Thread: The Future of Obamacare

There’s TROUBLE right here in River City

Posted by Michael Becker on Apr 23, 2014

River City being the city by the Potomac, Washington DC, and “trouble,” at least for the Democrats, is two words. They start with “O” and “D” and they’re “ObamaCare” and “Denial.” Realistically, you could throw in another “O,” that being “Obama.”

Enter to win the Family Gun Package Giveaway!

There’s a new poll out from the YG Network that’s not a good indicator if you’re a Democrat.

The poll found that 59 percent of independents and 55 percent of undecideds in the battleground districts disapprove of the president’s performance. Additionally, just 45 percent of those aged 18-44 and 46 percent of Hispanics in battlegrounds approve of Obama’s performance.

The President keeps talking about 8 million “enrollments” as a measure of success, they aren’t talking about how many people actually have paid the premiums or what the age distribution of the actual insured is.

They’re also doing nothing to assuage the real fear that people have with respect to their doctor and hospital will be.

In those same battleground districts where President Obama looks to be an anchor for any Democrat, ObamaCare’s numbers are even worse.

ObamaCare has a 39% approval rate and a 56% disapproval rate. In other words, there’s not likely to be a groundswell of voters showing up to make sure the racist Republicans who hate womyn and the poor don’t mess with their healthcare. There’s more likely to be a groundswell of people showing up who are tired of Democrats telling them how to run their lives and spend their money.

One-third of the poll’s respondents are concerned that they will see changes for the worse in their health insurance or will lose it altogether. Keep that in mind as late summer approaches and the state insurance commissioners announce the new rates for 2015 and businesses start announcing changes and price increases to their large group plans.

Republicans, and especially conservatives, can’t take anything for granted with this upcoming election. Democrats are good at getting out the vote and they’ve still got a very bitter taste left over from the Tea Party sweeps in 2010. They will do absolutely anything to hold the Senate. Absolutely anything.

Desperation breeds contempt and there’s never been a political group that is more desperate or holds more contempt for both the US Constitution and the American voter than Barack Obama’s Democrats.

It’s time to get involved. As the height of campaign season rolls around, candidates will be looking for help, and more than just money. You can be involved in a district where your help can make a difference. For instance, campaigns routinely have the technology to make calls to prospective voters from your couch. They provide the technology, the names, and the script. All you have to do is donate a couple hours out of your day to inform people and get them motivated to go to the polls.

Start planning now to make a difference

Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2014/04/the...zPhye7xRTm7.99

Report: Nevada Obamacare exchange considered dumping all customers

Sarah Hurtubise 1 hour ago

Nevada's Obamacare exchange and its lead contractor Xerox allegedly discussed dumping sign-ups from its queue and starting over while dealing with serious website glitches, according to documents released Wednesday.

video at link below

Matthew Callister, an attorney who has filed a class-action lawsuit against the exchange, released anonymous emails allegedly from a Nevada Health Link employee.

Callister took the opportunity to ask the author of the documents to come forward publicly, but in the meantime plans to use the emails as a guide for discovery during the lawsuit.

The documents allege that on November 8 and 9 last year, Xerox officials and former exchange director Jonathan Hager met regarding the website's technical problems and discussing cancelling all applications from that time on and asking customers to sign up all over again.
The proposed cancellations would also affect customers who had already paid their first premiums, the Las Vegas Review Journal reports.
By clearing out all enrollees, the exchange would have been able to rid itself of corrupted files that contained inaccurate information.

Nevada's exchange has continued to struggle with serious website glitches throughout the first enrollment period. Customers have struggled with a system that sometimes fails to communicate new coverage to the insurer, incorrect effective dates for insurance, and technical glitches on the consumer-facing side of the website as well.

One glitch kept multiple sets of records from being reconciled with Social Security numbers, according to Callister's documents. Tax credits "were all miscalculated…and not enough money was paid on the premiums," according to the letter.
Customer Larry Basich of Las Vegas, paid several months premiums for his health exchange insurance plan before suffering a heart attack and receiving $407,000 worth of care — only to have his bills denied by an insurer who was told the policy wouldn't be effective until months later.
Basich is one of Callister's original plaintiffs, and has been joined by over close to 60 exchange customers. After several months of negotiations the Health Plan of Nevada agreed to cover Basich's bills, the Review Journal reports.

Source
Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook, Google Plus, Tea Party Community & Twitter.
You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here.

Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/04/re...mIWkjbuBhGL.99

How to fix the health care system
The bottom line



Your health is in your hands
Jeff Novick used to use his scientific training in the service of the processed food industry. Then as he began to learn more about health and the effect of food on health he did a rapid about face.

How do we fix the medical-industrial complex?

How do we keep it from ruining so many lives and bankrupting the nation? How do we stop it from causing so much needless suffering? How to stop it from prematurely ending so many lives and crippling many others?

I'm inclined to agree with Novick.

The level of institutionally entrenched waste, incompetence, corruption and in some cases malevolence has reached such a level, it may be unfixable.

But that doesn't mean you and the people you love have to go down with the ship.

Take advantage of the videos on TheRealFoodChannel.com and share them with your friends, neighbors and loved ones.

There's a positive revolution going on and you can not only become part of it, but also be one the the beneficiaries.

Your health is in your hands and is not dependent on the good will of the government of the medical-industrial complex.

The US healthcare system is a sham.

Even what we call prevention is
nonsense.

However, we can take personal
responsibility for our health and
take steps toward REAL prevention.

Video (2:55):

http://www.therealfoodchannel.com/page/13.html

- Ken McCarthy
The Real Food Channel

P.S. Please share Real Food Channel
videos with your friends, family and
colleagues.

Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/realfoodchannel

That's how we grow. Thanks.Your health is in your hands

Politics

Democrats Confront Vexing Politics Over the Health Care Law

By JONATHAN MARTINAPRIL 19, 2014



Photo

Agents with a health care group helped people at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta sign up for insurance before the deadline. Credit Virginie Drujon-Kippelen for The New York Times


ATLANTA — When Franklin D. Roosevelt established Social Security, he created generations of loyal Democrats. When Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law, he built on that legacy, particularly with older Americans. And when George W. Bush instituted a new prescription drug benefit for Medicare, it helped reclaim elderly voters for Republicans.

But President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the $1.4 trillion effort to extend health insurance to all Americans, is challenging the traditional calculus about government benefits and political impact.
Even as Mr. Obama announced that eight million Americans had enrolled in the program and urged Democrats to embrace the law, those in his party are running from it rather than on it, while Republicans are prospering by demanding its repeal.

The reasons are complex and layered in the early assessments, but say much about the nation’s political polarization, its shifting fault lines of class and race, and a diminished faith in government.

Democrats could ultimately see some political benefit from the law. But in this midterm election, they are confronting a vexing reality: Many of those helped by the health care law — notably young people and minorities — are the least likely to cast votes that could preserve it, even though millions have gained health insurance and millions more will benefit from some of its popular provisions.
“The angry opponents are more mobilized than the beneficiaries,” said David Axelrod, the longtime adviser to Mr. Obama.

Young adults and minorities tend to vote in midterms at lower rates than older and white voters. And a poll by the Pew Research Center and USA Today found that more Republicans than Democrats will be influenced by a candidate’s stance on the health law.

As of last month, about 140,000 Georgians had signed up for coverage through the law’s exchanges, and about 28 percent of those were ages 18 to 34. Of the uninsured population in the state, 47 percent are white, 37 percent black, 10 percent Hispanic and 4 percent Asian, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Turnout among blacks in the state, who make up 30 percent of the registered voters, typically drops by about five percentage points in a midterm election, when the gap in black and white voter participation widens.

Increasing turnout beyond what is typical in nonpresidential years is particularly crucial to Democrats’ hopes here. But two Democratic scions in Georgia, Jason Carter, the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, who is running for governor, and Michelle Nunn, the daughter of former Senator Sam Nunn, a candidate for the Senate, are not invoking the health law as a way to stoke voter energy.

They have spoken in public about the law mostly to criticize it, did nothing to promote enrollment for insurance before last month’s deadline and declined interviews to even discuss the law. In a state where nearly 1.8 million people still lack medical insurance, the word “health” can scarcely be found on either candidate’s webpage.

Across the country, many Democrats have made the calculation that embracing the law offers more risk than reward.

The architecture of the law almost ensured this outcome. To win over centrist Democrats, the administration proposed a complicated, market-based overhaul that was undergirded politically by Mr. Obama’s promise that individuals could keep their existing health plans.

“It was sold as small, minor change because of the need to pass it through Congress and assure the vast majority of people that it wouldn’t disturb their existing health insurance,” said Stanley B. Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. “But why defend it, why mobilize behind it if it’s just small change?”

Mr. Obama’s loyalists say a broad-based, “single-payer” system was never politically feasible, and yet it was the lack of universality that made it easier for Republicans to portray it as an income transfer program from the better-off to the poor.

“I think it is viewed more as a social welfare program than a social insurance program, but that’s not right because it is social insurance,” Mr. Axelrod said.

That contrasts sharply with Medicare and Social Security, which remain popular because almost everyone who benefits paid something into the system. “That was done because it sat better with the American cultural idea of self-reliance,” said David M. Kennedy, a Stanford University historian.

In addition, Republicans argued effectively that the law was changing the status quo, affecting people who already had private health insurance, said Representative David E. Price, Democrat of North Carolina.

“There was an ability to exploit the unknown, to exploit the fear of people losing something that they have,” said Mr. Price, a political scientist. “That wasn’t true with Social Security and Medicare.”

The focus on the law’s expansion of coverage for those of modest means has also overshadowed popular, more broadly enjoyed benefits like allowing parents to keep their children on their plans until they are 26 and barring insurance companies from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

“This is where the communications failure has been so problematic,” said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, one of the law’s architects. “We haven’t really alerted Americans to the fact that there is much more to this than the exchanges that’s going to be really, really positive for all of us, not just those getting insurance.”

That view has not taken hold, especially among white voters who see the law as an act of government redistribution to the 15 percent of the population that is uninsured. In a New York Times/CBS News poll in December, just 17 percent of whites said the health law would help them while 41 percent said it would hurt; among blacks, 42 percent said it would help them while 15 percent predicted it would hurt. Four in 10 whites and blacks said it would have no effect on them.

This divide was easy to detect in Atlanta, where symbols of ethnic diversity abound — the city’s hip new barbecue restaurant, Sweet Auburn, is named after Atlanta’s historically black neighborhood and owned by a Chinese-American — but reminders of old divisions are just as evident.

Judy McDaniel said outside an enrollment event that she had “mixed feelings” even after her 42-year-old son was finally about to sign up for health insurance under the law. “I’ve been lucky enough in my career to afford my own insurance, and I’m not sure how I feel about supporting others,” said Ms. McDaniel, who is white and said she had voted against Mr. Obama.

At Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. served as pastor, black health insurance professionals signing up people on the final enrollment day predicted that the law would become more popular once it was less infused with politics.

“It’s going to happen when Obama is no longer the president,” Harold Hardee said. “You try taking Medicare away from folks now and they fight you.”
But when Medicare was passed in 1965, Americans had more faith in the federal government. Just 2 percent of those surveyed in a recent Quinnipiac Poll said they trusted Washington to do what is right almost all the time.

“In the ’60s, we felt like we could do anything,” recalled Joseph A. Califano Jr., a top domestic aide to Johnson. “We could feed the hungry, cure disease and clean the air. Now there’s just a lot more skepticism.”

Conservatives say that skepticism is well founded. “Systems that would have worked 30 years ago don’t work now,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker. “Outside the military and air traffic control, tell me a large bureaucracy that functions. It’s not that the country has changed. It’s that the country’s experience with systems has changed.”

This indifference was readily apparent on a recent morning at Octane, an Atlanta coffee shop filled with younger customers. As they sipped $4.60 lattes, several in their 20s said that they were supportive of the health law but that it would not have much bearing on their vote — if they voted at all.

Michael Martell, 26, a student teacher in North Carolina visiting a friend, said he had learned how vital it was to have health care from living in Spain. But as of now he is not eligible to vote in North Carolina’s pivotal Senate race because he is still registered in his native Illinois.

“I’m not really tied down to a single community, which makes it harder to be involved in politics,” he said.

Democrats say opinions of the law are destined to improve over time.

“There’s the reality of the program and the popular perception of it, and the more the perception aligns with reality the more you’ll see Democrats embrace it,” said Stacey Abrams, a Democrat and the minority leader of the Georgia House. But, she acknowledged, “we’re not there yet.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/us...ry-continues-5


Has anyone out there bothered to read the 2200 pages, and forget the changes the "man who would be king" has added to them???

Of course not!!!! What about the exemptions for friends and family??? The politicians, exempted!! The list goes on and on!!!!!!

You bet were not there yet because it has nothing to do with healthcare but all to do with control of you and yours from the cradle to the grave. If was so good why hasn't it been embraced by everyone, if it is good why do they need to force it on us???

If it was just healthcare for every American citizen it would be one thing but it isn't!!!

Senators Denounce Obama for Threatening 'Entire Constitutional System' By 'Nullifying' Immigration Laws

video at link below
On Thursday, 22 Republican senators, including even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), denounced President Barack Obama in a scathing letter for threatening America's "entire constitutional system" with his immigration "enforcement review" that threatens to "nullify" the nation's immigration laws.


"Your actions demonstrate an astonishing disregard for the Constitution, the rule of law, and the rights of American citizens and legal residents," the senators wrote in a letter to Obama. "Our entire constitutional system is threatened when the Executive Branch suspends the law at its whim and our nation’s sovereignty is imperiled when the commander-in-chief refuses to defend the integrity of its borders."
After intense pressure from pro-amnesty groups who fear that amnesty legislation will not pass this year, Obama's Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson met with advocacy groups last month to reportedly consider administrative actions--such as granting more forms of amnesty, not deporting illegal immigrants who have not committed "major" crimes, and allowing bond hearings for illegal immigrants--to further erode the nation's laws. The senators said they had "grave concerns" with these potential actions because they "would represent a near complete abandonment of basic immigration enforcement and discard the rule of law and the notion that the United States has enforceable borders."
"These policies have operated as an effective repeal of duly enacted federal immigration laws and exceed the bounds of the Executive Branch’s prosecutorial discretion," the senators wrote. "It is not the province of the Executive to nullify the laws that the people of the United States, through their elected representatives, have chosen to enact. Congress has not passed laws permitting people to illegally enter the country or to ignore their visa expiration dates, so long as they do not have a felony conviction or other severe offense on their record."
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who also signed the letter and has relentlessly debunked the notion that Obama is the so-called "deporter in chief," told Breitbart News that Obama's immigration policies also further hollow out the Middle Class that has been found to no longer be the world's wealthiest and hurt Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder Obama claims he wants to help.
"The Administration’s immigration policies are widening the income gap the White House claims it wishes to narrow," Sessions told Breitbart News. "American workers have a right to the protections our immigration laws afford, but the Administration has nullified those protections while simultaneously pushing to double the flow of future guest workers into the United States. These policies make it more difficult for the working poor of all backgrounds to rise into the middle class.”
He also said that even though "evidence proves that the Administration has collapsed immigration enforcement," with the result that "millions of struggling Americans have been deprived of their jobs and incomes," Congressional Democrats "continue to empower the illegality and stonewall all efforts to stop it.”
"Congress must work to end the lawlessness and restore constitutional order," he said.
The letter also cites figures from the administration's Immigration and Customs Enforcement revealing that in 2013, "nearly all individuals removed from the United States were convicted criminals and recent border crossers." It also mentions a Los Angeles Times report that found that "since 2009, there has been a 40% decline in removals of individuals living and working in the interior of the country."
The senators also cited the testimony to Congress from Chris Crane, President of the National ICE Council, who said the Obama administration is not only handcuffing ICE agents but also taking "disciplinary actions against its own officers for making lawful arrests, it appears clear that Federal law enforcement officers are the enemy and not those that break our Nation’s laws.”
Sessions also noted to Breitbart News that net immigration levels have quadrupled over the last 40 years and cited Harvard Professor Dr. George Borjas, who has found high levels illegal and legal immigration from 1980–2000 have "resulted in a 7.4% wage reduction for American workers without a high school diploma."
"Currently, more than 1 in 4 Americans without a high school diploma is unemployed, underemployed, or marginally attached to the workforce," he said. "Research from Dr. Borjas also demonstrates that American workers competing each year with immigrant labor lose approximately $400 billion in wages."
The senators wrote that the Obama should not look for new ways to weaken immigration laws, especially since his administration has since 2009:

...issued policy directives and memoranda incrementally nullifying immigration enforcement in the interior of the United States – to the point that unless individuals in the country illegally are apprehended, tried, and convicted for a felony or other serious offense, they are free to live and work in the country.

"You swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," they wrote. "We therefore ask you to uphold that oath and to carry out the duties required by the Constitution and entrusted to you by the American people."
Those who signed the letter include: Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, McConnell, Sessions, Richard Shelby (R-AL), Mike Lee (R-UT), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Mike Johanns (R-NE), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), John Boozman (R-AK), David Vitter (R-LA), Jim Risch (R-ID), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Tim Scott (R-SC), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Ted Cruz (R-TX), John Hoeven (R-ND).
Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) were the GOP senators on the Judiciary Committee who did not sign the letter.

---

Email Article Print article Send a Tip


by Tony Lee 24 Apr 2014 2205 post a comment

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...&utm_term=More


Let see what develops after all elections are coming up!!!!

The scam of the century

"We'll find out what's in it after we pass it"
The "story" of Obamacare






This will be interesting
It's one thing...

To give weapons to Mexican drug dealers - and then lose track of them...

To wage illegal wars and kill innocent people, including many children...

To give Wall Street scam artists trillions of dollars to bail out their reckless gambles...

I wonder how Americans are going to react when they realize that their insurance costs will double, triple, quadruple and more; that their deductibles are going to grow five to ten times; and that insurance companies will now have the right to "ration" care?

All this after they were told that Obamacare was going to "fix" the health care system in America.

Will this finally get through to them?

There have been a lot of
incredible scams in the last
100 years.

This one has a good chance to make
it to the #1 slot.

Video:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/25279.html

- Brasscheck

P.S. Please share Brasscheck TV e-mails and
videos with friends and colleagues.

That's how we grow. Thanks.

Cruz’s “Repeal Obamacare” vs. Rodgers’ “Keep and Reform It” vs. Option 3

Posted By Chris Graham on Apr 28, 2014


When it comes to handling Obamacare, there are, as I see it, three different approaches that different Republicans favor.

The first is the Tea Party conservatives’ favorite, and unfortunately it’s the most unrealistic: full repeal. But that’s never going to happen as long as the Senate remains in Democratic hands and the President remains a Democrat. The politicians who keep going on about repealing the law are just trying to buy your vote. They know the reality of it (one would hope), but they have to energize their base if they want to remain in power.

The second approach goes like this: “Obamacare is here to stay, so let’s make it work.” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers is one Republican who subscribes to this method. “We need to look at reforming the exchanges,” she said, since repeal of the law is unlikely.

While I appreciate Rodgers’ acknowledgment of the reality that Obamacare can’t be repealed anytime soon, I reject her defeatist response to that reality.

Acknowledging that Obamacare is here to say, at least for now, is not defeatist, despite what Sen. Ted Cruz or his like say; rather, it is solidly grounding yourself in reality so that you can strategize realistically. No progress in the actual, non-liberal sense can be made by living a fantasy. What is defeatist, however, is to accommodate the law, as Rodgers and others suggest we do.

What good can come about from reforming the health-care exchanges? What do we expect will happen by making the exchanges work smoothly? Does Rodgers not realize that if they are “fixed,” people will like Obamacare and never want to give it up?

This brings me to the third approach, which some shortsighted people would view as defeatist and which others are terrified of: Acknowledging the reality that Obamacare can’t be repealed right now, and not reforming the exchanges. In other words, let Obamacare do the damage that it’s going to do; let people lose their health insurance; let their personal information be hacked through the insecure websites, as has been happening. Thus will Obamacare damage itself. This is not defeatist; on the contrary, it is the bravest and most powerful way to fight back and tear this program down. On top of that, it is the one method that distances Republicans from the program entirely. How can they ever possibly be blamed if they have nothing to do with its operation at all?

Democrats want to fix the exchanges because they know that those exchanges (and, by extension, Obamacare as a whole) are Obamacare’s own worst enemy. So why should we want to help Democrats fix those exchanges? Why should we want to help Democrats make Obamacare more likeable?

Obamacare is already working against itself. Unfortunately there are unthinking Republicans out there who just blurt out reckless bumper-sticker phrases without any semblance of a strategy (Cruz, radio host Mark Levin, etc.), who want to repeal the law now, thus protecting Obamacare and socialized medicine from self-destructing even further in public opinion; and there are other Republicans who want to let Obamacare stay but reform the exchanges (Rodgers), thus, still, protecting Obamacare and socialized medicine from self-destructing even further in public opinion. What good is it to have Tea Partiers oppose RINOs if the policies of both have the same exact effect? Both the Tea Party and the RINOs have plans that would effectively prevent damage not just to Obamacare specifically, but prevent damage to the entire notion that socialized medicine can work.

Be smart, be strategic—ditch the RINOs, ditch the Tea Party, and support the third approach to Obamacare.

Read more at http://lastresistance.com/5561/cruzs...pRSDDl32qo2.99

States That Opposed Obamacare Spent The Least Per Person On Enrollment




Sarah Hurtubise 16 hours ago

The five states that managed to keep Obamacare enrollment costs the lowest per person were actually among those that most strongly opposed the health care law, according to a new report.

“The five states with their lowest cost-per-enrollee are all states whose governors and/or legislatures have resisted the ACA, and whose Attorneys-General challenged the constitutionality of the ACA,” wrote Jay Angoff, a former Health and Human Services official who worked under outgoing secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Florida, Texas, Georgia, Virginia and Michigan produced the five lowest enrollment costs per sign-up, according to Angoff’s report for Washington, D.C. law firm Mehri and Skalet.

When the states’ sign-up numbers were compared to HHS’ total spending on the exchange itself, Florida had the lowest cost at $76 per sign-up. Texas came to $102 per person; Georgia, $240 per person; Virginia, $376 per person; and Michigan at $427 per person.”

Meanwhile, the top five exchanges with the highest totals per sign-up included three Obamacare supporters and two that opposed it. The top two most expensive exchanges, Hawaii and Washington, D.C., have leaders which support the health care law.

The whopping total that Health and Human Services spent creating the exchanges came out to almost $7.4 billion. About half of that went to just 14 state exchanges and Washington, D.C. — the total for all state-run marketplaces was $3.87 billion. The federally-run exchanges, covering 36 states, cost $3.52 billion to build and begin enrollment.

While state-run exchanges have been drastically more costly per state, a good number of them are failing entirely. Oregon has already opted to give up on its state-run exchange and allow the federal government to run the Obamacare program through HealthCare.gov instead. HHS spent $303 million on Oregon’s exchange by itself, bringing it to a total of $4,419 per sign-up.

Massachusetts has also given up on its exchange — which previously functioned just fine under Romneycare — hoping to create a new state-run program, with the possibility of jumping onto HealthCare.gov if it isn’t ready in time for the next open enrollment period.

Even Massachusetts, though, with its health care exchange expertise, spent $5,681 per person to sign up 31,695 people for coverage. The state received $180 million from HHS to make its Romneycare exchange Obamacare-compliant.

Hawaii’s exchange, which along with Massachusetts, Oregon and Maryland has been in the top five worst state exchanges, cost by far the most, coming in at a whopping $23,899 per person.

Washington, D.C.’s exchange had the next highest per-enrollment costs at $12,467 per sign-up. Unsurprisingly, the District approved this week a tax on all health insurers operating in the city to pay for its struggling exchange.

The most cost-efficient exchanges were all run through HealthCare.gov, a sign of their opposition to the health care law. A possibility for their success could be lower spending on extras that failed to help people sign-up for coverage.

Source
Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook, Google Plus, Tea Party Community & Twitter.

Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/05/st...lCJF8YP4Db7.99

20 Million More Healthcare Plans to be Cancelled Due to Obamacare

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Dave Jolly

Remember President Barack Obama telling Americans over and over that if they liked their current healthcare plans that they can keep them? Remember when Obamacare kicked in last October and 6 million Americans had their plans cancelled because of Obamacare? Remember when President Barack Obama stepped in and told the insurance companies to stop cancelling plans and then gave an extension for it all to be worked out?

First off, it couldn’t be worked out because the insurance companies had already spent millions of dollars re-tooling their industry to meet Obamacare requirements. The 6 million cancelled plans failed to meet Obamacare guidelines and to re-instate them would have cost the insurance industry millions more dollars to re-tool their systems again.

Secondly, the grandfather clause in Obamacare was intentionally written to make it impossible for Americans to grandfather their existing policies into our new socialist medical system. Dr. David Hogberg, a healthcare policy analyst for the National Center for Public Policy Research explained:

“If you had your plan prior to March 2010 when Obamacare became law, it was supposed to be grandfathered in. You were supposed to keep it, but the Department of Labor came out with these grandfather regulations. It’s almost like telling a guy you can keep walking on the beach as long as you don’t get any sand on your feet. It’s almost impossible not to violate.”

But what’s going to happen when Obama’s illegal extension ends?

According to some experts, up to 20 million private healthcare policies will be cancelled for failing to meet the Obamacare guidelines. Obamacare established minimum requirements for all healthcare plans offered by the insurance companies and it is estimated that up to 20 million existing polices still fail to meet those minimum requirements.

A number of insurance company executives were summoned before the House Energy and Commerce Committee this week to be grilled on the 6 million previous cancellations. Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) asked them whose fault was it for the cancellation notices that were sent out last year. Gardner’s website posted the following response:

“The witnesses confirmed that these [previous] cancellation notices were sent out due to the president’s healthcare law. It was also disclosed that millions more Americans will see their plans canceled when the president’s healthcare law is fully enforced.”

He then asked the executives how many plans they still offer that fail to meet Obamacare standards. Only one executive, representing Blue Cross Blue Shield answered, telling him about 3.2 million. The other insurance leaders said they would have to do some research to find out. If that’s an average figure for each of the companies represented before the hearing, the number of polices that fail to meet Obamacare’s minimum requirements easily reaches 20 million, possibly more.

That means that when the extension runs out, the insurance companies will have no option but to mail out around 20 million cancellations. Add those to the 6 million already cancelled and to the 18 million Americans that were previously uninsured then subtract Obama’s bogus figure of 8 million enrollees and you end up with 36 million uninsured Americans. That’s twice the number of uninsured Americans prior to Obamacare.

This is the success that Obama and Pelosi are proud of. No wonder our country is going down the toilet under their leadership!

Read more at http://godfatherpolitics.com/15505/2...xRiW3wAqUM4.99

ObamaCare Workers Paid to do Nothing: Surprised?

Posted by Rodney Lee Conover on May 15, 2014

A former employee at an Affordable Care Act processing center in Missouri recalls having nothing, or so little work to do that she played board games while some co-workers slept.

Enter to win the Family Gun Package Giveaway!

Lavonne Takatz, 42, worked at the center in Wentzville from October to April.

“We played Pictionary. We played 20 Questions. We played Trivial Pursuit,” she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Wednesday.

Such allegations have spurred members of Missouri’s congressional delegation to call for investigations of the taxpayer-funded center in Wentzville, one of three nationally that are contracted to process paper applications for the new health-care law.

The federal government, under the auspices of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, gave a five-year, $1.2 billion contract last year to Serco Inc., a processing and security group, to process paper applications for health insurance from the 36 states with federal health insurance exchanges.

Though most sign-ups for insurance under the new marketplace were to be made online, officials at the time estimated that a third of the 20 million people expected to apply would submit paper applications.

Allegations that employees were doing little or no work, first reported by KMOV (Channel 4) on Monday, drew a flurry of responses from Missouri’s delegation Wednesday.

Takatz, who lives in Wentzville, said she originally took the job to help people obtain health care.

“I feel guilty for working there as long as I did,” she said. “It was like I was stealing money from people.”

Takatz said that when she and other employees looked for applications to process, they called it fishing because they were trying to catch an application before someone at another processing center could.

Employees refreshed their pages so frequently that Serco limited them to one refresh per 10 minutes. If workers refreshed more than that, they were called into a supervisor’s office and told to stop.

In the whole month of December, she said, she processed about six applications.

Workers became so bored and hostile, Takatz claims, that Serco began providing books to read. Employees were told they could not speak to the media, even if they left the company.
continue reading..


Workers at Wentzille Obamacare center played board games, ex-employee says

A former employee at an Affordable Care Act processing center in Wentzville recalls having so little work to do that she played board games while some co-workers slept.

Lavonne Takatz, 42, worked at the center in Wentzville from October to April.
“We played Pictionary. We played 20 Questions. We played Trivial Pursuit,” she told the Post-Dispatch Wednesday.
Such allegations have spurred members of Missouri’s congressional delegation to call for investigations of the taxpayer-funded center in Wentzville, one of three nationally that are contracted to process paper applications for the new health-care law.
The federal government, under the auspices of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, gave a five-year, $1.2 billion contract last year to Serco Inc., a processing and security group, to process paper applications for health insurance from the 36 states with federal health insurance exchanges.
Though most sign-ups for insurance under the new marketplace were to be made online, officials at the time estimated that a third of the 20 million people expected to apply would submit paper applications.
Allegations that employees were doing little or no work, first reported by KMOV (Channel 4) on Monday, drew a flurry of responses from Missouri’s delegation Wednesday.
Takatz, who lives in Wentzville, said she originally took the job to help people obtain health care.
“I feel guilty for working there as long as I did,” she said. “It was like I was stealing money from people.”
Takatz said that when she and other employees looked for applications to process, they called it fishing because they were trying to catch an application before someone at another processing center could.
Employees refreshed their pages so frequently that Serco limited them to one refresh per 10 minutes. If workers refreshed more than that, they were called into a supervisor’s office and told to stop.
In the whole month of December, she said, she processed about six applications.
Workers became so bored and hostile, Takatz claims, that Serco began providing books to read. Employees were told they could not speak to the media, even if they left the company.
“It was prison,” Takatz said. “We all referred to it as our cell blocks.”
U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-St. Elizabeth, is writing a letter to Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, “seeking answers to some of the disturbing allegations that have surfaced,” Luetkemeyer’s spokesman Paul Sloca said late Wednesday.
Luetkemeyer, whose district includes Wentzville, “is talking with all relevant (congressional) committees of jurisdiction to discuss whether or not an investigation is warranted,” Sloca added.
In addition, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., has co-authored a letter with Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, asking Tavenner to respond to a dozen questions about the allegations.
“We are concerned Serco may have much less work than was expected when CMS awarded the contract, and may not be successfully completing the applications it has received,” the letter said.
And Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., was “putting together a formal action to get to the bottom of it,” her spokesman, John LaBombard, said Wednesday evening, details of which were still being considered.
Serco, based in Reston, Va., directed media inquiries to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid. A spokesman for that agency said the Wentzville workers process paper applications, verify information, resolve conflicts of information and call consumers to obtain missing information or documents. CMS stated Wednesday that Serco employees were still receiving mail to process and working with customers, but CMS regularly reviews and makes adjustments to the center’s staffing levels.
A CMS spokesman said CMS was committed to ensuring federal funds were spent appropriately and performance expectations were “clear and monitored closely.”
“We are confident that the balance is appropriate,” the spokesman wrote in an email.
Efforts to speak to Serco employees outside the building Wednesday evening were unsuccessful.
Serco won the federal contract in July and selected Wentzville as one of three sites to carry it out. The others are in Arkansas and Kentucky.
A benefits and compensation manager with Serco told the Post-Dispatch in August that St. Louis was picked because of its growth potential and high number of college graduates.
The company moved operations to the old US Fidelis call center in Wentzville that month. In September, thousands of hopefuls showed up for job interviews at the center. Serco hired 790 people at a pay rate between $14 and $27 an hour with health insurance and a 401(k). According to CMS, the center now has 660 employees.
In October, the Arkansas processing center announced it would hire as many as 800 workers.
Serco’s parent company, Serco Group, is under fraud investigation in the United Kingdom for monitoring inactive criminals, according to reports.
Blunt’s letter makes reference to that allegation.
“CMS awarded Serco a contract despite the fact that Serco’s parent company, Serco Group plc, was placed under firm review in July 2013 after a British government audit found the company was charging for services it did not provide,” the letter says. “The probe by Britain’s chief procurement officer should raise more questions about Serco’s effort to implement Obamacare.”
The federal health care law has been controversial since before its passage, and a troubled rollout, caused by crashing computer systems supporting Healthcare.gov, dominated headlines for much of the winter. The White House has focused on more than 8 million sign-ups, citing that as proof the law is working.
These new allegations about the facility in Wentzville are already being viewed through that partisan prism.
In a news release Wednesday, Luetkemeyer said that “the implementation of Obamacare has been an absolute disaster from the very beginning, and I am extremely disturbed by these new allegations.”
But McCaskill’s spokesman said these new allegations should not take away from what the law is intended to do.
“Claire’s a strong supporter of the Affordable Care Act, and is encouraged at the good it’s already doing to slow the rise in costs, and make insurance affordable for millions,” LaBombard said in an e-mail. “That said, these allegations are serious — and if true, completely unacceptable.”
Chuck Raasch reported from Washington.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/special-reports/mohealth/report-taxpayer-dollars-pay-wentzville-obamacare-employees-to-do-nothing/article_9a84cbdd-f2ee-5961-98cd-7d24dc5b08eb.html

Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2014/05/oba...SfpFbTs6uDE.99