OBAMACARE EXPOSED!

ObamaCare Cancelled Your Health Insurance. Now, Send Us Your Letter.  MyCancellations.com

In the News.....

Tea Party Patriots--The Doctor Patient Medical Association has launched its "Keep Your Doctor"Campaign. They are working on short term patches to keep people from losing their doctors on January 1 when Obamacare's new policies and networks kick in. E-ail kathryn@doctorsandpatients.org information.

Just one more itty bitty problem with ObamaCare. If you actually succeeded in getting on an exchange and purchased health insurance without the website crashing on you. Be Warned.. if you travel or move to another state, your health plan won’t be traveling with you. If you find yourself needing medical treatment, your new health insurance may NOT cover it.

An Investor’s Business Daily editorial of Dec. 18, 2013 explains that within the ObamaCare exchanges so many Americans are being forced into, most plans only provide local medical coverage. Welcome to the world of consequences.

VIDEO:  Who are YOU under PPACA?—This video is 55 minutes long. It is dry and filled with overwhelming information. The video will go into laws, statutes, and codes explaining how all of this pertains to YOU.  Roberts isolated and exposed the secret of Limited Tax Liability, and for that reason none of the other justices supported him. Maybe he's not the ogre we've thought him to be.  Maybe....

SCORE ONE FOR OBAMACARE, January 20, 2014

Score one for Obamacare. Last week, a federal court struck down one of the major legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act. Washington, D.C. District judge Paul Friedman, ruling in Halbig v. Sebelius, upheld an IRS regulation that extended the law’s insurance premium subsidies and employer mandate to the 36 “refusenik” states—those which had decided not to set up their own health insurance exchanges. Under the Obamacare legislation, subsidies were meant for users of state exchanges. But now, people in those states who sign up for health insurance on the federal exchange can get subsidies.

This was disappointing to those of us who thought the court should strike down the subsidies. But this game isn’t over. A similar case is pending in Virginia, where a decision is expected any day, and two states have filed similar legal challenges as well

READ MORE:  http://www.humanevents.com/2014/01/20/score-one-for-obamacare/

ObamaCare’s Attack on the Elderly, January 20, 2014

In October of 2012, the Daily Mail exposed the highly disturbing realities of the Liverpool Pathway (LCP), the series of guidelines for treating terminally ill patients developed for Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

The most egregious of those realities concerned cash incentives paid to hospitals to ensure a certain percentage of hospital patients would be put on the regime. As healthcare expert Besty McCaughey reveals, a similar horror show is occurring on this side of the Atlantic, courtesy of ObamaCare. Beginning the the same time the LCP scandal was being exposed, the Obama administration began awarding hospitals bonus points for spending the least amount of money on elderly patients. Even worse, the idea was sold to the elderly as a good thing during the 2012 presidential election campaign.

During that campaign, Obama promised seniors that $716 billion in Medicare cuts over the next decade, used to fund the $1.9 trillion in new healthcare spending that expanded Medicaid and created the healthcare exchanges, wouldn’t affect them. When Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney ran an ad attacking the cuts, Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith called it hypocritical. ‘The savings his ad attacks do not cut a single guaranteed Medicare benefit,’ she declared.  Continue reading. 

Even Turbo Tax Shills for Obamacare, January 20, 2014 

Turbo Tax provides the usual helpful advice in its 2013 filing software.

Not sure I'm appreciating its rosy optimism regarding the Affordable Care Act, though:  

READ IT HERE.

VIDEO:  ANOTHER LIE.. ObamaPromised ACA Would Respect Those Who Disagree With Abortion--January 4, 2014

More New Taxes and Fees: How You’ll Pay for Obamacare in 2014, January 2, 2014--Obamacare contains 18 specific tax hikes, mandates, or penalties that cost Americans money, and three new ones take effect in 2014. This is only the beginning—watch how two of these taxes get worse in the years to come.  Read it all!

The Year of ObamaCare--Here Comes the ObamaCare Tax Avalanche!  January 2, 2014  As of January 1, ObamaCare is the law of the land. Or more accurately, those parts of ObamaCare that weren’t unilaterally changed or delayed to serve the interests of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party heading in the 2014 election.  Despite those efforts, it would appear that 2014 will bring no respite from the criticism associated with what might be best described as the biggest government boondoggle of all time. As the nation straddles the passage from the old year into the new, the hits just keep on coming.  Read it all here!

December 2013

Video:  A Day In the Life (under ObamaCare)

NBC figures out that employees aren't going to like what ObamaCare does in 2014--"You're going to be sorry you called it ObamaCare when people find out how great it is." - Every Democrat.  Gotta love that quote.  I could run around and search for specific high-level Democrats who uttered some variation of it but, in the end, there's no need.  Pretty much every left-winger in Congress has made the claim at one time or another.  Now, 2014 is just about here, and they get to find out if they were right.  If they were, the mid-terms should be a cakewalk.  Everyone will think Dems are wonderful, and they'll breeze through November. If they're wrong?  Well, they're not. Their media allies have told us they're not, and there's no chance of that changing.  Read more.  

The Hill:  Top 5 O-Care stories to watch--The healthcare law faced a very tough year in 2013, but that could pale in comparison to what happens in 2014. Between new exchange plans taking effect in January, the first enrollment period concluding in March and the midterm elections in November, the administration will have its hands full managing the rollout and mitigating negative stories for vulnerable Democrats.  Here are the top five stories to watch!

CMS claims December ObamaCare enrollment surge, leaves key questions unanswered--About 1.1 million Americans picked a plan through the federally run health insurance exchange as of Dec. 24 as part of President Obama's health care program, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Sunday.  But the announcement, which came in the form of a blog post from CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner, left many key questions unanswered.  Continued here.

Obamacare: The Health Care Song

Eight Ways to Opt Out of Obamacare--Obamacare is looming over all of us and the question remains: Do you sign up or opt out? If you choose to opt out, what are your alternatives?  Here are a few From Breitbart:  

How Hitler used Universal Healthcare in Holocaust--The next time someone tells you Obamacare isn’t Fascist, then ask them to watch this video. Government should never control healthcare. Healthcare should never be used to “control people.”  Read more.

Free Market Options to ObamaCare Already Exist-- More than a year ago, Dr. Barbara Bellar, a medical doctor with a JD degree, was running for office as an Illinois state senator, and provided a sound byte that continues to reverberate across the Internet, having been viewed as of this writing some 3,675,000 times. The clip lasts less than two minutes, including laughter and applause from her audience, to whom she said:  So let me get this straight. This is a long sentence:  Read it here!  

Georgia Lawmakers Announce Bill Nullifying ObamaCare-- Four Georgia state legislators are listening to the crescendo of constituent opposition to ObamaCare.  On December 16, State Representatives Jason Spencer, David Stover, Michael Caldwell, and Scot Turner announced their sponsoring of a bill that would halt the implementation of ObamaCare at the sovereign borders of the Peach State.  At their press conference, the lawmakers sought not only to explain their proposal, but to drum up support for it among like-minded Georgians.  Read more!

The next too-big-to-fail train wreck on the horizon--A Taxpayer Bailout for ObamaCare.  An American public already reeling from the catastrophic rollout of ObamaCare will more than likely be hearing an unfamiliar term being bandied about in the new year. “Risk corridor” refers to a provision in the law that allows the government to “stabilize” premium costs for insurance companies during the first three years of the healthcare rollout.  If insurance companies’ “target” costs for providing healthcare have been miscalculated, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will intercede on their behalf. Read more.

Government Isn’t Obligated To Inform Healthcare.gov Users When Site Compromises Their Private Info--If you enroll in Obamacare at Healthcare.gov and later find out that your financial information or identity has been stolen by hackers, it likely won’t be because the government called to warn you of the security breach. That’s because the government isn’t obligated to let you know if Healthcare.gov fails to protect your information from criminals.  Read more.

The doctor won’t see you? Analysts warn ObamaCare plans could resemble Medicaid--Those signing up for private health care coverage on the ObamaCare exchanges may be in for an unpleasant surprise -- they'll have insurance, but they might have trouble getting the doctor to see them.  As hundreds of thousands enroll for coverage beginning Jan. 1, analysts are warning that the plans are likely to give them access to fewer doctors and hospitals. So much so, they warn, that the system could begin to resemble Medicaid, the health care program for low-income Americans.  "Indeed, I think this will eventually be like Medicaid," said Merrill Matthews, director of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance.   Continue reading.  

Lack aid? Many counties have only pricey plans--More than half of the counties in 34 states using the federal health insurance exchange lack even a bronze plan that's affordable — by the government's own definition — for 40-year-old couples who make just a little too much for financial assistance, a USA TODAY analysis shows.  Read more.

New ObamaCare fees coming in 2014--Here comes the ObamaCare tax bill.  The cost of President Obama’s massive health-care law will hit Americans in 2014 as new taxes pile up on their insurance premiums and on their income-tax bills.  Most insurers aren’t advertising the ObamaCare taxes that are added on to premiums, opting instead to discretely pass them on to customers while quietly lobbying lawmakers for a break.  Continue reading.  

Obamacare Initiates Self-Destruction Sequence--Anyone who has had their policies cancelled will be exempt from the individual mandate next year. The administration is also allowing those people to buy catastrophic plans, even if they’re over 30.  Read more.  

Heritage Foundation:  This Is Exactly What Health Care Reform Is Supposed to Do--Imagine waking up from a coma to find that both of your legs and your left hand are gone.  After a motorcycle accident that nearly killed him, this was Moise Brutus’s devastating reality. And he had to navigate the broken Medicaid system to try to recover. Now, he calls those days “the dark times.”  Read the article.  

Herman Cain:  A serious leader would have abandoned ObamaCare long ago--It’s rather frightening when you think about it like this: ObamaCare really amounts to the federal government trying to run, not just a business, but an entire industry. We’re talking about the administration that appears to have the fewest members in history with private-sector business experience of any kind, and it thinks it can run the health insurance industry.  How’s that working out? Exactly.  Read more here.  

Krauthammer: Just watch, insurance companies ruined by ObamaCare will come knocking for a bailout--We’ve known about that ignominious little “risk corridor” provision tucked safely away in ObamaCare somewhere for awhile now, and last week, the Obama administration pulled the individual-mandate-compromising move that makes it all the more likely that such a bailout eventuality will come to pass. A few lawmakers have already started sounding the alarm on the possibility, but as all of these last-minute, last-ditch, desperately unilateral changes to crucial policy elements of the law start to add up, they might want to consider really shaking a leg on the issue when they come back from Christmas break.  I can practically hear the speeches already: “Thanks to the work of my administration, the insurance industry has come roaring back!”  Video and more.  

White House: No backup plan if Obamacare fails--When Obamacare implementation began, its supporters said the program needed about seven million people to enroll by next March. Of that number, advocates said, a large portion -- about 40 percent -- had to be young and healthy, to cover the costs of insuring older, less healthy Americans.  As Obamacare's problems mounted, and it became more and more likely the system would not hit those marks, supporters began to lower their standards. First, they said Obamacare will be fine even if far fewer than seven million sign up. Then they said it will be fine even if far less than 40 percent are young and healthy.  Continue reading.  

A second wind for health law? Or just hot air?  Whether you love it or hate it or are just plain confused by it, you've got to give the health care law this much: There's plenty of drama.  The nail biting goes on. As the clock ticks toward the Jan. 1 start of insurance coverage under President Barack Obama's big, bold and bedraggled creation, there are inklings it might get a second wind.  But that could turn out to be just hot air.  Read more.  

Poll: Support for Obamacare at new low as Jan. coverage deadline hits-- A new poll finds support for Obamacare slumping to an all-time low as the administration hits its deadline to register consumers for coverage on Jan. 1.  According to a CNN/ORC International survey released Monday, 35 percent say they support President Obama's signature domestic achievement, a drop of 5 points in under a month. Nearly two-thirds, at 62 percent, say they oppose the health law, a rise of 4 points since November.  Read more.

Gay GOP Group Blasts New Obamacare Ad for Exploiting Gay Stereotypes, Says ‘Liberals Would Be Apoplectic’ If Right Tried Anything Similar (And our taxpayer dollars paid for this ad!)-- Log Cabin Republicans, an advocacy group for gay conservatives and allies, is ripping a new Obamacare video ad that it says employs homosexual stereotypes to persuade gay men to enroll in Obamacare.  The ad from Out2Enroll — an Obamacare LGBT outreach group — depicts well-toned shirtless men in tight bathing trunks dancing, hugging, opening presents, and enrolling on the Obamacare website. There is one woman with the men in a few shots and a female singer, but they’re far from the focus.  Continued.  

Cruz: Millions Could Lose Their Lives Because of Obama’s Naivete  

ObamaCare may make finding treatment harder for mentally ill--To the outside world, it came across as mood swings and anger. But Regina Cullison would later be told by psychiatrists she struggled with depression and anxiety—and that she needed help. And that is where her trouble began and ended.  According to her mother, there were few psychiatrists in the county who took private insurance. When Ms. Cullison lost her job as a dentist’s assistant, and with it her insurance, she switched to a nonprofit facility. Doctors came and went, and none stayed long enough to establish a regular pattern of treatment.  Read more!  

Does O-Care cover getting SCREWED OVER?  I hear a lot about ObamaCare / KayCare from political activists, politicians, hacks extraordinaire.  We’ve got one of the worst unemployment rates in the nation.  North Carolina is one of the states hit hardest by O-Care.  Well, pull up a chair, boys and girls. It’s story time. I’ve got a personal account of an ObamaCare nightmare from one of our readers, named Tim, who hails from the Triangle area.  He’s getting smacked by BOTH our unemployment AND O-Care problems:  Continue reading!

GOP Rep: Young people ripped off by O-Care--One of the youngest House Republicans cried foul on behalf of young people he says are being ripped off by Obamacare.  Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) took to the airwaves on Saturday, hammering the White House for efforts to sell a “bad product” to young Americans.  Continue reading.

2014: Make-or-break for O-Care--President Obama is taking a bruised and bandaged ObamaCare into 2014 after a year of unprecedented problems for his administration and its signature law.  While the White House insists its efforts are on-track, the blundering on display in key portions of the reform's rollout surprised even Obama's most ardent critics in 2013.  Read more.

TPN—Judson Phillips:  Obamacare continues to self-destruct--Obamacare continues to self-destruct.  It’s no great shock.  The program will not work.  The program will never work.  Many Democrats view Obamacare as the albatross around their neck as they go into the 2014 elections.  Here is the question people are asking now.  Does Obamacare matter to anyone now?  MUST READ! 

Another ObamaCare Surprise: Estate Recovery--Sofia Prins and Gary Balhorn were about to sign applications for free coverage under Washington State’s Medicaid program — recently expanded under ObamaCare — when Sofia began reading the fine print: If you’re over age 55, the state of Washington will bill your estate for your health expenses when you die.  So much for “free.”  Prior to ObamaCare, state Medicaid programs (enacted in 1965 and expanded in 1993) offered help to poor people who couldn't afford health coverage but required states to recover their health costs from their estates when they died. However, state exemptions for personal goods and residences meant that such “estate recovery” efforts were modest as most people either had no other assets or had “spent down” those that they had to a minimal level.  Read the article.  

Why the nature of Obamacare makes it impossible for it to work--The problem with ObamaCare is not that it is poorly designed or sloppily implemented. The problem is in the nature of things: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as it has been envisaged, is inherently impossible. To see this, forget ObamaCare for the moment. Think health care in general.Health care can be many things for many people:  Please read on!

Morning Bell:  This Is No Obamacare Success Story, Mr. President--Most of the people applying for Obamacare are being funneled into Medicaid. President Obama boasted that sending these 803,000 people to Medicaid is an under-reported Obamacare success.  But this does not equal success—in fact, it’s a negative for the enrollees themselves and for taxpayers. Here are four reasons why this is bad news.  Continue reading.  

Phil Robertson can’t cite Scripture, but these prancing dudes are brought to you by ObamaCare! In the interest of getting the story right, it does not appear this is put out by the administration per se, although it’s likely one of those liberal advocacy groups that gets its funding from people who are joined at the hip with Obama and company. You can’t unsee this, so you’ve been warned:  Continued.  

14th change to law without Congressional approval... Who Says Obama Hasn't United the Country?  Yesterday the Obama administration suddenly moved to allow hundreds of thousands of people who’ve lost their insurance due to Obamacare to sign up for bare-bone “catastrophic” plans. It’s at least the 14th unilateral change to Obamacare that’s been made without consulting Congress. 

“It shows that the Obamacare insurance products aren’t selling so, at the last minute, the administration is holding a fire sale on a failed launch,” says Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, a health-care advocacy group. “Just think how you must feel if you were one of the people who spent the last two months fighting their way through HealthCare.gov to buy a policy that will be thousands of dollars more expensive than this catastrophic insurance!”  Continue reading!

WHITE HOUSE ANNOUNCES ANOTHER MAJOR OBAMACARE EXEMPTION-- People whose existing health care insurance has been canceled because of the Affordable Care Act will not be hit with tax penalties for failing to line up new coverage as required under the law.  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says she will use authorities in the law to issue a “temporary hardship exemption” from those penalties.  Read more!  

Heritage Foundation:  Top 10 Broken Obamacare Promises--Since the passage of Obamacare in 2010, many of the President’s famous promises have been routinely broken. As he so ironically threatened in 2009, “If you misrepresent what’s in this plan, we will call you out.” To that end, here are 10 promises of Obamacare that have already been broken.  1. “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.”  Reality:  Millions of Americans have lost and will lose their current coverage due to Obamacare.  2.  4.7 million reported health insurance cancellations or changes of existing policies in 32 states.  Continue reading.

The Hill:  Reid: ObamaCare will help Dems in 2014--Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) thinks the healthcare law will ultimately help Senate Democrats in 2014 even though some incumbents fear a backlash at the polls.  “I think for sure it will be a net positive,” said Reid, who expects the law to become more of a political benefit as problems are smoothed out by Election Day. “I think so by then for sure.”  Read more.

Medicaid Is Where the ObamaCare Action Is--HHS reported Wednesday that 1.2 million Americans have enrolled in ObamaCare since the exchanges opened on October 1st. The media is trumpeting this as a sign the website is improving and ObamaCare is making steady progress towards its goals. A deeper look at the numbers, however, reveals a more troubling trend. Of the total enrollees, […] READ MORE!  

John Hood, Daily Journal:  We’re Not Buying The Lemon--N.C. leaders said no to Medicaid expansion. That’s because they can see beyond the ends of their noses — and beyond the flimsy promises of the used-car salesmen in Washington.  RALEIGH — As the costly implementation of the perversely named Affordable Care Act continues to baffle, disappoint, and enrage the public, a collection of government vendors and left-wing groups has settled on a brilliant political strategy: castigate North Carolina for failing to do enough to implement the Affordable Care Act.  Continue reading.

(IBD) ObamaCare Navigators Tell Applicants To Lie Like Administration That Hired Them--No Veritas: A congressional field hearing has confirmed that not only is ObamaCare a lie agreed upon, but that "navigators" hired to guide the unwilling are telling applicants to lie and ignore the legal requirements to enroll.  James O'Keefe, the videographer who helped topple the community activist group Acorn, recently released a video showing ObamaCare navigators in Dallas advising applicants to lie about their income and otherwise evade legal procedures and requirements when signing up for health insurance in the Affordable Care Act's exchanges.  Read more. 

Obamacare: A death panel for the rule of law--Barack Obama is in a box: He repeatedly promised “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan,” but his socialized medicine monstrosity has cost millions of people their coverage. It’s also become painfully clear Obama knew this was going to happen as early as March 2010 — yet kept regurgitating his false promise.  Obamacare also has a bigger problem: As written, the law’s key mechanism for issuing subsidies to state exchanges is legally enforceable in only one third of the country — meaning the only way to pay for its nationwide dependency expansion is new deficit spending. This would clearly violate another oft-repeated Obama promise: That his law would not “add one dime” to the federal deficit (well, beyond the $6.2 trillion identified in this 2013 GAO report).  What’s an administration to do, right?  That’s easy: Change the law.

Read more!  

BREAKING: New Report Says Obamacare Navigator Program Marred by Mismanagement, Confusion--A new report produced by Rep. Darrell Issa's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reveals that Obamacare's controversial "Navigator and Assister" program has suffered from chronic poor management, resulting in widespread disarray, since the law's October 1 launch date. An advanced copy of the document obtained by Townhall raises a number of competency and security concerns. Below is a brief summary of its revelations and conclusions:  Read more.

How Death Panels Work Without Being Legal--Guaranteed: Unless Obamacare is killed… the elderly and infirm will be.  Once government makes all the decisions on who gets care and when, you’ll have nowhere to turn—even if you have the money to pay.  Big hearts and no brain activity leads to terrible outcomes. Think, people! If a consummate, pathological liar is the one promoting something, do you really think it’s going to be good for you?  Read more! 

GOP rips ObamaCare 'navigators'--Republicans on the House Oversight Committee released documents on Monday saying that the ObamaCare “navigators” responsible for helping consumers enroll in the new law have made a series of errors and put sensitive consumer information at risk.  Documents released with the report said they have been giving enrollees misinformation, and have not done enough to keep secure consumers’ health information, Social Security numbers, yearly income and other tax information.  Read more.

Heritage Foundation:  How to Help Uninsured Americans--Two of the problems Obamacare promised to solve were getting coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and helping the uninsured get coverage. Last week, we talked about how Heritage’s alternative to Obamacare would help people with pre-existing conditions. Today, let’s talk about the uninsured.  Obamacare’s promise of insuring all Americans isn’t working out. According to the Congressional Budget Office, more than 30 million people will still be uninsured in 10 years.  Read more.

GOP bill would highlight Obamacare security breaches--Rep. Diane Black on Monday introduced a bill that would require federal officials to let Americans know if their personal data has been breached on a federal Web system tied to the new health care law.  Mrs. Black, a Tennessee Republican who is a fierce critic of President Obama’s health reforms, pitched the legislation as a “common-sense reform” to address the steady trickle of security concerns that surround the online portals tied to Obamacare.  Read more!  

Obamacare Exchange Debits Checking Accounts (by accident?)  For the second week in a row, the Washington Health plan finder website is down, and it's causing problems for people who are dealing with billing issues. Some of them say the website is mistakenly debiting their accounts.  Shannon Bruner of Indianola logged on to her checking account Monday morning, and found she was almost 800 dollars in the negative.  “The first thing I thought was, ‘I got screwed,’” she said.  Read more.  

Obamacare ‘Assisters’ Recruit Young Enrollees Where They ‘Party by Night and Shop by Day’-- Obamacare needs young people to sign up to offset health-care costs of older, less-healthy Americans.  Which may explain why Obamacare “assisters” took to the streets of Washington, D.C. on Saturday to recruit new youthful members where they “party by night and shop by day,” Fox News reported.  That meant heading to a pair of Foot Locker stores where Nike’s Air Jordan 12 “Taxi” sneakers were on sale; after that, it’ll be two Denny’s restaurants from 2 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Fox News noted.  More!  

Report: Insurers fear they’ll have a net loss in enrollments for the year on December 31-- A week ago, Politico called this the worst-case scenario for ObamaCare. The odds were slim, they assured us, but not quite zero that the magical combo of millions of cancellations, endless exchange “glitches,” and panicky half-assed logistical complications designed to “fix” the problem would mean fewer insured Americans at the end of 2013 than existed at the start of the year. It was unlikely, claimed Politico, because the four or five million whose plans have been canceled had alternate routes to enrollment that didn’t involve Healthcare.gov. They could enroll directly with their current insurer in a new plan (although not if they wanted a subsidy, which are available exclusively on the exchanges) or they might even be automatically enrolled in a plan by their insurer in the interest of preventing a lapse of coverage. But it was, in fact, possible that the first week of January would bring news that ObamaCare had actually made the problem it purported to solve worse. That’s the worst-case scenario. It’d be a PR catastrophe.  Continue reading.  

Report: Insurers fear they’ll have a net loss in enrollments for the year on December 31-- A week ago, Politico called this the worst-case scenario for ObamaCare. The odds were slim, they assured us, but not quite zero that the magical combo of millions of cancellations, endless exchange “glitches,” and panicky half-assed logistical complications designed to “fix” the problem would mean fewer insured Americans at the end of 2013 than existed at the start of the year. It was unlikely, claimed Politico, because the four or five million whose plans have been canceled had alternate routes to enrollment that didn’t involve Healthcare.gov.  Continue reading.

Sebelius Doesn’t Know Where Obamacare Cancellations Come From--An embarrassing moment for Kathleen Sebelius this week if you ask me!  Read more! 

Obamacare Patients To Cost Doctors And Hospitals Millions--Yet another calculated ObamaCare assault on healthcare providers has been ferreted out of the 2700 impenetrable pages (plus revisions) of Barack Obama’s signature achievement.  Doctors and hospitals nationwide can already expect to be paid a pittance for their services to ObamaCare patients. And now, yet another financial blow to providers has been discovered.  CONTINUED.

  

Sebelius Explains the Free Market to Socialists (Sebelius 'Urging' Insurers to Cover People Who Haven't Paid)--Fearing that many people will think they have health insurance coverage when they do not, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is “urging” insurance companies to “give consumers additional time to pay their first month’s premium and still have coverage beginning Jan. 1, 2014.”  Insurance companies should cover people who haven’t yet paid, in other words.  More here. 

GOP senator calls for ObamaCare alternative--Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) offered the outlines of a Republican alternative to ObamaCare in the party’s weekly address.  “There are common-sense, bipartisan solutions to our health care problems that don’t require ObamaCare’s wholesale government take-over of the system,” Toomey said. “Now, in a nutshell, we can make insurance more accessible, more affordable, and more responsive to individuals and families. And put patients and their doctors in charge of health care decisions, instead of politicians and government bureaucrats.”  Continue reading.

Government Contractors Comply With Congressional Investigators; Ignore HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius--Vanguard of Freedom News reported yesterday on Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman, Darrel Issa's admonition of Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services Director for her telling government contractors not to comply to the Congressional Committees requests for information about the roll-out of the HealtCare.gov website.  Issa promptly warned Sebelius that telling them not to comply was against the law.  Read more.

Exclusive: Thousands of HealthCare.gov sign-ups didn’t make it to insurers--Enrollment records for close to 15,000 HealthCare.gov shoppers were not initially transmitted to the insurance plans they selected, according to a preliminary federal estimate to be released Saturday.  While these cases pose a challenge for the Obama administration, officials say they believe the situation is improving. Since early December, fewer than 1 percent of HealthCare.gov enrollments did not make their way to health insurance plans.  Continued.

Issa: Obama Admin. Wants to Stop Healthcare.gov Contractors from Cooperating With Congress--Two healthcare.gov contractors are defying requests from the Obama administration asking them not to cooperate with congressional investigators.  “Americans should be disturbed that this administration is trying to stop government contractors from providing Congress with documents related to the decision to launch healthcare.gov while known and serious security vulnerabilities were and still may be present,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said in a statement Friday.  Continued. 

Blue Cross and Blue Shield offers small businesses option to keep 2013 plans-- Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina said Thursday it is offering current small-group customers a new option to keep their existing plan into 2014.  “Small businesses are the backbone of North Carolina’s economy, and we understand the concern businesses have about the changes associated with the ACA (Affordable Care Act) and its effect on their employees,” said Brad Wilson, Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s president and chief executive.  More. 

Obamacare Pushing Puerto Rico Further Into Social Welfare State, Doctors Warn-- People in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico may not be grappling with the botched Obamacare website rollout, but the program could spell disaster for the island, which is facing a financial crisis and where half the population already is dependent on free health insurance, members of the island's medical community warned.  Puerto Ricans, who are born U.S. citizens, do not enroll on the healthcare.gov because their government decided not to offer health-insurance exchanges, which offers private plans.  Read more.  

Obamacare Song Parody - You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me Blue Shield

White House Illegally Changes ObamaCare Deadlines. Again. -- The Washington Post reported that “Obamacare’s deadlines are changing. Again.” Not accurate. The White House ischanging the ObamaCare deadlines arbitrarily and illegally – again.  Here’s what WaPo “reported“:  Read more.  

Here Come the Obamacare Taxes--First came the compliance burdens. Then came the expensive website woes, millions of policy cancellations and skyrocketing premiums. But if you thought Obamacare couldn’t be less popular, guess again. Here come the taxes.  As reported Sunday by the Review-Journal’s Jennifer Robison, there are a slew of new taxes to help pay for the boondoggle that is the Affordable Care Act, and the Internal Revenue Service will be reaching deep into wallets to collect that money starting next year.  Continue reading. 

Stop the ObamaCare Bailout--After many insurance companies lobbied FOR ObamaCare, Obama and his administration are planning to bail them out with YOUR tax dollars!  We can't afford it, and it's unconstitutional! Tell Congress right now to stop the new ObamaCare bailout:  Click here!

GOP rank-and-file quietly builds an Obamacare alternative--"The only alternative that Obamacare's critics have is, well, 'let's just go back to the status quo,'" said President Obama last week, "because they sure haven't presented an alternative."  It's an argument Democrats make all the time -- often, these days, to divert attention from the ongoing problems of their troubled national health care scheme. But still -- why haven't Republicans presented an alternative to Obamacare?  GOP leaders would protest immediately: They have come up with dozens of health care bills, only to see them rejected by Democrats. But the fact is, Republicans have not united behind a single health care proposal, even as millions of Americans would like to see what they've got. Why?  Read more.

Medicare pays full price for half-empty vials of medicine--After the Obamacare fiasco, the Health and Human Services Department must be a glass-half-empty kind of place. Just ask the folks at Medicare, who wasted $24.2 million paying for partly used vials of a type of breast cancer medicine.  Herceptin, which is used to treat breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body, normally is supplied in multiuse 440-milligram vials that can be stored for up to 28 days.  Read more! 

#NCSEN CFO Report: ObamaCare is a job killer! (um, SURPRISE ?????)  The elites in government, media and academia are finally coming around to what we’ve known about ObamaCare for years now:  Corporate financial chiefs say they expect to reduce hiring and also move more jobs to part-time status as a result of the Affordable Care Act, according to a new survey from Duke University and CFO Magazine.  Many companies also are considering a reduction in health care benefits for employees.  

ObamaCare Whistleblower: I was Told IRS Harassment ‘Came From The Top’ (Audio)--Wednesday, radio talk show host Sara Marie Brenner interviewed Bill Elliott, the cancer patient who gained notoriety when he appeared on Fox News with Megyn Kelly after his insurance was cancelled. Elliott, you may remember, later received notification of his audit from the IRS on the same day C. Steven Tucker, the man who helped him get his insurance back, received his. After reaching out to SC Governor Nikki Haley, two congressmen and a Democratic US Senator from North Carolina, he was able to get his IRS “audit” terminated.  

Rove: Obamacare Yoke Weighs Heavily on 2014 Democratic Candidates-- Democratic lawmakers seeking re-election in 2014 will pay a heavy political price for having supported President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act in 2010, writes Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.  Rove, a veteran Republican strategist and former deputy chief of staff to president George W. Bush, writes that the intensity of emotions against Obamacare is striking. 

Nearly 9,000 in NC have now signed up for subsidized insurance--Nearly 9,000 people in North Carolina have signed up for individual insurance through the glitch-plagued healthcare.gov website, federal officials said Wednesday.  The enrollment numbers are an improvement over October’s total of about 1,600. But they represent a mere fraction of the roughly 1 million North Carolinians who were expected to shop for individual insurance under the new federal mandate. 

HHS extends more Obamacare deadlines--The Obama administration on Thursday announced it would take steps to push back an already-delayed deadline to help those struggling to obtain health coverage on Jan. 1 -- and extend a federal insurance program for those with preexisting conditions.  Amid lingering questions about the health law's insurance exchanges, the tweaks were yet another attempt by the administration to quell concerns that the botched rollout of healthcare.gov would keep consumers from receiving coverage.

American Thinker:  Why Obamacare Is Off the Rails--The introduction of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as revealed by the roll-out of HealthCare.gov, is an epic public embarrassment, living up to predictions of a train wreck.  We're watching government at its most harmful and ineffectual. This is not rocket science -- no risky new technology is required; no laws of physics have to be invented or repealed. While the technology itself may present some challenges, problems like this more often than not stem from poor leadership, discipline, and accountability.  Read more!  

 

Sebelius on Obamacare Regulations: 'I Don't Know How Many Pages' --The Democrats' health insurance law gives the Health and Human Services Department "immense powers and decision-making authority," Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) told Kathleen Sebelius on Wednesday.  "And we know that many regulations have been written. Could you tell me how many pages of regulations have been written to implement this act?" Whitfield asked Sebelius.  Continue reading. 

Krauthammer: January Is Going To Be A Train Wreck For Obama, Democrats-- Look, at every level, every number that you get on this is either inflated or deceptive. As we just heard from Steve [Hayes], the number of enrollees are not enrollees. It’s people who put stuff in their shopping cart. Amazon would never call it a sale until you get a sale. And they don’t know how many have made the sale. And that’s because what they call euphemistically, the back-end, which is the cash register of the whole system, is not working.  The idea that you have to hand-match people who paid a premium with the insurers isn’t 20th century technology, it is 19th century technology. An insurer has to find the person, call them up, go overall of the details on the form and then adjust them, which of course is impossible to do in any substantial number.

Video and more.  

James Dobson sues Sebelius over abortion mandate--Dr. James Dobson, the longtime family values advocate who now reaches millions through his Family Talk ministry, has filed a lawsuit against Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius over the Obamacare abortion mandate.  “We believe that every human life, from the moment of conception, is sacred and a gift from God, and we cannot cooperate with this immoral mandate without violating our most deeply held religious beliefs,” Dobson said.  Read more.  

Obamacare forcing 14 percent cut in Medicare's home health care program--An estimated 3.5 million poor and ill homebound senior citizens will wake up on New Year's Day to discover Obamacare has slashed funding for their home health care program.  It will happen because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services quietly issued a regulation Nov. 22 announcing a 14-percent cut over the next four years in funding for the Home Health Care Prospective Payment program.  The rule cuts Medicare payments to home health care providers by 3.5 percent each year beginning in 2014, for a total cut of 14 percent.  

Read more. 

South Carolina State Senate to Consider Bill Blocking ObamaCare--A bill blocking enforcement of many key provisions of ObamaCare will soon be considered by the South Carolina state Senate.  More here. 

WaPo: ObamaCare is pretty much a compliance nightmare for small businesses--It certainly is not news, per se, that ObamaCare is imposing a whole raft of complex, costly new rules and regulations upon smaller businesses that are going to have to seriously struggle to summon the resources to cope with them, but the Washington Post‘s latest piece on the subject highlights an as yet little noticed set of specific rules that are really going to bring the pain on the business models employed by small owners and entrepreneurs across the country. There’s been plenty of discussion about the disincentives surrounding the 50-employee threshold above which employers must either provide health insurance to their workers or else pay a hefty penalty, but for the purposes of ObamaCare, even several completely separate small businesses can be lumped into the larger-businesses category if they share a single owner and the number of workers tally over 50. It’s going to get complicated:  Read on.

The Effects of Obamacare. Real Lives. Real Stories. Real Consequences.  Self-employed family struggling under costly Obamacare: “Along with the reduced income, our health insurance has almost tripled. My son has Type I diabetes and needs health insurance. I don’t know what we are going to do in November. In the last year, we have exhausted all our savings.” Ann Marie’s complete story.  For more stories on how Obamacare is destroying Americans’ lives, families and businesses, visit www.teapartypatriots.org. 

Taxpayers Shell Out $14,000 per Obamacare “Enrollee”--$5.2 billion for just 364,682 “enrollees”-- In her testimony before Congress today, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius provided an updated dollar amount for the cost of HealthCare.gov: $677 million. In addition to the $677 million spent on the federal Obamacare website, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has shoveled $4.5 billion of taxpayer money to promote Obamacare on the state level.  HHS also released updated “enrollment” figures for Obamacare. According to the agency 364,682 people have “selected a plan” – the equivalent of putting an item in your online shopping cart and leaving it there.

‘We Can’t Afford It’: Obamacare Could Pose a Serious Problem for Volunteer Fire Departments All Across the Country--The Affordable Care Act could lead to major financial problems at volunteer fire departments all across the country, possibly causing some to shut down unless Congress comes up with a way to exempt firefighters from the law.  The problem begins with how the U.S. Department of Labor and the Internal Revenue Service view volunteer firefighters. The Labor Department considers them to be actual volunteers while the IRS believes they are technically employees if they work more than 30 hours per week, the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) said on its website.

Ben Carson:Doctors Risk Being Government Employees Under ACA (OBAMACARE)-- One of the reasons the private medical practice is disappearing is that the costs of the new Obamacare rules are so onerous, Dr. Ben Carson said Tuesday on Fox News Channel's "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren."  "We are in the process of making doctors government employees," he said. "You need to be under the umbrella of a hospital or a big medical system."  Dr. Stephen Kiteck, of Somerset, Ky., also appeared on the program to discuss the newspaper ad he took out announcing he is quitting his practice because of the policies of Obamacare. 

We Weren’t Affected!  But now, along comes ObamaCare. Does that affect me? You bet your sweet life it does.  The response of a large plurality of Americans, if not an absolute majority to almost everything Barack Obama has done in the past five years can be summed up in a single phrase: It doesn’t directly affect me, so I don’t care.  Want to bomb Syria, Barry? Well, it doesn’t affect me.   Those four guys slaughtered in Benghazi?  Well, they weren’t in my immediate family, so it doesn’t affect me.  Or arresting the film maker that Obama blamed for the Benghazi massacre?  I don’t even know how to run a video camera, so it doesn’t affect me.  The thousands of men maimed or killed in Afghanistan?  Again, they’re not in my immediate family and I don’t know them personally, so it doesn’t affect me.   

Will ObamaCare enrollmentexceed expectations?  Will 36 million uninsured Americans sign up for Obamacare?  That’s what a recent survey from Gallup would have you believe. It says 63 percent of those without health insurance — out of a total of 58 million — plan on getting it rather than paying a fine under the health care law’s individual mandate.  That might have something to do with the fact that 77 percent of uninsured are now aware they are required to purchase health insurance under that mandate.

PR firms cash in on health rollout woes--It may be have been a debacle, but there is one upside to the glitch-plagued rollout of the health care website: It’s become a powerful case study for crisis management consultants and their clients of what not to do.  In Chicago, H + A International, a communications firm, delivered its customers a 15-point diagnosis of the administration’s handling of the crisis. That led one of its clients to temporarily halt the introduction of a new software product for engineers at a recent trade show of 30,000 people.  

Obama bombs Facebook with pro-Obamacare missives--Pro-Obamacare messages are being plastered on Americans’ Facebook pages by President Barack Obama’s most faithful supporters, many of whom need a morale boost, according to a new email blast from the president’s front-group.  “Next time you hear from the Obamacare naysayers in your life, here’s something you can send them… 29,000 Americans successfully signed up in just the first two days of the week,” says the Dec. 7 announcement from Obama’s “Truth Team”

Obamacare Architect Admits: If You Like Your Doctor, ‘You Can Pay for It’-- It sounded like a new twist on an old promise as Obamacare architect Zeke Emanuel was pushed to answer what Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace insisted was a simple question:  “President Obama famously promised, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Doesn't that turn out to be just as false, just as misleading, as his promise about if you like your plan, you can keep your plan?”  Emanuel tried heading toward after-the-fact nuances, but Wallace wouldn't let go: “It’s a simple yes or no question. Did he say if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?”

New Affordable Care (ObamaCare) US Health Plans will exclude top Hospitals! 

Cruz SLAMS the ‘lawless implementation of Obamacare’--Ted Cruz may no longer be the solicitor general of Texas, but the Republican senator has penned a legal memo about the White House’s “lawless acts on Obamacare.”  The Daily Caller was provided an early look at the memo, set for release Monday. This is the second time Cruz has released a report for his “The Legal Limit: The Obama Administration’s Attempts to Expand Federal Power series".  

Video:  ObamaCare Architect Zeke Emanuel: If You Like Your Doctor, You Can Pay More

The real healthcare problems--Charles Krauthammer gave us all good advice when he suggested that we should ignore what President Obama says and concentrate on what he does. The reality is that very little that the president peddled to America when he was attempting to gain support for the Affordable Healthcare Act was true. Truth is always the first casualty with this president! And for good reason, no one has ever held him accountable for anything: not the press, not the Senate Democrats, not American liberals, and not the voters.  What is going to happen to many Americans in the next months and years is what people should be focused on. We might want to consider some of the following, because it may affect us all—one way or the other.  

Obamacare– removing voters from government decision-making--Once the federal government has all of us purchasing government-sanctioned health insurance, we’re only a short step away from government controlling every aspect of health care, where there is not even a semblance of free market capitalism, with it all being managed by the federal government.  But the only way the federal government can manage something so large is to get government out of the hands of the legislative branch and therefore out of the hands of we the people - those who elect our legislators.

Feds against paper health applications--Federal health officials have been advising ObamaCare counselors this week to stop using paper applications to enroll people — out of fear that the applications wouldn’t be processed in time.  Based on interviews the Associated Press conducted, enrollment counselors and brokers facilitating the insurance sign-up process have been advised by the Obama administration to stop using paper.  Uninsured consumers in the United States must sign up for health insurance by Dec. 23 in order to receive coverage starting Jan. 1.

Michelle Malkin:  Obamacare's Perilous Protection Plan for Debtors-- "Uh-oh." That's the sound being uttered in doctors' offices and hospitals across the country as medical providers realize they're getting stuck with another bottomless Obamacare bill. While the White House desperately tries to pivot from the havoc wrought by the "Affordable Care Act," its hidden regulatory bombs keep exploding.  I heard about the latest problem this week from an eye doctor friend who received a letter from a Colorado-based insurer informing her that she's essentially on the hook for Obamacare's payment grace period for debtors. The optometrist is bracing for a flood of similar letters from other insurers. Like countless other independent providers, she's extremely concerned about the potential liability, uncertainty and fraud the rule imposes on her business.

The ObamaCare Buck Finally Stops, President Obama says blame the government, not President Obama.  President Obama has found someone to blame for the Affordable Care Act's rolling failures besides Republicans. ObamaCare is the government's fault, not his.  On Thursday, Mr. Obama dropped by American University for a heart to heart with Chris Matthews, and the MSNBC host wondered who in the executive branch is responsible for the botched health-care rollout. Mr. Obama listed a few impersonal culprits including "cynicism," "Washington gridlock" and "the management of government," but he then drifted into another classic.

AMERICANS LOSING HEALTH PLANS UNDER OBAMACARE A ‘GOOD THING,’ DEM REP. SAYS-- U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) is a member of President Obama’s so-called “strike team” that’s pumping the benefits of the Obamacare program and encouraging sign-ups as the Dec. 23 deadline looms for individuals to get coverage by Jan. 1.  Appearing on MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts program Friday, Cartwright hammered away at some existing health care plans he said were inadequate and noted at one point that Americans losing those plans is “a good thing.”

RUSH LIMBAUGH PREDICTS A CONSEQUENCE OF OBAMACARE THAT YOU MAY NOT HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT-- Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh predicted on Friday that Obamacare will cause the divorce rate in the U.S. to increase.  The claim came after a caller brought up the topic and speculated that some Americans would opt for divorce in order to receive lower premiums and other special subsidies under Obamacare. In fact, CBS New York reported last month that a couple was actually considering getting divorced to “save thousands of dollars.” 

Merry Christmas--Why has society changed to wishing people Happy Holidays and not Merry Christmas?  Don't want to offend anyone of any religion or culture?  Ever catch yourself hesitate saying Merry Christmas?  Avoidance or hesitation to willingly celebrate Christmas or acknowledge it, seems to be growing and it shouldn't.  Don’t tell me because it includes the New […]  

Rep.George Holding (R-N.C.) has proposed legislation that would require federal officials and others who use ObamaCare data to commit identify theft to serve a five-year prison term.  His No Identify Theft in Health Care Act, H.R. 3652, is yet another response to the troubled ObamaCare rollout. Over the last week, reports have surfaced quoting computer security experts who said HealthCare.gov has virtually no data security measures in place. 

Scam reported to DC health exchange--A few consumers enrolling in the Washington, D.C., insurance exchange have been guided instead to a fraudulent website, according to an official working for the Health Link portal.  Only two reports have surfaced about this problem, according to Richard Sorian, director of communications, education and outreach for the exchange. He noted that the report could be from the same person.  Source.

Obama and Sebelius Reportedly Had Just One Official Meeting in Nearly Four Years Leading Up to Obamacare Website Rollout--President Barack Obama apparently met officially with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just once in the nearly four years leading up to the Oct. 1 launch of the Obamacare website healthcare.gov, according to an analysis by the conservative Government Accountability Institute.  The organization examined the official White House calendar as well Politico’s presidential calendar. Phone and email communication were not included in the report.

How Obama wants to sweeten the bailout for insurers under Obamacare--In a little-noticed regulation issued the week of Thanksgiving, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed tweaking a program within President Obama's health care law to funnel additional money to insurers. 

Mark Levin: Obamacare ‘Is Whatever Obama Says It Is’--Yep, and the Supreme Court will back him up.  Check this out:  Discussing President Obama three-week public relations campaign to promote the Affordable Care Act, Mark Levin said on Tuesday that Obamacare is “Jell-O… it is whatever Obama says it is.”  “So people are losing their healthcare, they’re losing their coverage, people who have advanced stages of cancer, people who suffer from diabetes, people who have heart disease, and many, many other ailments and maladies and diseases and illnesses. People are losing their doctors, as well as their coverage. This is very, very serious. That’s why Obama’s ratings are going down, not because of the Republicans, or the media or anything. It’s because people are being adversely, miserably affected by this pathetic law, this pathetic law which is really Jell-O. It’s Jell-O. It is whatever Obama says it is. ‘Well the Supreme Court upheld the law.’ The Supreme Court upheld which law? What law? The way the law operates today isn’t even the law that the Supreme Court saw in many respects.

We Bet You Haven't Heard This About Obamacare--Another push is underway to raise the minimum wage. But what you probably haven’t heard is that Obamacare has already done that.  The plan on the table in Congress would raise the federal minimum wage above $10 an hour (which is higher than all existing state rates). Obamacare’s mandate on employers, however, is already scheduled to raise the hourly cost of hiring a full-time worker past $10 an hour.

WebMD Quietly Hired to Promote Obamacare--WebMD, the world’s second-most-popular website for health advice, has very quietly secured a government contract in which it agrees to promote Obamacare and educate doctors about it.  Representatives of the website have argued that this does not constitute a conflict of interest, since WebMD would be allowed autonomy to present its own take on medical news and advice, and this particular government contract affects only its private portal for doctors. That is, for now. A contract for educating the public about Obamacare is also under way.  

Four Obamacare “Success” Stories Cited By Obama All Had One Thing In Common: None Purchased Health Insurance Through Obamacare--Nineteen people stood behind President Obama on stage in the Executive Office Building Tuesday as the president kicked off a new campaign to promote Obamacare. One of those people, a young Florida woman named Monica Weeks, introduced Obama after telling the story of being struck with Crohn’s Disease at age 19 and receiving expensive treatments for several years that were covered by her parents’ health care plan — because Obamacare allowed her to remain on that plan until age 26. Now, Weeks said, she has coverage through a job. “The Affordable Care Act gives young adults who are just starting their careers more time to find a good job that offers reliable health insurance,” Weeks said.

A Sickening ObamaCare ‘Success Story’-- What is the “catastrophe effect”? And how does it set the stage for ObamaCare’s scandalous “success”? Norvell Rose explains…

White House Admits There May Be a Huge Problem With Thousands of Obamacare ‘Enrollments’-- Senior White House officials said this week that approximately 126,000 Americans who thought they successfully navigated healthcare.gov and signed up for health insurance plans may not actually be enrolled in Obamacare, ABC News reported.

Short-term fix on ObamaCare subsidies: Pay now, check later-- If this sounds familiar, it’s probably because HHS is going to use the same strategy for insurer subsidy payments that the IRS plans to use for paying tax credits. Both strategies are born out of necessity driven by incompetent systems development, too:

Sick of Obamacare? We've Got Something Different--The salesman in chief is back on the road.  President Obama will be spending the month of December once again explaining Obamacare to the American people. Because if he explains it one more time, maybe people will like it?  We expect these holiday greetings will go over about as well as a three-year-old fruitcake. Obama’s been selling the law for about that long, yet public opinion has turned against it.  The President said yesterday that he’s “learned not to make wild promises” anymore about the rollout of the health care law. But it’s clear he’s not going to stop making wild claims about Obamacare—and Obamacare’s critics.... That’s right—there is broad support for repealing Obamacare and starting over with health care reform. So what happens then?

Carolina Journal: Butterfield Staff Eschews Switch to Obamacare, Staffs of other NC delegation members choose exchanges.  Most of North Carolina’s congressional staffers — the men and women who work for the state’s two U.S. senators and 13 members of the U.S. House of Representatives — will be entering the District of Columbia’s health care exchange once the Affordable Care Act takes effect in January.  One notable exception: the office of 1st District Rep. G.K. Butterfield.  “The consensus amongst my team was to keep the same employer-sponsored coverage every other employee receives,” Butterfield said in a statement.  The Wilson County Democrat added that he instead had enrolled in the D.C. Health Link, the Obamacare exchange for the District of Columbia.

Yes Obama, Republicans have offered Obamacare alternatives--Republicans have introduced at least four comprehensive alternatives to Obamacare, despite President Obama’s claims they haven’t. Obama once again said in a speech Tuesday that Republicans in Congress have offered no alternatives to his signature health reform legislation.  “If, despite all of the millions of people benefitting from [Obamacare], you still think this law is a bad idea, then you’ve got to tell us specifically what you would do differently to cut costs and cover more people and make insurance more secure,” Obama said.  “You can’t just say that the system was working with 41 million people without health insurance." (Editor’s note:  Government says at least 30 million will still be uninsured under Obamacare. ) 

ObamaCare’s Latest Numbers Don’t Add Up. You Will Pay the Difference.  For ObamaCare to work, 40% of those buying healthcare insurance must be in the “rarely get sick” age group of 18-34. Their money must fund the health care of the older buyers. It turns out that only 28% are buying. Forget www.healthcare.gov. The entire program is sinking statistically. How many times does an unmarried male age 21-34 go to a physician? Six times. That means six times in the entire 13-year period.

Obama on Obamacare: This Law is Working-- Speaking from the White House Tuesday afternoon while flanked by people who have "benefited" from Obamacare, President Obama said his signature piece of legislation is working. The speech was part of a new public relations campaign to try and salvage what's left of the disastrous Obamacare rollout. 

Healthcare Bailout on the Way--The White House is laying out plans to bail out insurance companies to help offset the loss of revenue and profit that the industry is experiencing under ObamaCare.

Of 112 Obamacare Plans for Congress and Staff, 103 Fund Abortions--With a December 9th deadline for Members of Congress and congressional staff to sign up for Obamacare health insurance, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04) released new evidence of President Obama violating pro-life laws and providing taxpayer funding for insurance plans that include abortion on demand.  In the run-up to passage of Obamacare, Americans were repeatedly told and reassured by President Obama himself, including in a speech to a joint session of Congress in October 2009, that ‘under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion.’ Obama even issued the infamous Executive Order that claimed, “the Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to newly created health insurance exchanges,” said Smith. 

Court: Obama Admin Can’tMake Family Run Car Dealership Follow HHS Mandate--Randy Reed Automotive is a family-run automotive group in Missouri that doesn’t want to comply with the Obamacare abortion mandate requiring it to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions.

Tim Carney—Washington Examiner:  Obamacare merry-go-round: Regulations, subsidies, taxes, more subsidies--It may seem like he’s swinging back and forth — pro-business, then anti-business — but President Obama marching in a straight line: more state control of industry. It's the ratchet of state corporatism, and Obama is pretty handy with it. 

The Hill: Republicans eye Obama lawsuit, but party leaders are not on board--GOP lawmakers bashed the Obama administration at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday for opting not to enforce core parts of the Affordable Care Act, such as minimum requirements for individual healthcare plans.  Rep. Trent Franks (Ariz.), the chairman of the Judiciary panel’s Constitution and Civil Justice subcommittee, said Congress should sue the administration to spur Obama to enforce the healthcare law as written.

DIRTY HARRY EXEMPTS STAFF FROM OBAMACARE--Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, one of Obamacare's architects and staunchest supporters, is also the only top congressional leader to exempt some of his staff from having to buy insurance through the law's new exchanges.  Reid is the exception among the other top congressional leaders. GOP House Speaker John Boehner, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have all directed their staffs to join the exchange, their aides said.

Which Senator promised 'you cankeep your plan' the most? Kay did!

Daily Journal--Americans: Failures of Obamacare Are All Your Fault—RALEIGH — Wake up, people: An insidious corporate conspiracy is afoot, and it has a nefarious goal — forcing you to buy health insurance policies that you were choosing to purchase anyway. At least that’s what Sen. Kay Hagan and other Democrats scrambling to defend Obamacare after its clunky rollout are arguing.

The Morning Bell:  What Will Happen When (and If) HealthCare.gov Actually Works--HealthCare.gov may or may not be working—for some people.  That seems to be the clearest assessment after the Obama Administration has flubbed two deadlines to get the Obamacare website working.  The disaster has spawned countless news stories and updates about the website’s progress. But here’s the most important story: HealthCare.gov can’t fix anything that’s wrong with Obamacare.  Even if it worked perfectly from Day 1, that would do Americans little good. A slick, smoothly functioning website couldn’t undo all the damage Obamacare has done and is doing.  Here are just six of the things HealthCare.gov couldn’t begin to fix.

TPN--Alan Caruba:  From Prohibition to Obamacare--It is one of the great mysteries that, for progressives, also called liberals, the past provides no lessons, no warnings that would prevent them from repeating their errors. Progressives are always focused on a magical future in which there will be no wars, no hunger, no poverty. Their belief in the redistribution of wealth—communism—is, in Winston Churchill’s words, “the equal sharing of misery.” 

Report: Nearly One-Third of Obamacare Applications Contain Errors, ‘Tens of Thousands’ May Not Have Coverage Come Jan. 1--Health insurance plans for thousands of Americans who have signed up for Obamacare through the online federal exchanges contain errors, meaning those consumers may not get the coverage they signed up for come January 2014.  The computer-generated errors affect roughly one-third of consumers who have signed up for the Affordable Care Act since the exchanges launched Oct. 1, The Washington Post reported.  Errors included in the health insurance plans include “failure to notify insurers about new customers, duplicate enrollments or cancellation notices for the same person, incorrect information about family members, and mistakes involving federal subsidies,” the Post reported.  MORE!

The great bait-and-switch of ObamaCare--Obamacare “Essential Benefits” Rendered Most Current Health Plans Obsolete.  The great bait-and-switch of ObamaCare (“you can keep your plan and your doctor”) was intentionally orchestrated by the architects of the legislation. There were thousands of policies offered nationwide that were good and even very good but now they can’t be sustained under the new Obamacare policy requirements.  

Don't Look Now But Obama's Trying To Buy Off Insurance Companies To Accept His ObamaCare 'Fix'-- On the heels of a threatened mutiny by Congressional Democrats who vowed to side with Republicans and pass legislation that would allow millions of Americans to keep their healthcare plans, Barack Obama offered an 11th hour “fix” last month.  Insurance companies balked. Let me restate that: the insurance industry was livid, as illustrated by this statement from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) – issued during Obama’s November 14 press conference announcing his proposed “fix.”

GOP links Obamacare to pocketbook woes already troubling Americans-- House Republican leaders moved Tuesday to link Obamacare to voters' lingering anxieties over the economy, charging that the implementation of the law is hampering job creation and forcing already-struggling Americans to choose between food and Christmas gifts.  Republicans have signaled for weeks their intent to move beyond criticism of healthcare.gov, the Affordable Care Act's federal online insurance marketplace, and focus on additional myriad looming problems with Obama’s signature health care reforms. GOP leaders said the website remains dangerously flawed and error-prone, but emphasized at their weekly news conference that the problems with Obamacare run far deeper than the technical glitches plaguing the website.

Darrell Issa questions insurers on whether Obama knew of plans to drop plans, doctors--House investigators want to know when President Obama realized he could not uphold his repeated promise that "if you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor" under the new health care law. 

Republican doctors running for Congress amid ObamaCare rollout fiasco-- Eleven Republican doctors are running for the Senate, hoping that voters will see their medical expertise as an asset amid the administration’s botched rollout of ObamaCare.  “Doctors are in a very unique position to look at the financing of healthcare,” Rep. Paul Broun, a family physician running for the GOP nomination for Georgia’s open Senate seat, told The Hill.

November 2013:

The Obamacare Trainwreck: New HHS Proposal--Therefore, in §153.630(b)(7)(ii), we propose that the validation of enrollee health status (that is, the medical diagnoses) occur through medical record review, that the validation of medical records include a check that the records originate from the provider of the medical services, that they align with the dates of service for the medical diagnosis, and that they reflect permitted providers and services. In this paragraph, we also propose, for purposes of §153.630, that “medical record documentation” mean: “clinical documentation of hospital inpatient or outpatient treatment or professional medical treatment from which enrollee health status is documented and related to accepted risk adjustment services that occurred during a specified period of time.

Is Health Care A Fundamental Human Right or a Service?--How many Americans believe that health care is a fundamental human right? How many Americans believe that it is just a service that must be paid for just like any other service? Good doctors and nurses who train a long time and invest a lot of money in their education expect to be paid well for their expertise and unique skills

The ObamaCare Propaganda Campaign--In an effort that exemplifies both desperation and contempt for the public, the Obama administration, in coordination with its media cheer leading squad, is determined to rebrand ObamaCare. Toward that end, Families USA (FUSA) a self-described “national nonprofit, non-partisan organization dedicated to the achievement of high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans” was given a $1.1 million grant by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 

Belated House GOP Approval for Replacing ObamaCare?  After three long years of cautious resistance to comprehensive replacement of ObamaCare,the House Republican Leadership seems ready to approve of legislative hearings and eventual House action on major proposals to that effect – namely,to proactively support the Republican Study Committee’s HR 3121 (with well over 100 GOP co-sponsors) and Rep./Dr. Tom Price’s overlapping HR 2300 (with over 40 co-sponsors).  These two proposals —like Rep. Price’s HR 3400 in 2011 and HR 3000 in 2012 —can all be traced back to the March 2010 House debates and razor-thin 219-212 House passage of ObamaCare.  

ObamaCare Intensifying Doctor Shortage Crisis as Medicaid Balloons
With the ObamaCare-instigated expansion of Medicaid expected to add almost 10 million more Americans to the government entitlement scheme, the shortage of doctors is set to get much worse.

Obamacare Event Hands Out Condoms as Prizes--The Obamacare event took place at the University of Central Arkansas last weekend. It was hosted by a group called the Living Affected Corporation, which apparently has received a grant from the federal government to educate the public about Obamacare.  The event organizer spilled out a bag of condoms — as a couple whoops and hollers could be heard from the small crowd.

OBAMACARE BY THE NUMBERS: LOTS OF DOLLARS, LITTLE SENSE--The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) was rammed through Congress ­­— the President and Democrats refused to negotiate. Thus, the bill passed in 2010 with only Democrats voting for it.  The costs of this law are staggering. Here’s a by the numbers breakdown:  $2.6 Trillion — The latest Senate Republican Budget Committee estimate — using Congressional Budget Office numbers — of what ObamaCare will cost in the first 10 years.  $716 Billion — The amount of money President Obama removed from Medicare to help pay for ObamaCare. 

Obama Admin: We Will Win Our Bid to Force Hobby Lobby to Obey the HHSMandate--The Obama administration says it is confident it will prevail in its bid to force Hobby Lobby and other religious businesses and groups to obey the HHS mandate that compels them to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs.  

PALIN WAS RIGHT: Halperin, ‘ObamaCare Contains ‘Death Panels’-- The Affordable Care Act contains provisions for “death panels,” which decide which critically ill patients receive care and which don’t, says Mark Halperin, senior political analyst for Time magazine.  “It’s built into the plan. It’s not like a guess or like a judgment. That’s going to be part of how costs are controlled,” Halperin told “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.  

Unions given ‘special’ ObamaCare deal?  The Obama administration is being accused of giving labor groups “special treatment under the law” after formally proposing a change that could exempt union health plans from a pesky ObamaCare fee.  Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., who flagged the obscure rule change after it was filed in the Federal Register (see page 70), blasted the exemption as “crony capitalism at its worst.”

Supreme Court will take up new health law dispute--The Supreme Court has agreed to referee another dispute over President Barack Obama's health care law, whether businesses can use religious objections to escape a requirement to cover birth control for employees.  The justices said Tuesday they will take up an issue that has divided the lower courts in the face of roughly 40 lawsuits from for-profit companies asking to be spared from having to cover some or all forms of contraception.  The court will consider two cases. One involves Hobby Lobby Inc., an Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain with 13,000 full-time employees. Hobby Lobby won in the lower courts.

NYT Compares Not Expanding  Medicaid To Slavery-- Good grief, the left wing media is going off the rails. Not long ago we had Martin Bashir wanting to take a dump and a pee on Sarah Palin. Then the other day WaPo printed an op-ed tying the tea party to the assassination of J.... I wish I was kidding.  Now we have a New York Times op-ed comparing states that won’t expa..., and absolving President Obama of his lie about keeping your health insurance because President Lincoln lied about keeping slavery. It’s like these lunatics are trying to one-up each other.

Hagan on defensive over healthcare fallout--RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Fallout from the national healthcare overhaul was a hot topic in downtown Raleigh Monday.  Sen. Kay Hagan and Rep. Renee Ellmers attended the same leadership conference and discussed with ABC11 their very different positions on the Affordable Care Act.

N.C. OKs rate hikes for BCBS plans for re-enrollment--The state Insurance Department has approved the higher premium rates proposed by Blue Cross Blue Shield of N.C. that allow customers to keep one of four plans that were to end as part of implementing the Affordable Care Act.  Commissioner Wayne Goodwin said the department approved rate increases of 16.4 percent for Blue Advantage plans, an average of 22 percent for Blue Value plans, and 23.6 percent for Blue Saver and Blue Options HSA plans.

Organizing for America (OFA), President Obama’s campaign group, ObamaCare--What EVERYONE Will Be Talking About at Thanksgiving Dinner.  Have you seen them? The guides for how to talk to your family   about Obamacare over the holidays.  That’s right—Organizing for America (OFA), President Obama’s campaign group, has a big push called “Health Care for the Holidays” that urges people to “have the talk” with their loved ones about getting health insurance. 

New conservative NC group takes aim at ACA-- A new conservative third-party group is launching in North Carolina, and taking aim at the Affordable Care Act.  Executive Director Chad Adams announced the launch of Priorities North Carolina Monday.  

Yes, Democrats, Please Stand By Obamacare--There are so many fundamental problems with the Affordable Care Act, that I’ve long believed it is not designed to actually improve the insurance system in America, but to irreparably break it in order to usher in more direct government control of health care.  

Obamacare problems extend far beyond faulty website.  New JLF report documents health care law's negative consequences-- RALEIGH -- The federal health care law known as Obamacare creates more problems for North Carolinians than just the faulty website that has generated recent headlines. A new John Locke Foundation Spotlight report documents key Obamacare flaws and offers alternatives for addressing health care needs.  

CANCER PATIENT DROPPED FROM HEALTH INSURANCE PLAN BECAUSE OF OBAMACARE--A Virginia woman with kidney cancer learned recently that the Affordable Care Act has forced the cancellation of her employer-provided health insurance coverage.  Debra Fishericks, who has worked for Atkinson Realty in Virgina Beach, Va., for more than a decade, said the premiums she paid under her company’s health insurance plan were more than reasonable, according to a CBS News report that aired on WDBJ-TV. 

Poll: 69 Percent Of Americans Satisfied With Personal Health Care Plan--A new Gallup poll finds that 69 percent of Americans rate their personal coverage as excellent or good, but only 32 percent say the same about health care coverage in the country.

ObamaCare: While NC fiddles, other states carry on fight to protect residents--Earlier, we reported on the cushy treatment North Carolina insurance commissioner Wayne Goodwin has been getting regarding this ObamaCare mess.  Ol’ Wayne brags on his web site that everything related to insurance in this state has to be okayed by HIM.  (National analyses have found North Carolina will be hit the hardest by Obama Care.)

Vermont Confirms Security Breach To Health CareExchange Website--Officials overseeing the Vermont Health  Connect website confirmed Friday there was a security breach on the system last month in which one user got improper access to another user’s Social Security number and other data.  A report from state to federal officials overseeing the health insurance exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act said a consumer reported the incident with the Vermont Health Connect website on Oct. 17.

Judge Napolitano vs. Juan Williams on Obamacare, Social Security--Judge Andrew Napolitano strikes to the heart of the matter when he tells Juan Williams that he has abandoned the constitution on some issues.

CBNTV:  Obamacare:  Christmas Comes Early for the GOP--This week on The Brody File, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus joins us to explain how the GOP is ready to capitalize on the Obamacare political disaster.  Also, political commentator Charles Krauthammerstopped by to discuss his early liberal tendencies, politics and baseball.

If Obamacare is a tax, it was not legally passed?

Obamacare Then, Affordable Care Act Now--The president’s signature health care law takes on an evolving name in the mouths of Democrats as it becomes increasingly unpopular.

Enroll America under fire again after video suggests involvement in partisan politics--Enroll America, the group leading efforts to enroll Americans in ObamaCare, is facing accusations again that it has violated its tax-exempt nonprofit status by engaging in partisan politics — following the release of a video in which a top official seems to brag about his political connections.

Hacking Healthcare.gov – Stealing Your Information--How to hack Healthcare.gov? Just ask cyber security professional and "white hat hacker" David Kennedy.  Low enrollment might be a blessing in disguise for the Obama administration after it was announced that the Affordable Care Act's website, healthcare.gov, has flawed security and puts users at high risk for having their data stolen by hackers.

Forbes: The Impeachment Option Would Be Well-Deserved-- Since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, he has changed it five times. Most notably, he suspended the employer mandate last summer. This is widely known, but almost no one seems to have grasped its significance...If the President can ignore the laws passed by Congress, of what use is Congress? The President can do whatever he chooses. Congress can stand by and observe. Perhaps they might applaud or jeer. But in terms of political power, Congress will be irrelevant. Probably, it will become a kind of rubber-stamp or debating society. 

Subcontractor Working On Obamacare Website Under FBI Investigation--Of course. It’s almost as if they went out of their way to get the most sleazy, questionable and incompetent people imaginable.

Bill Whittle: The Hammer of Reality-- Bam! Bam goes the hammer. People receive cancellation notices from their insurance companies. Bam! Obama is exposed as a liar. Bam! Reid and Pelosi were in on it. Bam! When times are bleak for conservatives, we have one inalienable tool–the hammer of reality.

‘CAUGHT FLAT-FOOTED’: OBAMACARE WEBSITE OFFICIALS RUSHED TO HIRE FAMILIAR CONTRACTOR, DIDN’T SEEK BIDS, REUTERS REVEALS--Obamacare website officials rushed to hire a contractor they knew and failed to seek competing bids, according to government procurement documents reviewed by Reuters.  The challenges of building the financial-management and accounting elements of the Obamacare site in particular became a problem for the officials who were “caught flat-footed” over the scope of the job, the Reuters report stated.

#NCSEN: Sen. Sock Puppet back-stabbed by Schumer’s ‘Other Woman’-- New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D) made the “mistake” of going on TV and telling us the truth:  On Sunday, appearing on ABC’s This Week with fill-in host Martha Raddatz, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) admitted that Democrats knew full well that Americans would be booted from their health insurance plans as an effect of Obamacare implementation.

 

Congressmen hear from NC opponents of health law-- GASTONIA, N.C. (AP) -- Opponents of the federal health care overhaul testified here Friday before congressional Republicans, a hearing that the law's supporters called a political stunt.  About 200 people attended the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee meeting, which is headed by Obama administration critic U.S. Rep Darrell Issa, R-Calif.  "I brought Congress to North Carolina to understand the real impact of Obamacare on real Americans," said North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry, a committee member. "By and large, most folks are feeling the pain as a result of higher insurance costs."

NC Insurance Commissioner Goodwin Discusses Obama's Extension Of Canceled Health Policies--By now you probably know that President Obama has offered a temporary fix for people whose health insurance companies have canceled their policies because they didn't meet the minimum standards of the Affordable Care Act. You can keep your policies for another year if insurance companies are willing to still offer the plans, and if state insurance regulators are OK with it. North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin says he is. He joined President Obama and other insurance commissioners at the White House this week, and he joined WFAE's Kevin Kniestedt on Morning Edition.

Hidden Source Code in ObamaCare--There are some lines of code that violate the HIPAA Security Rule, which sets national standards for the security of protected electronic health information. The code hidden inside ObamaCare says, “You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system.” This is not HIPAA compliant.

Round 2 of ObamaCare enrollment to be delayed until after 2014 midterms--Hilarious. Do they really think Americans won’t remember? Well, I guess we did reelect Obama.  Check it out:  The Obama administration plans to delay the start of next year’s ObamaCare enrollment period, a move pitched as a way to give consumers and insurance companies more time to study their options — but which also conveniently pushes the second round of enrollment past the 2014 midterm elections.

American Thinker:  ObamaCare and Liberal Cruelty— No one has the right to sacrifice your life to save someone else's life. No one has the right to harm your family to help someone else's family. That's a bedrock principle in America.  Until Obamacare. The Democrats want a different America. In the new America, you are expendable. Your life, your health, your family's financial well-being, can be taken away if the government decides that other people's lives, health and finances will benefit. 

Democratic Staffers: Whoa, Our Rising Healthcare Costs Are 'Unacceptable-- Welcome to the Obamacare party, people who helped their bosses foist this monstrosity upon an unwilling public. Many of these legislative aides are now saddled with much higher -- "unacceptable!" -- health costs, now that they're fending for themselves on DC's Obamacare exchange. 

The Hill: ObamaCare sign-up date pushed to Christmas--Federal health officials announced a delay Friday for people seeking ObamaCare coverage that starts on Jan. 1, 2014.  Rather than signing up for health insurance by Dec. 15, as previously required, these users will have until Dec. 23 to choose their plans.  The policies will still begin on Jan. 1 of next year, said the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Obama administration estimate: As many as four out of five to lose their employer coverage--As the President’s egregious “if you like your plan you can keep your plan” lie was being laid bare, there was one constant response.  Democrats promised, again and again, that the cancellations - though impacting millions - would be limited to people who purchase individual insurance. That’s about 8% of the population.  Sure, it takes a staggering level of hubris to claim that 25 million Americans represent a “non-issue” but that was their claim. ...and, as usual, it was completely bogus.

#CruzCares--Cruz"noia” and the Senate Jackasses— In typical paranoid fashion, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has hatched a new campaign idea to save the donkeys from the wrath of the voters over ObamaCare. It seems Sen. Ted Cruz has infected these poor little jackasses with that most dastardly of diseases known as Cruznoia by simply announcing he will unveil his own health care plan.  Whatever shall we do they bray?  According to the title of Greg Sargent’s article in the WashingtonPost’s Plum Line, “Dems try going on offense: It’s Obamacare versus ‘Cruz Care’. Mr. Sargent states, “I’m told the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is set to launch a new campaign designed to refocus the debate on the Republican position on health care, which Dems will widely label as”Cruz Care.”

Blue Cross NC to raise individual rates by as much as 24% on reinstated health plans-- Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina said Tuesday it will raise rates as much as 24 percent on 2013 individual health insurance plans that are being extended next year.  The increase is double the price inflation for the same health plans just a year ago, but many Blue Cross customers who have grumbled about rising costs in past years are cheering the news this time.

ObamaCare Website Opens Door For Mass Identity Theft-- The nightmare world of propaganda and psych ops the Obama administration uses to frighten its citizens into mass subjugation has just exploded into daytime reality.  In an era where Identity Theft isruining lives, the headline warning from yesterday’s INVESTORS.com is the ObamaCare Website is Like ‘IdentityTheft.Gov.  Security: Computer security experts testify that the unfinished health care marketplace portal places the personal information of millions at risk on a poorly designed and built site that is a hacker’s dream.” 

Defending Obamacare: Only 83,000 Out Of 403,000 Got Ripped Off!  Here is a story out of Fredericksburg that is supposed to reassure us about Obamacare.  A new study says more than three-quarters of the 403,000 Virginians younger than 65 with individual health insurance coverage could qualify for some level of federal tax subsidy by buying health insurance through the federal marketplace.  But that leaves about 83,000 Virginians who might find their existing insurance canceled who won’t qualify for the subsidy help.

‘MELTDOWN’: READ THE EMAIL TOP OBAMACARE OFFICIAL SENT JUST DAYS BEFORE HEALTHCARE.GOV LAUNCH--Just days before the official launch of Healthcare.gov, the deputy chief information officer of CMS sent a stern email to colleagues warning of a potential “MELTDOWN.” 

OBAMACARE CONTRACTORS WITH TIES TO WHITE HOUSE, OBAMA CAMPAIGN SCRUTINIZED--Some Obamacare contractors have demonstrated political connections to the Obama administration, critics say, pointing to firms whose executives worked in the White House, for the campaign or had previous associations. 

Republican Alternative to Obamacare Gaining Momentum, Bill's Sponsor Says – Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) says increasing access to health care and lowering health care costs are at the heart of his bill that stands as an alternative to Obamacare. "We drafted this bill with a working group of members of the Republican Study Committee, which I chair," Scalise told Fox News's Neil Cavuto on Wednesday. He said momentum is building for the American Health Care Reform Act, which is being taken "very seriously."

DR. OBAMA to the Rescue!!  
It seems the Obama Administration deems that 3 ½ years of outright lying shows insufficient commitment to the ObamaCare cause.  More about this coming up.  First, it seems that ALL DEMOCRAT LEGISLATORS KNEW HE WAS LYING FROM DAY 1.  See ABC’s interview with New York’s Democrat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, in which she admits that EVERYONE knew—all the legislators—that Obama and the WH was lying about being able to keep your health care policyand your preferred doctors, “PERIOD,” under ObamaCare.  Apparently, word must have gotten around amongst the DEMs, back in 2010, of Obama’s advisors’ estimates that 40% to 75% of Americans would lose their health insurance coverage under ObamaCare.

ObamaCare Website Opens Door For Mass Identity Theft-- The nightmare world of propaganda and psych ops the Obama administration uses to frighten its citizens into mass subjugation has just exploded into daytime reality.  In an era where Identity Theft is ruining lives, the headline warning from yesterday’s INVESTORS.com is the ObamaCare Website is Like ‘IdentityTheft.Gov.  “Security: Computer security experts testify that the unfinished health care marketplace portal places the personal information of millions at risk on a poorly designed and built site that is a hacker’s dream.” (INVESTORS.com, Nov. 20, 2013)

Sebelius asked to explain $2B in Obamacare loans--Several leading GOP members of Congress are asking Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, under whose watch the Healthcare.gov website rollout has experience one fiasco after another, to explain the $2 billion in taxpayer money loaned to various interests to get health insurance CO-OPs up and running – and whether the taxpayers will get any of that back.  Just when the Obamacare experience appears to be able to go no lower – the website malfunctions, millions of policies are canceled outright, only thousands are able to sign up via online offerings, prices for policies are skyrocketing, and more – come the questions about loans.

The Supercut That Reveals How Democrats, Obama Suddenly Stopped Calling the Affordable Care Act ‘Obamacare--In case you haven’t noticed, Democrats and President Barack Obama have stopped referring to the Affordable Care Act as “Obamacare” and are now calling it by its formal name.  “I know health care is controversial, so there’s only going to be so much support we get on that on a bipartisan basis — until it’s working really well, and then they’re going to stop calling it Obamacare,” President Barack Obama himself said on Nov. 8.  But contrary to the president’s remarks, it looks like the bill’s supporters are the ones who have stopped “calling it Obamacare.”

‘THIS CONVERSATION NEVER HAPPENED’: LATEST UNDERCOVER OBAMACARE VIDEO MAY CREATE PROBLEMS FOR ‘NONPARTISAN’ ENROLL AMERICA--The latest video from conservative activist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas accuses the director of Enroll America of conspiring to release private data for political purposes.  Alleging that Americans’ personal data is being “cross-pollinated” among various left-leaning groups for political purposes, a Project Veritas “investigator” posed as an official a fake progressive group and sat down with the communications director of Enroll America in Texas, Christopher Tarango.

White House knew in March that Healthcare.gov site was running off the rails--Despite assurances all year long that the development of the central web portal of ObamaCare was proceeding as planned, the Obama administration knew full well that the opposite was true — and had their own independent analysts warning of disaster.  The Washington Post reports this morning that the White House brought in outside consultants for a risk assessment months before HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius assured Congress that all was well, and they specifically warned the White House in March of the eventual disasters that the October 1 rollout produced:

Woman Hailed by President as Obamacare Success Story Now Can't Afford Obamacare--CNN reports that a woman the president hailed as an Obamacare success story just realized she won't be able to afford Obamacare because it's too expensive. 

Obamacare lie #2: can’t keep your doctor either-- Good Monday morning America, and the day greets us to find yet another lie from President Obama: you don’t get to keep your doctor either.  It seems United Health sent out letters across some 10 states dropping doctors from their Medicare Advantage plans. 

Kay Hagan Voted to Block Resolution that Would Have Allowed Americans to Keep Existing Insurance--Not only did Senator Kay Hagan, who was swept into office on Obama’s 2008 coattails, falsely claim at least 24 times that Americans would be able to keep their existing insurance after Obamacare was rammed through, but she also voted against a 2010 proposal that would have protected those plans now being cancelled.  In other words, given the choice between keeping her promise to North Carolinians or rejecting that promise and ensuring the inevitable cancellation of more than 164,000 policies due to Obamacare regulations, Kay Hagan decided to sacrifice those insurance policies on the altar of partisan politics and loyalty to Obama. When push came to shove, Kay Hagan chose Barack Obama’s far-left agenda over protecting North Carolinians from the fallout of the Democrats’ health insurance takeover.

VIDEO:  Bombshell: Sen. Rand Paul Reveals — Barack Obama Wrote The Regulation To Cancel Your Insurance

VIDEO:  Hillary Clinton In 2007:  If You Like Your Plan, You Can Keep Your Plan

DoYou Believe Obama This Time? How About Now? …Now?  Once upon a time, Obamacare was “settled” law that was “here to stay.” Or so President Obama said—before Obamacare failed to survive contact with reality.  The reality is that the Administration is delaying the impact of major parts of the law, including the employer mandate and now the benefit mandates for health plans.  There’s a slight problem: As the President so readily reminded us, Obamacare is still the law of the land. Without undoing the law, everything that has people up in arms—the higher costs, mandates, plan cancellations—will still happen.

GOP senators to administration: Don't approve Obamacare union fix-- Twenty Republican senators are urging the Obama administration not to give unions special relief from an Obamacare tax that other employers, charities and organizations will be forced to pay under the healthcare law.  Most Republicans spent Thursday training their fire on President Obama's decision to offer a "fix" to allow individuals to keep their health plans even if they receive cancellation notices. But a group of GOP senators chose the same day to speak out against administration plans to exempt unions from a new Obamacare tax.

Statement on President Obama's ObamaCare "Fix"--The following is the statement of David Hogberg, Ph.D., senior fellow for health care policy at the National Center for Public Policy Research, on President Obama's ObamaCare announcement today:  Today President Obama displayed the arrogance and contempt for the American people that has become a hallmark of his Administration. 

REPORT: Planned Parenthood a 'Certified Application Counselor' for Obamacare...ObamaCare Key to Planned Parenthood Expansion--They were in on it from the beginning, so it is hardly surprising to see Planned Parenthood now not just promoting, but standing poised to reap the financial benefits of ObamaCare.  After working and spending a great deal to get Obama elected, Planned Parenthood was one of the privileged groups invited to the President’s “health care summit” at the White House early in Obama’s first term in March of 2009. 

List of Senator Kay Hagan "Keep Your Plan" lies

Obama move on canceled plans may touch 475K in NC—RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Some of the more than 473,000 North Carolina residents whose health insurance policies were canceled by their companies for not meeting new federal coverage standards may get to keep their current policies under a change President Barack Obama announced Thursday.  White House officials said a letter going to state insurance commissioners will specify that current plans will not be considered out of compliance with the federal health insurance overhaul law next year. It will be up to state regulators and insurance companies to decide whether to keep alive previously canceled policies.

SECOND UNDERCOVER VIDEO CATCHES MORE OBAMACARE ‘NAVIGATORS’ ADVISING APPLICANTS TO LIE FOR LOWER PREMIUMS--Conservative activist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has released a second undercover video of Obamacare “navigators” advising potential applicants not to report income in order to get a lower health insurance premium.  The group’s first video resulted in the firing of a part-time receptionist trainee as well as the suspension of three Obamacare “navigators.”

Obama defiant in Ohio: 'We are not going to gut this law'-- President Obama shifted from near-apology to defiance Thursday as he insisted that the Affordable Care Act's problems will be fixed and that he won't yield to political pressures.

Rep. Trey Gowdy at the Obamacare Website Oversight Hearings

Democrat Howard Dean: I Wonder If Obama Has the'Legal Authority to Do This'

Obama Changes Affordable Care Act Requirements by Himself--If you like your insurance plan, maybe you can keep it after all, for another year, President Obama told the American people on Thursday.  He said people may keep individual plans that haven't already been canceled; or they may buy similar ones, if they're available -- even if those plans don't meet the coverage and cost requirements of Obamacare, as the law says they must.

Obama Offers One Year Healthcare "Fix,"Says Buying Health Insurance Online is "Complicated"-- Speaking today from the White House, President Obama touted dismal Obamacare enrollment numbers as proof people are interested in the healthcare law and assured millions Americans they can keep their cancelled insurance plans if insurance companies continue to offer and provide them. 

Churches enlisted as‘trusted partners’ to sell Obamacare-- If your church does this, you should be looking for a new one since it must be a very liberal church and I doubt it is preaching the gospel.  Check it out:  The Obama administration and a closely aligned partner are aggressively marketing Obamacare to American churches, many of them African-American denominations, as part of a multiimillion dollar campaign to persuade America’s uninsured to buy health insurance.

Obama: 'We fumbled the rollout'-- A chastened President Obama admitted Thursday his administration had "fumbled the rollout on this healthcare law." [WATCH VIDEO]  Saying early technical glitches with the website and a broken promise that Americans could keep their health insurance were "on me," the president told reporters he heard "loud and clear" growing frustration with his signature legislation.

Republicans: Stop Helping the Democrats Fix ObamaCare-- The Republican fix for Obamacare isn’t repeal or defund. The House Republican fix that Fred Upton floated a couple of weeks ago  is, "If you have an individual healthcare policy that was effective as of this year, January 2013, that policy in fact is grandfathered in and it allows you to keep it for another year. You're not going to be subject to a penalty. You're not going to be forced to find something else."

OBAMA IN RETREAT OVER FAILED OBAMACARE-- Facing a revolt from fellow Democrats and the American public over the millions of health insurance policies cancelled because of Obamacare’s requirements, President Obama caved on a key point and will let some people keep their healthcare plans…for a while.  But he still fell far short of keeping his broken promise to let everyone keep their health insurance plans if they like them, period.

American Thinker: How Republicans Can Lose on ObamaCare-- It is a tactic as old as argument itself. The person seeking to accomplish something he knows to be dishonest and unjust sets the parameters of the argument, and invites his opponent to debate the predetermined memes. If the debater does not first disown the false premise, and reset the terms, he has effectively lost from the outset. In the case of ObamaCare, the premise is that our healthcare system was irretrievably "broken." Congress had to step in and "fix" healthcare.

Businesses cut full-time workers to meet Obamacare mandate, study says (+video)-- A study of small businesses found that many are cutting full-time workers or worker hours to comply with Obamacare. Franchises are making the biggest cuts.

Feds:About 1,700 in NC selected health plans-- RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Federal officials say about 1,700 North Carolina residents successfully signed up for health insurance plans on the troubled health care exchange website in the first month of open enrollment.  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday almost 30,000 applications to buy coverage for almost 58,000 people were completed on the government's marketplace for private insurance. But only about 1,700 reached the point where they bought plans or are ready to write a check.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: WAIT UNTIL THE OTHER OBAMACARE SHOE DROPS IN 2014 – ‘ALL HELL IS GONNA BREAK LOOSE’-- On Wednesday, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh warned listeners that problems caused by Obamacare are only going to get worse. He argued that when the other Obamacare “shoe” drops in 2014 — when the law starts impacting employer-provided health care plans — “all hell is gonna break loose.”

NEW CALL FOR ‘TOTAL REPEAL’ OF OBAMACARE FROM UNEXPECTED SENATOR--After repeatedly bashing senators like Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) over their crusade to defund Obamacare, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called for the “total repeal” of the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday. It’s a quick turnaround after the longtime senator, in September, proclaimed that it was “not rational” to think Obamacare could be defunded or repealed.

WHAT A COINCIDENCE: Valerie Jarrett’s Daughter and Hubby Work for Company that Receives $653 Million for Obamacare-- At this point this is still speculation with little confirmation, however it is highly suspect. I urge anyone to look further into this for more info.

*Note Balkisson is not the PM’s son, as written below, but rather an MP’s son. … B.

Medicaid for al-Qaeda?Obamacare Flaw Allows Anyone To Fraudulently Enroll--Though a sideshow throughout Obamacare’s passage and litigation, Medicaid’s pivotal role in President Obama’s health care reform effort has become apparent following the law’s October 1 implementation. In many states, Medicaid enrollment through the Healthcare.gov portal is dwarfing the number of “private” insurance plan purchases.

#NCSEN: O-Care political realities are biting Sen. Schumer’s sock puppet in the, um, butt--It’s a far cry from those heady days in 2008 and 2009 when a certain former state senator from Greensboro aspiring to be a US senator was telling us that we were going to eat every bit of our ObamaCare, and we were going to like it. Fast forward to today.  North Carolina is one of the hardest hit states in the Union by ObamaCare:

The unspoken success of ObamaCare--Despite what you are being told, the Affordable Health Care Act (ACA), commonly known as ObamaCare, is already proving to be a resounding success. The problem, however, is that the majority of Americans don’t fully understand the objectives of this plan, or the roles of its architects and its defenders. Even the vast majority of conservative pundits in all venues don’t seem to ‘get it’ and consequently, are leading their readers and listeners astray by focusing on the wrong issues.

Americans 34 Times More Interested In Buying Guns Than Obamacare--It appears obvious that Americans are rejecting Obamacare and are preparing to stand up against this usurpation of Liberty.

‘THIS IS UNREAL!’:  RUSH LIMBAUGH SAYS THIS OBAMACARE-RELATED DEVELOPMENT IS THE ‘LIMBAUGH THEOREM IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE’-- Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh pointed to an example of what he calls the “Limbaugh Theorem” on Tuesday, arguing that the White House is actually agreeing with former President Bill Clinton that President Barack Obama should keep his Obamacare promise to the millions of Americans who are losing their insurance plans.  Limbaugh first played a clip of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney reacting to Clinton’s criticism:

NEW PRO-OBAMACARE ADS ARE SO RIDICULOUS, YOU’LL WONDER IF THEY’RE REAL-- The Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and ProgressNow Colorado Education earlier this year introduced Americans to the “Brosurance” ad campaign, an initiative aimed at encouraging young voters, women and minorities to enroll in Obamacare.  They’re back now with a new round of eyebrow-raising pro-Obamacare ads that have a many on social network sites asking, “Is this real?”

NEW UNDERCOVER VIDEO CATCHES OBAMACARE ‘NAVIGATORS’ ADVISING POTENTIAL APPLICANT TO ‘LIE’--A new video produced by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas seemingly shows Obamacare “navigators” in Dallas, Texas, advising a man to provide false information on his application to get more subsidies and a lower premium.  Secretly video recording the exchange, a Project Veritas “investigator” tells Obamacare navigators at the National Urban League’s offices in Dallas that he never reports his outside income when filing his taxes, which is likely untrue. The navigators then advise him not to get himself in “trouble” by reporting the income to the IRS now.

ObamaCare is working just the way O intended and Hagan has been duped and has yet to realize it--What if, ObamaCare is but a prelude to a total system collapse?  Week before last President Obama tried to spin his way out of his 29 statements over two years that "if you like your plan you can keep it. Period. If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Period.  Last week he apologized to….Americans "who are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me…" Click here to listen to his actual words. 

Kay Hagan seeks ‘complete’ Obamacare probe--Senators will ask the Obama administration for a full investigation into the bungled launch of HealthCare.gov, according to a letter being circulated by Sen. Kay Hagan.

GROSS NEW AD: OBAMACARE IS A GREAT PLAN FOR THE PROMISCUOUS!  Remember Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law student and “reproductive rights activist” who demanded taxpayers cover the cost of her birth control? After her testimony before Congress on behalf of Democrats, she quickly became the most outspoken antagonist of the Republicans and their so-called “War on Women.” Free contraception is a matter of women’s health, Fluke argued at the time, and how dare Republicans suggest exercising self-control or personal responsibility?!

WHITE HOUSE RESPONDS TO BILL CLINTON SAYING THEY SHOULD ‘HONOR THE COMMITMENT’ ON INSURANCE PROMISES--White House press secretary Jay Carney responded to former President Bill Clinton’s assertion that the Obama administration should “honor the commitment” to ensure no one loses their current health insurance plan under the Affordable Care Act.  “The president has tasked his team with looking at options to address this,” Carney said during the White House press briefing.

DOCTORS WILL BE LEFT PAYING TAB FOR OBAMACARE ‘GRACE PERIODS’: REPORT--The Affordable Care Act entitles consumers eligible for the federal subsidy to three “free” months of health care if they choose to default on their premiums, meaning  doctors and hospitals will be left paying the tab.  If people can’t pay their premiums and instead decide to cancel their policies, they are given a three-month “grace period,”Watchdog.org reports.

President Puts Lipstick on the Obamacare Pig--Abraham Lincoln: “Honesty is the best policy.”  Barack Obama: “Honesty: What, me worry?”  That’s the legacy this president has carved out for himself as he struggles to put lipstick on the pig called Obamacare.  Wouldn’t it have been refreshing to hear the president come clean and admit he lied about how he sold the American people on the Affordable Care Act?

Few options for Obama to fix cancellations problem-- President Barack Obama says he'll do everything he can to help people coping with health insurance cancellations, but legally and practically his options appear limited.  That means the latest political problem engulfing Obama's health care overhaul may not be resolved quickly, cleanly or completely.

They Liked Their Health Plans, But Can’t Keep Them-- “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”  That’s a promise President Obama made at least 36 times over the past few years.  But for millions of Americans, Obamacare is bringing about a different reality: insurance cancellations, premium increases, even threats to your privacy.

Will your personal info be safe with Obamacare?  Obama administration officials are facing mounting questions about whether they cut corners on security testing while rushing to meet a self-imposed deadline to launch online health insurance markets.

Rocky Start For North Carolina Health Care Exchanges--CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (CBS Charlotte) - North Carolina’s largest insurer is having its share of problems with the Obamacare website.  Internal emails obtained by WNCN-TV show that Blue Cross Blue Shield show that only 1,000 people had filled out applications as of October 15th.  In fact, only one person was able to successfully use Healthcare.gov to enroll in the new exchange.  But even that single person has not paid, which means the enrollment is not complete.

White House Blames Stage IV Cancer Victim for Insurance Loss-- In a heartbreaking Wall Street Journal editorial, Edie Littlefield Sunby, a stage-four cancer survivor, details how ObamaCare cost her the health insurance Obama repeatedly promised she could keep, and how ObamaCare’s alternative plans don’t cover the doctors and facilities that have kept her alive. In response to her story, White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer fired off a dismissive tweet that basically blames her for picking the wrong insurance:

Who Is Affected by Obamacare? EVERYONE--In response to the wave of insurance cancellations hitting millions of Americans, and the admission by some on the left that President Obama’s “if you like your plan” promise was false, Obamacare’s defenders are now taking a different tack.  While the law’s supporters finally admit that some people will be worse off under the law, they now claim that those “losers” will be few and far between.

Administration “Decides” Obamacare Exchanges Exempt from Anti-Kickback Law-- The Affordable Care Act is the biggest new health care program in decades, but the Obama administration has ruled that neither the federal insurance exchange nor the federal subsidies paid to insurance companies on behalf of low-income people are “federal health care programs.”  The surprise decision, disclosed last week, exempts subsidized health insurance from a law that bans rebates, kickbacks, bribes and certain other financial arrangements in federal health programs, stripping law enforcement of a powerful tool used to fight fraud in other health care programs, like Medicare.

Obama: Caught in the Same Lie 29 Times

KAY OWNS OBAMACARE LIES-- People Who Like Their Health Insurance Can Keep It With ObamaCare

Kay Hagan aided and abetted O-Care’s ‘You can keep your plan’ LIE--Facts can be such troublesome things.  The mainstream media has been gushing over the “courage” shown by Senator Kay Hagan — affectionately know in many quarters as Chuck Schumer’s Sock Puppet™ –for her efforts to seek a delay in the ObamaCare enrollment deadline.  The problem for Madame Pantsuit here is that she was out front from the very beginning peddling the spin — that we all now know was a lie — that you can keep your existing health plan if you want to.

What Obamacare Subsidies?  People who purchase health plans on the health insurance exchanges may be eligible for subsidies, depending on one’s annual household income.  These sliding-scale subsidies offset one’s annual health premium.  The Obama Administration has marketed that individuals earning an annual household income between 100-400% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) will be eligible for subsidized health plans.  100-400% of the Federal Poverty Level translates as such:

PRESIDENT OBAMA ASKS INSURANCE CEOS TO HELP HIM EXPLAIN INSURANCE CANCELLATIONS-- How big of a headache has the implementation of Obamacare and the subsequent health insurance cancellations become for the Obama White House?  Big enough for the president to call on health insurance executives to help him explain the situation to upset Americans.  The White House is asking insurance companies to explain to millions of Americans the cancellation letters they’re receiving in the mail.

Patients realize their records are shared in Idaho health data exchange--Karen Helms didn't realize until this year that her medical records were being shared with a statewide network of health care providers. The discovery prompted her to question the state's health data exchange and to file a complaint with the federal government over privacy concerns.

Gingrich: Obamacare Is 'Anti-Marriage and Pro-Divorce' --- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is reminding Americans that the Affordable Care Act includes an "anti-marriage penalty" because it requires a married couple to pay much more for health insurance than co-habiting couples of the same age and the same income.  "It's both an anti-marriage and pro-divorce provision," Gringrich told CNN's "State of the Union with Candy Crowley" on Sunday. "I don't think anybody even knew it was in there."

WOMAN WITH CANCER LOSES ‘WORLD-CLASS’ INSURANCE PLAN BECAUSE OF OBAMACARE--A San Diego woman says she has been kicked off her insurance plan due to Obamacare while battling Stage 4 gallbladder cancer.  “I had great cancer doctors and health insurance,” Edie Littlefield Sundby wrote in a Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed. “My plan was canceled. Now I worry how long I’ll live.”

American Thinker:   High Deductibles Chase the Middle Class from Health Services-- In a recent conversation, a good buddy enraged by his new private insurance premiums and $5,800-per-year deductible said something that struck me as undoubtedly prophetic.  "I'd literally need to be dying before I would start paying this ridiculous deductible for routine care."

What If ObamaCare’s Subsidies End on February 15?  A federal district court judge will rule on this no later than February 15. He has the authority to declare that all subsidies on policies bought through the federal government’s exchanges are not legal, according to the actual language of the ObamaCare law.  This would throw a monkey wrench into the program. There are 34 states with no state-run exchanges. 

The seniors getting hurt by Obamacare--Medicare Advantage patients are getting hurt in just the way that critics of the President's plan warned that they would.  Obamacare has a new message to seniors: Take two aspirins and find yourself a new doctor in the morning.  Just ask 84-year-old Dorothy Gaillard, a retired book binder and a patient of my father, an Upper East Side primary care physician, for more than two decades.

Krauthammer: Obama care laid bare-- WASHINGTON — Every disaster has its moment of clarity. Physicist Richard Feynman dunks an O-ring into ice water and everyone understands instantly why the shuttle Challenger exploded. Last week, the Obama care O-ring froze for all the world to see: Hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters went out to people who had been assured a dozen times by the president that “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan. Period.”

John Hood Daily Journal:  Take this Obamacare Quiz-- RALEIGH — Want to test your knowledge of the provisions, justifications, and implications of the Affordable Care Act? I’ve made it simple for you. Just answer the following yes-or-no questions, check against the correct answers, and read down to the end of this column to see what your score means.

Obamacare User Sent Other People’s ‘Eligibility Letters’— Justin Hadley was using the Obamacare website when he was accidentally sent "eligibility letters" addressed to other people -- in other states.  "Justin Hadley logged on to HealthCare.gov to evaluate his insurance options after his health plan was canceled. What he discovered was an apparent security flaw that disclosed eligibility letters addressed to individuals from another state," the Heritage Foundation reports.

Four Legal Arguments Why ObamaCare is Bad Law & Ought be Overturned--When it became obvious on the day of ObamaCare’s premier that the Internet websites did not work, some were wildly disappointed, others angry, while another group heaved a sigh of relief.  

4 Things Obama Will Deny Americans…President Obama was one of the most promising candidates to ever run for President. He promised us so much that he might as well have run for National Genie.  Obamacare is the skunk that has been called a kitty in hopes that everyone would embrace it. But the stink is nearly impossible to eliminate. There were promises made that turned out to be lies. They could bring down the President. But forget about impeachment. There are too many Democrats to allow that, even though Obama nearly makes Nixon look like a saint.

ObamaCare Implementation Agency Paid Out $23 Million On Behalf of Dead People--The agency responsible for implementing ObamaCare erroneously paid out millions of dollars on behalf of dead people in 2011, according to a report released Thursday by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) paid $23 million to providers, suppliers, Medicare Advantage organizations and prescription drug plan sponsors on behalf of beneficiaries who died between 2009 and 2011, the OIG found.

IS THIS THE MOTHER OF ALL EMPLOYER MANDATES?  Business owners dodged a bullet when Obama delayed the health-care employer mandate for a year.  But Obama and the Democrats have something else coming for employers this week that could make the requirement to provide contraceptive coverage pale in comparison ...

‘OVERBLOWN CONTROVERSY’: NY TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD SAYS OBAMA ONLY ‘MISSPOKE’ ABOUT KEEPING HEALTH PLANS-- The New York Times published an editorial Sunday dismissing President Barack Obama’s broken promise of allowing all Americans to keep their current health plans as an “overblown controversy” and said he simply “misspoke.”  “Congressional Republicans have stoked consumer fears and confusion with charges that the health care reform law is causing insurers to cancel existing policies and will force many people to pay substantially higher premiums next year for coverage they don’t want,” the editorial said. 

‘LET HIM FINISH!’:  CHRIS WALLACE BRIEFLY LOSES CONTROL OF HIS SHOW AFTER PANEL ERUPTS IN OBAMACARE ARGUMENT-- Chris Wallace appeared to briefly lose control of his show Sunday morning as his two panelists erupted in a spirited argument over President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.  

ObamaCare: Illegal Voter Mine for the Democratic Party?  While many Americans remain focused on the ominous implications of ObamaCare with regard to health insurance or the faulty website, a far more serious issue remains under the radar. On Wednesday, two national election watchdog groups alleged that ObamaCare is really a massive voter registration vehicle masquerading as a healthcare bill.  

Obamacare — bad medicine

Fed appeal panel says Citizens United might end Obamacare's HHS mandate-- Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that bolstered political speech against campaign finance reform limitations, may also mean trouble for Obamacare's contraception coverage mandate, according to the second-highest court in the country. 

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.  A birdie sent me this:

STATE-BY-STATE BREAKDOWN: HOW MANY PEOPLE IN YOUR STATE WILL LOSE THEIR HEALTH PLAN DUE TO OBAMACARE?  The Associated Press on Saturday said at least 3.5 million Americans will lose their current health plans because of President Barack Obama’s signature health care program and released a chart showing a state-by-state breakdown. 

WHAT IF OBAMACARE WAS NEVER ABOUT OUR HEALTH?  Could Obamacare be the biggest voter registration fraud scheme in the history of the world?  This is the bombshell assessment of a pair of conservative activists: Gregg Phillips, founder of Voters Trust, and Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote. Both groups are conservative nonprofits focused on election integrity.

ONE DOCTOR SAYS HE’D RATHER CLOSE HIS PRACTICE THAN ACCEPT OBAMACARE-- An Oklahoma doctor opposed to President Barack Obama’s signature health care program will not accept insurance offered under the Affordable Care Act and says he will close his practice if he can’t profit while independent.  

Wayne Goodwin’s free pass on O-Care catastrophe in NC--The remnants of our state’s mainstream media and their partners over at BluePrintNC have been obsessed with beating on NCDHHS secretary Aldona Wos.  We got warnings– just before October 1 — about how North Carolina would be one of the worst-hit states by ObamaCare.  We’re getting reports of people seeing 300 to 500 percent increases in their out-of-pocket costs.  We’re getting stories like this and thisabout sticker shock for average North Carolinians.  Aldona Wos has very little to do with any of this.  But state Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin DOES:

“Official” or “unofficial”?  Loophole allows Congress, staff to weasel out of O-Care compliance-- The stuff the, um, honorables on Capitol Hill think is so good for us is apparently not always so good for them and their staffs. Word is coming out of DC about a new angle these people in Congress can use to weasel out of complying with this travesty they’ve saddled us with:  Obamacare is, once again, turning Capitol Hill upside down. 

RUMOR CHECK: COULD THE OBAMACARE WEBSITE OPEN THE DOOR TO VOTER INTEGRITYISSUES?  Anti-voter fraud groups are raising the alarm over a portion of the Obamacare website that gives applicants the option to register to vote, saying information surrendered to the site could interfere with election integrity.  Healthcare.gov, which has experienced significant technological problems since it first launched Oct. 1, presents individuals at the end of the application process with a box asking, “Would you like to register to vote?”

==============================================

October 2013

In West Virginia People are not enrolling inObamacare online

Ellmers to Sebelius:  Why Must Men Buy Maternity Coverage Under Obamacare?  The prize for best line of questioning to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius at the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Wednesday morning must go to Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC), for pinning Sebelius down on the question of why Obamacare requires men to buy maternity coverage. Sebelius tried to squirm away--as she had done with many other questioners, but Ellmers was on her "A" game.

REPORT: WHITE HOUSE ‘PRESSURED’ INSURANCE EXECS TO KEEP QUIET ABOUT OBAMACARE--Top White House officials have reportedly “pressured” insurance industry executives to keep quiet about

Obamacare, according to a new CNN report.  Insurance executives are not exactly fond of President Barack Obama’s health care law. And after voicing concerns over the new bill and its disastrous rollout, White House officials allegedly retaliated by informing industry leaders that the administration was not pleased:

THE ENTIRE OBAMACARE WEBSITE DEBACLE SUMMED UP IN ONEPICTURE-- As Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified Wednesday before Congress on the failed Obamacare website rollout, CNN ran a split-screen of her testimony with an image of the crashed site.

10 Signs That Obamacare Is Going To Wreck TheU.S.Economy-- It is hard to find the words to adequately describe how much of a disaster Obamacare is turning out to be.  The debut of Healthcare.gov has been probably the worst launch of a major website in history, millions of Americans are having their current health insurance policies canceled, millions of others are seeing the size of their health insurance premiums absolutely explode, and this new law is going to result in massive numbers of jobs being lost.  It is almost as if Obamacare was specifically designed to wreck the U.S. economy.  Not that what we had before Obamacare was great.  In fact, I have long argued that the U.S. health care system is a complete and total train wreck.  But now Obamacare is making everything that was bad about our system much, much worse.  Americans are going to pay far more for health care, the quality of that care is going to go down, they are going to have to deal with far more medical red tape, and thousands upon thousands of U.S. employers are considering getting rid of the health plans that they offer to employees altogether due to Obamacare.  If the U.S. health care system was a separate nation, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet, and now Obamacare is going to absolutely cripple it.  To say that Obamacare is an “economic catastrophe” would be a massive understatement.

OBAMA USINGROMNEYCARE TO GIVE FAILED HEALTH LAW ROLLOUT A BOOST--Desperately seeking to change the narrative from the embarrassing rollout of a key aspect of his health care law, President Barack Obama on Wednesday will be praising the signature achievement of his vanquished opponent in last year’s election.  The president will travel to Boston to deliver remarks at Faneuil Hall, the colonial-era meeting and marketplace where in 2006 then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was joined by Sen. Ted Kennedy and other supporters to sign a state health care law that included an individual mandate to buy coverage and established a health insurance marketplace, and later became the model for Obamacare.

Sebelius:"Republican efforts to delay and defund the law contributed toHealthCare.gov's glitch-ridden debut."  HHS Sec Sebelius Thinks Republicans Caused ObamaCare Woes-- Well, finally, the Socialist-Communist Liberal Democrats, of which the Obama Administration is unanimous, admits that their gemstone project, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,  AKA ObamaCare, is neither Protective nor Affordable.  Just days ago Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, confided that their crown jewel and typically incompetent liberal example of socialist products was in her words, “a failure”.  This monstrosity which has already cost our taxpayers multi-millions of dollars since it was signed into law by our resident dictator, Barack Hussein Obama on March 23, 2010, has taken those “geniuses” in the White House Administration three years and seven months to find out it has failed and doesn’t work. 

The White House Made Sure Millions Would Lose Their Insurance While TheyLied About It-- Last night I had the exquisite pleasure of listening to NPR explain that the people who were losing the insurance they wanted to keep and who would be forced to pay more for less, were only a few million of the insured. It was taken for granted, by NPR, that a few million robbed of their insurance and extra money every month was no big deal. Who cares about them, right? They’re just the eggs that we break to make the Obamacare omelet.  In the meantime, the White House site still makes the claim (Second paragraph, last sentence), “If you like your plan you can keep it and you don’t have to change a thing due to the health care law.” I checked at 8:35 Central Time last night and the sentence had still not been removed. If it has changed now, you can find a screen capture here.

‘HEALTH CARE FROM THE PULPIT’: HERE’S HOW SOME CHURCHES ARE SPREADING THE WORD ABOUT OBAMACARE--Community organizers are joining pastors across the country to educate and help parishioners sign up for Obamacare. The coordinated initiative, called “Health Care from the Pulpit,” is being implemented by Enroll America, a non-profit with the goal of maximizing ”the number of uninsured Americans who enroll in health coverage made available by the Affordable Care Act.”   The program has already reached a number of churches across the nation. In Jacksonville, Fla, Pastor John Newman is among those who invited community organizers from the group to his church to talk about the cost of Obamacare and the enrollment process.

SEE THEANTI-OBAMACARE AD THE RNC IS RUNNING DURING ‘THE DAILY SHOW’-- The Republican National Committee is buying airtime on Comedy Central’s left-leaning “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” to show an anti-Obamacare ad.  The ad, set to air during Tuesday’s episode, contrasts the differences between purchasing health insurance with and without healthcare.gov, the glitch-heavy website built to assist Obamacare enrollees. Running the ad during “The Daily Show” is a clear effort to target a younger audience.

MEGYN KELLY EXPLODES ON DEMOCRAT OVER SHOCKING OBAMACARE REPORT: ‘LET’SHAVE A SUBSTANTIVE DISCUSSION!’  Megyn Kelly battled with Democratic strategist Mark Hannah on Monday over a shocking reportthat revealed the Obama administration knew for years that millions of Americans would lose their health insurance plans due to Obamacare. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama repeatedly made promises to the contrary, telling Americans they will be able to keep their plans if they wish.  “Was he intentionally misleading, or was there some argument that he was grossly mistaken?” Kelly asked.

NBC NEWS: OBAMA ADMIN. KNEW MILLIONS WOULD NOT BE ABLE TOKEEP THEIR HEALTH INSURANCE FOR AT LEAST 3 YEARS, PROMISED IT ANYWAY-- The Obama administration has known for at least three years that millions of Americans would not be able to keep their current health care plans, despite repeated promises to the contrary made by President Barack Obama, NBC News reports, citing sources “deeply involved” in Obamacare.

BOB WOODWARD: ‘RAT’S NEST OF CONCEALMENT AND LIES’ BEHINDOBAMACARE WEBSITE DISASTER, ADMIN. SCANDALS-- Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said a “rat’s nest of concealment and lies” is at the heart of many Obama administration scandals and miscues, including the disastrous Obamacare website rollout.  “They need to review the this secret world and its power in their government because you run into this rats nest of concealment and lies time and time again then and now,” Woodward said of the White House during his appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday. “You get to a point where it’s what do you worry about? Secret governments.”

Tea PartyPatriots:  The Truth about Obamacare

Your Tax Dollars Will Fund Abortions andPlanned Parenthood Under Obamacare, Here’s How--On a Friday night back in December 2009, Senate Majority Leader Reid was in tense negotiations with then-Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, as Reid desperately needed Nelson’s vote to secure Senate passage of ObamaCare. Finally, Nelson had what Politico described as a “breakthrough” that lead to a deal, as Politico reported a few days later. Part of the deal, Politico wrote, was that “people who receive federal subsidies would need to write two separate checks as a way to ensure that none of the federal dollars went toward the abortion premium.”

Are You Subsidizing Abortion Coverage UnderObamacare?  Starting this month, uninsured Americans have the option to purchase health insurance through their state exchanges. What you may not know is that many of the plans being offered include elective abortion coverage!

HHS touts ObamaCare data hub--The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Saturday touted ObamaCare's data services hub as part of the new enrollment system that is working well.  The hub works by pulling information from federal agencies to verify ObamaCare applicants' person details in real time.  Someone filling out an application might input their income level, for example, and have it immediately cross-checked with the Internal Revenue Service through the data hub.

Morgan Brittany:  Was the Obamacare Implosion the Real Goal All Along?  Something is rotten in Denmark.For the past few weeks I have tried to wrap my head around this rollout of Obamacare and how it has crashed and burned in such a rapid and dramatic fashion.  My question is; why from day one was this an immediate disaster? How could so many so-called experts along with $600 million taxpayer dollars have created something so useless and worthless?  With over three years to construct the website, why was it never means tested before it was presented?  Why didn’t it work so easily and efficiently that everyone would praise it to the heavens?

Obamacare Appropriations:Billions of Taxpayer Dollars You Weren’t told About Even After They Passed theLaw-- Little was ever reported on some indefensible sections in the health care law. Remember, no Republican voted for this monstrosity. A few media organizations, Fox, Newsweek and a few financial/insurance websites, exposed this: Section 1102 Reinsurance for Early Retirees, more commonly known as ERRP.  I condensed the section to isolate specific terms and to show proof of appropriated funding totaling $5 Billion dollars:

Report: Final Cost of Obamacare Website Tops $1 Billion-- The principal contractors responsible for the federal government’s troubled health insurance website say the Obama administration shares much of the responsibility for snags that have crippled the system.  Executives of CGI Federal, which built the federal HealthCare.gov website serving 36 states, and QSSI, which designed the part that verifies applicants’ income and other personal details, testified Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

How many pages is the Affordable Care Act?  The nearly 11,000 pages of regulations for this one law alone would reach three feet high if you made the mistake of printing it.

ObamaCare Records:Finding “Mentally Disturbed” Gun Owners.  There are lots of reasons for Americans to hate ObamaCare.  But gun owners should be especially concerned about this “Obamanation,” because it will allow the federal government to use our medical information to keep us from buying guns. 

White House Extends 'Individual Mandate' Deadline-- The Obama administration is giving individuals who buy health insurance through government-run marketplaces until the end of March to enroll in a plan without a penalty, an administration official said.  The administration plans to issue guidelines soon to clear up confusion over deadlines under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, according to the official, who asked for anonymity Wednesday because the change hadn’t been formally announced.

Second Obamacare Lawsuit Gets Green Light In Court--D.C. district judge says he plans to rule by Feb. 15.  RALEIGH — For the second time in recent weeks, a federal judge has issued a ruling favorable to plaintiffs seeking to block the IRS from collecting tax penalties from employers in states such as North Carolina that do not have a state health insurance exchange under Obamacare. If any of several lawsuits arguing against the IRS rule prevails, it would cripple implementation of the national health reform. 

Hidden in ObamacareSite: Applicants Surrender Right to Privacy--source code that reads, “You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication of any data transmitted or stored on this information system.”  During his questioning on this specific issue, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) only received chilling answers and deflections from the primary contractor responsible for the site. When he asked Cheryl Campbell of CGI about it, her icy response was that another contractor was responsible. After some pressuring, she finally admitted that she was aware of the hidden source code.

Death Panels: Palin Was Right, Says Liberal Salon.  Remember in 2009 when Sarah Palin warned that Obamacare would lead to “death panels”? People ridiculed her alleged right-wing paranoia; PolitiFact christened her accusation the “Lie of the Year.” In this context, it’s ironic that a recent Slate article admits that socialized medicine goes hand in hand with government death panels. What’s even more disturbing is that the author–Adam Goldenberg–applauds the practice.  Specifically, Goldenberg explains that “Canada Has Death Panels”; this is the very title of his piece. Here’s the news hook:

DEMOCRAT: SKI RESORTS NEEDOBAMACARE WAIVERS--A multimillionaire member of Congress says he is seeking an exemption or waiver from Obamacare’s requirements for people who live near the exotic and pricy Vail ski resort because he thinks the Obamacare prices for them are too high.

Confirmed: Not Thousands, ButMillions Are Losing Their Health Insurance Due To Obamacare--It is somewhat comforting to know that my family has a lot of company. I have seen stories from various states about thousands of people losing their coverage, but since I had already published a post about similar numbers, I didn’t point this out. I’ve been waiting for someone to calculate how many people in the entire US have lost their insurance.  The Weekly Standard found it.  According to health policy expert Bob Laszewski, roughly 16 million Americans will lose their current plans because of Obamacare:

AdministrationGrants Itself 3-Month Exemption from Individual Mandate--The Obama administration is granting itself a three-month exemption from the Obamacare mandate that requires individuals to buy health insurance—even though the exemption, as written into the law itself, was plainly intended to provide forbearance to individual citizens who failed to meet the mandate, not to an incompetent administration that has failed to effectively implement the law.  In July, the administration similarly unilaterally suspended for one year the Obamacare mandate that requires large employers to provide insurance to their workers.

More Americans In 3 StatesHave Had Their Insurance Canceled Under ObamaCare Than Have Filed An ExchangeAccount In All 50-- reality of the ObamaCare roll-out appeared in a set of news stories that serve as an ironic juxtaposition. Over 500,000 individuals have seen their insurance policies cancelled in just 3 states.  In all 50 states, only 476,000 applications have been “filed” in an exchange. (Even though we are still learning the true definition of “filed.”)  First from Anna Gorman and Julie Appleby at Kaiser Health News:Thousands get health insurance cancellation notices

Obamacare contractors point fingers at federal overseers overbreakdowns--Obamacare contractors told a House hearing Thursday it was up to the federal agency implementing the law to say whether a key website that designed to let people enroll in private insurance should go live or be delayed ahead of its Oct. 1. launch.  Cheryl Campbell, a senior vice president at CGI Federal, the lead contractor on HealthCare.gov, said their portions of the program worked well in testing.

Millions of Americans Are Losing Their Health Plans Because ofObamacare-- While the Affordable Care Act was making its way through Congress in 2009 and 2010, President Obama famously promised the American people over and over again that if you like your health plan, you can keep it.   “Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you,” Obama said at one rally in July 2009. “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.”

Sen. Kay Hagan supports extending enrollment ofObamacare--North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan tweeted Wednesday night about her frustration with the Affordable Care Act.  Her tweet read, "ACA website problems unacceptable. I support extending open enrollment so NC families have time to shop for insurance plan right for them."  Hagan is among 60 Democrats who voted for the law in 2009.

LIBERALTV HOST SAYS WHITE HOUSE CALLED AND ‘BLUDGEONED’ HIM AFTER HE CRITICIZED OBAMACARE--Liberal TV host Bob Beckel on Wednesday claimed he was “bludgeoned” by a White House official over the phone after he criticized the Obamacare rollout and suggested the law’s implementation should be delayed for 6 months to a year.  “I said, ‘look, you can’t do this thing — yes it’s true, [Obamacare is] not a website, but it’s a portal to get through to get insurance,’” Beckel said.

DEM SENATOR ANNOUNCES BILL TO DELAY OBAMACARE MANDATES UNTIL 2015--Appearing on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Wednesday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced a potential bill that would delay all Obamacare mandates until Jan. 1, 2015.  “No fines whatsoever,” Manchin said of the bill he’s working on with Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). “Work out the kinks. Let’s fix this thing.”

Hobby Lobbyists: Company Pitches Mandate Fight to Supremes-- You know the ObamaCare rollout is bad when Consumer Reports, the holy grail of product reviews, warns people "to stay away from Healthcare.gov." In a blog post on the new system, the progressive company that prides itself on distinguishing the "hype from the facts" says the President's new website is a bust. Steer clear, its experts say, "until its software vendors clean up the mess they've made."

Obama using Obamacare meltdown to raise cash--President Barack Obama is using the disastrous crash of his Obamacare website to extract cash and volunteer hours from his supporters.  “By now, you’ve probably heard that the website has not worked as smoothly as it was supposed to,” Obama told his supporters in an email sent out late Tuesday.

“That’s why I need your help,” he said, in a video pitch that links to an online fundraiser.

Doug Kellet “The Morning Drive”--Gary from Raleigh's analysis once he got through the Healthcare.gov web site-- Quick analysis of what I see in the plan comparison screen:

AMERICANSFOR PROSPERITY: Exempt me too!

COULDTHIS LAWSUIT REALLY ‘FATALLY CRIPPLE’ OBAMACARE?  A federal judge on Tuesday declined to dismiss a lawsuit that could “fatally cripple” Obamacare, the Daily Mail reports.  A group of small businesses have reportedly filed a lawsuit claiming that the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, prevents the federal government from enforcing the federal law, as passed by Congress, in any state that chooses not to set up its own health care exchange. However, there seems to be another provision that could provide the feds a way around that.

NEWDOCUMENTS REVEAL THIS NFL TEAM WAS PAID $130K TO PROMOTE OBAMACARE-- The state of Maryland is paying the Baltimore Ravens, defending Super Bowl champions, $130,000 to promote President Barack Obama’s signature health care program, according to documents unearthed by a watchdog group.  The documents, obtained by Judicial Watch this week through a open records request, reveal the NFL franchise is being paid by the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange to promote the controversial program riddled with online glitches.

Obamacare, Mental Illness, & Gun Confiscation-- A little while ago, I wrote about how “mental illness” will be the avenue to gun confiscation. It’s a troubling trend we’re witnessing when even self-proclaimed conservatives jump on the bandwagon to campaign for forfeiture of 2^nd Amendment rights for those who are deemed “mentally ill.” I put it in quotes not because I don’t believe in it, but because what is considered to be mental illness might be something as benign as being critical of the government. If you criticize the government, then maybe a psychiatrist would diagnose you with having paranoid delusions, in which case you shouldn’t have a gun.

Doctors in Congress: Obamacare worse than you think-- At least 12 doctors in Congress have expressed serious concerns about Obamacare, and now President Obama admitted the recently unveiled online health insurance exchanges have been a technological headache and that he’s “frustrated” by them.  Obama also insists once those problems are fixed people will discover that the exchanges offer wonderful health plans at affordable prices, but a prominent congressman says the facts are not on the president’s side.

Get ready for Obamacare auto-enroll-- While President Barack Obama attempts to put a happy face on the cluster rollout of Healthcare.gov and other state exchanges, where only a half million people are said to have applied for government-subsidized insurance, it may be time to start asking if this was not all a part of the plan in the first place.  Consider the dilemma facing the Obama administration. More than 80 million Americans aged 26 to 64 years old making less than $46,000 not already on Medicaid now qualify for Obamacare, whether through Medicaid or the insurance exchanges, based on data from the U.S. Census and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

McCrory: New federal regulations could 'force' NC toexpand Medicaid under Affordable Care Act--Gov. Pat McCrory suggested Monday that new federal regulations could force North Carolina to expand Medicaid eligibility to more low-income people under the Affordable Care Act.  McCrory spoke in Washington at an event held by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Where is the White House getting the money for ObamaCare’s “techsurge”?  Sebelius told Congress this afternoon that she will indeed agree to testify about the O-Care rollout — just not this week, as she has a scheduling conflict. Here’s a question for her when she does via Byron York: How are they paying for this all-hands-on-deck salvage operation of Healthcare.gov, which even The One himself described as a “tech surge” in the Rose Garden today? I’m not asking that rhetorically, either. Appropriations can be very confusing; plenty of people watching the “defund” pageant play out assumed, I think, that a shutdown would mean choking off funding for ObamaCare until it was over. Not so, but you can understand why that mistaken impression might be had. Maybe York and I — and John Cornyn — are similarly mistaken and there’s an obvious source of funds for the “surge,” but if so, what?

Darden: We haveto cancel health insurance for 1,000 part-timers because of ObamaCare--Last year, Darden Restaurants raised the ire of progressives when it toyed with the idea of eliminating most of its full-time employment for its hundreds of locations in order to avoid the high costs of ObamaCare compliance.  Darden later rejected the idea, but most probably didn’t know that the chain offered low-cost health insurance to its part-time employees — or at least they did. Darden announced today that they will have to cancel that insurance thanks to the coverage mandates of ObamaCare, a decision which will send 1,000 employees into the Healthcare.gov exchanges that aren’t functioning now:

DANA LOESCH EXPLAINS WHY OBAMACARE IS THE ‘BIGGEST BAIT AND SWITCH’SINCE SOCIAL SECURITY

REUTERS: OBAMACARE WEBSITE COSTS TRIPLED BEFORE LAUNCH – WAS IT WORTH$292 MILLION?

Obamacare: The New Vietnam--It was the law.  And liberals were determined to sabotage that law.  To hold America hostage — in the middle of a war no less — until the law was repealed. Until the war was stopped.  To do it, they used the Three C’s.  Civil Disobedience.  The Culture.  The Congress.

Obamacare levies fines on non-profithospitals that offer free healthcare to the poor--It’s one of the lesser-known provisions in the so-called “Affordable” Care Act, but it’s having a major impact on charitable hospitals.  Obamacare actually fines hospitals that provide free health services to the poor.

Heritage Foundation:  How Will You Fare in the Obamacare Exchanges?  Enrollment in Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges has proven to be a somewhat difficult process amidst technical glitches and delays. Aside from the issues associated with actually purchasing health care, once an individual gets a quote for health insurance on an exchange, is the premium higher or lower than before?  Our research finds that for many states, the insurance on health exchanges will cost more than existing insurance. This study illustrates that the general experience for individuals shopping on the exchange is that of increasing premiums from what was available to them prior to implementation of the exchanges. Many families and individuals will face this reality as they apply for coverage, and the implications of experiencing sticker shock are important to consider if enough people choose not to sign up for coverage for various reasons.

10 things Obamacare won’t tell you--The health exchanges, central to the law, are also its biggest mystery.  1. “You might want to avoid signing up on Day One.”  In the offices of certain government officials and health insurance companies, a ticking countdown to a specific date has been posted on the walls for months: Oct. 1. That’s the day of the official ribbon-cutting for the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act (commonly called Obamacare), when Americans can begin lining up for 2014 health insurance. But because the law’s future was uncertain until the Supreme Court upheld it in mid-2012, the exchanges have been scrambling to get ready for opening day. Thirty-six states declined to set up their own exchanges for 2014 (each state has just one), so federal health officials had to do it instead — cramming years of work into a tight time frame.

Obamacare woes widen as insurers get wrongdata-- Insurers say the federal health-care marketplace is generating flawed data that is straining their ability to handle even the trickle of enrollees who have gotten through so far, in a sign that technological problems extend further than the website traffic and software issues already identified.  Emerging errors include duplicate enrollments, spouses reported as children, missing data fields and suspect eligibility determinations, say executives at more than a dozen health plans. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Nebraska said it had to hire temporary workers to contact new customers directly to resolve inaccuracies in submissions. Medical Mutual of Ohio said one customer had successfully signed up for three of its plans.

The Unraveling of ObamaCare--Advocates marketed the Affordable Care Act (ACA or "ObamaCare") to the American public as a way to "bend the cost curve" of soaring health care costs downward. But despite its supporters' hopes, the 2010 legislation was fiscally reckless, markedly increasing the government's already-unsustainable health spending commitments at a time of record deficits. Three years later, the fiscal harm stemming from the ACA is as bad as -- and even worse than -- many experts predicted. The problem lies with the nature of the law itself, promising trillions in new government benefits while relying on dubious financing mechanisms. These problems were not only foreseeable, they were indeed widely foreseen, says Charles Blahous, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.  Even before the president signed the ACA into law, non-partisan analysts demonstrated that the belief it would reduce federal deficits was based on a misunderstanding of government accounting.

 

Behind the curtain, more wavingred flags for Obamacare--So few applicants have gotten far enough along in ObamaCare's enrollment process at Healthcare.gov that insurers are only beginning to be able to assess the true depth of the site's technological problems.  But there are red flags beyond the error messages that have been publicly visible. This was my takeaway from a Wednesday conversation with an insurance industry source.

 

States Can Nullify Obamacare--On Rush Limbaugh’s Thursday program, George Mason University professor Walter E. Williams outlined the case that states can nullify Obamacare, citing Thomas Jefferson’s 1789 Kentucky Resolution, which was a claim that the U. S. Constitution is a compact among the several states, and any power not delegated to the U.S. government is void.  “I think the American citizens ought to press their state governors and legislatures just to nullify the law — just to plain nullify it and say, ‘The citizens of such-and-such-a state don’t have to obey Obamacare because it’s unconstitutional, regardless of what the Supreme Court says,’” Williams said.

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May 2013:Obamacare: Taxpayers Must Report Personal Health ID Info to IRS
When Obamacare’s individual mandate takes effect in 2014, all Americans who file income tax returns must complete an additional IRS tax form.

The new form will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.

As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.

So why will the Obama IRS require your personal identifying health information?

Simply put, there is no way for the IRS to enforce Obamacare’s individual mandate without such an invasive reporting scheme. Every January, health insurance companies across America will send out tax documents to each insured individual. This tax document—a copy of which will be furnished to the IRS—must contain sufficient information for taxpayers to prove that they purchased qualifying health insurance under Obamacare.

This new tax information document must, at a minimum, contain: the name and health insurance identification number of the taxpayer; the name and tax identification number of the health insurance company; the number of months the taxpayer was covered by this insurance plan; and whether or not the plan was purchased in one of Obamacare’s “exchanges.”
MORE:  http://www.atr.org/obamacare-taxpayers-must-report-personal-health-a7611

February 2013:  Micro Chip Implant Coming March 23, 2013--The New Health Care (Obama care) law H.R. 3590 Also HR 4872 requires all US citizens to have the RIFD implanted. This evil plan is being launched by America. its a micro chip injected in your hand. it will contain all your personal data heath and bank accounts etc. its also a GPS device being monitored. they can deactivate it at any time if they find you suspicious or not loyal to their government or go against them or their system and you will lose everything you ever had. soon this device will be made common just like they did credit cards, turning paper money into digital money. means nothing is physically in your hand. it will be made a must for every citizen with time according to their plan and then they will spread it outside America so they can monitor and control as many people as they can and turn them into slaves with their digital technologies.  This device is the future or slavery

STATES LACK DOCTORS TO MEET OBAMACARE DEMAND--As California moves to expand healthcare coverage to millions of Californians under President Obama's healthcare law, it faces a major obstacle: There aren't enough doctors to treat a crush of newly insured patients. Some lawmakers want to fill the gap by redefining who can provide healthcare. They are working on proposals that would allow physician assistants to treat more patients and nurse practitioners to set up independent practices. Pharmacists and optometrists could act as primary care providers, diagnosing and managing some chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and high-blood pressure.


Obamacare To Make Mislabeling Nutritional Facts On Food A Federal Crime, Guilty Could Face Jail Time--If the Food and Drug Administration gets its way, your trip to the grocery store could get a tad pricier. Supermarket owners argue a pending federal food-labeling rule that stems from the new health care law would overburden thousands of grocers and convenience store owners — to the tune of $1 billion in the first year alone. Store owner Tom Heinen said the industry’s profit margins already are razor thin. “When you incur a significant cost, there is no way that that doesn’t get passed on to the customer in some form,” he said.

January 2013:
IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family-- In 2010 Barack Obama said insurance premiums will decrease by 3,000% so you should get a raise when Obamacare passes. The president also stated, “we can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 per year.” In 2012, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) went so far as to say about Obamacare, “everybody will have lower rates.” A simple question. Do any of these people have conversations with one another before they spout off with this nonsensical twaddle?

How To Avoid The Obamacare Death Trap--We are less than one year out from healthcare tyranny under the oligarchy-endorsed Obamacare. It’s very deceptive to call Obamacare socialized medicine. The law has nothing to do with healthcare. It’s just the opposite. It’s sickness care. The Nazis had their gas chambers and America has “medical care,” which is the most sophisticated killing machine that demented minds can create. Americans are mentally dependent on the “medical” brainwash. When our dumbed-down people hear the trigger word “medical care,” they go blind and hyperventilate. They do not know a scam from a sham. They will go unanimous for anything with the term “healthcare” in it.
CONTINUED: http://personalliberty.com/2013/01/28/how-to-avoid-the-obamacare-death-trap/

Obamacare Could Mean Higher Premiums for Medicaid Recipients-- The Obama administration, in hopes of persuading states to expand Medicaid coverage to more people, is proposing to allow states to make recipients pay higher co-payments and other premiums, leading to higher bills for millions of low-income people. Obamacare extended Medicaid to many people who were not eligible before, but the Supreme Court said that states would have the option, rather than be required, to expand the program to more people, the New York Times reports. The administration said state Medicaid officials could offset the costs of expansion by charging higher co-payments and fees for doctors' care, making recipients pay more for prescription drugs and non-emergency visits to emergency rooms.

THE UGLY DOWNSIDE TO SOCIALIZED MEDICINE...FEWER DOCTORS...LONGER WAITS-- More than 90 percent of its residents already had health insurance, but the state hoped to cover nearly everyone by plugging as many holes as possible in its system, short of a so-called single payer option.

What resulted was a state law that became the blueprint for the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act signed by President Barack Obama. Now, as other states begin grappling with the intricacies of the federal health care overhaul, many are looking for lessons from the largely successful Massachusetts model as well as from its limitations and remaining challenges. Officials from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, West Virginia and Rhode Island have worked with Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economics professor who helped craft both the state and federal laws, to set up their exchanges.

CHECK OUT THIS GREAT WEBSITE:
http://www.obamacaretruthsquad.com/

Health Insurance Exchanges Explained--One important component of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) is the creation of statewide “exchanges” or organizations that will oversee the sale and purchase of health insurance, mainly for people outside of the employer-sponsored insurance market. The law invites, but does not require, states to create exchanges for their residents. In December 2012, states had to decide if they would establish and manage their own exchanges, or if they would refuse. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia elected to run their own exchange. Seven states agreed to operate their exchanges as federal-state partnerships. The federal government will step in and create exchanges in the remaining 25 states.  CONTINUED--FULL REPORT:  http://iwf.org/publications/2790280/Health-Insurance-Exchanges-Explained

Medicaid: Obamacare Makes A Bad Program Even Bigger--“…In the aftermath of the 2012 election, it is uncertain how this process will play out, but what the states decide will play a critical role in the future of the U.S. health care system.

…More than half the governors opposing expansion predicted that the federal government would renege on the generous terms of the ACA and scale back its share of Medicaid spending. Newly elected Governor Mike Pence (R-IN) compared the expansion to “the classic gift of a baby elephant. . . . The federal government says, ‘We’ll pay for all the hay — for the first few years.’ ”

…governors expressed concern about the lack of state flexibility or their belief that Medicaid may foster dependence among beneficiaries… Others argued that Medicaid itself is the problem, calling it a “broken program”… Rick Perry (R-TX) said that adding uninsured Texans to Medicaid is “not unlike adding a thousand people to the Titanic.”

Companies Prepare for Health Law--The Affordable Care Act (ACA) seeks to reshape the health care industry to provide care for all. However, this comes at significant costs to individuals and several companies. A particular major provision that will take effect next year is likely to hurt companies around the country, says the Wall Street Journal. By January 1, 2014, employers with 50 or more workers will have to pay penalties if they don't cover full-time employees. The penalties can range from $2,000 to $3,000 per uninsured employee. However, some companies are willing to pay the penalty because of how expensive it would be to cover every full-time employee. The law will impact small businesses disproportionately since most major companies already offer their employees rich benefits that include health insurance. Small companies, or ones that are trying to grow, have little room to spend on lavish benefits for their employees. Many of the benefits they may already offer could be deemed inadequate by the new law.

BUSINESS WINS RELIEF AGAINST CONTRACEPTIVE MANDATE, BRINGING NUMBER OF INJUNCTIONS TO 10--Another business won temporary relief Thursday from the Obamacare mandate to provide contraception against its religious convictions, bringing the total number of injunctions against the mandate to 10.

Health Insurers Raise Some Rates By Double Digits--But…but.. “Affordable Care Act”? Even the NY Times is reporting on the failures of Obamacare. Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s healthcare law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

MORE EVIDENCE OF ‘DEATH PANELS’ IN OBAMACARE--They're finally getting around to reading President Obama’s health-care legislation, and ... oh, boy! Are you ready for preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity and so-called life preferences? Here's what WND has found in largely unreported sections ...

December 2012:
ALG’s Nathan Mehrens discusses ObamaCare regulations on Fox News--Americans for Limited Government’s Nathan Mehrens appeared on Fox News to discuss the comment period on major ObamaCare regulations. The interview occurred on December 18, 2012.

HOBBY LOBBY: We Intend to Defy ObamaCare--An attorney for Hobby Lobby Stores said Thursday that the arts and crafts chain plans to defy a federal mandate requiring it to offer employees health coverage that includes access to the morning-after pill, despite risking potential fines of up to $1.3 million per day. Hobby Lobby and religious book- seller Mardel Inc., which are owned by the same conservative Christian family, are suing to block part of the federal health care law that requires employee health-care plans to provide insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and similar emergency contraception pills.

The companies claim the mandate violates the religious beliefs of their owners. They say the morning-after pill is tantamount to abortion because it can prevent a fertilized egg from becoming implanted in a woman’s womb.

Ring in the New Year with your New Healthcare Taxes-- Most of the new healthcare taxes will fall on high income earners, but the middle class and medical device industry will also take a hit. Directly impacting taxpayers is the Medicare tax hike on high income wage earners, higher taxes on investment income, lower contributions to flexible spending accounts and a higher threshold for deducting medical expenses from income tax.

Washington Times EDITORIAL: Obamacare’s costly new year, Taxpayers to start feeling law’s unhealthy effects-- The re-election of President Obama means Uncle Sam is only going to grow larger. As the New Year arrives, Americans are likely to see with their own eyes the consequence of their choice of chief executive as health care costs escalate thanks to Obamacare.

Provisions of the law that take effect in the New Year will reveal the true price tag of the president’s signature health care system in the form of five new taxes. Starting Jan. 1, a 2.3 percent medical device tax will be imposed on the miracles of modern medicine such as heart pacemakers, stents, prosthetic joints and diagnostic scanners. The levy will apply to sales, not profits, so startup firms that might be just breaking even could be pushed into the red by Obamacare. With 80 percent of medical device companies employing fewer than 50 people, the tax is a disincentive for small firms to stay in business — exactly the opposite of the effect needed to jump-start the nation’s flagging economy.

Rep. Fred Upton: States should have Medicaid flexibility--Obamacare is a seriously flawed law that makes health care coverage less affordable, costs taxpayers more than advertised and fails to deliver on most of its other grand promises. Because of the results of the presidential election and the Supreme Court’s decision last summer, repealing it during the next two years is highly unlikely. Yet there is one thing that could ameliorate some of the damage and loosen Washington’s grip on the massive new law — providing governors additional flexibility in how it’s implemented. So far, the level of cooperation the Obama administration has demonstrated to the states has been most disappointing. Moving forward, however, governors may have more leverage than they think. They can count on congressional Republicans as allies in their efforts to secure as much flexibility as possible. For a variety of reasons, including Obamacare’s basic design and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn part of it, states will play a pivotal role in the future of the new health care law.

Five 'ObamaCare' provisions to watch in 2013-- 2013 will be a big year for President Obama's signature healthcare law. By next New Year's, almost all of the law's major provisions are scheduled to be fully in effect. And that means 2013 will represent a mad dash to get ready — both in the states and in the Health and Human Services Department. In addition to the intensive preparation for 2014, next year will see several key provisions take effect, among them some of the law's most controversial provisions, including new taxes that will hit millions of employees.

Video: Aetna CEO Says ObamaCare Could Double Health Insurance Premiums--Aetna CEO says ObamaCare could double healthcare premiums.

In 2013, Millions Of Americans Face Obamacare Tax Hikes--As part of the negotiations over the fiscal cliff, Congress and President Obama are battling over whether to raise marginal tax rates at the very top of the income ladder. Regardless of how these talks turn out, millions of Americans are already facing tax hikes thanks to Obamacare. Obamacare’s authors chose to offset about half of the trillion-dollar cost of the law through higher taxes. Since the Supreme Court upheld the law’s individual mandate and allowed states to opt out of its Medicaid expansion, though, the cost estimate has swelled to $1.76 trillion between 2012 and 2021.

COURT: FEDS PROMISED NOT TO ENFORCE 'MANDATE', 'We take the government at its word and will hold it to it'--Religious organizations and business owners who object to Obamacare’s mandate to pay for abortifacients have been handed a huge victory, with a court concluding the government already has promised it never will enforce those provisions against them. “The government … represented to the court that it would never enforce [the mandate] in its current form against the appellants or those similarly situated as regards contraceptive services,” said an order released by U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The three-judge panel said the government said there will be “a different rule for entities like the appellants … and we take that as a binding commitment.”

American Thinker: ObamaCare: Game On for Physicians--Do the "we know best" government bureaucrats who birthed ObamaCare think doctors will simply stay still in the wake of this beast… The health care fix is now set to be law. The federal government stepping into administration and provision of medical services is creating a lot of uncertainty and concern among those of us that provide health care service. We know that there are inequities, cost issues, and other problems with the current system. But there is a lot of angst involved in thinking that the government is up to the challenge of appropriating control over one sixth or more of the economy, especially when we see how government has managed what it attempts to control now. Patients suffering from illness desire accurate diagnoses in a timely fashion with the best treatment options available. The massive bureaucracy of the Affordable Care Act ensures none of this, sacrificing the above in an attempt to ratchet down costs and increase the availability of care to the uninsured...or so the law is advertised. Perusing the bill shows that it is more a bureaucracy to ensure the expansion and power of government. Nowhere has thought been given as to how we physicians can be made to feel like partners in the success of "ObamaCare." Nowhere is the patient the focus of the bill, unless you count the fantasy that care is provided "free of charge."

Religious schools claim ‘major victory’ after ruling on contraception mandate-- Two religious-affiliated colleges claimed a “major victory” Tuesday after a federal appeals court ordered the Obama administration to verify that it is revising the so-called contraception mandate in ObamaCare. The decision out of the D.C. Court of Appeals effectively reinstated a challenge that had been dismissed by lower courts. Wheaton College and Belmont Abbey College were arguing against the federal health care overhaul rule that requires employers to provide access to contraceptive care. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has represented several plaintiffs challenging the rule, hailed the court decision. “The D.C. Circuit has now made it clear that government promises and press conferences are not enough to protect religious freedom,” Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund, said in a statement. “The court is not going to let the government slide by on non-binding promises to fix the problem down the road.” The court ruling did not overturn the contraception mandate. Rather, it effectively put the court case on hold while requiring the Obama administration to follow through on its pledge to revise the mandate as it pertains to religious-affiliated groups.

Let’s Be Honest – Medicare Is Insolvent And Doctors Soon Won’t Accept It-- Now that campaigning is finished, it is incumbent on our elected government to face up to Medicare’s problems and implement thoughtful solutions. Pretending that Medicare is financially solvent while ignoring the facts about the declining acceptance of Medicare and the future of health care access for seniors under the ACA is worse than misguided policy, it is outright dishonesty. Instead of fixating on ideological differences, the first step is to agree about the urgency of the situation, so that we can keep Medicare for the long term in a form consistent with America’s core. Regardless of the outcome of the 2012 elections, the facts about Medicare have not changed. Medicare is spiraling into bankruptcy, owing to both the demographics of America and the realities about health care. Every year for the next two decades, roughly 3 to 4 million seniors become newly eligible for Medicare as the baby boomer generation ages. Elected officials of both parties do not dispute the seriousness of the problem described in the 2012 Medicare Trustees Report, which estimated Medicare’s unfunded obligations to be almost $38 trillion and a hospital insurance trust fund that will become insolvent in 2024.

The post-election deluge of Obamacare regulations-- Despite the states’ multiple requests for answers on Obamacare implementation, from September 2012 through most of November 2012, the Obama Administration published only one Obamacare regulation. It quickly became clear that Obama was holding back on regulations to avoid any potential pre-election controversy. Many began predicting a deluge of regulations after the election. And they were right. Since November 26, 2012, nine Obamacare regulations have been published using a third of a million words on 1,148 pages. Four of those regulations deal with taxes—taxes on Medicare, health insurance policies, medical devices, and certain investment income. A fifth regulation proposes rules for health plans that want to create wellness programs for their policy holders. The remaining four have a comment period of only 30 days. That means that if you want to tell the Obama Administration what you think of them, you need to act now. At the very minimum we encourage you to protest these unusually short comment periods. Here is a brief summary of each of the four regulations:

Dominos Pizza Founder Sues Obama Admin Over HHS Mandate--The Catholic businessman who is the founder and former owner of the Domino’s Pizza chain has filed a lawsuit over the HHS mandate that forces religious employers to purchase drugs that may cause abortions for their employees. Tom Monaghan calls requiring businesses, schools and other religious places to pay for such drugs a ‘gravely immoral’ practice and filed suit late Friday in federal court for Domino’s Farms, a business development complex he owns.

Business Loses First Fight Against HHS Mandate, Battle Continues--An Illinois-based business lost its first battle in court against the HHS mandate on Friday. An Illinois federal district court denied a preliminary injunction sought by a for-profit construction business claiming that its First Amendment rights are being violated because it does not want to be forced to pay for drugs for their employees that may cause abortions.
Tenth Amendment Center: Jail Time for Enforcing Obamacare? South Carolina Bill proposes 5 years for federal agents. South Carolina joins three other states currently considering bills nullifying ObamaCare - top to bottom. The state legislatures of Maine, New Jersey, and Oklahoma have also had bills introduced aimed at stopping ObamaCare at the state border.

Obama Voters Find Their Hours Being Cut In Order To Avoid “ObamaCare Bankruptcy”-- It is the ultimate example of how you reap what you sow: Huge numbers of American workers who voted for Obama are now seeing their own jobs slashed below 30 hours a week as employers desperately try to avoid “Obamacare bankruptcy.”

Obamacare mandates for businesses only apply to those working 30 hours a week or more, and while many businesses do not want to cut workers’ hours, they are being forced to in order to stay afloat. This necessary action is causing businesses to lose money and become less competitive while at the same time destroying American jobs.

Some businesses are also slashing job positions in an effort to get below the 50-employee threshold above which Obamacare mandates kick in. So across the country, we’re not only seeing workers lose hours thanks to Obamacare; we’re also seeing workers losing their jobs.  At least health care costs are dropping, right?

Big ObamaCare Setback: Little-Noticed Court Ruling Lets Church Challenges Proceed-- Here’s an encouraging update on the nationwide legal challenges to ObamaCare by religious institutions that will be forced to provide insurance coverage for such things as abortion drugs, birth control and sterilizations that violate their beliefs. This story is a week old, actually. Strangely, you haven’t seen any real coverage of this development in mainstream media, perhaps because it concerns a crucial legal setback for Barack Obama and Kathleen Sebelius in a New York federal court.

Exchanging Medicaid for Private Insurance--Converting Medicaid into block grants would allow states the flexibility in designing programs that fit their individual needs, says Devon M. Herrick, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis... The Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but not without striking down a provision that would refuse federal Medicaid funds to states that didn't expand their Medicaid programs. Other provisions of the ACA will give sliding-scale subsidies to low-to-middle income individuals for the purchase of private health coverage in a health insurance exchange that will be set up in each state beginning in 2014, says Devon M. Herrick, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. The health insurance exchanges will be set up by either the state or the federal government. People that do not receive health plans through their employers or Medicaid are eligible for exchange subsidies.

Repairing ObamaCare--The Affordable Care Act is a deeply flawed law, but there are five essential changes that could fix it, says John C. Goodman, president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis... After the recent election, virtually all commentators quickly concluded that the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) is safe; Republicans are powerless to stop it. The trouble is: ObamaCare is a deeply flawed law. Here are five essential changes that could fix it, says John C. Goodman, president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis, and a research fellow with the Independent Institute.

Obamascare? Blue Shield of Calif. Mulls Proposal to Boost Premiums as Much as 20 Percent--Consumer advocates are asking Blue Shield of California to not increase rates on its 300,000 customers by an average of 12 percent (effective in March) and to instead use its $3.9 billion reserves to help offset the expected costs of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The company has proposed a maximum increase of 20 percent. Consumer advocates argue that Blue Shield is sitting on plenty of cash and, therefore, it has no reason to increase rates. “Blue Shield is sitting on a huge surplus that is beyond what is required or necessary,” Laurie Sobel, a senior attorney for Consumers Union in San Francisco, told the Los Angeles Times. “It should be used to hold down rate increases when it hits these extraordinary levels.”

Dems Ask for Delay to Obamacare Med Device Tax They Voted for in the First Place—(These people are a big joke. They just voted to tax the devices. Now they want to delay it. I quess they finally read some of the obamacare bill.)--Medical Device Tax is just one of 20 Obamacare Taxes. In a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid, 18 Democrat senators and senators-elect have asked for “a delay in the implementation” of the Obamacare medical device tax. Like most of the significant tax increases in Obamacare, the medical device tax is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2013, conveniently after the 2012 presidential election. Each of the 18 Democrat signatories voted for or supported Obamacare in the first place. And now they want a sweetheart exemption from one of its most onerous provisions. Even in Washington DC, that shows a lot of gall. The signatories to the letter are as follows: Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.); Kay Hagan (D-N.C.); Al Franken (D-Minn.); Herb Kohl (D-Wis.); Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.); John Kerry (D-Mass.)………

SEBELIUS AWARDS OBAMACARE EXCHANGE CONTRACT TO ‘FRIEND’...Many states are wisely signaling that they aren’t interested in doing the Obama administration’s bidding on Obamacare. As a result, many if not most of Obamacare’s insurance exchanges - the heart of the beast - will have to be set up and run .

ObamaCare Increases Medical Costs…For Your Pets--Do you love fuzzy little puppies? Me too, but taking your cuddly creatures to the vet will now cost more thanks to the medical device tax in ObamaCare. Lachlan Markay over at Heritage has more: According to a rule published Friday by the Internal Revenue Service, some medical devices used in veterinary practices will be hit by Obamacare’s 2.3 percent device tax. Many of their manufacturers are expected to hike prices, meaning higher veterinary costs for the nation’s pet owners.

Deal or No Deal, ObamaCare Taxes Poised to Hit Next Month--Even if lawmakers somehow stop the Bush-era tax rates from expiring, taxes are still expected to rise on Jan. 1 — thanks to a trio of new fees tied to the federal health care overhaul. The IRS this past week published rules for some of the first major taxes meant to help pay for President Obama’s massive insurance coverage expansion. Together, they will raise investment and income taxes on top earners and impose a separate — and controversial — tax on medical devices.

The bundle of fees has been largely overlooked as lawmakers and the White House bicker over the Bush tax rates, with Republicans demanding they be extended for everyone and Obama insisting rates rise for top earners. But that same group of earners is already in the crosshairs under the ObamaCare tax rules published this week.

Starting Jan. 1, investment income for individuals earning over $200,000 and households earning over $250,000 will be subject to a new 3.8 percent tax. Further, regular income above those thresholds will be hit with a .9 percent Medicare surtax. Should the Bush tax rates expire for those workers, those increases will be compounded.

The $63 Obamacare Cost You Probably Didn’t Know About--TheBlaze has brought you the top five worst taxes that would come with Obamacare in 2013, but there’s another expense that could also to hit close to home. It’s a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions. The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers. Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a “sleeper issue” with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers.

“Especially at a time when we are facing economic uncertainty, [companies will] be hit with a multi-million dollar assessment without getting anything back for it,” said Sheaks, a principal at Buck Consultants, a Xerox subsidiary.

Obama’s Dirty Little Tax Secret: He’s Already Raised Taxes on the Rich (CHART)--The one glaring omission in President Obama’s fiscal cliff demands for higher rates on top earners is that he’s already raised their taxes. That’s right! When he signed Obamacare into law, he raised tax rates on families earning more than $250,000—his definition of rich. He has done so by including in the 18 separate Obamacare tax hikes an increase of the tax rates on income and investment. Obamacare raises the hospital insurance (HI) portion of the payroll tax on wage income over $250,000 from 2.9 percent to 3.8 percent. And it applies that 3.8 percent rate to investment income—capital gains and dividends—for those with incomes above that level. This is a massive policy change, since it represents the first time the payroll tax will apply to investment income. And even though this investment income HI tax would apply only to top earners, it is a dangerous step down a slippery, tax-hiking slope.

Will The Illegal “Re-writing” Of ObamaCare Never End?  Chief Justice John Roberts rewrote the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in order to rescue it from the Constitution. The IRS rewrote the law in order to rescue it from financial oblivion. And the leftist scribes who authored ObamaCare claim none of this illegal, post-legislative tampering really matters. For they contend that what they wrote in the law is not as important as what they really meant! John Roberts stunned and angered “fellow” conservative justices on the Supreme Court when he deliberately ignored the actual language of the Affordable Care Act in ruling the law Constitutional. For although the law’s authors were careful to avoid any use of the word TAX, Robert’s ruled the individual mandate to be just that, allowing him to find the mandate Constitutional under the congressional power to tax. It was this dishonest interpretation of Congress’ “intent” that has permitted ObamaCare to continue on.

Mike Huckabee—Clarification--If you thought Obamacare would create jobs, boy, were you wrong. Obamacare’s critics warned that its new mandates and deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements would result in up to 93,000 jobs being lost in the health care field alone. Well, it’s already starting. This week, Orlando Health, a major Florida not-for-profit health care network, began cutting up to 400 jobs, the biggest cutback in its history. And we’ve already heard about the downsizing and reductions in hours at small businesses coast to coast. But at least Obamacare will create jobs in one industry: tax law. This week, the IRS issued the first of many, many Obamacare-related rules to come. They’re to clarify the new 3.8 percent tax on investment income to help fund health care. And they run for – brace yourself - 159 pages. Only the federal government could call 159 pages of gobbledygook a “clarification.”

Morning Bell: Businesses Cutting Hours, Bracing for Costs of Obamacare--It seems that every day now brings another business owner in the news talking about cutting workers’ hours or making other cost-cutting moves in anticipation of Obamacare’s impact in 2013. Here are just a few of the business owners’ comments on the health care law:

IRS Finalizes New Tax For Medical Devices Under ObamaCare--The U.S. Internal Revenue Service on Wednesday released final rules for a new tax on medical devices, products ranging from surgical sutures to knee replacement implants, that starts next year as part of President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law. The 2.3-percent tax must be paid, effective after December 31, by device-makers on their gross sales. The tax is expected to raise $29 billion in government revenues through 2022.

Healthcare Absent Under Obamacare? One physician wonders if any doctors will be practicing once ObamaCare is fully implemented, and he continues to question the quality of care patients will receive. In an effort to provide comprehensive healthcare reform, Dr. G. Keith Smith, an Oklahoma-based board-certified anesthesiologist, says officials have failed to recognize human behavior. Lawmakers assume that doctors will continue to work under ObamaCare, even if they are being paid less for their services. “Whatever the exchange is between the patient and the physician, if it’s not financially mutually beneficial, then that exchange tends to not occur,” he notes.

7 things that scare your doctor with ObamaCare on the horizon--As the Affordable Care Act is in full swing, there’s a lot of apprehension and perhaps, sometimes, enthusiasm about what is truly in store for the medical profession. The last time you visited your doctor you may have noticed that he or she was more apprehensive, cautious, and yes, maybe more overwhelmed. The fact of the matter is that the health care profession is undergoing the most significant renovation to ever happened in the history of the United States. Here are many things that keep many doctors awake at night:

Study: Drug coverage to vary under health law-- A new study says basic prescription drug coverage could vary dramatically from state to state under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. That's because states get to set benefits for private health plans that will be offered starting in 2014 through new insurance exchanges. The study out Tuesday from the market analysis firm Avalere Health found that some states will require coverage of virtually all FDA-approved drugs, while others will only require coverage of about half of medications.

Consumers will still have access to essential medications, but some may not have as much choice. Connecticut, Virginia and Arizona will be among the states with the most generous coverage, while California, Minnesota and North Carolina will be among states with the most limited. (Now aren't you glad you voted for Obama and his health care plan???)

Washington Examiner Editorial: Obamacare's new tax on health insurance--"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it," then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., famously said of Obamacare. This seems more and more like an understatement as fresh facts dribble out about President Obama's national health care law.

Now that the election is out of the way, the Obama administration is able to reveal more about its regulatory plans for implementing that law. On Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services released 373 pages of new Obamacare regs, and buried deep within is a 3.5 percent "user fee" -- that is, tax -- on premiums from health plans sold on Obamacare's soon-to-be-established federal exchanges. This tax comes above and beyond Obamacare's $100 billion excise tax on insurers.

ObamaCare Fallout: Walmart Ends Insurance For New Hires-- And so the government takeover of our health care system begins: Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, plans to begin denying health insurance to newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, according to a copy of the company’s policy obtained by The Huffington Post. …

Obamacare Fallout: Hospitals Will See Massive Layoffs-- Hospitals are expected to cut some 93,000 jobs in 2013 in anticipation of ObamaCare. A former presidential candidate and conservative advocate says America needs to prepare for major changes in the medical industry. Orlando Health, a not-for-profit network of community and specialty hospitals, is just one example of the massive layoffs expected in the coming year. Officials with the Central Florida-based healthcare services provider announced on Monday that the largest staff reduction in its nearly 100-year history will result in cutting up to 400 jobs, starting immediately.

ObamaCare: A Law That The Feds Never Intended To Implement By Themselves! 
The signature power grab of the left may be the “law of the land” as conceded by ever-conciliatory House Speaker John Boehner, but getting the massively complex statute up and running will be far more difficult than getting it passed. When Democrats rammed ObamaCare through Congress in 2010, their intent was to literally acquire the power of life and death over the American people, not create a workable healthcare plan. And this becomes increasingly apparent as the requirements of the 2700 page behemoth are gradually made known. Those who wrote the law believed that elected officials in the 50 states would eagerly invest an untold number of taxpayer millions for the creation of ObamaCare exchanges within their borders, dramatically increase state Medicaid outlays, and permit the federal bureaucracy to legislate everything for which the state treasury would be responsible in perpetuity!

Obama Slaps Fine on Red States That Don't Comply-On Friday the Obama administration announced a heavy fine on states that do not create state health exchanges. Users of the federal health exchange will have to pay a 3.5% fine added to their insurance premiums.

Is there still a way to stop Obamacare? - FreedomWorks Takes Action--Here is a short video on ObamaCare. As states decide whether to opt in or out of the exchanges, we have the very real opportunity to block implementation.

Chuck Norris: CHOKE THE LIFE OUT OF OBAMACARE-- Now that Obama has been re-elected and Democrats control the Senate, Republicans no longer have the chance to repeal Obamacare. But all is not lost. There’s still an opportunity for America to stop this disaster by choking the life out of the federal monstrosity. Obama’s signature legislative achievement is likely headed back to the Supreme Court.

Domino’s: Obamacare Requires 34 Million Pizza Nutrition Signs-- New Obamacare regulations will force pizza chains like Domino’s to post up to 34 million nutrition signs in its stores — one for every pizza combination the company makes. The rules require fast food and grocery stores that have more than 20 stores to require labels for each product they produce. Jenny Fouracre-Petko, the legislative director for Domino’s, said mandated signs will cost Domino’s nearly $5,000 per store. Even worse, the cost will get passed down to the consumer, many of whom will never see the signs since “10 percent of pizza customers never enter a Domino’s store” because they use Domino’s exclusively as a delivery service.

November 2012:

Five New ObamaCare Taxes Coming January 1--Although some of the “fiscal cliff” taxes can be avoided through a deal made in Congress, new ObamaCare taxes are guaranteed to kick in on January 1, amounting to $268 billion tax hike. From Americans for Tax Reform:

The Obamacare Medical Device Tax – a $20 billion tax increase: Medical device manufacturers employ 409,000 people in 12,000 plants across the country. Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales – even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year. In addition to killing small business jobs and impacting research and development budgets, this will increase the cost of your health care – making everything from pacemakers to prosthetics more expensive.

The Obamacare “Special Needs Kids Tax” – a $13 billion tax increase: The 30-35 million Americans who use a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) at work to pay for their family’s basic medical needs will face a new government cap of $2,500 (currently the accounts are unlimited under federal law, though employers are allowed to set a cap).

HOUSE COMMITTEE DISCUSSES WAYS TO PREVENT HEALTHCARE FRAUD, REPUBLICANS TARGET OBAMACARE--The government is struggling to contain fraud and waste throughout the health care system and Medicare is especially vulnerable to abuse, according to a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing Wednesday. The Medicare system loses an “estimated $60 million annually” to fraud, abuse, and waste, said Health Subcommittee chairman Rep. Joe Pitts (R., Pa.) in his opening remarks.  “There’s a broad spectrum of fraud that’s committed,” testified Kathleen King, health care director for the Government Accountability Office.

August 2012:
Can we stop calling ObamaCare the Affordable Care Act now? A Young America's Foundation activist forwarded an email from the Vice President for Finance at his school, Guilford College (Greensboro, NC), informing him that, "For the 2012-13 academic year, the annual cost of the student health insurance is increasing from $668 to $1,179. This insurance premium has been charged to your student account." Why the increase? "Our student health insurance policy premium has been substantially increased due to changes required by federal regulations issued on March 16, 2012 under the Affordable Care Act." Guilford College has been forced to raise their student premiums 75 percent, yet this administrator still insists on calling it the Affordable Care Act. Seems a bit ironic, to say the least.

July 2012:
Video: Brain Surgeon Confirms ObamaCare Rations Care, Has Death Panels!
A brain surgeon on the Mark Levin show confirms that Obamacare will indeed ration healthcare, and will include panels to decide whether patients (or “units,” as they are referred to) are eligible to receive critical care. The inhumanity is unbelievable.July 15, 2012: 

Whoops: Obama Describes Individual Mandate as a ‘Tax’
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/obama-describes-individual-mandate-as-a-tax/

ObamaCare's First Casualty--News that the Department of Health and Human Services was promulgating a rule that would destroy about 35% of the Health Savings Account market comes as no surprise to Tea Party activists who warned everyone who would listen that ObamaCare would kill the private insurance market.

The rule known as the "Medical Loss Ratio" rule would deny private and small business issued policies from being sold on the ObamaCare health care exchanges. There are currently five million people who have small business and individual issued policies. Those policies will be ripped from their hands should the rule go into effect.

Obamacare to Cost $2.6 Trillion over First Decade--A new government report found that Obamacare will be far more expensive than the president originally promised. The Senate Budget Committee study says spending will come in at $2.6 trillion in the first full decade of the new law. President Obama said it would cost around $900 billion. The report came as the Republican-controlled House voted Wednesday to fully repeal the law, continuing the ongoing debate over the best way to overhaul America's health care system.

The President’s $8 Billion Coincidence—Obama’s Affordable Care Act is funded by taking from Medicare and Medicare Advantage Cuts! (Video—YOU MUST WATCH)

WSJ--Obamacare toll: Doctors quitting medicine.
The practice of medicine is the Obama health-care law's biggest loser.--The Affordable Care Act will damage that most crucial of all life relationships, that between an ill person and his physician. Barack Obama's assertion that we all can keep our doctors is false.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304708604577505210356532588.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Obamacare: How Many of the President’s Promises Have Been Broken?
Yesterday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) almost called Obamacare’s individual mandate a tax, stopping mid-word to call it a “penalty”. White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew and other spokespersons echoed this talking point. This is in spite of last week’s Supreme Court ruling that deemed the mandate unconstitutional under both the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause, but ruled that it could stand as part of Congress’s authority to “lay and collect taxes.”

Dubbing the individual mandate a tax saved the President’s health care law, but it’s a concept that President Obama himself has strongly denied. In a 2009 interview, President Obama argued that his individual mandate was not a tax increase, stating, “I absolutely reject that notion.”

But after last week, President Obama must now admit it’s a tax or admit the mandate is unconstitutional. It’s can only be one or the other.

The mandate is in fact a tax, and it’s just one of many new taxes that hit the middle class in Obamacare. Lo and behold, another broken promise. President Obama claims that the mandate is holding people responsible, keeping with that spirit, here’s a reminder of the other promises the President and his health care law are responsible for breaking:
READ THE BROKEN PROMISES HERE! 

http://www.askheritage.org/obamacare-how-many-of-the-presidents-promises-have-been-broken-t3?utm_content=2012-07-06&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=AH_Weekly&utm_campaign=2012_Brand&mboxSession=1341614914343-598254

June 2012: 
COMPLETE LIST OF OBAMACARE TAXES
Taxes that took effect in 2010:

1. Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals (Min$/immediate): $50,000 per hospital if they fail to meet new “community health assessment needs,” “financial assistance,” and “billing and collection” rules set by HHS. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,961-1,971
2. Codification of the “economic substance doctrine” (Tax hike of $4.5 billion). This provision allows the IRS to disallow completely-legal tax deductions and other legal tax-minimizing plans just because the IRS deems that the action lacks “substance” and is merely intended to reduce taxes owed. Bill: Reconciliation Act; Page: 108-113
3. “Black liquor” tax hike (Tax hike of $23.6 billion). This is a tax increase on a type of bio-fuel. Bill: Reconciliation Act; Page: 105
4. Tax on Innovator Drug Companies ($22.2 bil/Jan 2010): $2.3 billion annual tax on the industry imposed relative to share of sales made that year. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,971-1,980
5. Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike ($0.4 bil/Jan 2010): The special tax deduction in current law for Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies would only be allowed if 85 percent or more of premium revenues are spent on clinical services. Bill: PPACA; Page: 2,004
6. Tax on Indoor Tanning Services ($2.7 billion/July 1, 2010): New 10 percent excise tax on Americans using indoor tanning salons. Bill: PPACA; Page: 2,397-2,399
CONTINUED:  http://atr.org/full-list-obamacare-tax-hikes-a6996

U.S. Supreme Coury Ruling on Obamacare
The Constitution and America were dealt an awful blow today!  But there may be a silver lining in this very dark cloud!  Read the following 2 articles.

Five Reasons Why the Obamacare Decision Might Not Be As Bad As You Think
Ever since the shocking ruling by the Supreme Court today that labeled Obamacare’s highly controversial individual mandate a “tax” was handed down, conservatives have been reacting with a mixture of depression and cold fury, especially toward the man who made it possible, Chief Justice John Roberts. Branded a “coward” in some corners, and a traitor by many, Roberts has been relentlessly criticized for a decision which many see as eroding the last obstacle to an overpowered government, and which certainly has the potential to do just that if the political philosophy that has so dominated the current administration continues unabated.

However, sympathetic though we are to these admittedly weighty fears of increased state power, we think one fact may have been a bit obscured by this response – this is still a decision by John Roberts. And John Roberts is still a Bush appointee, with a judicial philosophy that makes hardcore judicial liberals cringe, albeit a little less now. As such, since the decision was released, a steady drumbeat of commentary has gone up from everyone from Reason Magazine to Charles Krauthammer to Erick Erickson to George Will to even Ken Cuccinelli, one of the people who lost in the case, claiming the decision might be a sleeper victory. With a list of people like that believing they’ve secretly won, we figure we owe it to them to at least try to sum up the case for the Obamacare case being a success. Here are the top five reasons we can see why the Obamacare case might come back to haunt the Left and make the Right cheer:
CONTINUED:  http://www.theblaze.com/stories/five-reasons-why-the-obamacare-decision-might-not-be-as-bad-as-you-think/

American Thinker: The Chief Justice Done Good-- Chief Justice John Roberts has handed a remarkable victory to American conservatives by threading the judicial needle with perfect precision. The initial disappointment collectively felt by Americans who had hoped for a Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Obamacare soon will be replaced, upon further reflection, by the excitement that will come with a fuller appreciation of what the Chief Justice has wrought. First, almost completely unnoticed, the Chief Justice voted with his four conservative colleagues in drawing an unprecedented red line against Washington wielding the Constitution's Commerce Clause in the future to justify federal intrusion into the personal lives of Americans. This decision will restrict American Presidents and future Congresses for a generation and more.
CONTINUED:  http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/the_chief_justice_done_good.html

March 2012

Video: The Whole Truth  (About Obamacare from AmericanDoctors4Truth.org)

Charts: ObamaCare In 5 Pictures--ObamaCare & Things the Federal Government Can’t Do – The left circle lists things ObamaCare does. The right circle lists things the federal government cannot do. The individual mandate? Both circles.

CBO: 4 million to lose employer insurance by 2016--White House Dossier A new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office states that by 2016, Obamacare will result in 4 million people fewer people getting health insurance coverage from their employers. The estimate is a vast increase from the CBO prediction just a year ago that 1 million would no longer obtain coverage from their employers.  The estimate is a vast increase from the CBO prediction just a year ago that 1 million would no longer obtain coverage from their employers. And it raises substantial questions about the veracity of one of Obama’s key pledges in selling the health care law — that everyone who wants to keep their current health insurance plan and doctor could do it.

New CBO health law estimate shows much higher spending past first 10 years

Side Effects: Doctors Fear Obamacare--The American public doesn’t support Obamacare, and a new survey shows that doctors have an even worse opinion. No one has a better grasp on the state of the health care system than physicians, and according to the Doctors Company survey, 60 percent of them believe that Obamacare will have a negative impact on overall patient care. This survey is consistent with the findings of another doctor survey taken in October 2010, which also showed doctors’ lack of confidence in Obamacare.  The survey was conducted to unveil physicians’ concerns about health care reform. The Doctors Company, which is the largest insurer of physician and surgeon medical liability in the nation, received more than 5,000 surveys, including all specialties and every region in the country. The results weren’t good for the President’s signature piece of legislation.

The 10 Terrible Provisions of Obamacare You May Not Have Heard Of Obamacare includes such a variety and volume of negative policies that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Here is a list of 10 terrible provisions that every American should be aware of:
1. It increases taxes on families earning over $250,000. [2] In 2013, the employee portion of the Medicare payroll tax will increase from 1.45 percent to 2.35 percent for families earning $250,000 or more and individuals earning $200,000 or more. The income threshold is not indexed for inflation, so more and more middle-income families will be hit by the tax hike as time goes on.2. It adds a new tax to investment income. [2] The increased payroll tax rate is also applied to high-earners’ investment income for the first time beginning in 2013. It will hit capital gains, dividends, rents, and royalties, discouraging investment and harming economic growth.
3. It puts new limitations on those with HSAs and FSAs. [3] Starting in 2012, Obamacare restricts the products that consumers may purchase with a Health Savings Account (HSA) or Flexible Savings Account (FSA)—such as over-the-counter medications—and increases the penalty for such non-qualified uses of HSAs. It also limits the amount taxpayers may deposit into an FSA to $2,500 a year in 2013.
CONTINUED:  http://blog.heritage.org/2012/03/07/the-10-terrible-provisions-of-obamacare-you-may-not-have-heard-of/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Heritage%2BHotsheet

JANUARY 2012: 

ObamaCare Ups Premiums $1300

We Need Medicare Reform, but Not Obamacare
Obamacare Ends Traditional Medicare, but the Wrong Way: Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed that the health law protects Medicare. The truth: Obamacare makes massive changes to the program. Obamacare contains more than 160 provisions for Medicare that increase government’s control over the delivery of care, hit doctors with unsustainable payment cuts, and leave taxpayers with higher deficits.

Obamacare Continues an Outdated Model for Reform: Obamacare expands central planning and tightens price controls on providers. These recycled mechanisms have yet to show any success in driving down costs without harming patients’ access and quality of care. Even the program’s chief accountant says many Medicare providers cannot survive the cuts.

Obamacare Undermines the Doctor–Patient Relationship: On top of the severe payment cuts facing physicians that will threaten seniors’ access, the law weakens the doctor–patient relationship by linking payment not to patient outcomes but to adherence to government protocol.
FOR MUCH MORE CLICK HERE!

A cheery op-ed in a recent Washington Post by Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is titled, “The Affordable Care Act: helping Americans curb health-care costs.”

She claims that ObamaCare is helping to lower health costs “in three ways: by increasing insurance-market competition, assisting those who can’t afford coverage, and tackling the underlying cost of medical care.”

The law is doing exactly the opposite. The president repeatedly promised the American people he would cut a typical family’s premium $2,500 a year before the end of his first term. But costs are rising now even faster than before the law was enacted in March 2010.

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that premiums for a family policy topped $15,000 a year in 2011, increasing an average of $1,300 in the last year — three times faster than the year before.

The many ObamaCare mandates to come will raise premiums even further. Health insurance is consuming a bigger share of employer budgets, pre-empting pay raises and pushing higher costs onto employees, the Kaiser survey found.
CONTINUED:  http://www.conservative.org/acuf/issue-196/issue196news3

No Death Panels? They Are Here Now. When critics of Obamacare warned of death panels, the government dismissed all such talk as scaremongering. There will never be such panels. You have the government’s word. Oh yeah? Tell it to this mother.

I am going to try and tell you what happened to us on January 10, 2012, in the conference room in the Nephrology department at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

We arrived for our regular Nephrology visit with Amelia’s doctor who has seen her for the last three years. She examines Amelia and sends us for labs. I ask about the transplant and she says we have about six months to a year until she needs one. She tells us she reserved the conference room and when we get back from labs, we can meet with the transplant team and he can tell us about the transplant process.JANUARY 18, 2012:  Obamacare implementation continues to grind forward--
Obamacare is likely to find its way into the national debate continuously throughout 2012 as the Supreme Court takes the constitutionality of the law up, while the regulatory mechanisms for enforcing the law continue to be put into place.

Americans for Limited Government Foundation has put together some key upcoming dates when actions will occur that impact American’s healthcare. Some will get major news media coverage, others will be ignored in the legacy media. But all of these dates represent transformative changes that will change the way the government is involved in healthcare forever.

2011: 

AAPS News January 2012 - ObamaCare: More Power Means More Corruption   -- Once big government reaches a critical mass, it may be impossible to turn back. It picks the winners and the losers. The elite in both parties have accepted the premises of the welfare state, central planning, and fiat currency—and in medicine, third-party payment. Being contrary to the laws of economics (human nature), these ideas are historical losers, leading always and everywhere to corruption, oppression, poverty, and death.
Beware of the “repeal and replace” mantra—the result might simply be a reshuffling of special interest groups, the temporary winners, while Americans lose their Republic.
Craig Cantoni suggests a frightening analogy: “Unfortunately, voters are now like capos in a Mafia family. Knowing that the other party, or family, is headed by a ruthless don, they feel they have no choice but to elect an even more ruthless don to protect their family from being plundered by the other family.” This has been the pattern throughout history, he notes, as republics “morphed into empires and then into theft rings.”
Republican and Industry Complicity
Republicans and Democrats, or industry (including the AMA) and government may do a lot of mutual finger-pointing, but the current system is based on bipartisan legislation and on public-private partnerships (a.k.a. fascism). These include the private fiscal intermediaries that administer the Medicare program, and the managed-care companies that use Medicaid as a cash cow.
The sustained growth rate (SGR), the prime target of multi-million dollar AMA lobbying efforts, is from a bipartisan (Clinton-Gingrich) deal. The Texas Medical Association, in ads reminiscent of Al Gore’s scary cartoons with greenhouse gas villains beating up on poor Mr. Sun, feature a little girl’s voice worrying about how Big Bad SGR Man is going to hurt her grandma (http://tinyurl.com/8x5ez4n). In the background we see mathematical formulas and the weird equation “beets + clock = wagon,” reminiscent of the logic behind the resource-based relative value scale (RB-RVS), implemented through AMA’s lucrative coding monopoly and secretive “RUC” committee.
Leading Republican Presidential contenders Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are trying to distance themselves from ObamaCare, but both are big-idea, big-government men (“visionaries”) and have some inconvenient history.   CONTINUED.

A List of Obamacare Abominations--President Obama says his health care “reform” will be good for business. Business has learned the truth. Three successful businessmen explained to me how Obamacare is a reason that unemployment stays high. Its length and complexity make businessmen wary of expanding. Mike Whalen, CEO of Heart of America Group, which runs hotels and restaurants, said that when he asked his company’s health insurance experts to summarize the impact of Obamacare, “the three of them kind of looked at each other and said, ‘We’ve gone to seminar after seminar, and, Mike, we can’t tell you.’ I think that just kind of sums up the uncertainty.” Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, added that Obamacare makes it impossible to achieve even basic certainty about future personnel costs: “If I was trying to get you to fund a new business I had started and you asked me what my payroll was going to be three years from now per employee, if I went to the deepest specialist in the industry, he can’t tell me what it’s actually going to cost, let alone what I’m going to be responsible for.”

Obamacare’s MLR ‘Bomb’ Will Create Private Insurance Monopolies--My Forbes colleague Rick Ungar has caused a stir by arguing that medical loss ratio regulations contained in Obamacare have put us “on an inescapable path to a single-payer system for most Americans and thank goodness for it.” Rick’s glee at this alleged development is interesting. However, the bottom line is that Obamacare’s MLR regulations won’t deliver us a utopia of government-run single-payer health care. Instead, they will usher in a new era of private insurance monopolies and significantly drive up the cost of health insurance, things that neither liberals nor conservatives should cheer.
 
What is a medical loss ratio?  Investors in managed care stocks have long used medical loss ratios, or MLRs to understand the economic health of insurers. Insurers collect premiums from their beneficiaries, and then spend money paying out claims for health care expenses on behalf of those beneficiaries. The medical loss ratio is the percentage of premiums paid out in health expenses. So, if an insurer has had a bad year, in which expenses were greater than premiums collected, MLR can be higher than 100 percent. On average, depending on the type of insurance, MLRs are in the range of 70 to 85 percent.

Morning Bell: The Latest Obamacare Implosion-- Inefficient programs that don’t solve problems and are passed against the will of the American people seem to be the Obama Administration’s forte. Now their high-minded aspirations of a health care revolution are quickly unraveling as fatal glitches in Obamacare become apparent.

"What you permit, you promote." (On good authority from DC)   

Next up for implosion? The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act, otherwise known as the “CLASS Act,” which creates a government-run long term care insurance program too costly to sustain. At a time when entitlement programs in America have spun out of control, liberal proponents of Obamacare were pushing a new one that had no hope of staying afloat. Now, they are trying hide the fact that they were wrong as another bungling layer of Obamacare is exposed.

The per person Medicare insurance premium will increase from the present monthly fee of $96.40, rising to: $104.20 in 2012; $120.20 in 2013; And $247.00 in 2014. These are provisions incorporated in the Obamacare legislation, purposely delayed so as not to 'confuse' the 2012 re-election campaigns. Send this to all seniors that you know, so they will know who's throwing them under the bus. REMEMBER THIS IN NOVEMBER 2012 & VOTE ACCORDINGLY.

Obamacare Limits Children’s Access to Care--Last Wednesday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee released a grim report showing a reduction in the availability of child-only policies for parents looking to purchase health insurance for their children. They findings show that, “Of the 50 states, 17 reported that there are currently no carriers selling child-only health plans to new enrollees. Thirty-nine states indicated at least one insurance carrier exited the child-only market following enactment of the new health care laws.”

Researchers: Obamacare cost estimates hide up to $50 billion per year- Federal payments required by President Barack Obama’s health care law are being understated by as much as $50 billion per year because official budget forecasts ignore the cost of insuring many employees’ spouses and children, according to a new analysis. The result could cost the U.S. Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars during the first ten years of the new health care law’s implementation.

CATO INSTITUTE: The Individual Mandate--An Unprecedented Expansion of Federal Power-- *Before I go further, let me explain that I use the term "Obamacare" simply because people colloquially refer to it that way — probably because it's easier to say than "PPACA," "Affordable Care Act," or any other more cognate. While thought in some quarters to be pejorative, I've never understood how that is (unless said with a sneer, but by that standard anything can be pejorative). Even the leading academic supporters of Obamacare's constitutionality, such as Yale law professors Akhil Amar and Jack Balkin, use the term, as did Time magazine's managing editor Richard Stengel in his recent cover story about the Constitution. The one semi-accurate criticism I've heard is that the law was mostly written by Congress, not the White House (for which the president got plenty of heat from the left). But that just means it would be better to call it Pelosi-Reid-care, which presumably is no more or less pejorative. In any event, that ship has sailed.   CONTINUED:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13512 

The Future of Private Health Plans under Health Reform
The new health reform law creates incentives for state and federal politicians and bureaucrats to exert direct control over the premiums of health plans. However, because health plans largely pass through costs from medical providers, artificially limiting increases in premiums cannot actually result in lower health costs. Instead, it results in reduced access to care and threatens the solvency of health plans, says John R. Graham, director of health care studies at the Pacific Research Institute.

The health reform law also introduces at least five critical uncertainties that make it difficult to estimate future medical costs accurately, and suggest that the reform law will be much more disruptive to health insurance than the Obama administration has advertised:July 21, 2011:  Healthcare law may leave families with high insurance costs -- A major provision of the healthcare reform law designed to prevent businesses from dropping coverage for their workers could inadvertently leave families without access to subsidized health insurance.The problem is a huge headache for the Obama administration and Democrats, because it could leave families unable to buy affordable health insurance when the healthcare law requires that everyone be insured starting in 2014. http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/172765-healthcare-law-may-leave-families-with-high-insurance-costs

• It encourages the establishment of so-called Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). ACOs will lead to consolidation and cartelization of medical providers, thereby increasing medical costs more than anticipated.
• Health plans must offer policies designed on a standard health plan that offers government-approved benefits. They can vary their offerings only by how much of the actuarial value of the policy is indemnified by the health plan. Even expert actuaries cannot yet agree on the actuarial value of the policy.
• The law anticipates that some Americans will receive coverage through Health Benefits Exchanges. Independent analyses, however, conclude that many millions more will be enrolled in exchanges than the federal government anticipates.
• The health reform law imposes federal control over an accounting calculation called the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR), which equals the proportion of premium that is spent on medical costs. However, there is no evidence that individuals or groups choosing health plans believe the MLR is important.
• The law, which purports to maintain a significant role for private health plans, is not the desired end-state of many of its proponents. Many proponents would prefer a so-called "single payer" government monopoly health system. It is reasonable to anticipate that as the reform law fails, these politicians will seek to shift blame and liability to the private health plans, in order to minimize their role and continue progress towards this final goal.

Source: John R. Graham, "Bust or Bailout? The Future of Private Health Plans under ObamaCare," Pacific Research Institute, June 2011.http://www.pacificresearch.org/docLib/20110705_BustorBailout_F4.pdf

REPEAL OBAMACARE: For the first time, a graphic has been put together that illustrates just how dangerous ObamaCare will become if left unchecked. For months our organization, the Independent Women’s Voice, has been petitioning Congress, demanding a time-out on ObamaCare. While we have had some success, we knew we could do more. That is why we put together an easy to understand graphic that is ready to share.  (07.12.11)
http://therepealpledge.com/BigPillMay 23, 2011--Obama Care Highlighted by Page Number


THE OBAMACARE BILL HB 3200

JUDGE KITHIL IS THE 2ND OFFICIAL WHO HAS OUTLINED THESE PARTS OF THE CARE BILL.

Judge Kithil of Marble Falls, TX - highlighted the most egregious pages of HB3200.  Please read this........ especially the reference to pages 58 & 59

JUDGE KITHIL wrote:
** Page 50/section 152: The bill will provide insurance to all non-U.S. residents, even if they are here illegally.
** Page 58 and 59: The government will have real-time access to an individual's bank account and will have the authority to make electronic fund transfers from those accounts.
** Page 65/section 164: The plan will be subsidized (by the government) for all union members, union retirees and for community organizations (such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - ACORN).
** Page 203/line 14-15: The tax imposed under this section will not be treated as a tax. (How could anybody in their right mind come up with that?)
** Page 241 and 253: Doctors will all be paid the same regardless of specialty, and the government will set all doctors' fees.
** Page 272. section 1145: Cancer hospital will ration care according to the patient's age.
** Page 317 and 321: The government will impose a prohibition on hospital expansion; however, communities may petition for an exception.
** Page 425, line 4-12: The government mandates advance-care planning consultations. Those on Social Security will be required to attend an "end-of-life planning" seminar every five years. (Death counseling..)
** Page 429, line 13-25: The government will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order.

HAD ENOUGH???? Judge Kithil then goes on to identify:

"Finally, it is specifically stated that this bill will not apply to members of Congress. Members of Congress are already exempt from the Social Security system, and have a well-funded private plan that covers their retirement needs. If they were on our Social Security plan, I believe they would find a very quick 'fix' to make the plan financially sound for their future."

- Honorable David Kithil of Marble Falls, Texas APRIL 5, 2011--Obamacare Paid Out $2 Billion to Corporations-- A little-known provision in the Obamacare legislation has sent $2 billion to corporations, unions and state public employee systems to subsidize health coverage for retirees.

Financial Viability of Accountable Care Organizations--Most organizations will lose money in the first three years under the accountable care organization model...

$5B Hollywood Handout Bankrupting Obamacare

Thursday, 24 Mar 2011 By Chris Gonsalves

A $5 billion handout to states, big corporations, and Hollywood unions to subsidize health insurance for early retirees is threatening to bankrupt a major part of the year-old healthcare reform law, according to staffers of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

A small percentage of the organizations signed up for the plan has already drained more than $500 million from the program’s coffers.

Like many provisions in Obamacare, the “Early Retiree Reinsurance Program” has largely escaped public scrutiny and congressional oversight. The program provides subsidies to employers and unions to cover between $15,000 and $90,000 of the healthcare costs for early retirees.

The ERRP program was designed primarily to help early retirees over age 55, along with their spouses and dependents, who are not eligible for Medicare.

Nearly 5,500 organizations have been approved to participate in the program. Among the 253 participants that received more than $535 million in ERRP funding last year were Hollywood unions such as the Screen Actors’ Guild, and large corporations like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Sara Lee.

The lion’s share of ERRP reimbursements went to state governments, followed by non-profits, corporations, unions, and religious organizations, the report says.

Over one-third of the of the money spent in 2010, some $182 million, went to just five government entities: California Public Employees’

Retirement System — $57.8 million; State of New Jersey Treasury Department, Pension Accounting Services — $38.6 million; Georgia Department of Community Health, State Health Benefit Plan — $35 million; Commonwealth of Kentucky — $29.7 million; and Employees Retirement System of Texas — $20,982,299.

The retiree reinsurance money was supposed to last until 2014. The program received $5 billion — the same amount provided for high-risk coverage pools for people with pre-existing conditions. But with 10 percent of the allocated funds already spent on less than 5 percent of program participants in just a few months, the fund will likely run dry by early next year, according to Richard Popper, Director of the Office of Insurance Programs at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight.

“The Early Retiree Reinsurance Program is helping to control healthcare costs and protect coverage for early retirees and their families,” says HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “This program is providing critical financial relief to help states, private employers and other organizations preserve access to affordable health coverage for millions of Americans.”

The House staffers report concluded differently, however.

“With the public debate focused squarely on the spiraling costs of the federal budget, and this administration’s lackluster efforts to create job growth, the committee staff was surprised to learn that the healthcare law would subsidize the early retirees of corporate America, Hollywood, state, county and municipal employees, as well as unions,” the Congressional staffers wrote.

“It is inappropriate that a bill sold to the American people as healthcare legislation would contain a sweetheart deal for unions and Hollywood, and it is grossly inefficient that in troubling economic times, the American taxpayer would be asked to subsidize the healthcare costs of massive corporations.”

© Newsmax. All rights reserved.
=====================================
Operation Obamacare: Uncle Sam is afflicted with Obamacare and needs surgery! Step into the operating room by choosing the right answers to help him.   Click here! =====================================

Next week, the U.S. House of Representatives will be voting on a historic repeal of the Obamacare law.

While there are many reasons to oppose this flawed government health insurance law, it is important to remember that Obamacare is also one of the largest tax increases in American history.

Below is a comprehensive list of the two dozen new or higher taxes that pay for Obamcare’s expansion of government spending and interference between doctors and patients.


Individual Mandate Excise Tax (January 2014): anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance must pay an income surtax according to the higher of the following.

1 Adult 2 Adults 3+ Adults

2014 1% AGI/$95 1% AGI/$190 1% AGI/$285
2015 2% AGI/$325 2% AGI/$650 2% AGI/$975
2016+ 2.5% AGI/$695 2.5% AGI/$1,390 2.5% AGI/$2,085

Exemptions for religious objectors, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, those earning less than the poverty line, members of Indian tribes, and hardship cases (determined by HHS).

Employer Mandate Tax (January 2014): If an employer does not offer health coverage, and at least one employee qualifies for a health tax credit, the employer must pay an additional non-deductible tax of $2,000 for all full-time employees. This provision applies to all employers with 50 or more employees.

If any employee actually receives coverage through the exchange, the penalty on the employer for that employee rises to $3,000. If the employer requires a waiting period to enroll in coverage of 30-60 days, there is a $400 tax per employee ($600 if the period is 60 days or longer).

Combined score of individual and employer mandate tax penalty: $65 billion/10 years.

Surtax on Investment Income ($123 billion/January 2013): This increase involves the creation of a new, 3.8 percent surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single). This would result in the following top tax rates on investment income.

Capital Gains Dividends Other*

2010 15% 15% 35%
2011-2012 (now) 20% 39.6% 39.6%
2011-2012 (budget) 20% 20% 39.6%
2013+ (now) 23.8% 43.4% 43.4%
2013+ (budget) 23.8% 23.8% 43.4%

*Other unearned income includes (for surtax purposes) gross income from interest, annuities, royalties, net rents, and passive income in partnerships and Subchapter-S corporations. It does not include municipal bond interest or life insurance proceeds, since those do not add to gross income. It does not include active trade or business income, fair market value sales of ownership in pass-through entities, or distributions from retirement plans. The 3.8 percent surtax does not apply to non-resident aliens.

Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans ($32 billion /January 2018): New 40 percent excise tax on “Cadillac” health insurance plans ($10,200 single/$27,500 family). For early retirees and high-risk professions exists a higher threshold ($11,500 single/$29,450 family). CPI +1 percentage point indexed.

Hike in Medicare Payroll Tax ($86.8 billion/January 2013): Current law and changes:

First $200,000

$250,000 Married)

Employer/Employee All Remaining Wages

Employer/Employee

Current Law 1.45%/1.45%

2.9% self-employed 1.45%/1.45%

2.9% self-employed

Obama Tax Hike 1.45%/1.45%

2.9% self-employed 1.45%/2.35%

3.8% self-employed

Medicine Cabinet Tax ($5 billion/January 2011): Americans no longer able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike($1.4 billion/January 2011): Increases additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

Flexible Spending Account Cap — “Special Needs Kids Tax” ($13 billion/January 2013): Imposes cap of $2,500 (indexed to inflation after 2013) on FSAs (now unlimited). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children.

There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education.

Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers($20 billion/January 2013): Medical device manufacturers employ 360,000 people in 6000 plants across the country. This law imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax. Exemptions include items retailing for less than $100.

Raise "Haircut" for Medical Itemized Deduction From 7.5 percent to 10 Percent of AGI ($15.2 billion/January 2013): Currently, those facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction for medical expenses to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI).

The new provision imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI; it is waived for taxpayers 65 or older in 2013-2016 only.

Tax on Indoor Tanning Services ($2.7 billion/July 1, 2010): New 10 percent excise tax on Americans using indoor tanning salons.

Elimination of Tax Deduction for Employer-Provided Retirement Rx Drug Coverage in Coordination With Medicare Part D ($4.5 billion/January 2013)

Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike ($0.4 billion/January 2010): The special tax deduction in current law for Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies would only be allowed if 85 percent or more of premium revenues are spent on clinical services.

Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals(Min/immediate): $50,000 per hospital if they fail to meet new "community health assessment needs," "financial assistance," and "billing and collection" rules set by HHS.

Tax on Innovator Drug Companies($22.2 billion/January 2010): $2.3 billion annual tax on the industry imposed relative to share of sales made that year.

Tax on Health Insurers($60.1 billion/January 2014): Annual tax on the industry imposed relative to health insurance premiums collected that year. The stipulation phases in gradually until 2018, and is fully-imposed on firms with $50 million in profits.

$500,000 Annual Executive Compensation Limit for Health Insurance Executives ($0.6 billion/January 2013)

Employer Reporting of Insurance on W-2 (Min./January 2011): Preamble to taxing health benefits on individual tax returns.

Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting ($17.1 billion/January 2012): Requires businesses to send 1099-MISC information tax forms to corporations (currently limited to individuals), a huge compliance burden for small employers.

“Black Liquor”($23.6 billion): This is a tax increase on a type of bio-fuel.

Codification of the “Economic Substance Doctrine” ($4.5 billion): This provision allows the IRS to disallow completely-legal tax deductions and other legal tax-minimizing plans just because the IRS deems that the action lacks “substance” and is merely intended to reduce taxes owed.


© Newsmax. All rights reserved.   http://www.newsmax.com/GroverNorquist/obamacare-taxes/2011/01/14/id/382849

Big Health-Care Changes Arrive in New Year

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/health-care-law-unions/2011/03/24/id/390680
Friday, January 14, 2011
From the ATR website. 
By: Grover Norquist, Newsmax

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703909904576052240946162956.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird#printMode

The Wall Street Journal, Friday, December 31, 2010
By JANET ADAMY

New taxes on drug makers, lower prescription-drug costs for seniors and restrictions on tax-free medical spending accounts are among a slate of health-law provisions that kick in Saturday.

The changes show how the law will begin to reshape American health care, even as opponents try to overturn the measure in Congress and the courts.

Although House Republicans are threatening to starve the law of funding and stage a symbolic repeal vote, those actions aren't likely to block any significant pieces of the law aimed at consumers for 2011. That's because the changes generally involve new rules and don't require spending.

"The debate over defunding and repeal is going to be much more of a political story in 2011 than something that actually means something for consumers immediately," said Larry Levitt, vice president at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.

Over the longer term, however, Republicans could succeed in thwarting funding for staff and grants needed to put the law in place. The biggest changes, including new health-insurance exchanges and subsidies for lower earners, are set to happen in 2014.

Medicare recipients who fall into a prescription-drug coverage gap known as the "doughnut hole" may reap the biggest windfall of the law in 2011. Enrollees whose total drug costs for the year fall between $2,840 and $6,448 will get a 50% discount on branded prescriptions. That's compared with a $250 rebate the law gave them in 2010 to offset the cost of paying for those drugs entirely out of pocket. The seniors' group AARP estimates more than three million people fall into the doughnut hole each year.

The cost of drug coverage, however, will go up for some seniors. Medicare beneficiaries with annual incomes above $85,000 for individuals and $170,000 for couples will get a smaller government subsidy for Medicare Part D prescription-drug coverage.

In 2011, pharmaceutical manufacturers will see the first major industry tax of the law, a $2.5 billion levy that will be distributed across drug makers based on their sales volume for the year. The industry worries the tax will eat into companies' budgets for finding new drugs.

"It diminishes the amount of capital we have to invest in research and development," said John Castellani, president and chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry's main lobbying group. The industry spent $65.3 billion on research in 2009, according to the group.

Drug makers agreed to make concessions with the hope of getting millions of newly insured customers under the law.

Also under the law, about 20 preventive health services, including colorectal cancer screenings, mammograms and smoking cessation services, will be free for people on Medicare.  (However, the reimubursment to providers will decrease, so expect to see limited offerings of these services--rationing!)

Seniors with privately administered Medicare Advantage plans may see fewer extra benefits, such as eyeglasses and free gym memberships, as insurers prepare for federal reimbursement cuts to those plans in 2012.

For those insured outside Medicare, 2011 starts a new requirement that insurers must spend 80% of revenue for small-group plans and 85% of revenue for large-group plans on medical care. The requirement is designed to rein in industry profit and administrative costs. Carriers that don't meet the requirement will have to issue rebates to consumers, though those won't go out until 2012.

Consumers will no longer be able to use their flexible spending accounts—tax-free funds set aside for medical costs—to pay for any over-the-counter items, such as bandages and aspirin.

For many consumers, Jan. 1 will mark the first opportunity to tap into a slate of benefits that began taking effect Sept. 23. That's when the law called for insurers to allow parents to keep a child on their policy until their 26th birthday, among other things. Employers didn't need to make that batch of changes until they started a new plan year.

Nurse midwives also will see change in the new year. Until now, certified nurse midwives were paid 65% the rate of physicians for performing the same services by Medicare. Now they will be paid at the same rate.

Such practitioners provide senior women with basic medical services, such as Pap smears and cholesterol screenings, as well as providing gynecologic services to the three million women of child-bearing age who receive Medicare because they are disabled. The payment change was designed to bolster such care in rural areas, where physicians can be scarce, said Patrick Cooney, lobbyist for the American College of Nurse Midwives.


Write to Janet Adamy at janet.adamy@wsj.com

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