrue. He repeated them over and over again, often straight into the camera. It’s nice that Greg Sargent concedes now that the president “could have been clearer.” But “could have been clearer” implies that he was a little clear about how this would work and just didn’t clarify enough. The truth is the complete opposite. He wasn’t even deliberately unclear. He was clearly dishonest. Obama was stridently deceitful. Seriously, watch this video compilation of Obama’s repeated and vociferous statements about “keeping your plan” and tell me he was just failing to be sufficiently clear that millions of people wouldn’t be able to keep their plans...
...I agree that everyone in wonkland knew it was b.s. But what does it say about the liberal wonks that they either never said so when the legislation was being debated or said so very quietly under their breaths. I’m genuinely curious, did Sargent or his colleagues at the Washington Post report that what Obama was saying — never mind the impression he was leaving — was a lie, or even “narrowly untrue”? I mean did they report it when it might have hurt the law’s chances of passage, not afterwards when all lies are retroactively absolved as the price for social progress.
Indeed, what is so infuriating to many of us is that now that it’s the law of the land, Obamacare supporters act as if all of the lies were no big deal and no serious person believed them anyway. But as anyone can tell you, if Obama had been honest about the trade-offs in his signature piece of legislation, it would never have become his signature piece of legislation. So please, don’t tell me the lies don’t matter....
...And now, when the Democrats’ lies are proving politically inconvenient, we’re told that if Republicans were smart, they’d accept the law and engage in a sober conversation about the very real trade-offs in the law liberals lied about for years.
I’m not arguing that the GOP shouldn’t capitulate to the law simply out of spite (though spite is underrated in this circumstance if you ask me). But I fail to see why Republicans should simply accept that the law is here to stay and get into wonky discussions about how to improve it at the margins at the exact moment the wheels are coming off the bus. The president and the Democrats lied us into a bad law. The Right opposed the law on principle. A single party — the Democrats — own this law in a way that no party has had complete ownership of any major social legislation in a century. They bought this legislation with deceit and the GOP said so....
Question for Jay Carney: Didn’t Obama lie when he told people, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan”? Update: Obama knew for at least three years
...All that’s missing is a perfunctory “let me be clear.” Carney’s reply to this is, essentially, (a) a lot of people will be able to keep their plan if they like it, even if it’s not quite everyone, and (b) those who are getting dropped from their plans will get more comprehensive coverage on the exchanges. The latter point is like having the CEO of DirecTV tell customers that their monthly bill is about to double but they’ll now receive an extra hundred channels in return, maybe one or two of which people will actually watch. Comprehensive coverage is lovely, but if you’re on a budget basic coverage might be more cost-effective; why pay $1,000 extra a year for a new package that includes substance-abuse treatment, say, if you don’t drink or do drugs? Obama took the option of cheaper catastrophic care away from people because insurers wanted to squeeze healthy middle-class suckers for extra revenue by forcing coverage on them that they don’t need. And yet Carney’s basically selling this as a *good* thing about the law, a sort of upgrade over the basic — but affordable! — plans people have now. Remind me again: Isn’t “affordability” supposed to be a key plank of the Affordable Care Act?
As to the first point, that a lot of people will be keeping their plans, it depends on how you define “a lot.” Sixteen million people being dropped and half of them being forced to pay more sounds like “a lot” too...
Brutal: The “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” compilation clip
...In the same piece, Jonathan Strong quotes Harry Reid as saying it’s true that you can keep your plan under ObamaCare because it’s not the feds who are canceling coverage, it’s the insurers themselves. (“Insurance companies cancel plans. That’s what they do.”) If you’re mad that the rug’s been pulled out from under you, take it up with Blue Cross or whoever. I’ve gotta say: Never did I think they’d be so cornered politically that Valerie Jarrett’s Orwellian defense of ObamaCare’s rules would catch on among Democrats more widely. But, per Reid, apparently it has. They really are seriously going to argue that the cancellations, many of which are compelled by ObamaCare’s new rules on “essential benefits” and disqualified grandfathered plans, are something that insurers are doing somewhat voluntarily, not because America’s new legal framework is driving them to do so. At today’s House hearing, Sandy Levin actually described the cancellation notices people are receiving as mere “transitions” onto the new health-insurance exchange. We’re about three weeks away from Democrats saying, “ObamaCare? What’s ‘ObamaCare’?”
For your homework, via Ace, go read this Patrick Brennan post at the Corner that explains how Obama’s own HHS deputies made the law even more aggressive than it was designed to be in terms of forcing plan cancellations. The math of covering preexisting conditions is such that insurers had little choice but to take certain actions, like raising people’s deductibles, that would disqualify them from “grandfather” status — and O’s team, by writing the regulations for disqualification broadly, compounded the problem. It didn’t have to be this bad. They wanted it that way.
Valerie Jarrett: Obamacare doesn’t force you off your plan; your insurance company does, by complying with Obamacare
...She leaves out the part where Obamacare legally requires all health insurance plans to include a certain number of benefits that was above and beyond what many more, ahem, affordable plans offered, thereby making certain plans illegal. Many of those plans were plans that people liked and were assured they could keep. Obamacare offered a “grandfathering” clause, which the administration later eviscerated after it had served its political purpose, ensuring even more people would lose their current coverage. So, no change is required by you under Obamacare unless your insurance company goes and changes your existing plan to comply with Obamacare....
...Even the most reliably hacky Obamacare supporters have at least conceded that people are losing their old plans because of Obamacare. They spin it with the notion that these new plans are way better, so why would you have liked that dumb old plan anyway (which fit within your family’s budget and served you well)? But the act of spinning requires at least some reckoning with the truth.
What level of denial and/or mendacity is necessary to tweet this? What confidence that the media will be there to cover your lies? This is the mindset of the people surrounding President Obama, and because no one’s ever held accountable for screwing up, this is the mindset of those who are “fixing” Obamacare’s problems....
...All that’s missing is a perfunctory “let me be clear.” Carney’s reply to this is, essentially, (a) a lot of people will be able to keep their plan if they like it, even if it’s not quite everyone, and (b) those who are getting dropped from their plans will get more comprehensive coverage on the exchanges. The latter point is like having the CEO of DirecTV tell customers that their monthly bill is about to double but they’ll now receive an extra hundred channels in return, maybe one or two of which people will actually watch. Comprehensive coverage is lovely, but if you’re on a budget basic coverage might be more cost-effective; why pay $1,000 extra a year for a new package that includes substance-abuse treatment, say, if you don’t drink or do drugs? Obama took the option of cheaper catastrophic care away from people because insurers wanted to squeeze healthy middle-class suckers for extra revenue by forcing coverage on them that they don’t need. And yet Carney’s basically selling this as a *good* thing about the law, a sort of upgrade over the basic — but affordable! — plans people have now. Remind me again: Isn’t “affordability” supposed to be a key plank of the Affordable Care Act?
As to the first point, that a lot of people will be keeping their plans, it depends on how you define “a lot.” Sixteen million people being dropped and half of them being forced to pay more sounds like “a lot” too...
Brutal: The “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” compilation clip
...In the same piece, Jonathan Strong quotes Harry Reid as saying it’s true that you can keep your plan under ObamaCare because it’s not the feds who are canceling coverage, it’s the insurers themselves. (“Insurance companies cancel plans. That’s what they do.”) If you’re mad that the rug’s been pulled out from under you, take it up with Blue Cross or whoever. I’ve gotta say: Never did I think they’d be so cornered politically that Valerie Jarrett’s Orwellian defense of ObamaCare’s rules would catch on among Democrats more widely. But, per Reid, apparently it has. They really are seriously going to argue that the cancellations, many of which are compelled by ObamaCare’s new rules on “essential benefits” and disqualified grandfathered plans, are something that insurers are doing somewhat voluntarily, not because America’s new legal framework is driving them to do so. At today’s House hearing, Sandy Levin actually described the cancellation notices people are receiving as mere “transitions” onto the new health-insurance exchange. We’re about three weeks away from Democrats saying, “ObamaCare? What’s ‘ObamaCare’?”
For your homework, via Ace, go read this Patrick Brennan post at the Corner that explains how Obama’s own HHS deputies made the law even more aggressive than it was designed to be in terms of forcing plan cancellations. The math of covering preexisting conditions is such that insurers had little choice but to take certain actions, like raising people’s deductibles, that would disqualify them from “grandfather” status — and O’s team, by writing the regulations for disqualification broadly, compounded the problem. It didn’t have to be this bad. They wanted it that way.
Valerie Jarrett: Obamacare doesn’t force you off your plan; your insurance company does, by complying with Obamacare
...She leaves out the part where Obamacare legally requires all health insurance plans to include a certain number of benefits that was above and beyond what many more, ahem, affordable plans offered, thereby making certain plans illegal. Many of those plans were plans that people liked and were assured they could keep. Obamacare offered a “grandfathering” clause, which the administration later eviscerated after it had served its political purpose, ensuring even more people would lose their current coverage. So, no change is required by you under Obamacare unless your insurance company goes and changes your existing plan to comply with Obamacare....
...Even the most reliably hacky Obamacare supporters have at least conceded that people are losing their old plans because of Obamacare. They spin it with the notion that these new plans are way better, so why would you have liked that dumb old plan anyway (which fit within your family’s budget and served you well)? But the act of spinning requires at least some reckoning with the truth.
What level of denial and/or mendacity is necessary to tweet this? What confidence that the media will be there to cover your lies? This is the mindset of the people surrounding President Obama, and because no one’s ever held accountable for screwing up, this is the mindset of those who are “fixing” Obamacare’s problems....
CBS: Insurers backing out of the ObamaCare exchange markets
...The proposal to extend the open enrollment period, which has been endorsed by 10 Democratic senators, is a reaction to the well-documented problems with HealthCare.gov in its opening month. With many people having trouble applying for insurance through the website, and the administration setting a Nov. 30 deadline for the site to be fully functional, the senators say people need more time to sign up for coverage. The enrollment period is scheduled to end March 31. The senators haven’t asked for a specific new end date yet.
But expect to start hearing a significant amount of pushback from the industry, with a message focused on the fact that insurance premiums could skyrocket in 2015 if the enrollment period is extended. …
Right now, insurers need to submit 2015 rates to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services between April 1 and April 30, 2014. If the enrollment period ends in March, as currently scheduled, insurers will know exactly what their customer base looks like as they make projections about their 2015 rates.
But if people can still sign up after March 31, either while or after insurers are making those calculations, it creates a few problems. Here’s the big one: Most experts assume that young and healthy people — who are crucial to making the law’s finances work by offsetting the costs of sicker and older enrollees — are more likely to wait till the last possible moment or until they get sick to sign up for insurance.
If that’s true and they can’t be accounted for when insurers are projecting their 2015 rates because of extended enrollment, that could lead to an older and sicker pool when those calculations for 2015 are being made. That would likely increase rates. And generally, the uncertainty about the pools could cause insurers to err on the side of caution....
...The proposal to extend the open enrollment period, which has been endorsed by 10 Democratic senators, is a reaction to the well-documented problems with HealthCare.gov in its opening month. With many people having trouble applying for insurance through the website, and the administration setting a Nov. 30 deadline for the site to be fully functional, the senators say people need more time to sign up for coverage. The enrollment period is scheduled to end March 31. The senators haven’t asked for a specific new end date yet.
But expect to start hearing a significant amount of pushback from the industry, with a message focused on the fact that insurance premiums could skyrocket in 2015 if the enrollment period is extended. …
Right now, insurers need to submit 2015 rates to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services between April 1 and April 30, 2014. If the enrollment period ends in March, as currently scheduled, insurers will know exactly what their customer base looks like as they make projections about their 2015 rates.
But if people can still sign up after March 31, either while or after insurers are making those calculations, it creates a few problems. Here’s the big one: Most experts assume that young and healthy people — who are crucial to making the law’s finances work by offsetting the costs of sicker and older enrollees — are more likely to wait till the last possible moment or until they get sick to sign up for insurance.
If that’s true and they can’t be accounted for when insurers are projecting their 2015 rates because of extended enrollment, that could lead to an older and sicker pool when those calculations for 2015 are being made. That would likely increase rates. And generally, the uncertainty about the pools could cause insurers to err on the side of caution....
How the Obama Administration Made Sure People Couldn’t Keep Their Plans
...The Affordable Care Act as written and passed would have protected the grandfathered plans for a longer period of time and with more freedom for adjustment, but the Obama administration filled out the Secretary Shalls in such a way as to make that much harder, if not basically impossible, to do. The Obama administration’s original, June 2010 rules were actually even stricter, and would have, for example, made it impossible for an insurer or company to change the firms it uses to manage and administer the plan (which needn’t affect coverage and is a simple way to lower costs); those ludicrous restrictions were eliminated, but enough rules remain that it’s, again, near impossible to maintain a grandfathered health-care plan.
...The Affordable Care Act as written and passed would have protected the grandfathered plans for a longer period of time and with more freedom for adjustment, but the Obama administration filled out the Secretary Shalls in such a way as to make that much harder, if not basically impossible, to do. The Obama administration’s original, June 2010 rules were actually even stricter, and would have, for example, made it impossible for an insurer or company to change the firms it uses to manage and administer the plan (which needn’t affect coverage and is a simple way to lower costs); those ludicrous restrictions were eliminated, but enough rules remain that it’s, again, near impossible to maintain a grandfathered health-care plan.
Obamacare enrollments got off to very slow start, documents show
...The website launched on a Tuesday. Publicly, the government said there were 4.7 million unique visits in the first 24 hours. But at a meeting Wednesday morning, the war room notes say "six enrollments have occurred so far."
They were with BlueCross BlueShield North Carolina and Kansas City, CareSource and Healthcare Service Corporation.
By Wednesday afternoon, enrollments were up to "approximately 100." By the end of Wednesday, the notes reflect "248 enrollments" nationwide....
...The website launched on a Tuesday. Publicly, the government said there were 4.7 million unique visits in the first 24 hours. But at a meeting Wednesday morning, the war room notes say "six enrollments have occurred so far."
They were with BlueCross BlueShield North Carolina and Kansas City, CareSource and Healthcare Service Corporation.
By Wednesday afternoon, enrollments were up to "approximately 100." By the end of Wednesday, the notes reflect "248 enrollments" nationwide....
Obamacare: Unfair to the young middle class, punished enough already
...I am being funneled into the closest equivalent plan under the new California health exchange, and my monthly premium is going to rise by nearly 43% to $214 a month.
My old plan was as bare-bones as they came, so I assumed that even though the new plan would cost more, my coverage would improve under Obamacare, at least marginally.
It did not.
Under my old plan, my maximum out-of-pocket expense was $4,900. Under the new plan, I’m on the hook for up to $6,350. Copays for my doctor visits will double. For urgent-care visits, they will quadruple. Though slightly cheaper plans exist if I decide to shop around on the exchange, I will lose my dental coverage should I switch.
Needless to say, I am not pleased.
Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
We just didn’t realize that, unless we had health insurance at work, we’d be the ones paying for it....
...I am being funneled into the closest equivalent plan under the new California health exchange, and my monthly premium is going to rise by nearly 43% to $214 a month.
My old plan was as bare-bones as they came, so I assumed that even though the new plan would cost more, my coverage would improve under Obamacare, at least marginally.
It did not.
Under my old plan, my maximum out-of-pocket expense was $4,900. Under the new plan, I’m on the hook for up to $6,350. Copays for my doctor visits will double. For urgent-care visits, they will quadruple. Though slightly cheaper plans exist if I decide to shop around on the exchange, I will lose my dental coverage should I switch.
Needless to say, I am not pleased.
Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
We just didn’t realize that, unless we had health insurance at work, we’d be the ones paying for it....
IRS' Lois Lerner gave confidential Tea Party tax info to FEC, violating law
...The email chain began Feb. 3, 2009, when the FEC made it’s request to Lerner.
She emailed back 10 minutes later, and said: “I have sent your email out to some of my staff. Will get back to you as soon as I have heard from them.”
According to Judicial Watch, the materials “from the IRS’ files sent from Lerner to the FEC containing detailed, confidential information about the organizations. These include annual tax returns (Forms 990) and request for exempt recognition forms (Form 1024), Articles of Organization and other corporate documents, and correspondence between the nonprofit organizations and the IRS. Under Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, it is a felony for an IRS official to disclose either ‘return information or ‘taxpayer return information,’ even to another government agency.”
Lerner, who was head of the unit deciding tax exempt status, quit in the scandal.
“These extensive emails and other materials provide a disturbing window into the activities of two out-of-control federal agencies: the IRS and FEC,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And there is the very real question as to whether these documents evidence a crime.”
...The email chain began Feb. 3, 2009, when the FEC made it’s request to Lerner.
She emailed back 10 minutes later, and said: “I have sent your email out to some of my staff. Will get back to you as soon as I have heard from them.”
According to Judicial Watch, the materials “from the IRS’ files sent from Lerner to the FEC containing detailed, confidential information about the organizations. These include annual tax returns (Forms 990) and request for exempt recognition forms (Form 1024), Articles of Organization and other corporate documents, and correspondence between the nonprofit organizations and the IRS. Under Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, it is a felony for an IRS official to disclose either ‘return information or ‘taxpayer return information,’ even to another government agency.”
Lerner, who was head of the unit deciding tax exempt status, quit in the scandal.
“These extensive emails and other materials provide a disturbing window into the activities of two out-of-control federal agencies: the IRS and FEC,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And there is the very real question as to whether these documents evidence a crime.”
NSA Takes Huge Amounts of Data from Google and Yahoo
The National Security Agency has gained access to Google and Yahoo’s cloud networks and downloaded massive amounts of data including from Americans, according to the latest revelation on leaks from Edward Snowden, this time in the Washington Post.
The project involved, known as MUSCULAR, is operated jointly with the British intelligence agency known as GCHQ, and engages in copying data from an undisclosed interception point outside of the United States from fiber-optic cables that carry information between the companies’ data centers.
Circumventing a court-approved process that allows intelligence agencies to make requests directly from companies, the NSA inhales data as it moves between data centers around the world. Data is shuttled around this as part of regular backup processes at the companies, and to enable you to quickly access your data from anywhere in the world. Google and Yahoo run their own private networks, often passing data between countries and making it vulnerable to NSA taps....
The National Security Agency has gained access to Google and Yahoo’s cloud networks and downloaded massive amounts of data including from Americans, according to the latest revelation on leaks from Edward Snowden, this time in the Washington Post.
The project involved, known as MUSCULAR, is operated jointly with the British intelligence agency known as GCHQ, and engages in copying data from an undisclosed interception point outside of the United States from fiber-optic cables that carry information between the companies’ data centers.
Circumventing a court-approved process that allows intelligence agencies to make requests directly from companies, the NSA inhales data as it moves between data centers around the world. Data is shuttled around this as part of regular backup processes at the companies, and to enable you to quickly access your data from anywhere in the world. Google and Yahoo run their own private networks, often passing data between countries and making it vulnerable to NSA taps....
‘How did they know?’ Jim Angle shares disturbing experience with Obamacare 800 number
...@JimAngleFox called 800 number for Obamacare from unlisted number to ask questions and they REFUSED. They knew he was from the media. Wow. — Stan Darke (@VintageStan) November 01, 2013
Well, that seems newsworthy. We’re sure MSNBC will be all over this one.
Fox News correspondent Jim Angle described what happened when he reached out to the Obamacare call center.
I call the healthcare.gov 800 #, give my name & address, then put on hold. The guy comes back & says you appear to be in the media.— Jim Angle (@JimAngleFox) November 01, 2013
I was calling from an unlisted number & gave personal cell as my phone. How did they know? I have no idea but he wouldn't answer questions.— Jim Angle (@JimAngleFox) November 01, 2013
He told me a "an advanced resolution specialist" would call me in 2-5 business days. That will be interesting.— Jim Angle (@JimAngleFox) November 01, 2013...
...@JimAngleFox called 800 number for Obamacare from unlisted number to ask questions and they REFUSED. They knew he was from the media. Wow. — Stan Darke (@VintageStan) November 01, 2013
Well, that seems newsworthy. We’re sure MSNBC will be all over this one.
Fox News correspondent Jim Angle described what happened when he reached out to the Obamacare call center.
I call the healthcare.gov 800 #, give my name & address, then put on hold. The guy comes back & says you appear to be in the media.— Jim Angle (@JimAngleFox) November 01, 2013
I was calling from an unlisted number & gave personal cell as my phone. How did they know? I have no idea but he wouldn't answer questions.— Jim Angle (@JimAngleFox) November 01, 2013
He told me a "an advanced resolution specialist" would call me in 2-5 business days. That will be interesting.— Jim Angle (@JimAngleFox) November 01, 2013...
Lerner's Pension Could Be as Much as $102,600/Year, $3.96 Million Lifetime
Even before she retired last week, scandalized IRS official Lois Lerner's compensation was already attracting attention. While on administrative leave, federal rules allowed her to keep collecting a salary, one that reportedly totaled $177,000. So it was no surprise when speculation arose over how much Lerner could collect in federal pension benefits.
Unfortunately, that speculation, which initially projected a benefit of over $50,000, might be off by about half ... and in the wrong direction.
National Taxpayers Union calculations show that Lerner could qualify for a starting pension at the annual equivalent of as much as $102,600, and up to $3.96 million over her lifetime....
Even before she retired last week, scandalized IRS official Lois Lerner's compensation was already attracting attention. While on administrative leave, federal rules allowed her to keep collecting a salary, one that reportedly totaled $177,000. So it was no surprise when speculation arose over how much Lerner could collect in federal pension benefits.
Unfortunately, that speculation, which initially projected a benefit of over $50,000, might be off by about half ... and in the wrong direction.
National Taxpayers Union calculations show that Lerner could qualify for a starting pension at the annual equivalent of as much as $102,600, and up to $3.96 million over her lifetime....
Report: White House exerting ‘massive pressure’ on insurance companies to keep quiet
...“Basically, if you speak out, if you’re quoted, you’re going to get a call from the White House, pressure to be quiet,” said CNN investigative reporter Drew Griffin on Anderson Cooper 360 Wednesday night. Insurance companies executives, Griffin said, ask heads of consulting firms not to criticize the Obamacare rollout debacle publicly.
“They feel defenseless before the White House P.R. team,” Griffin said. “The sources said they fear White House retribution.”
Prior to the Obamacare rollout, insurance companies issued warnings to the White House about the possibility of mass cancellations, which the administration ignored.
Although the mass cancelations are an embarrassment to insurance companies, they are more concerned about losing their biggest customer — the federal government.
“Executives are willing to listen to the White House, because right now, it’s the government that’s the biggest customers of these insurance companies,” Griffin said. “Government-backed plans accounted for about 48 percent of healthcare policies last year, Anderson — a number that’s expected to grow this year, and years to come.”...
...“Basically, if you speak out, if you’re quoted, you’re going to get a call from the White House, pressure to be quiet,” said CNN investigative reporter Drew Griffin on Anderson Cooper 360 Wednesday night. Insurance companies executives, Griffin said, ask heads of consulting firms not to criticize the Obamacare rollout debacle publicly.
“They feel defenseless before the White House P.R. team,” Griffin said. “The sources said they fear White House retribution.”
Prior to the Obamacare rollout, insurance companies issued warnings to the White House about the possibility of mass cancellations, which the administration ignored.
Although the mass cancelations are an embarrassment to insurance companies, they are more concerned about losing their biggest customer — the federal government.
“Executives are willing to listen to the White House, because right now, it’s the government that’s the biggest customers of these insurance companies,” Griffin said. “Government-backed plans accounted for about 48 percent of healthcare policies last year, Anderson — a number that’s expected to grow this year, and years to come.”...
How Team Obama Justifies the Killing of a 16-Year-Old American
...First, it's vital for the uninitiated to understand how Team Obama misleads when it talks about its drone program. Asked how their kill list can be justified, Gibbs replies that "When there are people who are trying to harm us, and have pledged to bring terror to these shores, we've taken that fight to them." Since the kill list itself is secret, there's no way to offer a specific counterexample. But we do know that U.S. drones are targeting people who've never pledged to carry out attacks in the United States....
...He was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was also born in America, who was also an American citizen, and who was killed by drone two weeks before his son was, along with another American citizen named Samir Khan. Of course, both Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were, at the very least, traitors to their country -- they had both gone to Yemen and taken up with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and al-Awlaki had proven himself an expert inciter of those with murderous designs against America and Americans: the rare man of words who could be said to have a body count. When he was killed, on September 30, 2011, President Obama made a speech about it; a few months later, when the Obama administraton's public-relations campaign about its embrace of what has come to be called "targeted killing" reached its climax in a front-page story in the New York Times that presented the President of the United States as the last word in deciding who lives and who dies, he was quoted as saying that the decision to put Anwar al-Awlaki on the kill list -- and then to kill him -- was "an easy one." But Abdulrahman al-Awlaki wasn't on an American kill list.
Nor was he a member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninusla. Nor was he "an inspiration," as his father styled himself, for those determined to draw American blood; nor had he gone "operational," as American authorities said his father had, in drawing up plots against Americans and American interests. He was a boy who hadn't seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who snuck out of his family's home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him. He was a boy who was still searching for his father when his father was killed, and who, on the night he himself was killed, was saying goodbye to the second cousin with whom he'd lived while on his search, and the friends he'd made. He was a boy among boys, then; a boy among boys eating dinner by an open fire along the side of a road when an American drone came out of the sky and fired the missiles that killed them all. ...
...ADAMSON: ...It's an American citizen that is being targeted without due process, without trial. And, he's underage. He's a minor.
GIBBS: I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don't think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business....
...First, it's vital for the uninitiated to understand how Team Obama misleads when it talks about its drone program. Asked how their kill list can be justified, Gibbs replies that "When there are people who are trying to harm us, and have pledged to bring terror to these shores, we've taken that fight to them." Since the kill list itself is secret, there's no way to offer a specific counterexample. But we do know that U.S. drones are targeting people who've never pledged to carry out attacks in the United States....
...He was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was also born in America, who was also an American citizen, and who was killed by drone two weeks before his son was, along with another American citizen named Samir Khan. Of course, both Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were, at the very least, traitors to their country -- they had both gone to Yemen and taken up with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and al-Awlaki had proven himself an expert inciter of those with murderous designs against America and Americans: the rare man of words who could be said to have a body count. When he was killed, on September 30, 2011, President Obama made a speech about it; a few months later, when the Obama administraton's public-relations campaign about its embrace of what has come to be called "targeted killing" reached its climax in a front-page story in the New York Times that presented the President of the United States as the last word in deciding who lives and who dies, he was quoted as saying that the decision to put Anwar al-Awlaki on the kill list -- and then to kill him -- was "an easy one." But Abdulrahman al-Awlaki wasn't on an American kill list.
Nor was he a member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninusla. Nor was he "an inspiration," as his father styled himself, for those determined to draw American blood; nor had he gone "operational," as American authorities said his father had, in drawing up plots against Americans and American interests. He was a boy who hadn't seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who snuck out of his family's home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him. He was a boy who was still searching for his father when his father was killed, and who, on the night he himself was killed, was saying goodbye to the second cousin with whom he'd lived while on his search, and the friends he'd made. He was a boy among boys, then; a boy among boys eating dinner by an open fire along the side of a road when an American drone came out of the sky and fired the missiles that killed them all. ...
...ADAMSON: ...It's an American citizen that is being targeted without due process, without trial. And, he's underage. He's a minor.
GIBBS: I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don't think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business....
Are Men Society's Scapegoats?
...Men, of course, aren't the only ones who can do damage; statistics show that women can be just as violent as men. But while the Violence Against Women Act provides millions of dollars for shelters for abused women, you don't see too many shelters -- any, actually -- for abused men. "It's often been taken for granted that women can't really do that much damage, so it's OK to maybe slap your boyfriend or do something of that nature," says Kellie Palazzolo, an assistant professor at Arizona State University's Hugh Downs School of Human Communication who is overseeing research on how college students perceive female and male perpetrators.
That may be why so many women applauded Elin Nordegren's alleged golf club attack on then-hubby Tiger Woods -- we just don't like to think of women being violent except in self-defense. He cheated on her; he made her do that!...
..."Men are about 19 more times more likely than women to say they have been falsely accused of sexual abuse. About 85 percent of these abuse allegations are made by women during battles over parent time, during the throes of divorce, or when a live-in situation is failing. ... "(A) sex-abuse charge -- even if false -- often costs the father his job, his health, his friends, his reputation, and his relationship with his child." ...
...When it comes to custody cases, however, the odds are often stacked against dads. "Some women are coached to make false allegations of domestic violence, rape and child abuse," says Dr. Tara Palmatier, the no-nonsense founder of A Shrink 4 Men, in an email exchange with me. "Their attorneys may file baseless restraining orders to raise the stakes on men in the divorce or custody cases. These tactics don't just hurt men: they create widespread cynicism about the family court and the efficacy of the justice system."...
...Men, of course, aren't the only ones who can do damage; statistics show that women can be just as violent as men. But while the Violence Against Women Act provides millions of dollars for shelters for abused women, you don't see too many shelters -- any, actually -- for abused men. "It's often been taken for granted that women can't really do that much damage, so it's OK to maybe slap your boyfriend or do something of that nature," says Kellie Palazzolo, an assistant professor at Arizona State University's Hugh Downs School of Human Communication who is overseeing research on how college students perceive female and male perpetrators.
That may be why so many women applauded Elin Nordegren's alleged golf club attack on then-hubby Tiger Woods -- we just don't like to think of women being violent except in self-defense. He cheated on her; he made her do that!...
..."Men are about 19 more times more likely than women to say they have been falsely accused of sexual abuse. About 85 percent of these abuse allegations are made by women during battles over parent time, during the throes of divorce, or when a live-in situation is failing. ... "(A) sex-abuse charge -- even if false -- often costs the father his job, his health, his friends, his reputation, and his relationship with his child." ...
...When it comes to custody cases, however, the odds are often stacked against dads. "Some women are coached to make false allegations of domestic violence, rape and child abuse," says Dr. Tara Palmatier, the no-nonsense founder of A Shrink 4 Men, in an email exchange with me. "Their attorneys may file baseless restraining orders to raise the stakes on men in the divorce or custody cases. These tactics don't just hurt men: they create widespread cynicism about the family court and the efficacy of the justice system."...
In health care mess, Obama reaps what he sowed
...There's a story about First Lady Hillary Clinton's attempt to pass a national health care plan back in 1993 and 1994. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the old Democratic senator, told her that such far-reaching legislation had to pass with a really big majority to make sweeping changes in American life. "They pass 70-to-30, or they fail," Moynihan told Clinton, according to a recent account by Todd Purdum in Politico....
...Now, Obama is suffering the consequences of relying on just one party. When problems arose with his signature legislative achievement, he had no Republican support to help him out. None....
...There's a story about First Lady Hillary Clinton's attempt to pass a national health care plan back in 1993 and 1994. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the old Democratic senator, told her that such far-reaching legislation had to pass with a really big majority to make sweeping changes in American life. "They pass 70-to-30, or they fail," Moynihan told Clinton, according to a recent account by Todd Purdum in Politico....
...Now, Obama is suffering the consequences of relying on just one party. When problems arose with his signature legislative achievement, he had no Republican support to help him out. None....
Under Pressure From The White House, NBC Throws Its Reporter Under the Bus and Censors News That Obama Wrote Regs to Disqualify and Terminate Health Insurance Policies
...This is not just about having knowledge that events beyond Obama's control would unfold -- this is about events directly at his control. Regulation-writers are executive employees, and as such, answer to the president and not Congress.
This means Obama has the actual power -- not the puffed up, falsely asserted unconstitutional power, but the genuine legal power -- to call this agency and tell them, "We sold this bill as permitting people to keep their insurance; please re-write the regulations in a way that will honor this promise."
Remember, regulations are supposed to add details to the spirit of the law. They are not supposed to change the meaning of the law. Obama's regulations -- written at his behest, or at least with his connivance -- change the meaning of the law to render the "grandfathered policy" provision a nullity.
Via Politico, the White House began pushing back against this story. Not because it was untrue, but because it was politically lethal....
...The White House is taking the position that even a minor escalation in policy premium -- something that always happens, given the constant inflation in health care insurance costs -- constitutes a "new policy" which is then not grandfathered.
This is absurd. A regulation could easily be written that any escalation in premium equal to less than the rate of health care inflation + 1% will be considered the same policy and thus grandfathered. They are deliberately writing the regulations to disqualify the maximum number of policies, because they want to force the maximum number of people into the exchanges, which are, effectively, high-risk pools, and need a lot of healthy bodies to have any shot at solvency.
And any policy that is cancelled can then have its rates forcibly jacked up by ObamaCare, in order to subsidize others.
After this pushback, NBC deleted paragraph 3 without noting why they had done so. ...
...But why was it deleted in the first place? Why did NBC decide to trust the Obama Administration on this -- obviously a party that stinks of self-interest and potential deceit -- over its own reporter, who got it right?
I really want to stress this to everybody, because no one seems to get this yet:
These regulations, being a creature of the Executive branch, can be rewritten by the executive branch at any time. We don't need a law for this (though one would be useful, to force Obama to do the right thing).
Obama has it within his power to call up the HHS reg-writers and instruct them to honor the promise he made time and again for two years. And he doesn't want people to know this, because he is determined to break that promise.
That promise was always a lie, and not a meaningless lie at the periphery, but a central lie propping up the political campaign for ObamaCare. Had he told Americans that they would be losing their current health care in order to be dumped into what is effectively a high-risk pool, so that they could subsidize high-risk clients, the public would have rejected the law even more strongly than he did.
So he lied. And lied. And lied. And lied some more.
And even at this late date, he could still choose to honor his promise.
But he won't, because he can't -- he always intended to take people's insurance away from them. Always. And he's not going to undo, short of a veto-proof act of Congress....
On Obama's Devious Regulations to Force the Terminations of All "Grandfathered" Health Care Plans
...The Affordable Care Act as written and passed would have protected the grandfathered plans for a longer period of time and with more freedom for adjustment, but the Obama administration filled out the Secretary Shalls in such a way as to make that much harder, if not basically impossible, to do. The Obama administration’s original, June 2010 rules were actually even stricter, and would have, for example, made it impossible for an insurer or company to change the firms it uses to manage and administer the plan (which needn’t affect coverage and is a simple way to lower costs); those ludicrous restrictions were eliminated, but enough rules remain that it’s, again, near impossible to maintain a grandfathered health-care plan....
...This is not just about having knowledge that events beyond Obama's control would unfold -- this is about events directly at his control. Regulation-writers are executive employees, and as such, answer to the president and not Congress.
This means Obama has the actual power -- not the puffed up, falsely asserted unconstitutional power, but the genuine legal power -- to call this agency and tell them, "We sold this bill as permitting people to keep their insurance; please re-write the regulations in a way that will honor this promise."
Remember, regulations are supposed to add details to the spirit of the law. They are not supposed to change the meaning of the law. Obama's regulations -- written at his behest, or at least with his connivance -- change the meaning of the law to render the "grandfathered policy" provision a nullity.
Via Politico, the White House began pushing back against this story. Not because it was untrue, but because it was politically lethal....
...The White House is taking the position that even a minor escalation in policy premium -- something that always happens, given the constant inflation in health care insurance costs -- constitutes a "new policy" which is then not grandfathered.
This is absurd. A regulation could easily be written that any escalation in premium equal to less than the rate of health care inflation + 1% will be considered the same policy and thus grandfathered. They are deliberately writing the regulations to disqualify the maximum number of policies, because they want to force the maximum number of people into the exchanges, which are, effectively, high-risk pools, and need a lot of healthy bodies to have any shot at solvency.
And any policy that is cancelled can then have its rates forcibly jacked up by ObamaCare, in order to subsidize others.
After this pushback, NBC deleted paragraph 3 without noting why they had done so. ...
...But why was it deleted in the first place? Why did NBC decide to trust the Obama Administration on this -- obviously a party that stinks of self-interest and potential deceit -- over its own reporter, who got it right?
I really want to stress this to everybody, because no one seems to get this yet:
These regulations, being a creature of the Executive branch, can be rewritten by the executive branch at any time. We don't need a law for this (though one would be useful, to force Obama to do the right thing).
Obama has it within his power to call up the HHS reg-writers and instruct them to honor the promise he made time and again for two years. And he doesn't want people to know this, because he is determined to break that promise.
That promise was always a lie, and not a meaningless lie at the periphery, but a central lie propping up the political campaign for ObamaCare. Had he told Americans that they would be losing their current health care in order to be dumped into what is effectively a high-risk pool, so that they could subsidize high-risk clients, the public would have rejected the law even more strongly than he did.
So he lied. And lied. And lied. And lied some more.
And even at this late date, he could still choose to honor his promise.
But he won't, because he can't -- he always intended to take people's insurance away from them. Always. And he's not going to undo, short of a veto-proof act of Congress....
On Obama's Devious Regulations to Force the Terminations of All "Grandfathered" Health Care Plans
...The Affordable Care Act as written and passed would have protected the grandfathered plans for a longer period of time and with more freedom for adjustment, but the Obama administration filled out the Secretary Shalls in such a way as to make that much harder, if not basically impossible, to do. The Obama administration’s original, June 2010 rules were actually even stricter, and would have, for example, made it impossible for an insurer or company to change the firms it uses to manage and administer the plan (which needn’t affect coverage and is a simple way to lower costs); those ludicrous restrictions were eliminated, but enough rules remain that it’s, again, near impossible to maintain a grandfathered health-care plan....
Saturday, November 02, 2013
US swallowed $9.7 billion loss on General Motors bailout
The U.S. government has booked a loss of $9.7 billion on the nearly $50 billion bailout of U.S. automaker General Motors, according to a quarterly report to Congress on Tuesday.
In 2009, the U.S.Treasury extended $49.5 billion in loans to GM in exchange for $2.1 billion in preferred stock and a 60.8 percent equity stake.
Treasury has since whittled down its stake in GM through a series of stock sales. Those sales have all taken place below the price Treasury needed to break even on its GM investment, resulting in the loss, according to Tuesday's report from the Special Inspector General overseeing the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program....
The U.S. government has booked a loss of $9.7 billion on the nearly $50 billion bailout of U.S. automaker General Motors, according to a quarterly report to Congress on Tuesday.
In 2009, the U.S.Treasury extended $49.5 billion in loans to GM in exchange for $2.1 billion in preferred stock and a 60.8 percent equity stake.
Treasury has since whittled down its stake in GM through a series of stock sales. Those sales have all taken place below the price Treasury needed to break even on its GM investment, resulting in the loss, according to Tuesday's report from the Special Inspector General overseeing the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program....
Obama Officials In 2010: 93 Million Americans Will Be Unable To Keep Their Health Plans Under Obamacare
...60 percent of Americans have private-sector health insurance—precisely the number that Jay Carney dismissed. As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans....
...60 percent of Americans have private-sector health insurance—precisely the number that Jay Carney dismissed. As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans....
IPCC Conclusions Were Reached Three Years Before The “Research” Was Done
UNITED NATIONS — United Nations leaders will demand "concrete results" from the looming Cancun climate summit as global warming is accelerating, a top UN organizer of the event said Monday.
Robert Orr, UN under secretary general for planning, said the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on global warming will be much worse than the last one.
Representatives from 194 countries are to meet in the Mexican resort city of Cancun from November 29 to December 10 for a new attempt to strike a deal to curb greenhouse gases after 2012.
Orr told reporters that negotiators heading for the Cancun conference "need to remind themselves, the longer we delay, the more we will pay both in terms of lives and in terms of money."
He said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would make it clear to world leaders in Cancun "that we should not take any comfort in the climate deniers' siren call."...
UNITED NATIONS — United Nations leaders will demand "concrete results" from the looming Cancun climate summit as global warming is accelerating, a top UN organizer of the event said Monday.
Robert Orr, UN under secretary general for planning, said the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on global warming will be much worse than the last one.
Representatives from 194 countries are to meet in the Mexican resort city of Cancun from November 29 to December 10 for a new attempt to strike a deal to curb greenhouse gases after 2012.
Orr told reporters that negotiators heading for the Cancun conference "need to remind themselves, the longer we delay, the more we will pay both in terms of lives and in terms of money."
He said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would make it clear to world leaders in Cancun "that we should not take any comfort in the climate deniers' siren call."...
Top Dem Admits: ‘We Knew’
House Democratic whip Steny Hoyer conceded to reporters today that Democrats knew people would not be able to keep their current health care plans under Obamacare and expressed qualified contrition for President Obama’s repeated vows to the contrary.
“We knew that there would be some policies that would not qualify and therefore people would be required to get more extensive coverage,” Hoyer said in response to a question from National Review Online.
Asked by another reporter how repeated statements by Obama to the contrary weren’t “misleading,” Hoyer said, “I don’t think the message was wrong. I think the message was accurate. It was not precise enough . . . [it] should have been caveated with ’assuming you have a policy that in fact does do what the bill is designed to do.’”...
House Democratic whip Steny Hoyer conceded to reporters today that Democrats knew people would not be able to keep their current health care plans under Obamacare and expressed qualified contrition for President Obama’s repeated vows to the contrary.
“We knew that there would be some policies that would not qualify and therefore people would be required to get more extensive coverage,” Hoyer said in response to a question from National Review Online.
Asked by another reporter how repeated statements by Obama to the contrary weren’t “misleading,” Hoyer said, “I don’t think the message was wrong. I think the message was accurate. It was not precise enough . . . [it] should have been caveated with ’assuming you have a policy that in fact does do what the bill is designed to do.’”...
How the Obama Administration Made Sure People Couldn’t Keep Their Plans
...Meanwhile, even these grandfathered plans have to comply with a number of new Obamacare mandates — most important, they have to accept applicants regardless of preexisting conditions and charge them the same premiums, they have to eliminate lifetime-spending caps, and they have to cover dependents under 26 for free (there are other rules that also apply to grandfathered group plans). How, exactly, were health insurers supposed to comply with these new mandates (and other ways the ACA is raising costs) without raising customers’ contributions in the way the law says means losing grandfathered status? Obviously, they could have chosen to raise premiums alone — but then customers who don’t expect to use a lot of health care would switch to plans with higher cost-sharing, which ruins an insurance pool.
In other words, the ACA did make it incredibly hard for insurers to continue plans for the millions of Americans who don’t want comprehensive insurance — financially, insurers almost certainly had to adjust them in such a way that they would lose grandfathered status. This isn’t “normal turnover in the insurance market” (though there is plenty of that in the individual market); there’s a reason why an exceptionally large number of Americans are getting cancellation notices this fall....
...The Affordable Care Act as written and passed would have protected the grandfathered plans for a longer period of time and with more freedom for adjustment, but the Obama administration filled out the Secretary Shalls in such a way as to make that much harder, if not basically impossible, to do. The Obama administration’s original, June 2010 rules were actually even stricter, and would have, for example, made it impossible for an insurer or company to change the firms it uses to manage and administer the plan (which needn’t affect coverage and is a simple way to lower costs); those ludicrous restrictions were eliminated, but enough rules remain that it’s, again, near impossible to maintain a grandfathered health-care plan.
...Meanwhile, even these grandfathered plans have to comply with a number of new Obamacare mandates — most important, they have to accept applicants regardless of preexisting conditions and charge them the same premiums, they have to eliminate lifetime-spending caps, and they have to cover dependents under 26 for free (there are other rules that also apply to grandfathered group plans). How, exactly, were health insurers supposed to comply with these new mandates (and other ways the ACA is raising costs) without raising customers’ contributions in the way the law says means losing grandfathered status? Obviously, they could have chosen to raise premiums alone — but then customers who don’t expect to use a lot of health care would switch to plans with higher cost-sharing, which ruins an insurance pool.
In other words, the ACA did make it incredibly hard for insurers to continue plans for the millions of Americans who don’t want comprehensive insurance — financially, insurers almost certainly had to adjust them in such a way that they would lose grandfathered status. This isn’t “normal turnover in the insurance market” (though there is plenty of that in the individual market); there’s a reason why an exceptionally large number of Americans are getting cancellation notices this fall....
...The Affordable Care Act as written and passed would have protected the grandfathered plans for a longer period of time and with more freedom for adjustment, but the Obama administration filled out the Secretary Shalls in such a way as to make that much harder, if not basically impossible, to do. The Obama administration’s original, June 2010 rules were actually even stricter, and would have, for example, made it impossible for an insurer or company to change the firms it uses to manage and administer the plan (which needn’t affect coverage and is a simple way to lower costs); those ludicrous restrictions were eliminated, but enough rules remain that it’s, again, near impossible to maintain a grandfathered health-care plan.
Our embarrassing health care wait times
If this chart means anything, it means that Canadians in one part of the country do not have the same access to health care as Canadians in other parts of the country. And that surely means we’re failing on living up to notion of “universal health care”...
If this chart means anything, it means that Canadians in one part of the country do not have the same access to health care as Canadians in other parts of the country. And that surely means we’re failing on living up to notion of “universal health care”...
60 Minutes confirms Benghazi is a real scandal, and you’ve been lied to
60 Minutes had an absolutely devastating report on the Obama administration’s failure to protect Ambassador Chris Stevens and other Americans in Benghazi.
I’ll post the video when available (update – available and added), but the heart of the report is that there were clear and unequivocal warnings which were ignored, and the Obama administration lied about these warnings after the attack.
Hillary and Obama blamed a video and stood by the caskets perpetuating that lie.
And remember how almost all of the media obsessed with Mitt Romney’s statement over Benghazi, and colluded to ask Romney gotcha questions while downplaying and obfuscating what really happened....
60 Minutes had an absolutely devastating report on the Obama administration’s failure to protect Ambassador Chris Stevens and other Americans in Benghazi.
I’ll post the video when available (update – available and added), but the heart of the report is that there were clear and unequivocal warnings which were ignored, and the Obama administration lied about these warnings after the attack.
Hillary and Obama blamed a video and stood by the caskets perpetuating that lie.
And remember how almost all of the media obsessed with Mitt Romney’s statement over Benghazi, and colluded to ask Romney gotcha questions while downplaying and obfuscating what really happened....
Some health insurance gets pricier as Obamacare rolls out
...Pam Kehaly, president of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said she received a recent letter from a young woman complaining about a 50% rate hike related to the healthcare law.
"She said, 'I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,'" Kehaly said.
Nearly 2 million Californians have individual insurance, and several hundred thousand of them are losing their health plans in a matter of weeks.
Blue Shield of California sent termination letters to 119,000 customers last month whose plans don't meet the new federal requirements. About two-thirds of those people will experience a rate increase from switching to a new health plan, according to the company.
HMO giant Kaiser Permanente is canceling coverage for about half of its individual customers, or 160,000 people, and offering to automatically enroll them in the most comparable health plan available....
...Pam Kehaly, president of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said she received a recent letter from a young woman complaining about a 50% rate hike related to the healthcare law.
"She said, 'I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,'" Kehaly said.
Nearly 2 million Californians have individual insurance, and several hundred thousand of them are losing their health plans in a matter of weeks.
Blue Shield of California sent termination letters to 119,000 customers last month whose plans don't meet the new federal requirements. About two-thirds of those people will experience a rate increase from switching to a new health plan, according to the company.
HMO giant Kaiser Permanente is canceling coverage for about half of its individual customers, or 160,000 people, and offering to automatically enroll them in the most comparable health plan available....
No More Success Stories: University of Georgia Students Protest Excellence for Social Justice Week
...The concept behind the event is that everyone should be inherently successful; and therefore, elevating “success stories” violates notions of social justice, which are premised on equality of outcomes. According to this reasoning, if a “minority” becomes successful, while others fail to do so as well, that means society is unjust; and therefore, social justice requires elevating those who haven’t done as well, even if that means leveling the economy....
...The concept behind the event is that everyone should be inherently successful; and therefore, elevating “success stories” violates notions of social justice, which are premised on equality of outcomes. According to this reasoning, if a “minority” becomes successful, while others fail to do so as well, that means society is unjust; and therefore, social justice requires elevating those who haven’t done as well, even if that means leveling the economy....
Policy cancellations, higher premiums add to frustration over Obamacare
For many, their introduction to the Affordable Care Act has been negative: a broken website, and now cancellation notices from insurance companies followed by sticker shock over higher prices for the new plans. It's directly at odds with repeated assurances from the president, who has said "if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you."
But people across the country are finding out they're losing their existing insurance plans under Obamacare because requirements in the law, such as prenatal and prescription drug coverage, mean their old plans aren't comprehensive enough.
In California, Kaiser Permanente terminated policies for 160,000 people. In Florida, at least 300,000 people are losing coverage....
For many, their introduction to the Affordable Care Act has been negative: a broken website, and now cancellation notices from insurance companies followed by sticker shock over higher prices for the new plans. It's directly at odds with repeated assurances from the president, who has said "if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you."
But people across the country are finding out they're losing their existing insurance plans under Obamacare because requirements in the law, such as prenatal and prescription drug coverage, mean their old plans aren't comprehensive enough.
In California, Kaiser Permanente terminated policies for 160,000 people. In Florida, at least 300,000 people are losing coverage....
Government is Magic
...The United States government is the ultimate giant unworkable mess. It is a living cargo cult where everyone marches around following routines that are supposed to yield great prosperity, but never do. The processes themselves are broken and make no sense, but the cargo culturers of the government cannot and will not hear that. They know that the government will magically make everything work.
Because government is progress. Government is modernity. Government is magic.
The cargo culters on the islands, who once witnessed the might and power of the American military during WW2 make American flags and uniforms, they build airstrips and wooden control towers, and wait for the planes to land and make them rich. They don't understand why these things should work, but they do them anyway because that is how they remember it happening.
Our own cargo culters invoke FDR and JFK, they talk about the New Deal and the Great Society, they make grand promises and roll out big programs, and then they wait for it all to work. They don't understand themselves how or why it would work. But government is magic and the appearance of a thing is just as good as a real deal.
Build a website and it will work. Pass a law and they will come. Get a degree and you're competent.
There is no need to know how to do a thing. You don't need engineers or competent men. All you need to do is remember the great dreams of the past, listen to a few inspirational JFK speeches and then carve a computer out of wood and wait for free health care to arrive.
In cargo cult America, the food is free, the cell phones are free and the money can be printed forever because government is magic.
...The United States government is the ultimate giant unworkable mess. It is a living cargo cult where everyone marches around following routines that are supposed to yield great prosperity, but never do. The processes themselves are broken and make no sense, but the cargo culturers of the government cannot and will not hear that. They know that the government will magically make everything work.
Because government is progress. Government is modernity. Government is magic.
The cargo culters on the islands, who once witnessed the might and power of the American military during WW2 make American flags and uniforms, they build airstrips and wooden control towers, and wait for the planes to land and make them rich. They don't understand why these things should work, but they do them anyway because that is how they remember it happening.
Our own cargo culters invoke FDR and JFK, they talk about the New Deal and the Great Society, they make grand promises and roll out big programs, and then they wait for it all to work. They don't understand themselves how or why it would work. But government is magic and the appearance of a thing is just as good as a real deal.
Build a website and it will work. Pass a law and they will come. Get a degree and you're competent.
There is no need to know how to do a thing. You don't need engineers or competent men. All you need to do is remember the great dreams of the past, listen to a few inspirational JFK speeches and then carve a computer out of wood and wait for free health care to arrive.
In cargo cult America, the food is free, the cell phones are free and the money can be printed forever because government is magic.
Obama admin. knew millions could not keep their health insurance
...Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”
None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.
Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”
That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them. ...
...Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”
None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.
Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”
That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them. ...
Obamacare jacks up her insurance
Sue Klinkhamer has a problem.
It’s called Obamacare.
And the irony of her situation is not lost on her. In a recent email addressed to her former boss, Illinois Congressman Bill Foster, and other Democratic colleagues, she wrote:
“I spent two years defending Obamacare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can’t put in print. The congressman was not re-elected in 2010 mainly because of the anti-Obamacare anger. When the congressman was not re-elected, I also (along with the rest of our staff) lost my job. I was upset that because of the health care issue, I didn’t have a job anymore but still defended Obamacare because it would make health care available to everyone at, what I assumed, would be an affordable price. I have now learned that I was wrong. Very wrong.”
For Klinkhamer, 60, President Obama’s oft-repeated words ring in her ears: “If you like your health plan, you will keep it.”
Well, possibly not....
Sue Klinkhamer has a problem.
It’s called Obamacare.
And the irony of her situation is not lost on her. In a recent email addressed to her former boss, Illinois Congressman Bill Foster, and other Democratic colleagues, she wrote:
“I spent two years defending Obamacare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can’t put in print. The congressman was not re-elected in 2010 mainly because of the anti-Obamacare anger. When the congressman was not re-elected, I also (along with the rest of our staff) lost my job. I was upset that because of the health care issue, I didn’t have a job anymore but still defended Obamacare because it would make health care available to everyone at, what I assumed, would be an affordable price. I have now learned that I was wrong. Very wrong.”
For Klinkhamer, 60, President Obama’s oft-repeated words ring in her ears: “If you like your health plan, you will keep it.”
Well, possibly not....
Obamacare: More than 2 million people getting booted from existing health insurance plans
(CBS News) CBS News has learned more than two million Americans have been told they cannot renew their current insurance policies -- more than triple the number of people said to be buying insurance under the new Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
There have been estimates about hundreds of thousands of people losing coverage, CBS News' Jan Crawford reported on "CBS This Morning." CBS News has reached out to insurance companies across the country to determine some of the real numbers -- and this is just the tip of the iceberg, Crawford said. The people who are opening the letters are shocked to learn they can't keep their insurance policies despite President Obama's assurances to the contrary.
The White House is on the defensive trying to explain it, after Mr. Obama repeatedly said, "If you like your doctor or health care plan, you can keep it."
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, "What the president said and what everybody said all along is that there are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act to create minimum standards of coverage."
It's an unexpected reality of Obamacare being told through anecdotes in local papers and on social media. But the hard numbers reveal the evidence is far more than anecdotal. CBS News has confirmed with insurance companies across the country that more than two million people are getting notices they no longer can keep their existing plans. In California, there are 279,000; in Michigan, 140,000; Florida, 300,000; and in New Jersey, 800,000. And those numbers are certain to go even higher. Some companies who tell CBS News they've sent letters won't say how many.
Industry experts like Larry Levitt, of the Kaiser Family Foundation, say the insurance companies have no choice. "What we're seeing now is reality coming into play," he said.
Obamacare forces them to drop many of their plans that don't meet the law's 10 minimum standards, including maternity care, emergency visits, mental health treatment and even pediatric dental care....
(CBS News) CBS News has learned more than two million Americans have been told they cannot renew their current insurance policies -- more than triple the number of people said to be buying insurance under the new Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
There have been estimates about hundreds of thousands of people losing coverage, CBS News' Jan Crawford reported on "CBS This Morning." CBS News has reached out to insurance companies across the country to determine some of the real numbers -- and this is just the tip of the iceberg, Crawford said. The people who are opening the letters are shocked to learn they can't keep their insurance policies despite President Obama's assurances to the contrary.
The White House is on the defensive trying to explain it, after Mr. Obama repeatedly said, "If you like your doctor or health care plan, you can keep it."
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, "What the president said and what everybody said all along is that there are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act to create minimum standards of coverage."
It's an unexpected reality of Obamacare being told through anecdotes in local papers and on social media. But the hard numbers reveal the evidence is far more than anecdotal. CBS News has confirmed with insurance companies across the country that more than two million people are getting notices they no longer can keep their existing plans. In California, there are 279,000; in Michigan, 140,000; Florida, 300,000; and in New Jersey, 800,000. And those numbers are certain to go even higher. Some companies who tell CBS News they've sent letters won't say how many.
Industry experts like Larry Levitt, of the Kaiser Family Foundation, say the insurance companies have no choice. "What we're seeing now is reality coming into play," he said.
Obamacare forces them to drop many of their plans that don't meet the law's 10 minimum standards, including maternity care, emergency visits, mental health treatment and even pediatric dental care....
Obama’s false insurance promise
To say that President Obama is on the record telling Americans they can keep their current health insurance is an understatement. He repeated the assurance so many times during the health-care debate that it was almost a verbal tic.
He was stirring: “Americans must have the freedom to keep whatever doctor and health-care plan they have.”
He was adamant: “If you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.”
He was clear: “Let me be clear: If you like your doctor or health-care provider, you can keep them. If you like your health-care plan, you can keep that, too.”
He had to keep repeating his promise, since there was so much bad information out there. “No matter what you’ve heard,” he said in a weekly radio address in August 2009, “if you like your doctor or health-care plan, you can keep it.”...
...Obama could always go with the Huey Long defense. In one of his gubernatorial campaigns in Louisiana, Long promised a state senator a bridge project in exchange for an endorsement. Upon getting elected, he reneged on his pledge. Asked by the jilted state senator what he should tell his disappointed constituents, Long advised: “Tell them I lied.” ...
To say that President Obama is on the record telling Americans they can keep their current health insurance is an understatement. He repeated the assurance so many times during the health-care debate that it was almost a verbal tic.
He was stirring: “Americans must have the freedom to keep whatever doctor and health-care plan they have.”
He was adamant: “If you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.”
He was clear: “Let me be clear: If you like your doctor or health-care provider, you can keep them. If you like your health-care plan, you can keep that, too.”
He had to keep repeating his promise, since there was so much bad information out there. “No matter what you’ve heard,” he said in a weekly radio address in August 2009, “if you like your doctor or health-care plan, you can keep it.”...
...Obama could always go with the Huey Long defense. In one of his gubernatorial campaigns in Louisiana, Long promised a state senator a bridge project in exchange for an endorsement. Upon getting elected, he reneged on his pledge. Asked by the jilted state senator what he should tell his disappointed constituents, Long advised: “Tell them I lied.” ...
Is the Embattled IRS the Next Obamacare Nightmare?
...“In all candor, unless the IRS receives additional resources in order to implement the ACA (Affordable Care Act), they truly -- it's a zero-sum game,” George told a House Appropriations subcommittee. “They're going to have to make very difficult choices in terms of customer service, in terms of enforcement, in order to take on this huge responsibility that they have been presented with," George said.
Last June, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report estimated that the IRS would spend $881 million of taxpayers’ money to implement the first four years of Obamacare, including about $500 million that the HHS diverted to the agency. ...
...“In all candor, unless the IRS receives additional resources in order to implement the ACA (Affordable Care Act), they truly -- it's a zero-sum game,” George told a House Appropriations subcommittee. “They're going to have to make very difficult choices in terms of customer service, in terms of enforcement, in order to take on this huge responsibility that they have been presented with," George said.
Last June, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report estimated that the IRS would spend $881 million of taxpayers’ money to implement the first four years of Obamacare, including about $500 million that the HHS diverted to the agency. ...
Obamacare's Big Thinkers Forgot to Bring in the Doers
...Think of it this way: If the website doesn’t work by Nov. 30, all hell will break loose. How much more hellacious will it get if the president’s tech guy promised that the website would work and it didn’t? Not all that much more hellacious, really.
On the other hand, if they admit that it might not work on Nov. 30, the national discussion will immediately start focusing on delaying all or part of the law. This way, they buy themselves a month’s respite from demands for a delay, and they also make that delay much harder to implement, because more people will have bought through the state exchanges or had their existing insurance policies canceled by their insurers. Sure, that might seriously screw up the insurance markets -- but as far as I can tell, the administration has decided, possibly correctly, that any backward movement, however small, puts the whole law in grave danger. So damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead....
...But I’ve never seen a gap this complete -- one in which the entire IT organization seems to have been panicking about the impossibility of their task, and then the inevitable failures, while the folks issuing the orders were blithely issuing last-minute change orders and telling everyone they could find how swell this was all going to be. Usually, when things are going this wrong, you do more than casually mention it; you sit the folks on the business side down and explain that unless the project is pushed back, it’s going to be an unmitigated disaster. ...
...Think of it this way: If the website doesn’t work by Nov. 30, all hell will break loose. How much more hellacious will it get if the president’s tech guy promised that the website would work and it didn’t? Not all that much more hellacious, really.
On the other hand, if they admit that it might not work on Nov. 30, the national discussion will immediately start focusing on delaying all or part of the law. This way, they buy themselves a month’s respite from demands for a delay, and they also make that delay much harder to implement, because more people will have bought through the state exchanges or had their existing insurance policies canceled by their insurers. Sure, that might seriously screw up the insurance markets -- but as far as I can tell, the administration has decided, possibly correctly, that any backward movement, however small, puts the whole law in grave danger. So damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead....
...But I’ve never seen a gap this complete -- one in which the entire IT organization seems to have been panicking about the impossibility of their task, and then the inevitable failures, while the folks issuing the orders were blithely issuing last-minute change orders and telling everyone they could find how swell this was all going to be. Usually, when things are going this wrong, you do more than casually mention it; you sit the folks on the business side down and explain that unless the project is pushed back, it’s going to be an unmitigated disaster. ...
Administration Officials Worried Obama's Promise that People Could Keep Their Plans Wasn't Right, and Let Him Make It Anyway
...When the question arose, Mr. Obama's advisers decided that the assertion was fair, interviews with more than a dozen people involved in crafting and explaining the president's health-care plan show.
But at times, there was second-guessing. At one point, aides discussed whether Mr. Obama might use more in-depth discussions, such as media interviews, to explain the nuances of the succinct line in his stump speeches, a former aide said. Officials worried, though, that delving into details such as the small number of people who might lose insurance could be confusing and would clutter the president's message.
"You try to talk about health care in broad, intelligible points that cut through, and you inevitably lose some accuracy when you do that," the former official said.
The former official added that in the midst of a hard-fought political debate "if you like your plan, you can probably keep it" isn't a salable point....
...When the question arose, Mr. Obama's advisers decided that the assertion was fair, interviews with more than a dozen people involved in crafting and explaining the president's health-care plan show.
But at times, there was second-guessing. At one point, aides discussed whether Mr. Obama might use more in-depth discussions, such as media interviews, to explain the nuances of the succinct line in his stump speeches, a former aide said. Officials worried, though, that delving into details such as the small number of people who might lose insurance could be confusing and would clutter the president's message.
"You try to talk about health care in broad, intelligible points that cut through, and you inevitably lose some accuracy when you do that," the former official said.
The former official added that in the midst of a hard-fought political debate "if you like your plan, you can probably keep it" isn't a salable point....
Crappy Compensation Just One (Big) Reason Doctors May Spurn Your Obamacare Coverage
...A poll conducted by the New York State Medical Society finds that 44 percent of MDs said they are not participating in the nation’s new health-care plan.
Another 33 percent say they’re still not sure whether to become ObamaCare providers.
Only 23 percent of the 409 physicians queried said they’re taking patients who signed up through health exchanges....
...A representative of one primary care provider organization, speaking to MedPage Today on background, said some rates were 70% lower than traditional preferred provider network plans, adding that plans were trying to make provider rates as low as possible to keep premiums equally low.
"Initial hearsay information is that payment rates being offered by [marketplace] plans are quite low in at least some of the states," a federal affairs representative for a second primary care provider group said. "What that means is that fewer providers will sign up."...
...A poll conducted by the New York State Medical Society finds that 44 percent of MDs said they are not participating in the nation’s new health-care plan.
Another 33 percent say they’re still not sure whether to become ObamaCare providers.
Only 23 percent of the 409 physicians queried said they’re taking patients who signed up through health exchanges....
...A representative of one primary care provider organization, speaking to MedPage Today on background, said some rates were 70% lower than traditional preferred provider network plans, adding that plans were trying to make provider rates as low as possible to keep premiums equally low.
"Initial hearsay information is that payment rates being offered by [marketplace] plans are quite low in at least some of the states," a federal affairs representative for a second primary care provider group said. "What that means is that fewer providers will sign up."...
President Obama, off the record
...“It’s like, ‘The president wants to know what you think about ‘x.’ So you go, ‘I guess I better figure out what I think about ‘x,’” one columnist explained.
The off-the-record meetings are held over coffee around the long wooden conference table in the Roosevelt Room, just off the West Wing lobby. Participants vary depending on the issue of the day, but there are regulars. Brooks, the New York Times columnist, is a frequent guest, as is Joe Klein of Time Magazine. From The Washington Post: E.J. Dionne, Eugene Robinson, Ezra Klein and Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor. On foreign policy: the Post’s David Ignatius, Bloomberg View’s Jeffrey Goldberg, and the Times’ Thomas Friedman. He also holds the occasional meeting with conservatives. This month, he met with Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer, Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot, and other influential representatives from the right....
...The second goal is more tactical: By meeting privately with the people who shape national opinion, the president ensures that his points of view will be represented in the media — even if those points of view aren’t directly attributable to him....
...“It’s like, ‘The president wants to know what you think about ‘x.’ So you go, ‘I guess I better figure out what I think about ‘x,’” one columnist explained.
The off-the-record meetings are held over coffee around the long wooden conference table in the Roosevelt Room, just off the West Wing lobby. Participants vary depending on the issue of the day, but there are regulars. Brooks, the New York Times columnist, is a frequent guest, as is Joe Klein of Time Magazine. From The Washington Post: E.J. Dionne, Eugene Robinson, Ezra Klein and Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor. On foreign policy: the Post’s David Ignatius, Bloomberg View’s Jeffrey Goldberg, and the Times’ Thomas Friedman. He also holds the occasional meeting with conservatives. This month, he met with Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer, Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot, and other influential representatives from the right....
...The second goal is more tactical: By meeting privately with the people who shape national opinion, the president ensures that his points of view will be represented in the media — even if those points of view aren’t directly attributable to him....
HHS Predicted Much Employer-Backed Health Coverage Wouldn't Survive Obamacare, Either
Back in 2010, when the Department of Health and Human Services projected that “40 to 67 percent” of individual customers will not be able to keep their existing health coverage because of the tight requirements for grandfathering policies, HHS made similar projections for health coverage offered by employers. As it turns out, many of those comfortably ensconced in jobs at large and small firms were projected to lose their health plans, too. Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, we can review that now-offline document. At that time, HHS estimated that 34 to 64 percent of large employer (100 or more workers) plans would lose grandfathered status by 2013, and that 49 to 80 percent of small employer (under 100 workers) plans would lose grandfathered status by 2013....
Back in 2010, when the Department of Health and Human Services projected that “40 to 67 percent” of individual customers will not be able to keep their existing health coverage because of the tight requirements for grandfathering policies, HHS made similar projections for health coverage offered by employers. As it turns out, many of those comfortably ensconced in jobs at large and small firms were projected to lose their health plans, too. Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, we can review that now-offline document. At that time, HHS estimated that 34 to 64 percent of large employer (100 or more workers) plans would lose grandfathered status by 2013, and that 49 to 80 percent of small employer (under 100 workers) plans would lose grandfathered status by 2013....
The Biggest Lie? 'Keep Your Plan'
...So when President Obama decided to take another stab at health care, he was determined to avoid that pitfall. He endlessly promised in the most emphatic way possible that under his plan, Harry and Louise would have nothing to worry about.
"Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you," the president said at a July 2009 rally in New Jersey. "First of all, if you've got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you."
Later he said that "When I say 'If you have your plan and you like it,' ... what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform."
He promised this after the law passed, and throughout the 2012 election campaign.
Of course, Obama knew it wasn't true when he said it. He just couldn't admit it if he wanted to convince enough Democrats to vote for the bill....
...So when President Obama decided to take another stab at health care, he was determined to avoid that pitfall. He endlessly promised in the most emphatic way possible that under his plan, Harry and Louise would have nothing to worry about.
"Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you," the president said at a July 2009 rally in New Jersey. "First of all, if you've got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you."
Later he said that "When I say 'If you have your plan and you like it,' ... what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform."
He promised this after the law passed, and throughout the 2012 election campaign.
Of course, Obama knew it wasn't true when he said it. He just couldn't admit it if he wanted to convince enough Democrats to vote for the bill....
Mean girls: Scientists say women have evolved to be ‘indirectly aggressive’
An authoritative study published by the Royal Society has explored the scientific basis for “competition and aggression” between women, and found that they have most likely evolved to be mean to one another.
Dedicating a whole journal issue to the theme and inviting international evidence from across disciplines, the research found that the “constraints of offspring production and care” meant that it favoured the female of the species to resort to low-risk forms of aggression.
Scientists said that since Darwin first put forward his theories on reproductive competition, extensive research has been done on how more expendable men developed larger body size, use of weaponry and ritualised displays of aggression....
...“Although female aggression takes diverse forms, under most circumstances relatively low-risk competitive strategies are favoured.”
The scientists added that they found “coalitions or alliances may reduce risk of retaliation” – a theory to explain why groups of women gang up on others – as famously documented in the 2004 Lindsay Lohan film Mean Girls....
An authoritative study published by the Royal Society has explored the scientific basis for “competition and aggression” between women, and found that they have most likely evolved to be mean to one another.
Dedicating a whole journal issue to the theme and inviting international evidence from across disciplines, the research found that the “constraints of offspring production and care” meant that it favoured the female of the species to resort to low-risk forms of aggression.
Scientists said that since Darwin first put forward his theories on reproductive competition, extensive research has been done on how more expendable men developed larger body size, use of weaponry and ritualised displays of aggression....
...“Although female aggression takes diverse forms, under most circumstances relatively low-risk competitive strategies are favoured.”
The scientists added that they found “coalitions or alliances may reduce risk of retaliation” – a theory to explain why groups of women gang up on others – as famously documented in the 2004 Lindsay Lohan film Mean Girls....
Joel Kotkin: Many stuck near the bottom
...Inequality is on the rise throughout the country, while there are significant differences in its depth by geography and region. California is producing ever more billionaires, three times as many as in regularly faster-growing Texas, but the middle class is in secular decline, according to a recent Public Policy Institute Study, and now constitutes less than half California's population. The state also suffers the highest rate of poverty in the country and is now home to roughly one-third of the nation's welfare recipients, equal to almost three times its proportion of the nation's population....
...Indeed, under the current liberal regime, the prospects for the poor and working class have decreased markedly while the wealthy, often villainized by the administration, have luxuriated. During much of the tenure of the first black president, the gap between Anglo incomes on the one side and those of blacks and Hispanics has widened, doubling since the Great Recession....
...Inequality is on the rise throughout the country, while there are significant differences in its depth by geography and region. California is producing ever more billionaires, three times as many as in regularly faster-growing Texas, but the middle class is in secular decline, according to a recent Public Policy Institute Study, and now constitutes less than half California's population. The state also suffers the highest rate of poverty in the country and is now home to roughly one-third of the nation's welfare recipients, equal to almost three times its proportion of the nation's population....
...Indeed, under the current liberal regime, the prospects for the poor and working class have decreased markedly while the wealthy, often villainized by the administration, have luxuriated. During much of the tenure of the first black president, the gap between Anglo incomes on the one side and those of blacks and Hispanics has widened, doubling since the Great Recession....
Gray wolf to lose endangered species protection as numbers rise
From the comments:
I’d like to address another, often overlooked aspect of this potentially devastating situation…the wolves themselves
They are, when not being harassed and menaced by humans, perhaps the noblest creatures on the planet…or at least in the top five…
Often called “nature’s perfect parents” wolves take a communal view when rearing their young. Only the alpha male and female mate…the rest celibate and sharing in raising, feeding and protecting the pack and it’s young. They don’t overkill…taking only what they need (unlike certain species of bear, which will kill hungry or not…especially those coke-endorsing white ones who ARE the most carnivorous creatures on the North American continent…but they get the good PR, while wolves are vilified for their incredibly miniscule impact on cattle and other livestock
If man was as true to his essential, fundamental nature as wolves are…the world would be a far better place in many ways that really matter...
From the comments:
I’d like to address another, often overlooked aspect of this potentially devastating situation…the wolves themselves
They are, when not being harassed and menaced by humans, perhaps the noblest creatures on the planet…or at least in the top five…
Often called “nature’s perfect parents” wolves take a communal view when rearing their young. Only the alpha male and female mate…the rest celibate and sharing in raising, feeding and protecting the pack and it’s young. They don’t overkill…taking only what they need (unlike certain species of bear, which will kill hungry or not…especially those coke-endorsing white ones who ARE the most carnivorous creatures on the North American continent…but they get the good PR, while wolves are vilified for their incredibly miniscule impact on cattle and other livestock
If man was as true to his essential, fundamental nature as wolves are…the world would be a far better place in many ways that really matter...
FBI to Lavabit founder: ‘Do you really think users trust you over us?’
...Levison said he was willing to provide the FBI limited access to what they wanted, but the bureau told him that was not sufficient, insisting on full access.
He recalls lead prosecutor Jim Trump asking, “Do you really think users trust you over us?” Levison answered in the affirmative and Trump replied that Levison was “lucky” he had not already been arrested.
“I was outnumbered eight to one,” said Levison speaking of his interaction with federal agents. “They were taking offense that I was saying these things. They didn’t seem to understand at all what they were doing.”
Levison said the FBI responded to concerns about overreach by saying, basically, “Don’t worry. We’re the federal government. We wouldn’t do that.”...
...Levison said he was willing to provide the FBI limited access to what they wanted, but the bureau told him that was not sufficient, insisting on full access.
He recalls lead prosecutor Jim Trump asking, “Do you really think users trust you over us?” Levison answered in the affirmative and Trump replied that Levison was “lucky” he had not already been arrested.
“I was outnumbered eight to one,” said Levison speaking of his interaction with federal agents. “They were taking offense that I was saying these things. They didn’t seem to understand at all what they were doing.”
Levison said the FBI responded to concerns about overreach by saying, basically, “Don’t worry. We’re the federal government. We wouldn’t do that.”...
CNN: Senate Democrats supported rule that led to insurance cancellations
Washington (CNN) - Senate Democrats voted unanimously three years ago to support the Obamacare rule that is largely responsible for some of the health insurance cancellation letters that are going out.
In September 2010, Senate Republicans brought a resolution to the floor to block implementation of the grandfather rule, warning that it would result in canceled policies and violate President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance if they liked it....
Washington (CNN) - Senate Democrats voted unanimously three years ago to support the Obamacare rule that is largely responsible for some of the health insurance cancellation letters that are going out.
In September 2010, Senate Republicans brought a resolution to the floor to block implementation of the grandfather rule, warning that it would result in canceled policies and violate President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance if they liked it....
An Obama voter's cry of despair
...When I'm finished with my patient write-ups at night and get into bed, the book returns me to a time when politics inspired millions and speeches could take your breath away. The election turned out to be a landslide, and news anchors paused to reflect on the historic nature of the hour.
My classmates cried with joy, and my parents saved every newspaper they could find. A young team of visionaries was headed for the White House, and the nation was ready for change. During Obama's transition to office in 2008, he had an 82% approval rating. There was something in the air.
And then I close the book. Cutting to the present is a rude awakening, like snapping out of a dream. It's hard to remember those days of optimism -- they seem a distant memory, a sad reminder of opportunities gone by. Change indeed happened, in the years since I cast my first ballot. It was simply nothing I could have imagined....
...Republican obstructionism cannot explain allowing the bugging of foreign leaders, nor having drones strike innocent children overseas. It cannot explain having the National Security Agency collect data on the private lives of Americans, nor prosecuting whistle-blowers who reveal government wrongdoing. It cannot account for assassinating Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, without a trial, nor shirking public funding and spending limits during presidential campaigns.
It cannot justify the findings of a report that says the White House's efforts to silence the media are the "most aggressive ... since the Nixon Administration".
And, most recently, it cannot excuse the failure to design a simple website more than three years since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law....
...When I'm finished with my patient write-ups at night and get into bed, the book returns me to a time when politics inspired millions and speeches could take your breath away. The election turned out to be a landslide, and news anchors paused to reflect on the historic nature of the hour.
My classmates cried with joy, and my parents saved every newspaper they could find. A young team of visionaries was headed for the White House, and the nation was ready for change. During Obama's transition to office in 2008, he had an 82% approval rating. There was something in the air.
And then I close the book. Cutting to the present is a rude awakening, like snapping out of a dream. It's hard to remember those days of optimism -- they seem a distant memory, a sad reminder of opportunities gone by. Change indeed happened, in the years since I cast my first ballot. It was simply nothing I could have imagined....
...Republican obstructionism cannot explain allowing the bugging of foreign leaders, nor having drones strike innocent children overseas. It cannot explain having the National Security Agency collect data on the private lives of Americans, nor prosecuting whistle-blowers who reveal government wrongdoing. It cannot account for assassinating Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, without a trial, nor shirking public funding and spending limits during presidential campaigns.
It cannot justify the findings of a report that says the White House's efforts to silence the media are the "most aggressive ... since the Nixon Administration".
And, most recently, it cannot excuse the failure to design a simple website more than three years since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law....
Is ‘global cooling’ the new scientific consensus?
Is there a new scientific consensus forming around global cooling? That’s what environmentalist Lawrence Solomon writes in the Financial Post, citing the fact that solar activity is decreasing at the fastest rate as anytime in the last 10,000 years.
“Now an increasing number of scientists are swinging back to the thinking of the 1960s and 1970s,” Solomon writes. “The global cooling hypothesis may have been right after all, they say. Earth may be entering a new Little Ice Age.”
Solomon adds that Columbia University’s George Kukla — who warned the U.S. government about the dangers of global cooling in 1972 — postulated that “[g]lobal warming always precedes an ice age… The warming we saw in the 1980s and 1990s, in other words, was expected all along, much as the calm before the storm.”
Recently, scientists have been looking to solar activity as a predictor of world climate. Low solar activity has been connected with cold periods in human history, while high levels of solar activity have been connected with warming periods, like the recent one from the 1950s to 1998.
The United Nation’s climate authority has tried to downplay the influence of solar activity on the Earth’s climate, but climate scientists have been more assertive that the sun plays a role in affecting global temperatures....
Is there a new scientific consensus forming around global cooling? That’s what environmentalist Lawrence Solomon writes in the Financial Post, citing the fact that solar activity is decreasing at the fastest rate as anytime in the last 10,000 years.
“Now an increasing number of scientists are swinging back to the thinking of the 1960s and 1970s,” Solomon writes. “The global cooling hypothesis may have been right after all, they say. Earth may be entering a new Little Ice Age.”
Solomon adds that Columbia University’s George Kukla — who warned the U.S. government about the dangers of global cooling in 1972 — postulated that “[g]lobal warming always precedes an ice age… The warming we saw in the 1980s and 1990s, in other words, was expected all along, much as the calm before the storm.”
Recently, scientists have been looking to solar activity as a predictor of world climate. Low solar activity has been connected with cold periods in human history, while high levels of solar activity have been connected with warming periods, like the recent one from the 1950s to 1998.
The United Nation’s climate authority has tried to downplay the influence of solar activity on the Earth’s climate, but climate scientists have been more assertive that the sun plays a role in affecting global temperatures....
IRS' Lois Lerner Gave Confidential Tea Party Tax Info to FEC, Breaking the Law
The Internal Revenue Service shared highly confidential tax information of several Tea Party groups in the IRS scandal with the Federal Election Commission, a clear violation of federal law, according to newly obtained emails.
The public watchdog group Judicial Watch told Secrets Thursday that it was former scandal boss Lois Lerner who shared the information on groups including the American Future Fund and the American Issues Project.
The emails obtained by Judicial Watch show that the IRS, which was considering the tax status of the groups, gave the FEC the tax returns of the groups, including income, expenditures and staff pay. The emails also revealed the exact working of the prying political questions the IRS wanted the groups to reveal, such as their goals and the requests for brochures and ads.
The information, sent via email, to the FEC came in response to the organization’s questions about whether the IRS had granted tax-exempt status to the Tea Party groups. It is unclear how the information the IRS sent was going to help the FEC, since the IRS hadn’t determined the tax status of the groups yet.
The emails were produced to Judicial Watch last week by the FEC in response to an Aug. 9, 2013, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The email chain began Feb. 3, 2009, when the FEC made it’s request to Lerner.
She emailed back 10 minutes later, and said: “I have sent your email out to some of my staff. Will get back to you as soon as I have heard from them.”...
The Internal Revenue Service shared highly confidential tax information of several Tea Party groups in the IRS scandal with the Federal Election Commission, a clear violation of federal law, according to newly obtained emails.
The public watchdog group Judicial Watch told Secrets Thursday that it was former scandal boss Lois Lerner who shared the information on groups including the American Future Fund and the American Issues Project.
The emails obtained by Judicial Watch show that the IRS, which was considering the tax status of the groups, gave the FEC the tax returns of the groups, including income, expenditures and staff pay. The emails also revealed the exact working of the prying political questions the IRS wanted the groups to reveal, such as their goals and the requests for brochures and ads.
The information, sent via email, to the FEC came in response to the organization’s questions about whether the IRS had granted tax-exempt status to the Tea Party groups. It is unclear how the information the IRS sent was going to help the FEC, since the IRS hadn’t determined the tax status of the groups yet.
The emails were produced to Judicial Watch last week by the FEC in response to an Aug. 9, 2013, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The email chain began Feb. 3, 2009, when the FEC made it’s request to Lerner.
She emailed back 10 minutes later, and said: “I have sent your email out to some of my staff. Will get back to you as soon as I have heard from them.”...
When Fraud Is Legal
Under socialism, there's no such thing as consumer protection.
...The answer to Alter's question is that Obama said it both before and after the law was enacted. The famous New York magazine montage features two dozen clips of Obama saying essentially the same thing. The earliest dates from October 2008; the latest, September 2010. So perhaps it is an unrealistic promise that turned into a lie.
But calling it a "lie" offers Obama another excuse--the one to which Page resorted when he observed dismissively that "that's one of those political lies." After all, politicians break promises all the time, and isn't it a little naive to expect them not to lie?
It seems to us, however, that this is not just "one of those political lies." To understand why, let's try a thought experiment. Enlarge Image
Suppose BHO Insurance Co. decides it wants to corner its state's market in automobile coverage. It begins an aggressive ad campaign offering a too-good-to-be-true deal: Sign up with us, and we'll give you better coverage at lower premiums. We're so sure you'll love our deal that if you like the terms of your existing policy, you'll be able to keep them--GUARANTEED!
The ad campaign, with the company's charismatic president acting as pitchman, is a smashing success. The competing companies lose so much business that they declare bankruptcy or are acquired by BHO. But BHO's policies are more expensive, and they include "comprehensive" coverage most customers neither need nor want. Take it or leave it, the company says, reneging on its guarantee in the knowledge that state law requires cars to be insured before they can be driven on public streets.
You'd call that a bait-and-switch. The legal term is fraud....
...Consumers and honest businesses need protection from unscrupulous market participants. That is nearly impossible when an industry is owned, or effectively controlled, by the government. To socialize an industry is to put it in a position to regulate itself. It legalizes fraud by recasting it as mere "political lies."...
Under socialism, there's no such thing as consumer protection.
...The answer to Alter's question is that Obama said it both before and after the law was enacted. The famous New York magazine montage features two dozen clips of Obama saying essentially the same thing. The earliest dates from October 2008; the latest, September 2010. So perhaps it is an unrealistic promise that turned into a lie.
But calling it a "lie" offers Obama another excuse--the one to which Page resorted when he observed dismissively that "that's one of those political lies." After all, politicians break promises all the time, and isn't it a little naive to expect them not to lie?
It seems to us, however, that this is not just "one of those political lies." To understand why, let's try a thought experiment. Enlarge Image
Suppose BHO Insurance Co. decides it wants to corner its state's market in automobile coverage. It begins an aggressive ad campaign offering a too-good-to-be-true deal: Sign up with us, and we'll give you better coverage at lower premiums. We're so sure you'll love our deal that if you like the terms of your existing policy, you'll be able to keep them--GUARANTEED!
The ad campaign, with the company's charismatic president acting as pitchman, is a smashing success. The competing companies lose so much business that they declare bankruptcy or are acquired by BHO. But BHO's policies are more expensive, and they include "comprehensive" coverage most customers neither need nor want. Take it or leave it, the company says, reneging on its guarantee in the knowledge that state law requires cars to be insured before they can be driven on public streets.
You'd call that a bait-and-switch. The legal term is fraud....
...Consumers and honest businesses need protection from unscrupulous market participants. That is nearly impossible when an industry is owned, or effectively controlled, by the government. To socialize an industry is to put it in a position to regulate itself. It legalizes fraud by recasting it as mere "political lies."...
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