The Affordable Care Act is Coming Home to Roost

[B-Man]

The Obamacare whiners

 

by Rich Lowrey

Henry Waxman made a plea at the end of Wednesday’s House hearing grilling of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The California Democrat and liberal lion asked Republicans to reach across the aisle to work with Democrats to improve Obamacare.

Yes, Henry Waxman, who has made a career of ideological witch hunts and smash-mouth partisanship, wants a cease-fire over Obamacare, or so he says.

Waxman was picking up a common liberal theme: It’s not fair that Republicans continue to oppose the president’s eponymous health care law and pick at its failures, deceits and irrationalities. If only they were more reasonable, Obamacare could be tightened up around the edges with a few technocratic fixes and go on to its glorious destiny.

It’s a little late to get or expect any Republican buy-in, though. That would have required serious compromise back in 2009, when Democrats, at the high tide of their power in the Obama era, saw no reason to make any. They ignored the polls, they ignored Scott Brown’s shocking win in Massachusetts, and they ignored normal parliamentary practices to pass the single most partisan piece of major social legislation in a century.

They insisted on this particular law, at this particular time. They own it. They own every canceled policy, every rate increase, every unintended consequence and every unpopular intended consequence. It is theirs, lock, stock and two smoking barrels.

But they can’t stop whining.

 

{snip}

 

In a characteristically graceless note, in his health care speech in Boston Wednesday President Obama didn’t say anything about how his prior declarations had been misleading, at best. Instead, he tweaked his dishonesty for a different positive spin: “For the fewer than 5 percent of Americans who buy insurance on your own, you will be getting a better deal.” Not if they are forced — as many of them will be — to buy benefits they don’t need at a price they don’t want to pay.

 

From the beginning, Obamacare has depended on a political ethic of doing and saying whatever is necessary. The falsehood about people keeping their coverage was essential to selling the legislation. So the president repeated it relentlessly. Now that actually allowing people keep their current coverage would undermine a pillar of the law, the president will resist all efforts to make good on his famous promise.

 

Whatever it takes.

 

Near the end of his Boston remarks, the president said, “Both parties working together to get the job done, that’s what we need in Washington right now … You know, if Republicans in Congress were as eager to help Americans get covered as some Republican governors have shown themselves to be, we’d make a lot of progress.”

 

Is that how we’d make a lot of progress? The president got his law and it’s possible more people will be uninsured in 2014 than if it had never passed. That’s on him, no matter how much he and his supporters want to evade responsibility for their own achievement.

 

Read more: http://www.politico....l#ixzz2jK7YIzA2

[IDBillzFan]

http://finance.yahoo...-152316725.html

 

 

 

What's a measly 5% anyway.

 

This is the new argument the WH is releasing. I heard Juan WIlliams get his WH invitation stamped yesterday on Special Report for making the same comment. Don't think of it as 15 million people. Think of it as 5%, which is very small relative to 100%.

 

Progressives all around have to be standing around saying "Well, this was fun while it lasted. The gig is up. Everyone run for the middle!"

 

PS...this doesn't sound any better while hearing it from a person wearing that stupid wig. I freaking HATE Halloween day.

[DC Tom]

The Obamacare whiners

 

by Rich Lowrey

 

Henry Waxman made a plea at the end of Wednesday’s House hearing grilling of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The California Democrat and liberal lion asked Republicans to reach across the aisle to work with Democrats to improve Obamacare.

 

 

Hey Henry, remember "We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don't mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back?"

 

Yeah, good luck with that. No one's reaching across the aisle. If you're REALLY lucky, maybe they'll reach over the seat back and give you a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

[IDBillzFan]

Hey Henry, remember "We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don't mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back?"

 

Yeah, good luck with that. No one's reaching across the aisle. If you're REALLY lucky, maybe they'll reach over the seat back and give you a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

 

INCONCEIVABLE!!!

 

(Sorry. That's all I ever hear when I see Waxman's disgusting mug.)

[DC Tom]

INCONCEIVABLE!!!

 

(Sorry. That's all I ever hear when I see Waxman's disgusting mug.)

 

"Never go in against a Democrat when Health Care is on the line! HA HA HA HA HA! - urk - <thud>."

[Chef Jim]

I just put a bid on this place. Not much to look at but at least no one can find me and I can do whatever the hell I want.

 

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/caribbean-shack-9118835.jpg

[IDBillzFan]

Barack Obama now doing his Kevin Bacon/Stripes routine with nervous Dems.

 

Officials involved in the ObamaCare rollout are meeting with Senate Democrats on Thursday to try and calm fears about the struggling enrollment site.

 

Marilyn Tavenner, administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, headed to Capitol Hill Thursday with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and former budget director Jeff Zients. The three will meet with lawmakers as support rises among Democrats for delaying the implementation timeline. Zients was brought in to lead the triage effort for HealthCare.gov, the federal enrollment portal. Vulnerable Democratic senators are backing a variety of changes in response to problems with the website, including deferring the individual mandate and extending the law's enrollment period.

 

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who is up for reelection in 2014, is crafting a bill that would let policyholders keep plans that do not meet standards under the Affordable Care Act.

 

The Obama administration is under serious pressure to fix the enrollment portal before it becomes an election issue and creates a drag on sign-ups.

 

Tavenner is due back in the Senate on Tuesday to testify before the Health Committee on the problems facing HealthCare.gov.

 

White House press secretary Jay Carney called the meeting "part of our constant communications with the Hill on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act [and] the obvious problems with the website."

 

The White House spokesman also swiped at the GOP, noting that fewer than 20 House Republicans appeared at a briefing provided by the Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday.

 

Carney said that the administration was "going to keep providing information," but that it appeared Republicans were more interested in "yet another political food fight" than knowing "the substance of this issue."

[B-Man]

No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

By John R. Lott Jr.

 

Obamacare, even with massive Democratic supermajorities in Congress, would never have passed if Americans thought that they would be forced to give up their current plans.

 

The reason is simple. To begin with, Americans were overwhelmingly happy with the quality of their health care.

 

That is reflected in surveys: For example, shortly before the November 2006 election, the Kaiser Family Foundation, in conjunction with USA Today and ABC News, released the results of a survey. It found that 89 percent of Americans who were insured were satisfied with “their own personal medical care.” Ninety-three percent of those who had recently been seriously ill were satisfied with their medical care, as were 95 percent of those who suffered from a chronic illness. Surprisingly, even most of the uninsured were happy with the quality of the health care that they were receiving.

 

Obamacare came about because people were willing to make slight changes to the health-care system because of concerns over the uninsured. Only 44 percent of the respondents were satisfied with the “overall quality of the American health care system,” but this was out of concern for what they thought was happening to others, not their own health care.

 

Obama might be able to weather many controversies — from IRS-gate to the NSA’s spying on Americans to the disastrous operation of the Obamacare website — by claiming he knew nothing about what was going on. But his promise that people would be able to keep their insurance policies and doctors is hitting people on a much more personal level.

 

The administration is desperately trying to counter by arguing: 1) you might be losing your insurance policy that you liked so much, but you will actually be getting a better (if more expensive) one and 2) the cancellation of existing policies is really the fault of those irresponsible insurance companies.

 

The president and his defenders don’t want to recognize that those two arguments contradict each other. “Better” policies cost more, and insurance companies have to raise premiums to provide the upgrade. The many new mandates in these “better” policies explicitly ban the old policies, so insurance companies have no other option than to cancel the existing policies.

 

But there is a more fundamental problem: If consumers really believed that the policy Obama wants them to have was really the best policy, they could have bought it well before the mandates were imposed. The additional coverage cost something, and when people could make the choice themselves, they decided that these benefits weren’t worth it.

 

Of course, we could require everyone buy Porsches to drive. For almost everyone a Porsche would clearly be a “better” car. But would requiring people to buy Porsches make people better off? Of course not. Not even close.

 

{snip}

 

In Boston on Wednesday, President Obama went on the attack against insurance companies for the cancelled policies. He talked about “bad-apple insurers” who used to issue “substandard plans before the Affordable Care Act,” and lamented that the insurance companies “had free rein every single year to limit the care that you received.” But if the insured were really that abused, why were about 90 percent of Americans happy with their own health care?

 

Obama told Americans that they could get all sorts of increased health-insurance benefits, for less. Today, with many millions of Americans losing their health insurance and new policies becoming much more expensive, Americans are learning firsthand a basic economic lessons: “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Edited October 31, 2013 by B-Man

[keepthefaith]

Socialism is ugly.

[Wacka]

INCONCEIVABLE!!!

 

(Sorry. That's all I ever hear when I see Waxman's disgusting mug.)

I think of Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera.

[Nanker]

The President speaks: http://youtu.be/IGUBm0XQbqA

[B-Man]

Obamacare laid bare

by Charles Krauthammer

 

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. This week, the Obamacare 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.”

 

The cancellations lay bare three pillars of Obamacare: (a) mendacity, (b) paternalism and © subterfuge.

 

(a) Those letters are irrefutable evidence that President Obama’s repeated you-keep-your-coverage claim was false. Why were they sent out? Because Obamacare renders illegal (with exceedingly narrow “grandfathered” exceptions) the continuation of any insurance plan deemed by Washington regulators not to meet their arbitrary standards for adequacy. Example: No maternity care? You are terminated.

 

So a law designed to cover the uninsured is now throwing far more people off their insurance than it can possibly be signing up on the nonfunctioning insurance exchanges. Indeed, most of the 19 million people with individual insurance will have to find new and likely more expensive coverage. And that doesn’t even include the additional millions who are sure to lose their employer-provided coverage. That’s a lot of people. That’s a pretty big lie.

 

{snip}

 

(b) Beyond mendacity, there is liberal paternalism, of which these forced cancellations are a classic case. We canceled your plan, explained presidential spokesman Jay Carney, because it was substandard. We have a better idea.

 

Translation: Sure, you freely chose the policy, paid for the policy, renewed the policy, liked the policy. But you’re too primitive to know what you need. We do. Your policy is hereby canceled.

 

Because what you really need is what our experts have determined must be in every plan. So a couple in their 60s must buy maternity care. A teetotaler must buy substance abuse treatment. And a healthy 28-year-old with perfectly appropriate catastrophic insurance must pay for bells and whistles for which he has no use.

 

© As for subterfuge, these required bells and whistles aren’t just there to festoon the health-care Christmas tree with voter-pleasing freebies. The planners knew all along that if you force insurance buyers to overpay for stuff they don’t need, that money can subsidize other people.

 

Obamacare is the largest transfer of wealth in recent American history. But you can’t say that openly lest you lose elections. So you do it by subterfuge: hidden taxes, penalties, mandates and coverage requirements that yield a surplus of overpayments.

So that your president can promise to cover 30 million uninsured without costing the government a dime. Which from the beginning was the biggest falsehood of them all. And yet the free lunch is the essence of modern liberalism. Free mammograms, free preventative care, free contraceptives for Sandra Fluke. Come and get it.

 

And then when you find your policy canceled, your premium raised and your deductible outrageously increased, you’ve learned the real meaning of “free” in the liberal lexicon: something paid for by your neighbor — best, by subterfuge.

 

 

 

http://http://www.wa...bb78_story.html

 

 

 

.

Edited November 1, 2013 by B-Man

[drinkTHEkoolaid]

All this colossal disaster is going to be used by obama and the dems as evidence its not working and its the obstructionist republicans fault.

 

He will then say in order to make this work the government needs greater control and he will then sell a single payer system to an idiot populace with collective short term memories and low information.

 

Next the government will be in control of all things healthcare. Once they have that power they will use it for more control.

 

It costs more to insure people who smoke, drink, eat fatty foods and red meat, too much sodium or pops that are just too big.

 

they will start by demonizing specific groups, look at ny state. First the smokers, then soda drinkers, next will be drinkers.

 

It's all just a colossal waste of money to further increase government control.

 

Gatorman, yes it can and will happen. Quote me.

[DC Tom]

All this colossal disaster is going to be used by obama and the dems as evidence its not working and its the obstructionist republicans fault.

 

He will then say in order to make this work the government needs greater control and he will then sell a single payer system to an idiot populace with collective short term memories and low information.

 

Next the government will be in control of all things healthcare. Once they have that power they will use it for more control.

 

It costs more to insure people who smoke, drink, eat fatty foods and red meat, too much sodium or pops that are just too big.

 

they will start by demonizing specific groups, look at ny state. First the smokers, then soda drinkers, next will be drinkers.

 

It's all just a colossal waste of money to further increase government control.

 

Gatorman, yes it can and will happen. Quote me.

 

Don't forget guns.

[B-Man]

No more, "the Republican's sabotaged the ACA" Bullsh*t from the administration, the media, or the posters here, without being reminded of this Inconvenient truth...............

 

 

From CNN:

 

Senate Democrats supported rule that led to insurance cancellations.

 

Senate Democrats voted

unanimously

three years ago to support the Obamacare rule that is largely responsible for some of the health insurance cancellation letters that are going out.

 

In September 2010, Senate Republicans brought a resolution to the floor to block implementation of the grandfather rule, warning that it would result in canceled policies and violate President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance if they liked it. . . .

On a party line vote, Democrats killed the resolution

, which could come back to haunt vulnerable Democrats up for re-election this year.

 

Senate Democrats like Mary Landrieu, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan and Mark Begich – all of whom voted against stopping the rule from going into effect and have since supported delaying parts of Obamacare

 

 

The spin from the Administration/media the last few days is exposed.

 

 

 

 

 

.

[Doc]

All this colossal disaster is going to be used by obama and the dems as evidence its not working and its the obstructionist republicans fault.

 

He will then say in order to make this work the government needs greater control and he will then sell a single payer system to an idiot populace with collective short term memories and low information.

 

Next the government will be in control of all things healthcare. Once they have that power they will use it for more control.

 

It costs more to insure people who smoke, drink, eat fatty foods and red meat, too much sodium or pops that are just too big.

 

they will start by demonizing specific groups, look at ny state. First the smokers, then soda drinkers, next will be drinkers.

 

It's all just a colossal waste of money to further increase government control.

 

Gatorman, yes it can and will happen. Quote me.

They can talk, but without a Dem super-majority in the Senate again, along with a majority in the House and the president being a Dem, it ain't gonna happen.

[/dev/null]

they will start by demonizing specific groups, look at ny state. First the smokers, then soda drinkers, next will be drinkers.

 

They already went after the drinkers in the 20s/30s. It was called Prohibition, which I think will be the model for how Obamacare will ultimately be dismantled. Citizens won't abide by the law. Businesses will find loopholes. States will find ways to circumvent Federal law.

 

Eventually America will wake up with a hangover and wonder wtf we were thinking

[TakeYouToTasker]

they will start by demonizing specific groups, look at ny state. First the smokers, then soda drinkers, next will be drinkers.

In addition to a 37% increase in the cost of our offices family plan; smoking has become a firable offense.

[B-Man]

Good luck with this............................

 

 

Organizing for Action: Merry flipping Christmas, ya’ll:

Organizing for Action (OFA), the pro-President Obama group, is launching a new effort over the holiday season to boost enrollment in Obamacare amid the botched rollout of the health care reform law.

 

The new campaign is focused on “encouraging parents and grandparents to talk to the young adults in their lives about the importance of signing up for health coverage,” the group said in a statement. …

 

“Over the past few months, OFA has been making sure people have information about the benefits they are already seeing from Obamacare and the resources they need to get enrolled through the new marketplaces,” said the group. “The Healthcare for the Holidays campaign encourages family, friends and neighbors to have the one-on-one conversations that are crucial to getting people enrolled.”

 

 

 

Sure, it’s kind of cute but it’s definitely not even trying to be anything more than an advertisement devoid of any substantive information about ObamaCare at all.

 

Nutshell version: “Haha, #LOLwut, now go sign up for ObamaCare.” A somewhat more straightforward version might have nixed the jokes and instead shown the parents telling their son: “Honey, we know you’re having trouble developing a career beyond those part-time shifts over at the coffee shop and that the opportunities for your generation are being squeezed in this godawful economy, but you should really dedicate a huge chunk of your budget to a more comprehensive health plan than what you really need. It’s the law, after all.”

[Koko78]

OFA has been making sure people have information about the benefits they are already seeing from Obamacare...

 

Well, at least that's an incredibly cost-effective amount of information to spread. Quarter-page flyers in quantity can be created cheaply.