Thread: MORE HOT WATER FOR SEBELIUS AND THE OBAMACARE CREW

MORE HOT WATER FOR SEBELIUS AND THE OBAMACARE CREW



By: John Hayward
10/29/2013 02:07 PM

It’s not particularly surprising to learn that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has followed the time-honored Obama Administration practice of refusing to hand over documents requested by Congress. I’m honestly not sure why House Oversight bothers making polite requests with generous deadlines any more. Subpoenas are the only way to get the attention of the Most Transparent Administration In History, and even then it’s hit and miss. CNN reports:

A House Republican aide told CNN Monday that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius missed an extended deadline set by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to respond to its request for documents and information about the HealthCare.gov website. That could trigger a congressional subpoena from Republicans.
Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-California, first issued the request in a letter on October 10, setting an initial deadline of October 24. He extended the deadline to Monday at the close of business after receiving no response the first time. Issa indicated he would consider issuing a subpoena if Sebelius missed the second deadline.

You’ll never guess what their excuse was.

A spokesman for HHS told CNN Friday that the initial request came during the government shutdown and was extremely broad but that the agency had reached out to the committee to discuss the request and how HHS could respond.

Okay, you probably did guess that one on the first try.
Also receiving a subpoena from Rep. Issa’s committee: Quality Software Services Inc. (QSSI), one of the contractors who brought us the half-billion-dollar miracle of 404Care, the website that can’t find its own pages. They also missed a deadline to provide documents voluntarily, as The Hill reports:

Issa said in a release Tuesday that QSSI has until Nov. 11 at 12 p.m. to hand over any contracts it has with the Department of Health and Human Services regarding the HealthCare.gov development process.
Committee leaders first wrote a letter to the contractor Wednesday requesting that they voluntarily provide lawmakers with documents by Friday, which did not happen.
The letter warned the company if they failed meet that deadline, the committee would consider issuing a subpoena in an effort to obtain the information regarding the broken website.
“It is crucial that you provide information quickly because of the serious concerns about data security related to the lack of testing,” the letter stated.

QSSI is one of the contractors that testified they were given only a matter of days to test the biggest web rollout in history. From a Fox News report about last week’s congressional hearings:

Representing contractor QSSI, Andrew Slavitt told the committee that ideally, end-to-end testing should have occurred well before the launch, with enough time to correct flaws.
“Months would be nice,” said Slavitt.
“We would have loved to have months,” concurred CGI vice president Cheryl Campbell, though she earlier claimed no amount of testing could have flagged all the problems.
Questioned whether there were concerns the site was not ready to go live, she also said: “It was not our position to tell our client whether they should go live or not go live.”

Really? Whose position would that have been, exactly? I guess it’s a lost cause to say that President Obama and Secretary Sebelius should have been on top of things.

Slavitt said his firm did share concerns with the agency, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, adding they were responsible for addressing them.
“We identified errors in code that was provided to us by others,” he said. “In this function we reported back the results to CMS and the relevant contractor, who in turn was responsible for fixing coding errors or making any necessary changes.”
He also blamed in part a “late decision” to require customers to register before browsing for insurance, which could have helped overwhelm the registration system.
“This may have driven higher simultaneous usage of the registration system that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred if consumers could window-shop anonymously,” he said.

Gosh, I’m starting to get the impression that allowing Big Government bureaucrats to design a massively complicated computer system, and change it at the last moment for entirely political reasons, might be a mistake.
Fingers of blame were pointed right back at QSSI during the hearings:

Campbell said QSSI’s tool that allowed consumers to create secure accounts created a “bottleneck” in the system.
Slavitt later said QSSI takes “accountability” for the problems with that function.

But evidently not enough “accountability” to cooperate with congressional investigators, absent a subpoena.
Secretary Sebelius also got caught fibbing about her agency’s behavior and the ObamaCare regulations by the Associated Press, which uses the far milder term “misstatement” for the false claims Sebelius made to deflect criticism:

Misstating the health care law she is responsible for administering, Kathleen Sebelius has asserted that the law required health insurance sign-ups to start Oct. 1, whether the system was ready or not. In fact, the decision when to launch the sign-up website was hers.
The troubled debut of the government’s health insurance enrollment website has raised questions about whether its start date should have been delayed to allow testing and repairs before it went live. Asked last week whether that might have been the wiser course, Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, said that wasn’t possible because the law required an Oct. 1 launch.
In a visit to a community health center in Austin, Texas, on Friday, Sebelius acknowledged more testing would have been preferable. “In an ideal world there would have been a lot more testing, but we did not have the luxury of that and the law said the go-time was Oct. 1,” she said.
But the law imposed no legal requirement to open the website Oct 1. The law says only that the enrollment period shall be “as determined by the secretary.” The launch date was set not in the law, but in regulations her department had issued. Agencies routinely allow themselves flexibility on self-imposed deadlines.

She went on to blame the government shutdown for her failures again, even though it was well known within her agency that the exchange wasn’t ready for prime time, long before the shutdown drama began. Also, if you’ll recall the media coverage of the shutdown’s early days, ObamaCare resources were pointedly excluded from it.
One of the reasons that allowing Sebelius to keep her job is ridiculous is that under ObamaCare, the HHS Secretary becomes the single most powerful bureaucrat on the planet. The Affordable Care Act’s huge stack of regulations include hundreds of matters left to the discretion of the Secretary. Another example is the hangman’s noose of regulations that have been strangling so many insurance plans over the past few weeks. The Secretary has abundant discretion for loosening up the standards for “grandfathered” policies, but she and Obama are pretending they can only sit back helplessly and watch the horror unfold.
We might cut Kathleen Sebelius a little slack by asserting that no human being could fully understand the vast complexity of ObamaCare law, but that’s an argument for repealing the law, not accepting her excuses. Likewise, the Healthcare.gov contractors had an impossible task… which we should hold Obama and Sebelius accountable for dumping on them. And that doesn’t excuse the ineptitude that left us with a cold plate of code spaghetti on Launch Day.
It is absurd and unacceptable for anyone involved with the ObamaCare debacle to withhold information about it, including the Administration officials who continue to insist they can’t produce enrollment totals. Lies and opacity have cost the American people dearly. Nothing but absolute and immediate transparency in all aspects of ObamaCare is acceptable. This isn’t a CIA operation against deadly terrorist enemies, in which secrecy is essential. It’s time for everyone who thought they could get away with lying to us “for our own good” to be held accountable.

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/10/2...bamacare-crew/

President Whatever?

Posted by Michael Becker on Oct 30, 2013

You can’t make this stuff up. At least I can’t.The Secretary of Health and Human Services (for the moment) Kathleen Sebelius testified before the House today. She was questioned by a couple of committees and a book could be easily written about the farce.
In preparation for viewing the short video below, remember that Sebelius is the same person who said, in reference to the fact that lots of people are calling for her resignation over the ObamaCare website fiasco, that those calling for her head are “…people I don’t work for.”
Well, today under questioning by Republicans (Democrats for the most part made speeches extolling ObamaCare), when asked about her meetings with President Obama, noted that she’d given him regular briefings on the ObamaCare roll out but hadn’t gotten into the details with him.
[Excuse me for a second, I’m stopping to vomit]
…
[There, much better]
She was pressed and this was the result.

Whatever. Whatever! Whatever?????
Actually, it’s WTF??
The nation is in the best of hands. Or something.

Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2013/10/pre...IlH0D51CTQs.99

Liberal Robert Reich: Obamacare Was Republicans’ Idea

Posted By Philip Hodges on Oct 30, 2013

If the Obamacare rollout had been a success, the Dems would be gloating and saying, “See? I told ya so.” They’d be talking about how they had immense opposition from the racists in the tea party, but after a long fight, they were victorious. And now, thanks to their tenacity, everyone has access to free healthcare insurance, and everyone’s fitter, happier and more productive as a result.

That may have been their pipe dream, but that certainly didn’t come true. The rollout has been such a disaster, such a waste of money, that Congress is subpoenaing those who were involved with the administering of the rollout. We want to know what went wrong. Why was this rollout such a disaster? And what’s the deal with the website?

So now that it’s being acknowledged even by the Obama administration that this program has had sort of a rough intro (to put it mildly), it’s all of a sudden not the Democrats’ problem. They didn’t ask for this mess. This was after all the Republicans’ idea all along.

That’s what former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich espouses in a piece he entitled, “The Democrats’ Version of Health Insurance Would Have Been Cheaper, Simpler, and More Popular (So Why Did We Enact the Republican Version and Why are They So Upset?).” He wrote:

While Republicans plot new ways to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, it’s easy to forget that for years they’ve been arguing that any comprehensive health insurance system be designed exactly like the one that officially began October 1st, glitches and all.

For as many years Democrats tried to graft healthcare onto Social Security and Medicare, and pay for it through the payroll tax. But Republicans countered that any system must be based on private insurance and paid for with a combination of subsidies for low-income purchasers and a requirement that the younger and healthier sign up.

Not surprisingly, private health insurers cheered on the Republicans while doing whatever they could to block Democrats from creating a public insurance system…

When today’s Republicans rage against the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, it’s useful to recall this was their idea as well…

So why are today’s Republicans so upset with an Act they designed and their patrons adore? Because it’s the signature achievement of the Obama administration.

Doesn’t it kind of remind you of quarreling children saying to the parent, “He started it!”

Yes, we all know that what the Dems really want is a single-payer system. But you can’t put this disaster on the GOP. They didn’t even vote for it. And it’s got Obama’s name all over it. Literally.

It was so good that we had to pass it to find out exactly what was in it. Pelosi said it would be “a liberation, a freedom.” They’re the ones who wanted it. They voted for it, their leader signed it into law, and the Supreme Court gave it a pass as well. It’s the “law of the land,” they keep telling us.

Oh, but not anymore. Since it’s been such a failure, they’re going to have to blame it on the Republicans.

Read more at http://lastresistance.com/3513/liber...lAggYCrfCZz.99

GRIM REAPER: Kathleen Sebelius, Welcome to an Unwelcome Washington Tradition, The DEATHWATCH

By Clash Daily / 31 October 2013 /

http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=91588&sitesection=clashdaily& VID=25308504

It’s Kathleen Sebelius’s turn now. On the Hill, they’re calling for her resignation and tossing around words like “subpoena.” Pundits are merrily debating her future. (She’s toast! Or is Obama too loyal to fire her so soon?) Her interviews, more closely parsed than usual, seem wobbly. Though never a colorful presence on the political scene, she’s suddenly a late-night TV punch line.

And on Wednesday morning, the embattled secretary of health and human services will submit to a quintessential station of the Washington deathwatch — testifying before a congressional committee — to discuss her agency’s failings in the botched rollout of the federal health-insurance Web site.
We’ve seen it so many times before. But how does it feel?

“I just kept sliding down, sliding down, and now I’m out of a job,” former agriculture secretary Mike Espy told The Washington Post in an agonized interview just days after his 1994 resignation.

It was a rare glimpse into the real-time emotions of a top-level appointee at his hour of doom — a process so bruising that many seem reluctant to discuss it years later, even after they’ve moved on to successful second acts or quiet retirements. Many of The Post’s calls went unreturned; interviews that were promised failed to materialize.

One former high-level appointee who ran the gantlet several years ago — and spoke hesitantly, on the condition he not be named — recalled speaking at a press event unrelated to the controversy of the moment: “We were there to talk about the good work [we] were doing. All the questions we got from the media were about the investigations.”

Read more: washingtonpost.com

Read more at http://clashdaily.com/2013/10/grim-r...XFMWUKpe3JB.99

Obama Says: “It’s Your Fault!”

Posted By Frank Camp on Oct 30, 2013

Senior Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett Tweeted: “FACT: nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans.”

For years, ever since the idea of Obamacare was widely announced, Obama has said that “if you like your insurance, you can keep it.” That little statement was a staple of his propaganda program to put people at ease. Many fewer people would have supported Obamacare if they knew that they would be kicked off their own insurance plans, and be forced to pay drastically higher prices for new plans.

Obama needed something to placate the masses. Unfortunately, all it took was a simple verbal promise. Despite all of our knowledge that politicians—especially Democrats—lie, many Americans still bought into Obama’s solemn promise. I suppose it helped that the media drooled over Obama’s promise like he was God promising the Israelites the land of Milk and Honey. Oh, how compassionate and amazing he is. How intelligent and thoughtful.

Now that it has been revealed that Obama knew all along that between 40% and 67% of Americans would lose their insurance plans, the administration is spinning faster than a dradle on Hanukah. I’ve seen it all over the news cycle: Dem strategists blaming the insurance companies, Americans, and everyone else besides the man responsible. On the Kelly File, Democrat strategist Mark Hannah said it wasn’t Obama’s fault, but that of the insurance companies. He claimed that it has been well understood that Obama’s only promise was that Americans could keep their insurance so long as their insurance company never changed even a modicum of their policies. If, after 2010, insurance companies made even the slightest alteration to insurance plans, they would not be grandfathered in. I guess Obama’s promise came with an invisible caveat. Gosh, I wish I was smart enough to understand Obama’s complexities.

This is yet another example in a long list of Democrats lying. Unfortunately, semantics generally win the battle. So long as Democrats use the right words, the masses will bow down in awe of their verbal mastery. It’s just a con.

How many revelations will it take to make people realize that Obama is a fraud? Can Valerie Jarrett just say this and get away with it? I guess so. I suppose that it is just our fault that we didn’t read in between the lines, that we didn’t understand “if you like your plan, you can keep it” to mean “if you like your plan, and there has not been a single change to it—even down to the minutia of the policy—you can keep it…for now. That is until fully government-run healthcare becomes the new law of the land.”

It’s so simple, how could we not have seen it?

Read more at http://lastresistance.com/3515/obama...QGc7Mdqm4Uu.99

Why Do You Decide What's Lousy?!' Megyn Challenges Dem Over ObamaCare


by Fox News Insider // Oct 30 2013 // 9:46pm As seen on The Kelly File

Things got heated tonight on The Kelly File between host Megyn Kelly and Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone (NJ).

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‘Hold Me Accountable!’: Sebelius' Heated Exchange With Rep. Blackburn

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Pallone, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, was one of the lawmakers questioning Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Congress today about the ObamaCare rollout problems.


Kelly asked Pallone about President Obama’s promise that if you like your health care, you can keep it. That has proven to be false for millions of Americans already.


Pallone charged that insurance companies have been “caught” selling lousy plans, which is why Americans are seeing their plans canceled. “The president never said that he could stop the insurance companies from canceling plans. This is a private market.”

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Woman Giving Some Kids Fat Letters Instead of Halloween Candy

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Kelly challenged that many of the policies are being canceled because the regulations imposed on them by ObamaCare left them with no choice. “[Sebelius] admitted it today, sir,” Kelly said.


Pallone told Kelly that was not true, but she persisted, “If they change the policies in any marginal way, then ObamaCare requires that they be canceled and the people get kicked off.”


He responded, “They tell them where they can get the insurance. Look, the bottom line is if you’re selling a lousy policy at a price that’s too high, nobody’s going to buy it. And so they’re canceling these policies because they know people won’t buy them."


“But they were buying them. They were buying them! There were 15 million people who bought them and said I like them, Mr. Pallone, I like them,” Kelly reacted.


Pallone answered that people won’t buy them anymore thanks to ObamaCare. “Why do you get to decide what’s lousy?” Kelly asked.

“It’s capitalism,” Pallone tried to reason. “Let the marketplace decide.”


Kelly retorted, “Well, the marketplace would like to decide but they’ve been told by the president and the Democrats, thanks to ObamaCare, that they can’t.”


video at link below

http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/10/30...over-obamacare


Hey Pallone do you get to buy Obamacare/Affordable Care ?????? Whoops guess not, your exempted!!!!!

Pelosi: Universal Daycare Would be a Great Addition to Obamacare

Posted By Philip Hodges on Oct 30, 2013

If you think Obamcare’s been great so far, just think how much better it would be if only we had universal daycare attached to it. That’s exactly what Pelosi is pushing for. She wants to add universal childcare as a component to the oh-so-successful Obamacare program. Perhaps we could call it Pelosicare. The Hill reported:

Pelosi and other Democrats have emerged from the shutdown fight with new confidence, and she vowed her party would “of course” pick up seats next year. It is the first time Pelosi has guaranteed that Democrats will cut into the GOP’s majority.

Atop her priority list as Speaker, she said, would be “comprehensive affordable, quality childcare” for working mothers, which she sees as a natural extension of ObamaCare.

“That would have the biggest impact on women, families and … job creation,” Pelosi said. “That was on President Nixon’s desk … in the ’70s, and he vetoed it for cultural or whatever reasons. And now we have to do that again.”… Of a federal childcare law, she said: “This is the missing link in so many things that we’ve talked about. It is not exhaustive of all the things we want to do or have done with regard to women, but I do think it would unleash the power of women.”

“Unleash the power of women.” Sounds scary.

Just what we need. Another disaster on top of an already existing one. Is this “comprehensive, affordable quality childcare” component going to have its own website too? Maybe they can link to it on the healthcare.gov website.

She’s promising “affordable” and “quality” childcare. But didn’t Obama promise those things about healthcare? And what did we get? A bunch of exorbitant rate increases, less coverage, and millions of insured being dropped.

And how is she proposing we pay for this whole new “free” program? If it’s the same program that Obama was pushing a few months ago, it’ll be paid for by smokers through a hefty increase in the tobacco tax. If that’s all they’ve got, it’ll run itself out of money.

You’ve got to start the government education young. Remember, as Melissa Harris-Perry said, our kids don’t actually belong to us. They belong to the “community.” It takes a village to raise a child.

And since the economy’s so bad right now that often both parents have to have jobs, who is left to take care of the kids? The government helped create this economic mess, and now it offers its “solution,” which doesn’t involve in any way fixing the economy, but only involves a taxpayer-funded nanny to take care of the kids.

Read more at http://lastresistance.com/3511/pelos...PaPb2JSvW75.99

Control from the cradle to the grave of you and yours but not theirs!!!!!

About 290,000 Washington residents lose health insurance plans

By Shelby Sebens / October 30, 2013

By Shelby Sebens | Northwest Watchdog

When D.J. Brooks got a letter in the mail from Group Health in Washington state, he wasn’t surprised his health insurance plan was being dropped and a new, comparable plan would cost a lot more.
DROPPED: About 290,000 Washingtonians will joins millions of other Americans hunting for new health insurance plans after being dropped from theirs.


Brooks wasn’t happy the cost jumped from $444 a month to $876. His rates were set to rise as he entered a new age bracket, but he didn’t anticipate them going that high. What bothered Brooks more was a feeling his ability to choose his health insurance was being stripped away.
Brooks, 55 a Seattle resident, considers himself a policy minimalist. He and his wife stay healthy and in turn bought bare bones individual insurance to keep costs down. If something major happened — cancer or a heart attack — he said they would have been covered.
That option of slimmed down, cheaper insurance is now gone, thanks to mandates set in place by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Like millions of other Americans, Brooks can either pay more for a plan that was comparable to his last or shop for new insurance in the private market or through the state based exchange,where he might find a more affordable plan.
But then he might have to find a new doctor, in a new network. And he likes Group Health. He likes that the company has a database of his family’s medical information and that he could choose not to pay more for more coverage.
“As an American, look, if I want to drive a Cadillac I can drive a Cadillac. If I want to drive a Corolla, I will drive a Corolla,” he told Northwest Watchdog. “That’s my choice. Don’t take away my choice. That’s the part that really, really pisses me off. My freedom, my liberty, my choice has been taken away .”
The Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner estimates about 290,000 Washington residents will see their health plans dropped in the individual market. About half of those will qualify for government subsidies to help them pay for health insurance.
Now that Obamacare is in effect, insurance companies with plans that don’t meet the essential health benefits required under the law are dropping those to meet the mandate. Plans will cost more because they provide more. Many plans will include family dental, maternity care, vision, mental health, a higher percentage of medical costs covered, less out of pocket pay and prescription drug coverage.
“If you really use health care, its’ a good deal for you,” said Stephanie Marquis, spokeswoman for the insurance commissioner’s office. “The idea is give people some basic benefits.”
She said she has encountered many Washington residents who thought they were covered under their individual plans for basic services only to find out they weren’t. She referenced a woman who became pregnant and found out she wouldn’t be covered by her insurance because pregnancy was considered a preexisting condition.
Under the new health law, an insurance company cannot deny coverage based on preexisting conditions.
Brooks gets it. He understands why his insurance cost could go up.
“It’s because you’re getting a beefier plan and the costs to insurance companies is going up because of all these people that weren’t in the pool,” he said. “Let’s face it, there are reasons why they weren’t in the pool. That’s going to cost money.”
Marquis said she empathizes with healthy people who want cheaper plans but said “no one’s immune from back luck.”
She said getting basic benefits to everyone only works if the pool is large enough to make costs go down. For example, if only pregnant women bought maternity health care coverage, no one could afford it, she said.
The change in his ability to choose a lesser insurance plan prompted Brooks to give his congressmen a piece of his mind.
“I just blasted them. I said this is ridiculous,” he said. This is not what you guys promised.”
Other politicians are feeling the sting of this part of Obamacare. President Obama is taking a lot of heat for his promise that Americans could keep their health insurance if they like it under the new law.
Clearly, not everyone can.
Contact Shelby Sebens at Shelby@NorthwestWatchdog.org
Like Watchdog.org? Click HERE to get breaking news alerts in YOUR state
Part of 58 in the series Obamacare

• Obamacare compliance means less money for TN service agencies
• The mystery of Obamacare spending in Arkansas
• Obamacare raises questions for MD small business owners
• Kansas official on Obamacare: ‘Let someone else be the guinea pig’
• Obamacare insurance marketplace has plenty of kinks on first day
• OR’s Obamacare insurance marketplace hits technological snag
• Fail: Day 1 of the New Mexico Obamacare rollout
• Obamacare marketplace riddled with glitches
• Senator asks: Do you want this dysfunctional government taking over health care?
• Jobs, coverage at risk with Obamacare, MN union health official says
• Oregon’s Obamacare ads resemble middle school art
• VIDEO: Obamacare vs Affordable Care Act: Comedy triumphs in court of confusion
• Patience is key to navigating Illinois’ Obamacare marketplace
• Hawaii residents, lawmakers frustrated with health connector glitches
• Healthy young, key to Obamacare, aren’t buying it
• NM’s health exchange tries to lure ‘young invincibles’
• Obama drama: Senator blames governor for big rate hikes
• Progressive group navigates Oregon students through Obamacare
• Maddening: Trying to log onto federal health care site
• You know that one guy who successfully signed up for Obamacare? He didn’t
• What’s wrong? It’s been a week, and Obamacare website still not working
• HHS Secretary Sebelius back in FL after embarrassing Obamacare rollout
• Health centers enroll Floridians in Obamacare as application problems persist
• VIDEO: Stewart skewers Sebelius on Obamacare
• Obamacare effect? 9 companies exit Nebraska’s health insurance market
• Obamacare: Children of undocumented parents face an uncertain future
• Which way do we go? Obamacare navigator registration in TN in question
• NM health exchange tries to ease problems with Obamacare website
• CPA says hype over Obamacare small business tax credit is misleading
• Obamacare navigator under fire for arrest warrant
• Reports of Obamacare fraud emerge in Tennessee
• After two weeks, FL online Obamacare enrollees are hard to find
• Illinois state governor touts 100K Obamacare enrollees, all in Medicaid
• Kansas lawmaker calls for crackdown on Obamacare navigators
• WI health care exchange seeing few getting through
• Hawaii’s Obamacare exchange relaunches with more glitches
• We’ll know next month how many people in NM signed up for Obamacare — maybe
• Zero: Number of Nebraskans Obamacare navigators have signed up
• It took this Delaware woman 11 days to sign up for Obamacare – and she was the first
• How many people have signed up for health insurance in VA? Who knows?
• What else? NM federal health exchange ads stalled due to website problems
• Blue Cross hires temp workers to deal with Obamacare glitches
• If Obamacare is the next Medicare, will physicians leave en masse?
• Three problems that won’t be solved by fixing the Obamacare exchange glitches
• Plenty of Oregonians interested in Obamacare, but none can enroll online
• Criticize this: Obamacare premiums a near match to WI disclosures
• Report: Missourians will see sharp rise in premiums under Obamacare
• Kansas navigators say they’ve enrolled no one in Obamacare
• Obamacare too costly for rich Coloradans, Democrat congressman says
• Study: Kansas premiums to spike following Obamacare rollout
• Hang on to your candy: Creepy Uncle Sam is back
• Obamacare or bust: NM Watchdog turned back again
• Medical journals, experts refute claim that Medicaid cuts ER use
• Arkansas spends $4M on Obamacare ads, wants more
• LOL: In July video, HHS bragged about being ‘on schedule’ with Obamacare
• Illinois uses Day of the Dead to market Obamacare
• Sebelius denies GOP’s Terry ‘unreliable’ Obamacare info
• About 290,000 Washington residents lose health insurance plans

Please, feel free to "steal our stuff"! Just remember to credit Watchdog.org. Find out more

Shelby Sebens





http://watchdog.org/113555/health-in...plans-dropped/

Breaking! Obamacare: Bait and Switch Extraordinaire!

By Suzanne Olden / 31 October 2013




“If you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period.” Barack Obama, 2009.

Mr. Pants-on-Fire is probably wishing he take that back! Worse, it appears he knew it was a bald faced lie at the time. The effects of the “Affordable” Care Act will be hitting more than 16 million Americans, HARD. And that’s before the employer mandate kicks in and gives the rest of us a swift kick in the bank account as well.

Robert Laszewski, a top healthcare consultant wrote this about the situation:

The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the … regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare …16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must … comply with the new health law’s benefit mandates — the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.

This guy isn’t a politician, but someone in the industry who knows how the ACA effects this market.

So what are these individual market plans? They were plans that could be customized to the individual purchasing them. Let’s say you’re a single man who is healthy, or an older couple in their sixties. You could choose a plan which would not include coverage for maternity care. Why not? You don’t need it and it kept premiums lower. Some of these individual plans also were “catastrophic” policies, meaning that the deductibles were higher than the purchaser thought they would reach in a year (on purpose) and therefore only covered something really serious – a catastrophe. Under the ACA, these types of plans aren’t compliant, so they are being canceled.

Then there was this gem: “We will start by reducing premiums by as much as $2500 per family per year.”

Well, Mr. President, most people aren’t finding that to be the case. In fact, quite the opposite. Social media has been rife with examples of how this is the biggest load of crap foisted on the American public. Up until about a week or so ago, the MSM ignored it, or called the stories “incidental” or in some cases outright lies. Funny how they changed their tune when it affected them. Here are some examples:
The CBS employee who found that her plan was changing to one with higher premiums, much higher deductibles, and a much lower rate of coverage once the deductibles are met – 60% of the billed services.

Patti Davis (Ronald Reagan’s daughter), an Obama and Obamacare supporter tweeted, “Could the president please explain why I and others are losing our health ins. plans? Wasn’t supposed to happen!”

Kirsten Powers, USA Today contributor, Daily Beast columnist and Fox News contributor, a huge Obamacare supporter, also found that her plan was being cancelled and her replacement options were much higher.

Incredibly, Obamacare supporters keep saying that the ACA plans will be “better” and provide “better coverage.” How can a plan that makes you pay much more out of pocket before it ever even kicks in (your deductible) be “better coverage?” How can a plan that only covers 60% of a covered service (after the astronomical deductible is reached), as opposed to the plan it replaced which covered it at 80% or 100%, be considered “better coverage?” How can a plan that makes prescription drugs MORE expensive be “better coverage?” THIS is what people are finding out when they look for that “better coverage” !

How, in the name of all that is holy, is this better than the plans they may have already had? Even if they had catastrophic plans before, at least the premiums were lower!

Of course, the reaction from the left runs along these lines of “you’re too stupid to know what you’re doing, buying, getting, so we will decide for you.” Matt Walsh blogged emails from people describing exactly what they had, what they were losing and exactly what they were getting with the new plans. Many of them had situations where they knew what they needed because of a family member with a condition that needed specific coverage, or because they were intelligent enough to read a policy. I’ve had an individual market plan and knew what it covered and didn’t. Contrary to the left’s opinion, people aren’t stupid.

Many people are saying “I can’t afford the premium so I’ll just pay the fine!” Well, that’s not really a good option either. Here’s why. In 2014 the fine is $95 per person, or $285 per family. By 2016 that fine goes up to $695 per person/$2,085 per family! But wait, that’s only if you make less than $37,000 a year! If you make more than that, you’re really screwed. Here is a chart:

$50,000 income = $1,000/$3,000
$75,000 income = $1,600/$4,800
$100,000 income = $2,250/$6,750
$125,000 income = $2,900/$8,700
$150,000 income = $3,500/$10,500
$175,000 income = $4,100/$12,300
$200,000 income = $4,700/$14,100

Over $200,000 = the cost of a “bronze” health-insurance plan (which are or will be running $4,500-$5,000 per person/$12,000-$12,500 per family).
With the average family insurance plan costing almost or in some cases more than $1000 a month and deductibles of $5000-$12000, even that $200,000 earner is facing $14,100 in fines or a minimum of $17,000-$24,000 out of premium/out-of-pocket. Even the low end of the spectrum is still facing the $17,000/$24,000 scenario if insured or the extra $2k+ fine (which is an extra $174 a month). Oh, and those “subsidies”? Forget it if you are middle class. You don’t qualify.

So you have that kind of extra money in your monthly budget? Obamacare will be the final straw that makes the middle class disappear into poverty … and maybe that was the plan all along.

Image: Courtesy of http://www.correntewire.com/blog/riggsveda


Read more at http://clashdaily.com/2013/10/breaki...2qJ6CZSGyjo.99

SPANK YOU VERY MUCH: Sen. Landrieu(D) Claims Dems Promise You Could “Keep Your Insurance” Only Applied To “Good Insurance”

By Clash Daily / 30 October 2013









As he stepped off an escalator leading from the Capitol’s underground subway system to the U.S. Senate, Ron Johnson opened up a yellow folder, pulled out a copy of the “If You Like Your Health Plan, You Can Keep It Act,” and handed it to fellow senator Chris Coons.

“I look forward to reading this,” said Coons, a Democrat from Delaware.

“It’s the president’s exact language,” replied Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin.

Johnson was, of course, referring to President Obama’s pledge that Americans who like their health insurance could keep it under Obamacare, a pledge that has proven untrue for millions of Americans who are losing their current insurance policies because they don’t comply with Obamacare.

As Johnson and Coons entered a senators-only elevator, the Democrat was asked by THE WEEKLY STANDARD if Americans should be able to keep the plans they had in 2013. Coons shrugged his shoulders a little bit, while Johson enthusiastically responded, “Absolutely!”

Johnson’s bill, which will be introduced on Wednesday, could put Democrats in a tough spot. Asked Tuesday to explain the news that millions of Americans were losing their insurance policies, contrary to the president’s promise, Senate Democrats responded with a mixture of denials, evasions, and historical revisionism. Nearly all refused to say if they opposed Johnson’s bill.

Read more: weeklystandard.com


Read more at http://clashdaily.com/2013/10/spank-...qtuXcqrkcMu.99