Category Archives: Obamacare

2008 Election, 2012 Election, 2014 Election, Economy, Florida, Immigration, Media, Obamacare, Politics

Jolly (R) Wins FL13, Who Knew?

One Associated Press piece in the local paper titled Fla. House race could be warning for Democrats was all there was in the news media about the republican win in a district that voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. In a contest that was described as a bellwether for the midterm elections in November, where Obamacare was the focus on both sides.

NBC’s Chuck Todd said . . .

Tomorrow’s race in Florida will tell us a lot about the power of the Republican Party’s health-care attacks on Democrats could have in 2014.

Jolly campaigned on a conservative platform; cutting government spending, balanced budgets and repealing Obamacare. Sink tried a new version of offense with Obamacare; mend it, don’t end it. She followed the President’s agenda with a pro-illegal alien agenda, and more government spending. ‘Cutting spending’ and ‘balanced budget’ as an objective never crossed her lips.

Republican David Jolly beat Democrat Alex Sink with 48.5 percent of the vote to Sink’s 46.7 percent. Before the returns were in, Democrats began downplaying the importance of this contest. When the results were final, DNC Chair Debbie Was-a-man Shultz tried explaining away their loss, saying “the GOP fell short of its traditional margin” in a Republican-leaning district (but trending Democrat) packed with older voters.

She’s right about that. And the mainstream media carried her message. Missing in that fact is a little perspective. What she and the news media won’t say is that in all seven of Rep. Young’s elections, he ran unopposed. In this election, Jolly had two challengers. Sink a Democrat, and Libertarian candidate Lucas Overby.

Speaking of traditional margins. Third parties traditionally have given Democrats the win by siphoning off Republican party votes. Ralph Nader and Ross Perot come to mind. But this time, the nearly 5% that Overby got wasn’t enough to hand Sink a win. Also not mentioned was the fact that Jolly’s candidacy was not taken seriously by the establishment Republicans, allowing Jolly to be outspend by Democrats 3 to 1.

On the day before the election, Todd also said this . . .

Conversely, a Jolly win on Tuesday would signal that it’s open hunting season on Democrats — even in places where Obama has been a strength for Democrats in past elections.

It’s also open season on the establishment Republicans if they don’t stand on the principles that got them elected, and if they refuse to understand that running on conservative principles, compared with the status quo of the last 6 years, is how you win elections.

Obamacare, Organized Labor, Politics

Obamacare, What Could Go Wrong?

Time for a recap on the success, or lack thereof, of the greatest piece of legislation (if you ask a Democrat) since the New Deal, Social Security, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Section 8 Housing combined. Universal health care, said President Obama, is what Americans have wanted. And they wanted it so that the 15 percent of Americans that didn’t have health insurance could then have it. After all, we are a generous and compassionate America. Not only that, but average family policyholders would see a $2,500 decrease in their premiums because everyone would now be insured.

Now, three years since the bill’s enactment, and with less than two weeks to go before the mandatory sign-up period ends, the circus of all legislation, Obamacare, is tumbling down and taking Americans, the economy, with it.

Remember when Big Labor and businesses complained of the cost and burden the ACA would put on them, and were granted delays of implementation through 2014? They couldn’t afford it. That left the individual mandate to fund the program on its own, since big businesses got the delay they wanted. Then Republicans asked for the individual mandate to also be delayed, because people, including Congressional employees who make six figure salaries, couldn’t afford it. They filibustered for the delay and got no where. Now, the administration is doing what Republicans wanted to do last year because, ta daaa, it is creating “hardship” on people. People can not afford to buy it. Now, since the individual mandate has been pushed back two years, until October 2016, the Affordable Care Act has no one mandated to participate. Which means that the Affordable Care Act now has no mandated funding. And what funding it does have, is no where near what it takes (by demographic) to survive, let alone reduce anyone’s premium. What a brilliant plan?

Delaying Obamacare’s Individual Mandate Due to ‘Hardship’ — Caused by Obamacare

It’s getting difficult to take any part of Obamacare seriously.

The Obama administration has altered or delayed it so many times—who can be sure what the law is at this point?

The individual mandate stating that every American has to purchase government-approved health coverage or pay a fine is supposed to kick in on March 31. That’s the deadline to sign up for coverage, supposedly to avoid this year’s penalty.

But Obamacare is never “settled law,” as the president and others have called it, because Health and Human Services (HHS) keeps writing more regulations.

Most recently, the administration extended the “hardship exemption” from the individual mandate for those who had their previous policies canceled because of Obamacare until October 2016.

To qualify, your plan must have been canceled because it wasn’t compliant with Obamacare, and you just have to tell the government you “believe” that other insurance policies are unaffordable.

The exemption means people who meet these criteria are free from the individual mandate. But if they want to buy coverage, they are given the special option to buy a “catastrophic” health insurance plan, which is not eligible for subsidies and typically would be available only to those under age 30.

When the exemption was first announced in December, Heritage experts Alyene Senger and Robert Moffit said this “is not going to simplify anything. Rest assured it is going to create even greater confusion for health insurers trying to sell these products. Also, don’t expect the unhappy consumers who’ve just lost their previous coverage to understand clearly which plan they can pick and be legally qualified to pick it.”

Due to the utter confusion and the underperforming signups on HealthCare.gov, reporters asked HHS this week whether the agency would simply extend the deadline for people to buy coverage. An HHS official responded that, “In fact, we don’t actually have the statutory authority to extend the open enrollment period in 2014.”

This administration hasn’t let a detail like legal authority stop it from overstepping its bounds multiple times. And as Heritage’s Senger and Moffit put it, “issuing more government rules to correct the consequences of their unworkable government rules is the only thing they seem to know how to do.”

Repealing the ACA would be way better than what we now have. Replacing it with the House version would be better, and, would deliver in the private sector all that the ACA was promised to do in the public sector but can’t.

H/T Amy Payne 

2014 Election, Economy, Obamacare, Organized Labor, Politics

Problem Is Median Income, Not Minimum Wage

It ought to be clear by now that nothing President Obama has done to “fix” our economy has worked. And the reason is he has it all wrong. You can’t build the private sector economy when you bleed the strength from it via taxes, over-regulation, and debt. As the government grows, the economy shrinks. And boy has the government grown.

Aside from his propensity to tax and spend, where spending is to favor contributors, labor unions, and favored special interests like environmental wackos and green energy flops, none of which builds the economy, President Obama’s economic engineering is not working because he can’t identify the problem.

The problem is not the minimum wage. That is a political strategy for hooking low information voters and the poor to vote Democratic. And to give Big Labor a raise. Raising the minimum wage will cause people to lose jobs. Just like Obamacare is causing people to lose jobs.  The middle class is getting poorer.  While the minimum wage remained steady, the median family income has fallen every year since Obama’s “recovery” began.

According to the Census report, the high point for median household income in the United States was back in 1999 ($56,080). It almost got back to that level in 2007 ($55,627), but ever since then there has been a steady decline. The following figures come directly from the report, and as you can see, median household income has fallen every single year for the past five years…

2007: $55,627
2008: $53,644
2009: $53,285
2010: $51,892
2011: $51,100
2012: $51,017

Did you know that there are six counties in America where the median income is over twice the national median?  Four of those counties are suburban Washington.

You know where President Obama’s focus is. And it is not on how to raise median family income. That’s where the middle class is. Is this because he doesn’t know how? Or is it because he doesn’t care that his social justice agenda is killing jobs and ruining the economy, especially the middle class? Which one works for you?

Immigration, Obamacare, Politics

Illegals Can Get Coverage Under ACA

illegal_aliens

Joe Wilson was right when he shouted “you lie” to Obama when he said that illegals wouldn’t be covered under obama-stop-deporting-dreamers-apObamacare. Of course everyone knew that. After all, it’s why the Heller Amendment was defeated.

In a virtual town hall meeting hosted by Spanish-language media outlets on Thursday, President Obama wanted Latinos to know that “I’ve got your back.”  And . . .

The main point that I have for everybody watching right now is, you don’t punish me by not signing up for health care. You’re punishing yourself or your family if in fact there’s affordable health care to be had.

Links:

2012 Election, 2014 Election, 2016 Election, Economy, Obamacare, Politics

I Want My Affordable Health Care

Have you begun to notice that the Affordable Care Act, which was supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, (never mind that 85% of the population were happy with the health insurance and health care they had), keeps getting delayed (illegally I might add) from implementation? Curiously, all the bad stuff, like policy cancellations and the people seeing their premiums double and deductibles quadruple, losing their doctors, hospital, and medicine, keep being pushed back to periods AFTER elections. After 2012, after 2014, and now some provisions after 2016 and long after 2016.

If this law is so good, something that Americans just couldn’t live without, then let those policy cancellation notices come out in September and October of 2014. Let’s get it on already. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Democrats totally OWN the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, would it? Or from the fact of what we’ve seen so far that it is turning out to be nothing like what was promised? Or maybe it was because the promises have been revealed to everybody, including democrats, to be not promises, but outright lies?

Ignoring the failure of Obamacare is one thing. What’s even more amazing is the democratic strategy for the 2014 mid-term election. A strategy designed to not make Democrats look like they have to run away from Obamacare. Their idea is to run on fixing it.

To a Democrat in Washington this makes perfect sense. Just like their inability to stimulate the economy with so-called stimulus spending, and wanting to spend more, while the only result is record long-term unemployment, the lowest worker participation rate since Jimmy Carter, and massive record national debt. In other words, they’ve proven that what they’re doing does not work. So let the ones who broke the economy fix the economy by doing the same thing that broke it in the first place.

It follows then that we should re-elect the people who destroyed our health care system and health insurance industry so that they can ostensibly “fix” it in however many years it will take. And that makes sense to who? Especially when there has been a private sector alternative solution to Obamacare for 4 years now. And on that topic, remember, every time you hear a Democrat say “they have no alternative,” you know they are lying to you again.

Media, Obamacare, Politics

Obamacare Update, He Knew

Recall last October, shortly after the Obamacare rollout, President Obama acted totally surprised, ‘caught off guard’ I think was his phrase. Surprised to find out how bad the problems with the website and other problems with the law were. Everyone was astonished that the President would have been so disconnected from his signature piece of legislation that he was caught off guard. Then news that the White House visitors log showed only one entry of Secretary Sebelius having been to The White House in the 18 months prior to the rollout had everyone scratching their head.

From FOIA requests, The Hill has uncovered dozens of meetings between Sebelius and President Obama, many of those about Obamacare specifically. He knew what the situation was. His CYA was to lie about it and to throw Sebelius under the bus.

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Saturday February 15th is National Youth Enrollment Day

That’s the day The White House has picked to have an all-out youth enrollment campaign for Obamacare. Oh but wouldn’t you know, healthcare.gov will be down for maintenance on Saturday February 15th until Tuesday February 18th.

OK, everyone who still thinks that the federal government knows how to control your health care better than you, please raise your hand.

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Colorado Health Exchange Director Indicted For Fraud, Theft, False Claims

Christa McClure, 51 is the director of partner engagement for Connect for Health Colorado, the state program that implements the Affordable Care Act in the state. She is facing an eight-count indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Billings, Mont., in January. The 12-page indictment alleges that while serving as executive director of the federally funded Housing Montana, McClure between 2008 and 2010 paid herself “significant sums” for consulting services although she was already on the payroll as a full-time employee. She also made payments to her family and used federal money for personal travel, the indictment alleges. She also is accused of charging homeowners for a $750 warranty that did not exist, converting a laptop for personal use, inflating the hours she was to be compensated for and writing herself a $21,000 check.

What’s worse? State health care exchange officials said they had thoroughly vetted her.

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Oregon Health Exchange Enrolled ZERO

Despite receiving $160 million in taxpayer money, Oregon’s ObamaCare website has yet to properly sign up a single person for health care.

And there could be consequences. An Oregon legislator has gone to the FBI. Top officials have resigned. The state is investigating. And there could be a federal probe as soon as Thursday.

If history is any lesson with this administration, instead of hand-cuffs or a pink slip, there’s probably a promotion coming.

2014 Election, 2016 Election, Economy, Fair Tax, Obamacare, Politics

Stalinist Obama Criminalizes Normal Business Practices

This should make a difference to even the most staunch, deaf, dumb, and blind supporters of King President Obama, not to mention members of Congress.

So Obama has unilaterally legislated illegal conditions on the illegal waiver. To wit, employers will be required to certify to the IRS, under penalty of perjury, that the waiver was not a motivating factor in the company’s hiring and firing decisions. As Fox News’s Chris Stirewalt quips, “To avoid ObamaCare costs you must swear that you are not trying to avoid ObamaCare costs.”

Businesses are only businesses because they can manage to make a profit. When expenses increase on one end, like in taxes for example, they find ways to offset those added expenses where possible. Else they will eventually be forced out of business. And there is no better a motivator for a cost-cutting business decision than tax increases. Happens all the time, every day of the week. The tax code even drives businesses overseas. This isn’t a story about tax reform and the advantages of FairTax, but it could be.

Where Obamacare is concerned, every employee now has tax value attached to them. Employers have to decide if they can afford to keep the employee and pay for their insurance, cut their hours and let them get their own insurance, or terminate them. In addition to interfering with free-market business decisions and stifling free speech prior to the next two elections, this lawless President is now going after businesses by criminalizing normal business activity. As a matter of fact, the normalcy of these kind of decisions was specifically confirmed by the Supreme Court, who ruled that the Obamacare mandates were taxes, not penalties.

As if all his making up laws and breaking laws is not enough, his latest move should garner bi-partisan support for having blatantly crossed the line of being within the law and under constitutional authority. President Obama has become the most destructive force in this country to this country. He and his agenda must be stopped.

This latest move by the regime should be front page, above the fold in every newspaper, calling him out on this lawless action. Carrying the call for impeachment. But that’ll never happen.

Link: Obama Adds Irrationality To Lawlessness — While Threatening Prosecution  |  Thought Police: Firms must swear ObamaCare not a factor in firings

Obamacare, Politics

Obamacare’s Alternative Gains Another Co-Sponsor

Rep. John Kline [R-MN2] became a co-sponsor to the alternative to Obamacare that President Obama says does not exist, H.R. 2300: Empowering Patients First Act of 2013.

Kudo’s to Rep. Kline. If your representative isn’t a co-sponsor yet, let him or her know that they should be. Persuading more Democrats and electing  more Republicans to the Senate, is the only way this is going to work.

Economy, Obamacare, Politics

Obamacare, So Much For Building The Middle Class

1 Comment

Remember the meme last week coming from The White House? Income inequality, needing to grow the middle class. Oh, and raising the minimum minimum wage cartoon2wage. Today? Not so much. Today, everything most conservatives knew would happen under Obamacare, was confirmed by the CBO. The director of the Congressional Budget Office said today that Obamacare will cause the loss of 2.5 million jobs, and, will cause people to migrate from full-time positions to part-time positions. Obama and his media aren’t too concerned about that. In fact, they are saying this is good news. This is a new “freedom.” Americans now have “new choices, new options.” Americans now have the freedom to choose either not to work, or to work less. And, the less they work and the less they make,  the more government subsidies they will get. And conversely, the more they make, the less government subsidies they will get. And higher taxes for richer households also reduce the incentive to work. So now, faced with the possibility of moving up that economic ladder, and because of the consequences of making more money, people will now weigh whether it is worth it for them to take that new job or promotion that pays a few thousand dollars more if it means losing more than that in subsidies. Paul Ryan nailed it by calling it a “poverty trap.”

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf said the nonpartisan report does find that the healthcare law creates a disincentive for working. “The act creates a disincentive to work relative to the case were the law not in place,” he said.

Does that sound like a plan to build the middle class? Does it sound like a plan to encourage moving up the economic ladder? Of course it doesn’t. And worse, Obamacare is doing exactly as it was designed to do. Aside from ruining the private sector health insurance and health care industries, it is  building and enlarging the dependent class. Effectively killing the American Dream. Or, replacing it with the progressive version of the American Dream. Which is, for the government to control as much of our lives as it can get away with, and, to grow the number of people dependent on the government, insuring votes from whoever promises them the most.

Sorry to say this, but Barack Obama and his party are overseeing the destruction of this country. Which is why the ACA must be repealed, if not replaced.