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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Insurance</title>
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		<title>ObamaCare&#8217;s Abysmal Numbers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/obamacares-abysmal-numbers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacares-abysmal-numbers</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/obamacares-abysmal-numbers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 13 May 2014 04:53:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[8 million]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cancelled]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[enrollees]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[exchanges]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Insurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225389</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The truth about the president's "eight million" new enrollees.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cancelled-policy600.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225396" alt="cancelled-policy*600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cancelled-policy600-387x350.jpg" width="310" height="280" /></a>The ongoing efforts by the Obama administration and their media apparatchiks to boost the “soaring&#8221; enrollment figures of ObamaCare have hit another bump in the road. Despite administration’s highly dubious figure of </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-obamacare-enrollment-20140418-story.html#page=1">eight million</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> enrollments, the latest McKinsey </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://healthcare.mckinsey.com/sites/default/files/McKinsey%20Reform%20Center_Individual%20Market%20Post%20OEP%20Trends.pdf">survey</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> tracking the health insurance market’s first open enrollment period reveals that a staggering 74 percent of those who signed up for the plan were previously insured. Furthermore, McKinsey &#8220;confidently” </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/05/12/mckinsey-75-percent-of-obamacare-enrollees-were-previously-insured-n1836419">states</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that only 1.7 million enrollees were previously uninsured and another 865,000 purchased coverage off the exchanges. Thus, Americans have endured a complete upheaval of the nation’s healthcare system to provide coverage for only 2.6 million additional individual market enrollees.</span></p>
<p>And as most Americans know, the eight million touted by the administration as enrolled makes no distinction between those who have “signed up” for Obamacare, and those who have actually paid for their plans. McKinsey puts the percentage of those who have actually paid their first month’s premium at 83 percent.</p>
<p>What a lot of Americans don’t know is that a number of enrollees are <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/05/07/confirmed-many-of-obamacares-8-million-enrollees-are-duplicates-n1834786">duplicates</a>, due to ongoing problems with the “back end” of the <a href="http://healthcare.gov/">Healthcare.gov</a> website, which <i>still</i> remains <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/04/28/politico-by-the-way-healthcaregov-is-still-missing-massive-critical-pieces-n1830122">under construction</a>. Thus, people who were unsure if they initially got coverage were encouraged to go through the process a second time. How many of those “double enrollees” were counted twice remains a mystery.</p>
<p>But perhaps the most glaring reality omitted by ObamaCare’s cheerleaders is this: they are touting the success of a plan that Americans are <i>required</i> to purchase, lest they face IRS scrutiny and/or a fine for failing to do so.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, this so-called success is what prompted President Obama at an April 17 press conference to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-press-conference-obamacare-ukraine-putin-russia-2014-4">announce</a> that &#8220;the repeal debate is and should be over,” and that ObamaCare &#8220;is working.” The president was aiming his remarks at Republicans, belittling them in the process. &#8220;I recognize that their party is going through the stages of grief—anger, denial, all that stuff,&#8221; Obama smugly declared. &#8220;We&#8217;re not at acceptance yet.”</p>
<p>Despite the president’s arrogance, the American public, a far more important component in this equation than the GOP, is not “at acceptance yet” either. A Washington Post-ABC <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/04/29/National-Politics/Polling/release_342.xml">poll</a> conducted in April reveals that 29 percent of the public believes the quality of care they receive is getting worse, compared to only 14 percent who believe it is getting better, a more than two-to-one margin. A majority of Americans believe it has stayed the same.</p>
<p>Nearly the same two-to-one margin, 44 percent to 24 percent, applies to Americans who believe the the <i>entire nation’s</i> healthcare system is getting worse, with only a third saying it is staying the same. Cost comparisons are also bleak, with 47 percent saying healthcare costs have increased, compared to only 8 percent reporting cost decreases. Similar percentages apply to the entire nation’s healthcare costs, with 58 percent of Americans seeing increases, compared to 11 percent who see decreases. Yet perhaps the most important question in this survey asked Americans if they approved of the way Obama was handling the implementation of the law. A whopping 57 percent disapproved, compared to only 37 who approved. O<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">ne thing is clear: all of the above makes an utter mockery of the idea that the ObamaCare debate is over.</span></p>
<p>And why should it be? Even before the president unilaterally postponed business mandates that threaten million of additional Americans with policy cancellations take effect, the string of broken promises attached to the healthcare bill remain inarguable. Despite the promise to “bend” healthcare costs down, ObamaCare is expected to <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/government-says-health-spending-jump-200148498.html">increase</a> healthcare spending by 6.1 precent this year, compared to a growth rate of less than 4 percent the previous four years. Two-thirds of businesses that currently offer health insurance to their workers will see <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/obama-administration-health-laws-new-rules-will-increase-costs-for-most-small-businesses/2014/02/24/0623d01e-9d9c-11e3-9ba6-800d1192d08b_story.html">increases</a> as well, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).</p>
<p>Nor did premiums drop by $2500 for the “typical family&#8221; as the president <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/521/cut-cost-typical-familys-health-insurance-premium-/">promised</a>—when he wasn’t busy promising Americans who got insurance through their employer that their premiums could <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUd-slJc-GY">drop</a> by as much as 3000 percent. In fact, according to health industry officials interviewed in March, premium costs will <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/201136-obamacare-premiums-are-about-to-skyrocket">double</a> in some parts of the country next year. As for jobs, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626804579362691500388668">projected</a> in February that the reduction in the the total number of hours Americans work due to ObamaCare will be equivalent to a 2.3 million reduction in full-time jobs in 2021. The CBO had previously estimated a workforce reduction equivalent of only 800,000 jobs. If such revisions have a familiar ring, maybe it’s because Democrats’ initial promise that ObamaCare would only cost $848 billion over a decade was as empty as any of the others: ObamaCare’s ten-year cost estimate now <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbo-obamacare-s-10-year-costs-will-now-eclipse-2-trillion_778723.html">surpasses</a> $2 trillion.</p>
<p>And who can possibly forget the most glaring &#8220;broken promise&#8221; of all, more accurately referred to as Politifact’s <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/">2013 Lie of the Year</a> &#8211; President Obama’s oft-repeated contention that Americans can keep their insurance policies and/or their doctors and other healthcare providers?</p>
<p>Yet the fundamental flaw in the whole enterprise is <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377736/notice-not-obamacare-ramesh-ponnuru/page/0/1">best described</a> by National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru who notes that &#8220;the picture of Obamacare today looks more like one the critics painted than the one supporters did: a lot of trouble for a small gain.”</p>
<p>Yet even those small gains may be ephemeral. As Bloomberg News revealed last October, there is an &#8220;accelerating trend&#8221; of healthcare providers <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-14/patients-pay-before-seeing-doctor-as-deductibles-spread.html">demanding</a> upfront payments for non-emergency care as insurance deductibles rise. That trend will undoubtedly be <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/04/13/the-next-obamacare-disasters/">exacerbated</a> by ObamaCare, due in large part to a provision in the law that provides enrollees a 90-day grace period of premium nonpayments before their insurance can be cancelled—even as the insurance companies themselves remain liable for payments to providers for only 30 of those 90 days. The remaining 60 days leave the provider on the hook for collecting their fees. Furthermore, the aforementioned small businesses looking at rate increases may decide to drop coverage altogether, putting another 20-30 million Americans in the same boat as the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2014/01/06/the-obamacare-law-devours-itself-with-exemptions-amid-5-million-and-counting-cancellations/">5 million</a> Americans who had their policies cancelled because they failed to meet the new requirements.</p>
<p>Another trend likely to accelerate is the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304450904579365373011903340">narrowing</a> of provider networks, as insurance companies strive to contain costs by eliminating more doctors and healthcare facilities from the list of options provided to enrollees. Lawmakers in many states are looking for ways to force insurers to expand those networks, and a federal proposal aims to give the CMS the power to require insurance companies to provide a full list of providers in a network. But as mentioned above, that in turn is likely to push overall premium costs higher.</p>
<p>As the McKinsey study notes, this also does not bode well for the future. Despite an increase of previously uninsured respondents shopping for insurance from 44 percent to 61 percent between their February and April surveys, McKinsey notes that only 21 percent of those shoppers reported enrolling in plan. This rate is far lower than the one for those who had insurance before ObamaCare became the law of the land.</p>
<p>The most prevalent reason cited for exiting the purchasing process? Perceived affordability, with the highest percentage of those refusing to buy being &#8220;previously uninsured and subsidy-eligible.” This means a plan primarily designed to attract more lower-income Americans who have never had health insurance due to affordability issues isn’t living up to expectations.</p>
<p>Moreover, Americans should never forget that all of this is happening even as two other major variables remain unresolved. First, the mechanism for a taxpayer bailout of insurance providers remains in effect. These so-called “risk corridors” allow providers to set their premium prices artificially <i>lower </i>until the end of 2016. After that, without underwriting by the federal government, premiums could skyrocket even higher. Second, the employer mandate affecting mid-sized companies with 50 to 99 full-time employees, and larger companies with 100 employees or more, has been <a href="http://www.nfib.com/article/obamacare-implementation-postponed-64768/">postponed</a> until 2016. It remains to be seen how many more policy cancellations will result when Democrats can no longer kick <i>that</i> politically-charged can past another election cycle.</p>
<p><i>Washington Post</i> columnist Charles Krauthammer <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Obama-Obamacare-healthcare-Charles-Krauthammer/2014/04/18/id/566333/">sums up</a> the entire picture as it currently stands. &#8220;Everybody is getting a worse deal,” he contends. &#8220;If the providers are, that means the doctors aren&#8217;t getting their usual payments, which means they have to see much more patients, which means they spend less time, which means the care is inferior, that means they are reimbursed at a lower rate, which means some of them will go out of business.”</p>
<p>He also addresses the president’s unseemly spiking of the ObamaCare ball. &#8220;Which is going to have more effect on the voter&#8211;Obama in a press conference in a holiday week throwing out a number, 8 million, which means nothing?” he asks. &#8220;Or knowing someone in your family, or you, losing health insurance, having your hours reduced so your employer can call you part-time—losing your job, losing hours&#8211;all of this stuff affecting you personally?</p>
<p>No matter how one answers those questions one thing is certain: America has a long, <i>long</i> way to go before any debate regarding ObamaCare is over.</p>
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		<title>ObamaCare for Illegals</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/obamacare-for-illegals/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacare-for-illegals</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/obamacare-for-illegals/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 31 Mar 2014 04:46:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Insurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sign up]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=222324</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Americans learn the true meaning of the president's promise of "healthcare for all." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/mexicans-obamacare-610x400.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222327" alt="mexicans-obamacare-610x400" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/mexicans-obamacare-610x400-450x295.jpg" width="315" height="207" /></a>The Obama administration and a group run by senior Obama White House veterans are encouraging illegal aliens to enroll in Obamacare at Mexico&#8217;s consulates across the United States.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Apparently it&#8217;s not enough for President Obama to redistribute the wealth of Americans to other Americans. Now he wants to redistribute the wealth of Americans to the Third World.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">American taxpayers will undoubtedly foot the bill for these illegal immigrants who enroll in Obamacare. This enrollment free-for-all appears to be but one prong of President Obama&#8217;s program to undermine America&#8217;s market-based system of governance by overwhelming it. This subversive approach is called the Cloward-Piven Strategy, named after its creators, Marxist academic-activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Their method for hastening the fall of capitalism called for overloading the government with impossible demands in order to generate social chaos and economic collapse, which would then clear the way for socialist revolution, as I wrote in my book, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://tinyurl.com/vadumbook"><i>Subversion Inc.: How Obama&#8217;s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers</i></a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Although the strategy was designed for the so-called welfare rights movement, there is no reason why it can&#8217;t be applied to other government endeavors.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Which brings us to a disturbing admission by a community organizer who is pushing illegal immigrants to jump on the Obamacare free-taxpayer-supported-healthcare bandwagon.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“Whether they’re Mexican nationals or whether they’re United States citizens or whether they’re in transition &#8211; and if they’re there it is our responsibility within all of America to educate on the Affordable Care Act,” Enroll America field organizer Jose Medrano </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/27/Obamacare-Navigators-Help-Enroll-At-Mexican-Consulates">told</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Breitbart News.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Mexican government&#8217;s consular office in Brownsville, Texas, hosted an Obamacare enrollment fair last week.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“The Mexican consulate is a very reliable source of information to the Latino community,&#8221; Medrano said. &#8220;And therefore when they host their events, yesterday being the health fair, there are several hundred people that show up.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Although illegal aliens aren&#8217;t supposed to be getting government healthcare benefits or subsidized coverage under the Affordable Care Act, President Obama seemed to give these individuals the green light to get covered earlier this month. Obama said that the Healthcare.gov website would not be used to ascertain an individual’s immigration status.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“None of the information that is provided in order for you to obtain health insurance is in any way transferred to immigration services,” Obama said reassuringly at the time.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Medrano said 101 families were represented at the Obamacare signup fest in Brownsville, and roughly three fifths of the representatives spoke with a healthcare counselor. The consular office is helpful “as part of the transition” to “mainstream …  America.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/27/Obamacare-Navigators-Help-Enroll-At-Mexican-Consulates">has been spending</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a lot of time in Texas recently trying to boost Obamacare enrollment figures. The former Kansas governor has made at least four visits to Texas for Affordable Care Act-related events since Dec. 20, 2013.</span></p>
<p>&#8220;I’m sure [she was aware],” Medrano said when asked if Sebelius knew about the enrollment fair at Mexican consulate in Brownsville. “We put our events in a database that several organizations are connected to at mainly HHS, so they are fully aware of who was here.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The HHS secretary&#8217;s sudden fondness for Texas </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/30/Election-Integrity-Activists-Obamacare-Biggest-Voter-Registration-Fraud-Scheme-in-History">may have</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> more to do with partisan politics than public health.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It&#8217;s no secret that Obama operatives and other Democrats are going all-out to turn the critical Republican-red state of Texas Democrat-blue. Battleground Texas, a well-connected political action committee, was founded by Jeremy Bird, who was national field director for Obama&#8217;s 2012 reelection campaign.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Guerrilla videographer James O&#8217;Keefe&#8217;s group, Project Veritas, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/the-obamacare-navigators-nightmare/">paid a visit</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Enroll America, which is run by Obama White House alumni. O&#8217;Keefe found that Enroll America appeared to be sharing data and working directly with Battleground Texas.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">When Brian Pendleton, also of Enroll America, was introduced at a speaking engagement, he called Enroll America “the official group for the DNC [Democratic National Committee].”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And the Obama administration interprets the National Voter Registration Act (a.k.a. the Motor-Voter law) to require that voter registration services be offered when an applicant visits an Obamacare healthcare insurance exchange. Who helped to write the NVRA? Cloward and Piven, of course. President Bill Clinton thanked them by name when they attended the bill signing ceremony in 1993.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In an incredible non-coincidence, a La Mesa, California couple were recently </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.10news.com/news/local-couple-upset-after-receiving-pre-marked-voter-registration-card-from-covered-california-03282014">incensed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> when they received papers to register as Democrats from their health insurance provider Covered California, the state-run agency that implements the Affordable Care Act in the Golden State. They received a letter about voter registration and a registration card already marked with an &#8220;x&#8221; in the Democratic Party box. The longtime Republicans told local media they were &#8220;perplexed as to how the voter registration card pre-marked Democrat ended up in their mailbox.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Meanwhile, the Mexican consulate in Chicago was the site of an Obamacare enrollment event last month, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://politics.suntimes.com/article/springfield/head-get-covered-illinois-explains-obamacare-deadline-prep/fri-02282014-833pm">according to</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Get Covered Illinois, which is part of Enroll America. The Mexican consulate in Las Vegas has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://vegasseven.com/2014/03/22/three-questions-broken-nevadas-health-insurance-exchange/">been used</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> for enrollment purposes.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Mexico&#8217;s many consular offices in the U.S. have also </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/19/usda-partnering-with-mexico-to-boost-food-stamp-participation/">been used</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to encourage Mexican nationals in this country to apply for food stamps, as part of a U.S. program that predates the Obama administration.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Stephen Miller, a spokesman for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/27/Obamacare-Navigators-Help-Enroll-At-Mexican-Consulates">said</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> “promoting Obamacare at a Mexican consulate raises three major policy concerns.”</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One, the possibility that illegal immigrants could fraudulently access federal subsidies; two, that such promotions provide a financial inducement to unlawfully enter the U.S. (or overstay a visa) by offering households headed by illegal immigrants federal subsidies through their legal relatives or dependents; and three, that these activities widen an existing flaw in our legal admissions process by continuing to subvert the principle that those seeking to lawfully enter the U.S. should be financially self-sufficient.</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In 2012, ranking members of the Senate Budget, Finance, Judiciary, and Agriculture committees sent correspondence to then-Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In the letter they protested the fact that both the Department of State and DHS were encouraging would-be welfare recipients to flock to America by excluding &#8220;reliance on almost all governmental welfare programs when evaluating whether an alien is likely to become a public charge.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;Under your interpretation,&#8221; the senators wrote, &#8220;an able-bodied immigrant of working age could receive the bulk of his or her income in the form of federal welfare and still not be deemed a ‘public charge.’” The Immigration and Nationality Act specifically states, they added, that &#8220;[a]n alien who … is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible&#8221; to the United States.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It needs to be pointed out that the outfit Medrano works for, Enroll America, isn&#8217;t some rogue operation. It&#8217;s a shadowy quasi-official arm of the Obama administration. HHS Secretary Sebelius has engaged in legally questionable efforts to raise money for the group.</span></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=7805">Enroll America</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> is a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/the-obamacare-navigators-nightmare/">corrupt</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> 501c3 nonprofit </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.groupsnoop.org/Enroll+America">that is funded</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderprofile.asp?fndid=5211&amp;category=79">Robert Wood Johnson Foundation</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, H&amp;R Block, and companies that stand to profit from Obamacare, according to groupsnoop, a research website operated by the National Center for Public Policy Research.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The nonprofit organization was founded in 2011 by Ron Pollack, executive director of </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=7559">Families USA</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, a far-left group with ties to the labor movement. As of June 2013, Enroll America had refused to disclose how large its no doubt massive budget was.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The group&#8217;s leaders are largely Democratic Party operatives and community organizers. Pollack sits on Enroll America’s board. Its president, Anne Filipic, is former deputy director of the Office of Public Engagement for the Obama White House. The group&#8217;s managing director, Chris Wyant, was an economics advisor in the Obama White House.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Enroll America&#8217;s advisory board is chock full of left-wing pressure groups such as the Texas-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, Community Catalyst, Health Care for America Now, NAACP, National Council of La Raza, National Urban League, Planned Parenthood, Service Employees International Union, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and Young Invincibles (a project of the ACORN-linked Center for Community Change).</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As community organizers continue their frantic efforts to enroll people in Obamacare, the March 31 deadline for enrollment is upon us.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The deadline is make-believe, of course, as Americans </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/03/26/obama-administration-announces-health-care-extension/">learned</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> last week. The Obama administration announced that all consumers who had applied for coverage but failed to complete the process by the end of today will now have until roughly mid-April to follow through.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In congressional testimony barely three weeks ago, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius denied an extension was at hand. On March 12 when Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/03/25/surprise-white-house-to-delay-firm-obamacare-enrollment-deadline-past-march-31/">asked</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, “Are you going to delay the open enrollment beyond March 31st?” Sebelius answered, “No, sir.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But that was then. HHS claims there has been a sudden jump in enrollments.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;We are experiencing a surge in demand and are making sure that we will be ready to help consumers who may be in line by the deadline to complete enrollment &#8212; either online or over the phone,&#8221; HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said last week.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In what is likely a lie or at best a half-truth, the Obama administration </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/facts/blog/2014/03/marketplace-enrollment-hits-6-million.html">said</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> last week that &#8220;more than 6 million Americans have signed up for coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplaces since October 1, thanks to the Affordable Care Act.&#8221; As previous media exposes have shown, the administration has a habit of counting people who open accounts at Healthcare.gov or who select a plan but don&#8217;t actually pay for it as Obamacare enrollees.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Sebelius rationalized away the deadline extension, which is yet another lawless presidential modification of Obamacare. She likened the in-limbo status of healthcare applications to citizens standing in line when the polls close. Those individuals are still allowed to vote even though the official deadline has passed, she said, so it&#8217;s only fair that applicants part way through the process be accommodated.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Applicants will reportedly be given an opportunity to indicate they tried to enroll before the March 31 deadline by checking a box on the website, but HHS will make no effort to verify whether previous signups were attempted.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the move rendered the Obamacare deadline &#8220;meaningless.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;The administration is now resorting to an honor system to enforce it. What the hell is this, a joke?&#8221; Boehner said last week.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Avik Roy of </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Forbes</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/03/25/surprise-white-house-to-delay-firm-obamacare-enrollment-deadline-past-march-31/">says</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> this latest moving of the goalposts is obviously politically motivated. The extension is &#8220;designed to get as many people under the Obamacare tent as possible, to ensure that the law is impervious to repeal.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">All of this is another reminder that the government takeover of healthcare has never been about healthcare.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">President Obama&#8217;s increasingly unpopular Affordable Care Act is about radically transforming America by extending government control over all aspects of life, redistributing wealth, encouraging dependency, and building the Democratic Party base among voters, whether citizens or not.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Obama and his radical brethren want to reconstruct America so that the collective trumps the individual, and the rest of the world trumps America.</span></p>
<p>Last year the president said that Obamacare was about securing civil rights. He expounded the ugly, neo-Marxist view that every American has the right to extract free medical care from taxpayers and unwilling providers.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“In the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one should go broke just because they get sick,” he said. “In the United States, health care is not a privilege for the fortunate few, it is a right.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In Obama&#8217;s estimation this so-called right to health care supersedes all other rights.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Obamacare is a means to an end and if community organizers have to troll Mexican consular offices in order to rope in enrollees, President Obama is fine with that.</span></p>
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		<title>Screw You, Mickey Kaus</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ann-coulter/screw-you-mickey-kaus/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=screw-you-mickey-kaus</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ann-coulter/screw-you-mickey-kaus/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Mar 2014 04:15:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ann Coulter]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221991</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[My impossible ordeal with ObamaCare. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/obamacare_signup_rtr_328.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221992" alt="USA-HEALTHCARE/TECHNOLOGY" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/obamacare_signup_rtr_328.jpg" width="268" height="195" /></a>I&#8217;ve been thrown off my health insurance &#8212; THANKS, OBAMACARE! &#8212; and have spent hours and hours over the past month trying to figure out my options now that the Democrats have made my old plan, which I liked, &#8220;illegal.&#8221; (I prefer to think of my plan as &#8220;undocumented.&#8221;)</p>
<p>Whom do I bill for the hours of work Obamacare forced me to perform? How about you, Mickey? You&#8217;re the smartest living liberal (faint praise), and you assured us that Obamacare was going to be fantastic.</p>
<p>By now, Obama has issued &#8220;waivers&#8221; from Obamacare to about 99 percent of the country. (Perhaps you&#8217;ve heard, there&#8217;s a big midterm election this year.) As one of the few Americans not granted a waiver, I&#8217;m here to tell you: You have no idea what&#8217;s coming, America.</p>
<p>I thought I had figured out the best plan for me a month ago after having doctors and hospital administrators look at the packets of material I was sent by my old insurance company &#8212; the same mailing that informed me my old plan was &#8220;illegal&#8221; under Obamacare.</p>
<p>But when I checked online recently, I discovered the premier plan &#8212; the &#8220;platinum,&#8221; low-deductible, astronomically expensive plan that might be accepted by an English-speaking doctor who didn&#8217;t attend medical school in a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts &#8212; does not include treatment at any decent hospitals.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s sort of unfortunate because THAT&#8217;S THE ONLY REASON I WANT INSURANCE! That&#8217;s the only reason any sane homo sapien wants health insurance: to cover health care costs in the event of some catastrophic illness or accident &#8212; not to pay for Mickey Kaus&#8217; allergy appointments. But my only options under the blue-chip plan were hospitals that also do shoe repair.</p>
<p>I called Blue Cross directly to ask if its most expensive insurance plan covered the only hospital I&#8217;d ever go to in an emergency. Since that&#8217;s all I wanted to know, that&#8217;s what I asked. (I like to get to the point that way.)</p>
<p>But &#8212; as happens whenever you try to ascertain the most basic information about insurance under Obamacare &#8212; the Blue Cross representative began hammering me with a battery of questions about myself.</p>
<p>First my name. (Does that make a difference to what hospitals its plans cover?) Then my phone number. By the time he got to my address, I said, CAN YOU PLEASE JUST TELL ME IF ANY OF YOUR PLANS COVER XYZ HOSPITAL? I DON&#8217;T EVEN KNOW IF I WANT TO SIGN UP WITH YOU!</p>
<p>Finally, he admitted that Blue Cross&#8217; most expensive individual insurance plan does not cover treatment at the hospitals I named. Their doctors are &#8220;out of network&#8221; (and the person who designed this plan is &#8220;out of his mind&#8221;).</p>
<p>This was the rest of the conversation, verbatim:</p>
<p>ME: None of your plans cover out-of-network doctors?</p>
<p>BLUE CROSS: No.</p>
<p>ME: Why is it called &#8220;Premier Guided Access WITH OUT-OF-NETWORK PLAN&#8221;?</p>
<p>BLUE CROSS: Where did you see that?</p>
<p>ME: On Blue Cross&#8217; own material describing its plans.</p>
<p>BLUE CROSS: Oh. I don&#8217;t know why it&#8217;s called that.</p>
<p>ME: None of your plans cover (the good hospital)?</p>
<p>BLUE CROSS: No.</p>
<p>ME: I don&#8217;t know who you are, but I have a very specific set of skills that will help me find you. And when I find you, I am going to kill you. (Click.)</p>
<p>True conversation. Except the last sentence. That was my fantasy.</p>
<p>I decided to approach it from the opposite direction and called one of the nation&#8217;s leading hospitals to ask which plans it accepted. The woman listed a series of plans, but she couldn&#8217;t tell me if I was eligible for any of them. For that, she said, I&#8217;d have to go to the Obamacare website.</p>
<p>Does Obamacare cover suicide?</p>
<p>I went to &#8220;healthcare.gov&#8221; and &#8212; I guess I had heard this, but had blocked it from my memory like a rape victim unable to remember her attack &#8212; you can&#8217;t even peek at the available plans until you&#8217;ve given the government reams of personal information about yourself.</p>
<p>How about they let me look at the merchandise first?</p>
<p>Inasmuch as the cost of health insurance under Obamacare is so high that it will generally make more sense just to pay for your own catastrophic health emergencies, I was not interested in telling Kathleen Sebelius everything about me in order to have the privilege of glancing at the government&#8217;s crappy plans.</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s the only choice. As the Obamacare website directs:</p>
<p>(1) Create an account. (Name, password.)</p>
<p>(2) Tell us about yourself and your family. (Every single thing.)</p>
<p>(3) Choose a health insurance plan. (That&#8217;s where you finally get to see the plans.)</p>
<p>I wonder if other consumer-oriented businesses will start demanding names, addresses, passwords and phone numbers before the customer is allowed to browse the merchandise. Maybe Williams-Sonoma could pick up a few sales tricks from Ezekiel Emanuel! Oh, you&#8217;d like to see the bronze muffin tin? Sure, but first I&#8217;ll need your Social Security number, date of birth and mother&#8217;s maiden name. Sign here, here and here.</p>
<p>The main point of the Obamacare website is to encourage people other than me to get a government subsidy. There&#8217;s also a section helping you register to vote. You just can&#8217;t see the insurance plans. (Guess which one you need a government ID for?)</p>
<p>With zero help from the Obamacare website, I eventually figured out that there was one lone insurance plan that would cover treatment at a reputable hospital. The downside is, no doctors take it.</p>
<p>So my only two health insurance options &#8212; and yours, too, as soon as the waivers expire, America! &#8212; are: (1) a plan that no doctors take; or (2) a plan that no hospitals take. You either pay for all your doctor visits and tests yourself, or you pay for your cancer treatment yourself. And you pay through the nose in either case.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s not insurance! It&#8217;s a huge transfer of wealth from people who work for a living to those who don&#8217;t, accomplished by forcing the workers to buy insurance that&#8217;s not insurance. Obamacare has made actual health insurance &#8220;illegal.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not &#8220;insurance&#8221; when what I want to insure against isn&#8217;t covered, but paying for other people&#8217;s health care needs &#8212; defined broadly &#8212; is mandatory.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s as if you wanted to buy a car, so you paid for a Toyota &#8212; but then all you got was a 10-speed bike, with the rest of your purchase price going to buy cars, bikes and helmets for other people.</p>
<p>Or, more precisely, it would be like having the option of car insurance that covers either collisions or liability, but not both. Your car insurance premium would be gargantuan, because most of it would go to buy insurance, gas and air fresheners for other people in the plan.</p>
<p>If you have employer-provided health care, you may not have to make the 400 phone calls I had to, but the result will be the same: You&#8217;re not getting what is commonly known as &#8220;insurance.&#8221; You&#8217;re getting a massive bill to pay for other people&#8217;s chiropractors, marriage counselors, birth control pills, smoking cessation programs, &#8220;preventive care&#8221; appointments and pre-existing conditions.</p>
<p>Health insurance has been outlawed, replaced with a welfare program that has been renamed &#8220;insurance.&#8221;</p>
<p>When Matt Drudge decided he&#8217;d rather pay for his own health care, liberals hysterically denounced him for not buying an Obamacare transfer-the-wealth, fake &#8220;insurance&#8221; plan. It used to be shameful to be a public charge. Now it&#8217;s shameful to pay for yourself.</p>
<p>And it&#8217;s shameful to work for yourself. The self-employed are currently the only Americans subjected to Obamacare. (In a way, it&#8217;s lucky for the Democrats that there aren&#8217;t enough of us to hurt them in this year&#8217;s midterm elections!)</p>
<p>But we&#8217;re the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. You may have an employer-provided plan now, but the waivers can&#8217;t go on forever. If you live in America, your health insurance is going to disappear, too.</p>
<p>The government simply cannot force all insurance companies to give subsidized health care to a third of the country, to ignore the pre-existing health conditions of its customers, to pay for every little thing tangentially related to health &#8212; like smoking cessation programs, marital counseling and pediatric dental care &#8212; and also expect them to cover your cancer treatment.</p>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t matter if you&#8217;ve been paying for insurance your whole adult life. That policy is now &#8220;illegal.&#8221; Put your hands in the air, nice and easy, and step away from the policy &#8230;</p>
<p>You 99-percenters still unaffected by Obamacare will blithely go to the polls this November and vote on some teeny-tiny issue, completely unaware of the total destruction of health insurance in America. The waivers have worked.</p>
<p>Now we&#8217;ll have to wait 40 years for a future Mickey Kaus to come along and expose the disastrous consequences of this horrendous government program, just like the real Mickey Kaus did with welfare. But for now, I say: Screw you, Mickey Kaus.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Desperate Times for ObamaCare</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/desperate-times-for-obamacare/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=desperate-times-for-obamacare</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/desperate-times-for-obamacare/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2014 04:45:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221546</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How Obama's con is pillaging America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/obamacare-supreme-court_-protest-6001.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-221548" alt="Affordable Care Act Supreme Court" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/obamacare-supreme-court_-protest-6001.jpg" width="341" height="273" /></a>The air of desperation surrounding ObamaCare gets thicker and thicker with each passing day. And no matter how dishonest President Obama, his administration officials, Democrats and their media allies, are in their attempt to fool the public, painful truths about this disaster can no longer be obscured. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We begin with premiums. As </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/201136-obamacare-premiums-are-about-to-skyrocket">revealed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Hill</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, they are about to &#8220;skyrocket,&#8221; with costs in some parts of the country increasing by as much as 200 percent. Unsurprisingly, this revelation runs completely counter to the Obama administration&#8217;s claims, most recently advanced by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in last week&#8217;s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee. “The increases are far less significant than what they were prior to the Affordable Care Act,” the Secretary said.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Except that they&#8217;re not. A </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/affordable-care-act/price-index">report</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by eHealth explains that premiums in the individual health market have risen 39 percent for individuals, and 56 percent for families, since February 2013. Minus the subsidies, the average cost of an individual plan is now $274, and a family plan is now $663 per month, up from $446 last year. And despite Sebelius&#8217;s contention, these figures are higher than those recorded between 2005 and 2013, when individual and family premiums rose at a rate of 37 percent and 31 percent, respectively.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Administration officials counter that subsidies will bring those costs down. That is certainly true, but those so-called reductions aren&#8217;t reductions at all. They merely shift the part of a premium&#8217;s cost from the individual or family insurance consumers to the taxpayers at large. This cost-shifting goes a long way towards explaining why a plan the president and his party </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-now-estimated-cost-26-trillion-first-decade_648413.html">promised</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> would cost $900 billion over a decade when it was first introduced, quickly </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-now-estimated-cost-26-trillion-first-decade_648413.html">tripled</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to $2.7 trillion. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">With regard to those premium increases, the biggest driver should have been the most obvious: Americans are now required to purchase </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.healthcare.gov/what-does-marketplace-health-insurance-cover/">“essential health benefits,”</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> another wildly misleading euphemism designed to obscure yet another, but far more pernicious aspect of cost-shifting embodied in ObamaCare. There is nothing remotely essential in requiring a 50-year-old man to be covered for maternity and newborn care, or senior citizens to be covered for pediatric services. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Thus, many insurers are utterly baffled by Sebelius&#8217;s contention, especially in light of the disastrous rollout of the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://healthcare.gov/">healthcare.gov</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> website. “It’s pretty shortsighted because I think everybody knows that the way the exchange has rolled out … is going to lead to higher costs,” said one senior insurance executive who requested anonymity. That same executive said he expects insurance rates to </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">triple</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> in the &#8220;populous swing state&#8221; from which he hails. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Other insurance executives were equally frustrated with another cost driver, namely the administration&#8217;s unconstitutional penchant for changing the parameters of the law. They cited the administration&#8217;s decision to allow people to keep their old insurance policies instead of forcing them onto the exchanges, the limited amount of money government has to help cover the costs of older and sicker patients, and the under-enrollment of the so-call &#8220;young invincibles&#8221; that could help keep costs down. “We’re exasperated,” the same unnamed executive contended. “All of these major delays on very significant portions of the law are going to change what it’s going to cost.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The lack of enrollment by young healthy Americans could be the deciding factor in determining those costs. The current data is not </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-18/young-invincibles-are-killing-obamacare">breaking well</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> for an administration that projected the percentage of ObamaCare purchasers in the 18 to 35 age group would be 40 percent. As of March 1, approximately 4.2 million Americans had selected an ObamaCare plan. Less than 1.1 million, or only 25 percent of them, belonged to that demographic. From October through February, the number of signups averaged out to 840,000 per month. In order to reach the 40 percent figure by the end of this month, more than 900,000 people would have to sign up for the plan &#8212; and everyone of them and their covered family members would have to be between the ages of 18 and 35.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And once again, note the term &#8220;sign ups.&#8221; On Tuesday, embattled White House Press Secretary Jay Carey was finally forced to </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/19/white-house-admits-a-fifth-of-obamacare-enrollees-wont-buy-insurance/">admit</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> what many Americans have known for a long time: sign ups isn&#8217;t remotely the same as </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">pay</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> ups. “We can point you to major insurers who have placed that [pay up] figure at 80 percent, give-or-take, depending on the insurer,” Carney said. That means one-in-five don&#8217;t have actual coverage. When Fox News correspondent Ed Henry originally asked Carney why the administration continues to use the word &#8220;enrolled,&#8221; Carney declined to answer.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The lack of candor is hardly an anomaly. The president and his party promised that health insurance would be more affordable, saving families as much as $2500 per year in costs. That was a baldfaced lie. But it was the lesser of two baldfaced lies with which insurance companies had to cope. The greater lie was the president&#8217;s oft-repeated promise that Americans could keep their doctor and their healthcare providers. Faced with bad or worse, insurance companies chose bad: in response to the Obama administration&#8217;s benefit mandates, taxes and regulations, they narrowed provider networks to keep premium costs down. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Unfortunately, even that option didn&#8217;t work. Despite narrow, sometimes drastically narrow, networks that deprived many Americans of critical care formerly provided by their &#8220;bad apple&#8221; insurance policies, premium prices </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">still</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> increased by double digits in most markets.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Remarkably, the administration&#8217;s &#8220;solution&#8221; for the problem will inevitably exacerbate it. The HHS sent a letter to insurance companies informing them that they must provide &#8220;reasonable access&#8221; to doctors and hospitals beginning next year, including an expansion of access to &#8220;essential community providers&#8221; from 20 percent to 30 percent. In addition, healthcare regulators will looking at other cost-cutting features in insurers&#8217; plans, in an effort to determine if they are &#8220;discriminatory&#8221; with regard to discouraging sick Americans to sign up for healthcare. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As is typical with this administration, the term &#8220;reasonable access&#8221; is left undefined, doubtless to give them case-by-case leverage against those insurers they wish to single out for the kind of political humiliation that deflects blame away from the Obama administration and a Democratic Party wholly responsible for this mess. As for the word &#8220;discrimination,&#8221; is there even a scintilla of doubt that it will be used as a club to browbeat those same insurers?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Another undefined term could be </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/03/20/medical-group-that-backed-obamacare-warns-obscure-rule-could-hurt-doctors/">far more</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> problematic. ObamaCare gives customers a 90-day grace period for unpaid premiums before insurers can cancel their coverage. Yet insurers are only responsible for claims made in the first 30 days. During the next 60 days, insurers can place subsequent claims in a &#8220;pending status&#8221;&#8211;and ultimately deny payment for them if insurance is cancelled, leaving healthcare providers on the hook. The administration contends the grace period rule is limited to those who have already paid one month&#8217;s premium, and requires insurance companies to notify healthcare providers &#8220;as soon as practicable&#8221; when those customers are in arrears. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The American Medical Association (AMA), which shamelessly shilled for the passage of ObamaCare, grasped the implications. &#8220;Managing risk is typically a role for insurers, but the grace period rule transfers two-thirds of that risk from the insurers to physicians and health care providers,&#8221; AMA President Ardis Dee Hoven said in a statement. On Wednesday, they provided their members with </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/news/news/2014/2014-03-19-ama-issues-grace-period-guide-to-assist-physicians.page">guidelines</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to help them manage that possibility. But even those guidelines couldn&#8217;t obscure the truth. &#8220;The Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services (CMS) regulations do not specify how the health insurance issuer must notify you when one of your patients enters the grace period,&#8221; they stated. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Perhaps the biggest and most painful truth about ObamaCare was </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/16/curl-we-completely-overhauled-american-health-care/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&amp;utm_medium=RSS">illuminated</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Washington Times&#8217;</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Joseph Curl, who reminds us that original impetus behind the bill was to insure the 46 million Americans President Obama warned us were only “one illness away from financial ruin.” As Curl noted the above enrollment figures of only 4.2 million, or just 9 percent of the 46 million cited by Obama, he asked the obvious question: We changed the $2.7 trillion health care system to sign up 4.2 million people?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If data compiled by Goldman Sachs are correct, even that paltry number is misleading. The investment bank projects that the Obamacare exchanges will end up actually </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">enrolling</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> 4 million people&#8211;but only 1 million of them will have been previously uninsured.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Regardless, the bill&#8217;s cheerleaders remain defiant. When Obama appeared on her TV show, useful idiot Ellen DeGeneres </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2014/03/20/ellen-sucks-obama-obamacare-doing-very-very-welli-think-everyones-very-g">contended</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that &#8220;everyone&#8217;s very grateful&#8221; for Obamacare. The terminally clueless Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who defied the available data and </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/201299-pelosi-we-couldnt-be-prouder-of-obamacare">contended</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that ObamaCare has &#8220;dramatically&#8221; slowed the growth in healthcare costs, insisted Democrats &#8220;couldn&#8217;t be prouder&#8221; of the bill and that it would backfire for the GOP as a campaign plank. Slate&#8217;s David Weigel </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/03/defending_obamacare_why_aren_t_democrats_using_the_approach_republicans.html?wpisrc=burger_bar">believes</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> all Democrats have to do is &#8220;find Obamacare success stories.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Again, reality bites. As </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Hill</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> reveals, opposition to ObamaCare </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/201311-o-care-opinions-holding-steady-despite">remains</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> near its all time high with a 53 percent disapproval rating. ABC’s Jeff Zeleny </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://hotair.com/archives/2014/03/17/abc-democrats-privately-admit-obamacare-is-political-poison/">revealed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that &#8220;privately several Democrats tell ABC News they’re increasingly worried the health care law is political poison.&#8221; As for ObamaCare stories, here&#8217;s a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/03/20/50-states-50-obamacare-horror-stories-%E2%80%A6-are-they-all-lying-harry-reid">compilation</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of 50 negative ones&#8211;from every state in the union.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yet the ultimate reality is the simplest one for the American public to grasp. The president and his administration have taken a duly enacted law and made a complete and unconstitutional mockery of it, altering or delaying every onerous piece for nothing more than transparent political considerations. They have done so with complete complicity from Congressional Democrats, who have made an equal mockery of the constitutionally-mandated separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches. That&#8217;s how the president, his administration and Democrats have </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">demonstrated</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, not talked about their &#8220;pride&#8221; for ObamaCare. </span></p>
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		<title>The Parade of ObamaCare Lies Marches On</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-parade-of-obamacare-lies-marches-on/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-parade-of-obamacare-lies-marches-on</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-parade-of-obamacare-lies-marches-on/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Mar 2014 04:49:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[income inequality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Insurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uninsured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Union]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220742</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What's hiding behind the administration's statistics on the "newly insured." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/obamacare-website-ap.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-220749" alt="obamacare-website-ap" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/obamacare-website-ap-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>Another round of inconvenient realities have gotten in the way of the ObamaCare rollout. A report issued by a major union accuses ObamaCare of exacerbating income inequality. A separate survey explains how the administration is playing it fast and lose &#8212; and downright deceptively &#8212; with their head count of enrollees. And finally, a daunting percentage of the uninsured Americans for whom the bill was ostensibly written have concluded that the Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA) is, well, unaffordable. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Unite Here, a union with 300,000 workers in the gaming, food service, manufacturing, textile, distribution, hotel, airport and laundry industries, has published a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cdn.ralstonreports.com/sites/default/files/ObamaCaretoAFL_FINAL.pdf">report</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> titled “The Irony of ObamaCare: Making inequality worse.” The intro gets right to that irony. &#8220;The promise of Obamacare was the right one and the hope for extending healthcare coverage to the un-and under-insured a step in the right direction,&#8221; it states. &#8220;Yet the unintended consequences will hit the average, hard-working American where it hurts: in the wallet.&#8221;</span></p>
<p>The 12-page document by the union that was the first to give its endorsement to then-Senator Barack Obama further explains that because most the ACA&#8217;s $965 billion in subsidies will end up in the pockets of insurance providers, it represents &#8220;one of the largest transfers of public wealth to private hands ever.&#8221; According to the union, the bill also strangles fair competition in the insurance market, and pushes people into part-time work. And if employers follow the incentives laid out in the law, families will be pushed onto the ObamaCare exchanges where it will cost low-wage employees as much as $5 per hour to pay for similar coverage.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Testimonials by workers who will be hurt are included. Hotel cook Arturo Marquez, a single father with two children, reveals that the &#8220;best deal ObamaCare could offer me would take $1,908 more than our union plan. That’s like a dollar an hour pay cut. If I get really sick and wind up in the hospital, they can charge me $3,700 more out of pocket. I can’t imagine taking care of my son and daughter while taking a $2.70 an hour pay cut.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Guest room attendant Angela Portillo, who notes that &#8220;housekeeping is a tough job&#8221; where some of her fellow workers suffer &#8220;serious injuries,&#8221; reveals that ObamaCare would cost her and her husband “$8,057.04 a year more to keep the great insurance we have now. That’s a $3.87 per hour pay cut. We work hard for our insurance. Why should we have to take a cut in pay for it?”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Near the end, the report notes the tragic irony of the Obama administration&#8217;s highlighting of economic inequality, even as it fails to preserve health plans that have been achieving ObamaCare goals &#8220;for decades.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;We take seriously the promise that &#8216;if you like your health plan, you can keep it. Period.&#8217; UNITE HERE members like their health plans. UNITE HERE’s plans are ready to compete with the corporate giants of the health insurance industry if Washington will simply create a level playing field,&#8221; it concludes.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">No doubt this report will come as a surprise to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). It was Reid who </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/harry-reid-denies-all-obamacare-horror-stories-all-are-untrue_783449.html">told</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the nation in late February that </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">all</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of the &#8220;horror stories&#8221; attached to the ACA were untrue. </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">New York Times</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> columnist Paul Krugman will be equally astonished, considering his </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/opinion/krugman-health-care-horror-hooey.html?_r=0">piece</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, &#8220;Healthcare Horror Hooey&#8221; posited that people are &#8220;just making stuff up&#8221; about the bill&#8217;s shortcomings.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If anyone is </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/03/08/mckinsey-only-14-of-obamacare-exchange-sign-ups-are-previously-uninsured-enrollees/">making stuff up</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, it&#8217;s the Obama administration. A new </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://healthcare.mckinsey.com/individual-market-enrollment-updated-view">survey</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> from McKinsey &amp; Company, a global management consulting firm that has been conducting monthly assessments of the exchange-eligible population, reveals that the White House&#8217;s numbers regarding people who have gained healthcare coverage are pure fiction. The survey notes that not everyone who has selected a plan has actually paid the premiums required to truly be counted as covered, and that only a small percentage of people enrolled on the exchanges were previously uninsured. When those &#8220;filters&#8221; are applied to the administration&#8217;s totals, they dwindle substantially.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In February, 2,096 eligible respondents were surveyed. Only 48 percent of them had signed up for a 2014 healthcare plan, and three-fifths of that 48 percent were people who liked, and were able to keep, their old plans. The other two-fifths were the ones who enrolled on the exchanges. Regarding the latter group, 27 percent of them had been uninsured in 2013, and almost half of the 27 percent still hadn&#8217;t paid a premium. Of the remaining 73 percent who had been previously insured, 86 percent of them had paid their premiums.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">When the percentages are combined, a far more accurate&#8211;and truthful&#8211;picture emerges. Only 19 percent of those who had paid their premiums were previously insured, and of those the Obama administration is characterizing as sign-ups, only 14 percent are enrollees who were previously uninsured. Thus, despite the administration boasts about 3.3 million &#8220;gaining&#8221; healthcare coverage, only 472,000 are previously uninsured exchange enrollees as of February 1.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Far more important, McKinsey &amp; Company&#8217;s survey then inquired why those who didn&#8217;t sign up for a healthcare plan avoided doing so. Out of the five possible reasons for people failing to enroll, 50 percent chose, “I could not afford to pay the premium.” In second place, 31 percent cited the technical difficulties of enrolling: &#8220;I could not effectively shop,&#8221; &#8220;I could not complete purchase,&#8221; and &#8220;I could not set up user account.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Thus, the central premise of ObamaCare, the heavily promoted notion that leaving millions of Americans unable to afford health insurance was a national disgrace, is revealed to be an utter fraud. It was a fraud </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/harvard-medical-study-links-lack-of-insurance-to-45000-us-deaths-a-year/">buttressed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by a 2009 Harvard survey that contended as many as 45,000 people per year died from a lack of coverage. That research was subsequently </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://healthblog.ncpa.org/does-lack-of-insurance-cause-premature-death-probably-not/">debunked</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by other healthcare experts, but it mattered little to Democrats determined to pass a so-called affordable healthcare bill by any means necessary &#8212; including serial lying President Obama himself.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Then, Democrats were guilty of lying by commission. One of the most popular lies was the idea that there were 47 million Americans without health insurance. That figure was revealed to be fraudulent even before Obama was elected. In a 2008 </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Washington Times</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/mar/21/five-myths-of-health-care/?page=all#pagebreak">article</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, Sally Pipes, president and chief executive officer of the Pacific Research Institute, revealed that figure included anyone who went without insurance for any part of the year (including a single day), 14 million people who are eligible for public health-care programs such as Medicaid, 10 million people with household income above $75,000 (meaning they could afford insurance), and 10.2 million illegal aliens.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Now, the Obama administration is lying by omission. When Gary Cohen, who will soon be leaving his job as the director of the main implementation office at the Health and Human Services Department, showed up at an insurance conference last Thursday, he touted the administration&#8217;s updated enrollment figures of 4 million enrollees. Unfortunately for him he was </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/hhs-doesn-t-know-how-many-uninsured-are-signing-up-for-obamacare-20140306">asked</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a critical question: how many of the people who signed up for ObamaCare were previously uninsured? &#8220;That&#8217;s not a data point that we are really collecting in any sort of systematic way,&#8221; he responded.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Washington Post</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/health-insurance-marketplaces-signing-up-few-uninsured-americans-surveys-say/2014/03/06/cdae3152-a54d-11e3-84d4-e59b1709222c_print.html">notes</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, making sure the administration </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">can&#8217;t</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> collect that data appears to be a feature, not a flaw, within the system, due to differences in wording on paper and online </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://healthcare.gov/">HealthCare.gov</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> applications. &#8220;The paper versions of applications, used by a small fraction of people who are signing up, contain a multiple-choice question asking whether people in a household currently have insurance,&#8221; the paper explains. &#8220;&#8216;No&#8217; is one of the boxes people can check. But the online application, which most people use to enroll, asks whether people want to apply for coverage but does not give them a place to indicate whether they have insurance now or have had it in the past. As a result, HHS analysts have no way to assess how many of the online enrollees were uninsured in the past.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Finally, in what at first glance appeared to be good news for ObamaCare defenders, a new Gallup Survey </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/167798/uninsured-rate-continues-fall.aspx">indicates</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that the percentage of Americans without health insurance continues to decline, from 17.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013, to 15.9 percent so far in 2014. Yet the devilish details reveal that number is still higher than 14.8 percent of Americans </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/124973/americans-went-uninsured-2009-2008.aspx">cited</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by Gallup as uninsured in 2008, long before ObamaCare became the law of the land. &#8220;The number of uninsured was generally below 15% in 2008 until it began to increase in November of that year, coincident with the worst of the economic crisis,&#8221; Gallup explained. Furthermore, a Gallup-Healthway&#8217;s Well-Being Index </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/167798/uninsured-rate-continues-fall.aspx?utm_source=alert&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=syndication&amp;utm_content=morelink&amp;utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines">brings up</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> another obvious reason why the latest drop &#8220;could be&#8221; due to ObamaCare: Americans are now required to buy health insurance, or pay a fine for failing to do so.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As the Associated Press </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://news.yahoo.com/policy-notifications-current-status-state-204701399.html">revealed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> in December, 4.7 million Americans had their &#8220;bad apple&#8221; insurance plans cancelled. How many of them the administration is now promoting as new healthcare enrollees is not only impossible to determine, but as Gary Cohen reminds us, of </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">no importance</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. In other words, we have a healthcare plan sold to Americans based entirely on the premise of reducing the number of uninsured &#8212; by an administration that now professes to have no interest whatsoever in knowing whether or not they achieved their objective. Absolutely pathetic.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Video: A Day in the Life of Trying to Sign Up for ObamaCare, Part II</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/tommi-trudeau/video-a-day-in-the-life-of-trying-to-sign-up-for-obamacare-part-ii/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=video-a-day-in-the-life-of-trying-to-sign-up-for-obamacare-part-ii</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Feb 2014 05:00:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tommi Trudeau]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219582</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Not one doctor, or even one Urgent Care Center, in a 50 mile radius accepts my ObamaCare plan.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/pl.gif"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-219583" alt="pl" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/pl-450x252.gif" width="450" height="252" /></a><strong>[To watch Part I, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/tommi-trudeau/video-a-day-in-the-life-of-trying-to-sign-up-for-obamcare/">click here</a>.]</strong></p>
<p>Not one doctor, or even one Urgent Care Center, in a 50 mile radius accepts my ObamaCare plan:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/qStqpdVO7ho" height="315" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Post-Obamacare Reform</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/howard-hyde/post-obamacare-reform/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=post-obamacare-reform</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 20 Feb 2014 05:25:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Hyde]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219219</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The time is overdue to get alternatives into the public consciousness.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/failure.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-219265" alt="failure" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/failure-450x268.jpg" width="450" height="268" /></a>For all of the daily noise about the latest casualties of the Obamacare train wreck (Senator and Obamacare author Max Baucus’ term), from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicting major long-term damage to employment markets to the President’s illegal delay of the black-letter provisions of the employer mandate, there is very little public discussion of what to do about all of it. The time is overdue to get alternatives into the public consciousness.</p>
<p>Obama and the Democrats love to say that Republicans never offered any alternatives to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.  They pretend to ignore the proposed Patient&#8217;s Choice Act of 2009, the Empowering Patients First Act of 2009, the Patient Option Act of 2013, the American Health Care Reform Act of 2013, and now the Burr-Coburn-Hatch plan, a.k.a the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility, and Empowerment Act, a.k.a. the Patient CARE Act (PCA), to name a few. They get away with this feigned justifiable ignorance because they know that the dominant media will hardly give those proposals any ink, tweets or air time, even to let the public know that they exist.</p>
<p>There are plenty of options for healthcare reform besides the ACA, as even Obama tacitly acknowledges every time he issues another royal decree in contradiction to the law’s (rare moments of) plain, unambiguous language; and we will have to discuss them in order to repair the damage left behind by this law and renew the world’s best medical system. Let’s first take a look at what is perhaps more important than the individual proposals themselves: the principles upon which reform should be based.</p>
<p><b>Principle Number One: Incremental (as opposed to comprehensive, all-or-nothing, take-it-or-leave-it) reform</b>. Each policy should be a net positive in and of itself, a move in the right direction rather than a costly kludge that has to be offset somewhere else in the tangled web of taxes, fees, accounting gimmicks and legalese.</p>
<p>One of the biggest problems with Obamacare, as with the immigration reform and too many other bills besides, is their sheer size and scope. No one can read it apart from a handful of unaccountable ‘experts’ to whom we are supposed to surrender our common sense, our money and our liberty. We’re still learning, four years later, what’s in the Obamacare ‘law’.  And then when we do look at individual elements, whether actually in the law or made up after the fact, they are almost all negative: taxes, penalties, prohibitions, exemptions, delays, arbitrary and capricious power granted to unaccountable officers and boards, cost shifting (or it is SHAFTing?) to those least able to protect their interests by hiring lobbyists.</p>
<p>An important aspect of the policy proposals that I list below is that each of them can be taken on its own as a stand-alone bill, to be proposed, debated in the light of day, and voted up or down more or less independently of the others. If one seems less important or less urgent than others, we don’t have to get bogged down; we can come back to it later while we pass the low-hanging fruit. Let the political horse-trading be expressed by the ordering and prioritizing of policies in separate bills, rather than in Cornhusker Kickbacks buried in the omnibus bill cooked in the smoke-filled back room.</p>
<p><b>Principle Number Two: Empower consumers, patients, families, physicians, insurance companies, counties and states &#8212; in that order &#8212; not the federal government and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).</b> At this point in our big-government evolution, solutions consist largely of divesting power from Washington and returning it as far as possible to the individual citizen.</p>
<p><b>Principle Number Three</b>: <b>Free markets. </b>Private property and limited interference from government results in the best products at the lowest prices for the largest number of people. Think iPhone; apply to health care. We need a market environment for healthcare that is just as free and dynamic and innovative as that for computers and orange juice and mutual funds and automobiles and beer. Consider that the reason we have such contention over immigration policy is that America, because of Capitalism, has become the most attractive place in the world for people to live and work. The US healthcare system, for all its warts, was until 2010 the best in the world because it was the freest.</p>
<p><b>Principle Number Four</b>: <b>Use the ‘Bush/Romney Standard’</b>: That is, we should not give any powers to Barack or Bill or Hillary that we wouldn’t be equally eager to give to President Bush or President Romney, to say nothing of President Cruz. You wouldn’t let them raid Medicare to the tune of $760 billion or make the rules up as they go along.</p>
<p>Discretionary powers should be clearly and explicitly enumerated, and those not so enumerated must be assumed not to exist; in other words to require the legislation and/or approval of the people’s representatives in Congress.</p>
<p><b>Principle Number Five: Get out of the way of the unmatched generosity of the American people to help each other.</b></p>
<p>Private, voluntary charity is not a failure; it is a blessing to be honored and cultivated. Americans donate more of their time, talent and treasure than any other nation, through their churches, synagogues, non-profits and other voluntary organizations. They serve the poor and the disadvantaged that they know personally, without need for nor interference from bureaucratic codes and protocols. They do this without demanding salaries, benefits, job security and unfunded defined-benefit pensions that are demanded by our public employee unions who run our government programs.  Voluntary giving is many times more effective and efficient than government-run poor relief and creates no burden on the economy or public finances. It is an important and integral part of the solution for which we make no apologies.</p>
<p><b>Principle Number Six</b>: <b>Envy is not a principle</b>.</p>
<p>With these principles in mind then, the specific policy proposals include but are not limited to the following:</p>
<p><b>Promote competition </b>among insurance companies across state lines without interference or dictation from state insurance commissioners. If we can buy oranges from Florida, mutual funds from Tokyo and wine from France we should be able to buy financial products like insurance from whomever gives us the best deal. As I have written before, those products are relatively freely sold in highly competitive markets across not just state lines but national borders. Health insurance, on the other hand, for decades prior to Obamacare, has been sold in severely and increasingly constrained markets, dictated to by 50 different state insurance commissioners, each with his own favorite list of mandatory coverage provisions. Competition and innovation have been crushed under the jackboot of bureaucracy and compliance. Patient-consumer choice has been reduced. If any plans are &#8220;sub-standard&#8221;, &#8220;lousy&#8221;, “cut-rate” or &#8220;bottom-feeding&#8221;, as Obama and his supporters like to say, that’s why.</p>
<p>In a truly free market, many more people than today would be able to find a plan that works for them at the intersection of their needs and their means, with consumer reports, reviews on social media and word-of-mouth from friends and family members to guide them. Companies that offer products and services in free markets live and die by their reputations. In the era of Facebook and Twitter, no insurance company could survive if a significant number of its customers assessed its products and services as &#8220;sub-standard&#8221;, &#8220;lousy&#8221;, or &#8220;bottom-feeding&#8221;. We need competition, not control, to bend the cost curve downward.</p>
<p><b>Eliminate the mandates </b>and let consumers negotiate with insurance companies for the features they consider essential (or not).<b> </b></p>
<p>In particular, re-open the market permanently to low-premium, high-deductible catastrophic coverage plans which are the baseline standard for all true &#8216;insurance&#8217;.</p>
<p>Not everyone needs coverage for maternity services, contraception, fertility treatments, quitting smoking, acupuncture, hair plugs, chiropractic, naturopathy or massage therapy. But by mandating these services and more, regulation drives up the cost of plans unnecessarily while potentially denying consumers access to things they need and want more urgently, like better customer service, lower prices, coverage for other conditions not mentioned in Obamacare or greater catastrophic coverage – or just more insurance companies willing and able to participate in the market.</p>
<p>Mandates are a dead weight on the economy, causing costs to rise unnecessarily, making us all (especially us 99%) poorer.  In 2012, the 6 most expensive states (average family premium per enrolled employee for employer-based health insurance) had premiums on average 28% higher than the 6 least expensive states ($17,167 vs. $13,387) and 43% more mandates (48 vs. 34) [Sources: Kaiser Family Foundation and Council for Affordable Health Insurance].</p>
<p>If the consumers want something covered, they will demand it anyway by their buying and not buying, preferring the offerings of one company and plan over those of others. If consumers don’t want it, it’s an extra unnecessary expense, no different economically or in terms of moral hazard than compelling non-smokers to buy cigarettes; might as well smoke ‘em if they’re ‘free’. Either way, the army of bureaucrats needed to enforce the mandate, with their guaranteed salaries, iron-clad job security and (unfunded) defined-benefit pension plans – not to mention health care – must be paid for somehow (hello taxpayer and grandchildren). Mandates are taxes dishonestly imposed. We should have no taxation without honest representation.</p>
<p><b>Repeal the medical device tax</b>, the Medicare tax, the new 2014 tax on small-business and individual-market health insurance premiums and all the other taxes that only serve to destroy innovation and make healthcare more expensive to everyone now and forever.</p>
<p><b>Promote Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and Flexible Spending Accounts(FSAs).</b> These help people pay for medical expenses with pretax dollars and encourage people to spend health care $$ wisely.</p>
<p>No one spends other people’s money more wisely than they spend their own.  The cost curve will be bent downward to the degree that resources and decision-making power are pushed back to the people to whom it makes the greatest personal difference.</p>
<p><b>Reform the tort liability legal casino</b> so that doctors don&#8217;t have to spend a hundred thousand dollars apiece fighting frivolous lawsuits (which 90% of malpractice suits are found to be). Doctors should only order costly and/or hazardous tests if they are in the patient’s best interest, not because they need to triple-cover their own legal backsides.</p>
<p>Texas put a cap of $250,000 on non-economic damages in 2003 and reduced the number of cases by over 80%, and the number of physicians attracted to practice in the state increased 18% in four years.</p>
<p>Implementing ‘loser-pays’ laws, in which any plaintiff filing a claim found to be baseless must pay the legal costs of the defendant, would bring restraint to this out-of-control arena of legalized extortion.</p>
<p><b>Make all health plans and medical expenses tax-deductible from the first dollar</b>. Level the playing field between individuals and employers, because World War II is over and we thought we won.</p>
<p>Our current model of employer-provided health insurance dates from WWII when wage and price controls led employers to resort to non-wage benefits to attract workers (now where’s a great law like that when we need one? – MAXimum wage laws!). There is no moral or economic justification for letting one group of Americans deduct medical expenses from taxable income and others not.</p>
<p><b>Allow physicians to take a tax deduction or credit for services rendered pro bono</b> (serving the poor and/or uninsured), without micromanaging their work. If we want the poor to be served, encourage it.</p>
<p><b>Eliminate government subsidies</b> for unhealthy products like sugar, corn syrup and tobacco (yes, you read that right; in spite of all the government anti-smoking campaigns, tobacco growers received $1.3 billion in subsidies between 1995 and 2011).</p>
<p><b>Abolish the IPAB</b>. This is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, created by the ACA. Its members are as unaccountable as members of the Fed – the Federal Reserve Banking system – and all they can do is issues price control edicts and deny care.  There’s a reason they are called the ‘death panel’.</p>
<p><b>Reform Medicaid</b> according to the terms of its own mission.</p>
<p>If you ask the average intelligent Joe what Obamacare was supposed to accomplish, he might reasonably answer, provide health coverage for the very poor, uninsured and uninsurable. Well guess what? That’s what Medicaid was supposed to do! Only problem is, it’s a failure. A recent study demonstrated that people with no insurance at all had better health outcomes than those covered by Medicaid.  If we insist upon helping the poor through a federal government program, then let’s fix the program that has been targeted at the poor for almost 50 years.</p>
<p>Medicaid does best in the states where it is block-granted rather than micromanaged by the Feds. And States that take the money and buy insurance for the poor do even better.</p>
<p>Finally, <b>Honor the Medical License</b>.</p>
<p>There is a reason we confer licenses of different degrees of authority and responsibility upon people who have dedicated decades of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to medical education, training, internships, residencies and professional practices.  In economic terms, it is a cost saving mechanism. We do it precisely because no matter how well the website works or how brilliant our genius leaders in Washington and their cadre of lawyers are, there is no way that they can know everything about medicine and every patient in the country. We need trained professionals that we can trust to make the correct judgments in the field better than anyone else possibly can, regardless of what the computers and MBA’s flowcharts say.</p>
<p>The Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman was opposed to government licensure of physicians.  Most physicians and many right-thinking people consider that view to be ludicrous; of course we need a recognition of the highest levels of professionalism; otherwise, who will protect us from charlatans and quacks? But the  government seems increasingly uninterested in using licensure as a way of delegating and trusting, and more as a sucker’s game; a means to controlling, micromanaging and manipulating. It&#8217;s about power, not about doing the right thing.</p>
<p>Traditionally in America, doctors have been self-employed, running their own practices and referring within a circle of reputable colleagues.  But the overwhelming trend now is herding the majority of doctors into employee roles at big hospital corporations and Accountable Care Organizations or ACOs (anyone on the anti-corporate Left paying attention?). A provision of the ACA actually prohibits doctors from pooling their resources to be owner-investors in new hospitals. Lawyers and hedge-fund managers are welcome, but physicians need not apply.</p>
<p>In other words, those with the most knowledge of medicine in general and their own patients in particular are being stripped of their power by those with the most ambition and the most Harvard Law degrees.  This is not an improvement for the American health care system or for patients.</p>
<p>We must eliminate the mandates that require doctors to suppress their own professional experience and judgment to comply with cookie-cutter protocols, Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and codes dictated by Washington bureaucrats who are without any medical training or knowledge of the individual patient.</p>
<p>Right now as you are reading this, individual doctors and patients, churches, citizens, foundations and insurance companies are finding the solutions all across this great country of ours.  That is the solution, not Washington D.C.</p>
<p><b>Conclusion</b></p>
<p>Obamacare is  now a dead letter.  If its 2,700 pages of ‘law’ and 20,000 pages of regulation do not mean what they say but only what Obama or Sibelius say that they say depending upon their transient mood and the shifting political winds of the moment, then it means nothing and doesn’t even have to be formally repealed in order to be gotten past. We can ignore it and move on. The task for us, citizens and our representatives, is to construct an alternative system, one brick at a time, major priorities early, improving with each increment, without Rube Goldberg contradictory constructions, violations of the sovereignty of the individual and of the patient-doctor relationship, or massive and dangerous concentration of centralized power. The greatest health care system the world has ever known can yet be greater than it ever was.</p>
<p>It begins with We the People. It begins with liberty.</p>
<p><strong>Howard Hyde is author of ‘<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pull-Plug-Obamacare-Citizen-Pamphlet/dp/0615765939">Pull the Plug on Obamacare</a>’, available in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pull-Plug-Obamacare-ebook/dp/B00BNXX4F6">Kindle</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pull-Plug-Obamacare-Citizen-Pamphlet/dp/0615765939">paperback</a> editions from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pull-Plug-Obamacare-Citizen-Pamphlet/dp/0615765939">Amazon.com</a>. He edits the website <a href="http://www.hhcapitalism.com/">www.hhcapitalism.com</a>. Email: <a href="mailto:HHCapitalism@gmail.com">HHCapitalism@gmail.com. </a>Follow on Twitter: @HowardHyde.</strong></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Obamacare&#8217;s Stunning Redistribution of Wealth</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/john-perazzo/obamacares-stunning-redistribution-of-wealth/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacares-stunning-redistribution-of-wealth</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/john-perazzo/obamacares-stunning-redistribution-of-wealth/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Jan 2014 05:20:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[John Perazzo]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214644</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A closer look at precisely how much Obamacare takes from you, to give to others.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/obama-health-care.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214646" alt="obama-health-care" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/obama-health-care.jpg" width="280" height="158" /></a>For all the attention Obamacare has drawn in recent weeks, few observers have noted that the law is having the unexpected, yet most welcome, effect of transforming scores of millions of Americans, virtually overnight, into generous benefactors of the less fortunate. A real-world example—representative of countless millions of similar situations—will make this crystal clear:</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s say that you are a healthy, hardworking 54-year-old single adult in San Francisco earning $45,960 per year—the income level at which federal Obamacare subsidies from your fellow taxpayers are no longer available to help you pay your monthly health-insurance premiums. As a San Francisco resident, you are permitted to choose from among 16 separate Obamacare-compliant insurance plans. Four of these are so-called “Bronze” plans, low-level policies whose average premium will cost you $453 per month, or $5,436 per year. In exchange for those premium payments, a Bronze plan will cover 60% of your medical expenses—that is, <i>after</i> you meet the $5,000 out-of-pocket annual deductible. For this priceless peace of mind, you can thank Obamacare—the Democratic Party&#8217;s gift to a grateful America.</p>
<p>Let us contrast your case with that of Joe, another 54-year-old single individual in San Francisco, who happens to be an <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/25/obamacare-policies-slam-smokers-could-backfire/">obese alcoholic and longtime drug abuser</a> with little ambition and no history of ever having held a full-time job for very long. Joe currently earns $15,860 per year, which is just above the income level that would have made him eligible for Medicaid. Because Joe doesn&#8217;t qualify for Medicaid, Obamacare stipulates that he must now purchase his own health insurance—thereby proving that, contrary to the shrill rhetoric of conservative naysayers, no one gets an undeserved free ride under Obamacare.</p>
<p>Like you, Joe can choose from among 16 separate plans that are available to San Francisco residents. But unlike you, he is eligible to receive federal government subsidies—money that other, wealthier Americans, such as you, magnanimously “contribute” toward the healthcare expenses of financially “disadvantaged” individuals. If he selects one of the four Bronze plans (whose average monthly premium is $453), Joe qualifies for $452 in average monthly subsidies—meaning that, regardless of which Bronze plan he chooses, he will pay a monthly premium of exactly $1. You read that correctly. The very same healthcare plan that would cost you $453 per month, is available to Joe for $1 per month—i.e., the cost of three oatmeal-raisin cookies at your local Subway sandwich shop. Over the course of a year, you will pay a total of $5,436 in policy premiums, while Joe, who sadly failed to qualify for <i>free</i> healthcare through Medicaid, will pay his own fair share of $12. This is all in the interest of social justice, you understand. And please, <i>don&#8217;t even think</i> about whispering that Obamacare might be some sort of “wealth redistribution” scheme, lest you expose yourself as a petulant reactionary who doesn&#8217;t give a damn about sick people.</p>
<p>Oh, imagine what a wonderful world it would be if we could somehow transfer this same brand of Obamacare-style fairness to realms other than health insurance. In such a utopia, for example, the $25,000 new automobile that you purchase would cost a deserving soul like Joe just $55. Your $100 nightly fee at a motel would be 45 cents for Joe. And the $25 hardcover book you purchase at Barnes &amp; Noble would set Joe back about a nickel. What&#8217;s that, you say? These items aren&#8217;t life-and-death necessities, like medical care, and thus don&#8217;t serve as useful analogies? Good point! Let&#8217;s stick with real necessities, such as food and housing: The same load of groceries that costs you $250 would cost Joe 55 cents. Your $1,200-per-month rent or mortgage payment would be available to Joe for about $2.65 a month. And the $250,000 home you seek to buy could be Joe&#8217;s for about $552. Yes, we&#8217;re talking about a veritable paradise of fairness!</p>
<p>But let&#8217;s return, for a moment, to the subject of healthcare in the here-and-now. Suppose you decide to opt for something substantially better than the aforementioned Bronze plan. As a resident of San Francisco, you can also choose from among four separate Silver plans, which each pay 70% of your medical costs (after a $2,000 annual deductible) and have an average monthly premium of $614. For Joe, these same four plans are available for an average of $38 per month—thanks to the marvelous, magical subsidies that are built into Obamacare. In fact, <i>one</i> of the Silver plans in particular would cost Joe just twenty nickels per month—a darned fair deal for someone needing healthcare, wouldn&#8217;t you say? And again, try not to view the disparity between <i>your</i> fee and <i>Joe&#8217;s</i> fee as some form of “wealth redistribution,” but rather as an opportunity for you to cultivate the fiscal virtue that our president terms “<a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-s-tax-plan-based-neighborliness">neighborliness</a>,” whereby those who are “<a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-s-tax-plan-based-neighborliness">sitting pretty</a>”—like you—extend a helping hand to the “<a href="http://seattlemedium.com/president-obama-help-our-less-fortunate-at-christmas/">less fortunate</a>”—like Joe. Yes indeed, think about how deliriously happy you&#8217;re making good-ol&#8217; Joe!</p>
<p>Now, if you&#8217;re feeling somewhat bold and are inclined to seek out even better coverage, you might opt to enroll in one of San Francisco&#8217;s four Gold insurance plans, which pay 80% of your medical costs (with no deductibles) and have an average monthly premium of $752. For Joe, the average cost of such a policy is $166 per month.</p>
<p>And then there are the top-of-the-line policies—the four Platinum plans—which will pay 90% of your medical expenses and will cost you, on average, $843 in monthly premiums. For Joe, by contrast, the cost of these plans will run about $258 a month.</p>
<p>So, let&#8217;s review: Joe can have <i>the very best</i> coverage available—the type of Platinum plan that our revered overlords in Washington have carefully secured for themselves—for roughly half the cost that <i>you</i> must pay for the most meager, bare-bones, low-end Bronze coverage in existence. Or, alternatively, he can have:</p>
<ul>
<li>a Gold plan for about one-third of what you pay for the Bronze;</li>
<li>a Silver plan for one-twelfth of what you pay for the Bronze; or</li>
<li>his own Bronze plan for <i>less than four-tenths of 1 percent</i> of what you pay for the same plan.</li>
</ul>
<p>And why is Joe able to do all this? Because you, my generous comrade, are largely buying his plan for him. Hooray for you! Hooray for advancing the vision that our president so eloquently laid bare just one month ago, when he identified the eradication of “inequality” as the motive that “drives everything I do in this office.” Ain&#8217;t it wonderful to be part of such a grand crusade?</p>
<p>And in case you seek additional cause for celebration, rest assured that Obamacare imposes the same type of fairness and equity on family plans as it does on individual plans. For instance, a 54-year-old San Francisco couple with two grown children (ages 19 and 20) living at home—and with a $94,200 household income (the income level at which subsidies are no longer available)—can enroll in a bare-bones Bronze family plan (with an annual deductible of $10,000) for an average monthly premium of $1,175. Meanwhile, an identically structured San Francisco family whose household income is $32,500—just above the level that would have qualified them for Medicaid—can obtain a Bronze plan for precisely $4 per month. Yes, the same plan that costs $14,100 per year for the first family, costs <i>$48 per year</i> for the second family.</p>
<p>The four Silver family plans, meanwhile, have an average monthly premium of $1,593 for the first family, and $81 per month for the second family. Annual outlays would be $19,116 for the first family, vs. $972 for the second family.</p>
<p>This, in a nutshell, is the exquisite beauty of Obamacare: It is redistribution … er, um, er … It is neighborliness on a scale never before seen in this country. And many millions of Americans are poised to reap its glorious benefits! As a form of shorthand, you can simply refer to these fortunate millions as “Democrats,” in honor of the party of benefactors that is, at this very moment, purchasing their eternal political allegiance with your dollars. Take pride in the fact that this wonderful arrangement is but one aspect of the “fundamental transformation” of America that our president is so faithfully pursuing, true to his word. At its essence, it is an arrangement designed to take from certain individuals according to their ability to pay, while giving to other individuals according to their need—a profoundly neat and elegant formula if ever there was one. It almost makes you wonder if anyone else has ever thought of anything like it before.[1]</p>
<p><b>NOTE:</b></p>
<p>[1] A central principle of Marxism, popularized by Karl Marx himself, is this: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>ObamaCare Chaos Continues</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obamacare-chaos-continues/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacare-chaos-continues</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obamacare-chaos-continues/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Dec 2013 05:50:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Insurance]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=213737</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And the air of desperation grows thicker.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/obama-health-care1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-213740" alt="obama-health-care" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/obama-health-care1.jpg" width="400" height="225" /></a>If you like unintended comedy, blatant stereotyping, and an undeniable air of desperation eliciting yet another spasm of lawlessness, the moments leading up to today&#8217;s sign-up <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/us/health-care-enrollment-deadline.html?_r=1&amp;" target="_blank">deadline</a> for ObamaCare are sure to please.</p>
<p>We begin with the unintended comedy <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/opinion-rich-lowry-obamacare-affordable-care-act-pajama-boy-an-insufferable-man-child-101304.html" target="_blank">known</a> as Pajama Boy. The Obama administration&#8217;s former campaign apparatus, Organizing for America (OFA), apparently believes the way to get the so-called &#8220;young invincibles,&#8221; necessary to subsidize older and sicker Americans to sign up for healthcare, is to appeal to their inner metrosexual. “Wear pajamas. Drink hot chocolate. Talk about getting health insurance. #GetTalking,” reads the ad, accompanied by a picture of a slightly built man-boy wearing plaid, zip-up &#8220;onesie&#8221; pajamas, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that evoke memories &#8212; depending on your age &#8212;  of Buddy Holly, Elvis Costello, or <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Big+Bang+theory,+cast&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a#q=big+bang+theory+cast&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official" target="_blank">Johnny Galeki</a>, aka Leonard Hofstadter, from the popular CBS sitcom &#8220;Big Bang Theory.&#8221; And lest anyone doubt how the story ends, OFA has <a href="https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/412969328997175296" target="_blank">followed</a> up the original ad with our young man lounging in contentment, sporting a Christmas sweater and coordinated socks, accompanied by the caption, &#8220;And a happy New Year with health insurance.&#8221;</p>
<p>One suspects as many <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/12/20/utter-chaos-white-house-exempts-millions-from-obamacares-insurance-mandate-unaffordable-exchanges/" target="_blank">six million</a> Americans, who have had their individual policies cancelled because they didn&#8217;t comply with the ObamaCare requirements, will be far less contented.</p>
<p>Administration officials <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/19/insurance-cancellations-fewer-than-500000/4132959/" target="_blank">tried</a> to put a happy face on that reality, contending that &#8220;fewer that 500,000 thousand Americans&#8221; will have no insurance at all when the healthcare plan kicks in January 1. Four officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, further contended the number may be even lower because the insurance industry had accommodated President Obama&#8217;s first dalliance with selective law enforcement in November. That was when the president first contradicted his oft-stated declaration that the healthcare bill is the &#8220;law of the land&#8221; and <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/11/15/obama-to-nation-if-you-like-your-plan-you-can-keep-your-plan-at-least-until-the-next-election/" target="_blank">announced</a> that those Americans who had their policies cancelled could retain them through 2014. That many of those policies were no longer available, and that such a move could help precipitate a &#8220;death spiral&#8221; for insurance companies, was apparently of little consequence.</p>
<p>So too is the reality that the number of Americans left uninsured on New Year&#8217;s Day is <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-falling-apart-our-eyes_771566.html" target="_blank">unverified</a>. Considering the Obama administration’s track record with regard to telling the truth, only time will tell how many individual American &#8220;eggs&#8221; will have been broken to make the ObamaCare &#8220;omelet.&#8221;</p>
<p>Moving on to stereotyping, one is hard-pressed to imagine anything more offensively cliched than a YouTube <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/193824-log-cabin-republicans-blasts-obamacare" target="_blank">video</a> created by <a href="http://out2enroll.org/" target="_blank">Out2Enroll</a>, a coalition of organizations who want to make sure that LBGT communities are aware of ObamaCare. &#8220;Get Enrolled&#8221; parodies &#8220;Let It Snow,&#8221; sung by an earnest young woman. &#8220;Hope you&#8217;re stuffed from your Thanksgiving. Now it is the season of giving. Before the doctor brings a lump of coal, get enrolled, get enrolled get enrolled,&#8221; goes the first verse. As the song progresses, the accompanying video shows a quartet of gay young men wearing nothing but red and green briefs and Christmasy headgear, engaging in a series of sexually provocative poses.</p>
<p>Some members of the gay community were not amused. “This cynical ad betrays the depths Obamacare advocates will sink to in order to pad their pathetic enrollment numbers,” Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director Gregory T. Angelo said in a statement released Sunday. “As a self-proclaimed ‘fierce advocate’ of gay equality, President Obama would do well to distance himself from this nonsense and denounce it immediately.”</p>
<p>Angelo further noted the hypocrisy of promoting such stereotypes. “Out2Enroll and others should take a look in the mirror and ask if the truth is that they are the ones responsible for promoting &#8230; harmful stereotypes,” he said.</p>
<p>Angelo may be well-intentioned, but he is naive. When the only commandment for implementing the progressive agenda is &#8220;by any means necessary,&#8221; there are no such things as stereotypes, cliches, unseemly titillation &#8212; or the rule of law.</p>
<p>Thus, it was completely unsurprising that a desperate Obama administration was more than willing to “improvise” yet another last-minute change to ObamaCare. On Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a <a href="http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/facts/factsheets/2013/12/letter-to-senator.pdf" target="_blank">letter</a> to Democratic senators, notifying them that the individual mandate will be now <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304367204579270252042143502" target="_blank">suspended</a> in 2014 for those Americans who had their insurance policies cancelled by the new law. In addition, those Americans are eligible for a &#8220;hardship exemption,&#8221; meaning that if they don&#8217;t, or can&#8217;t, sign up for a new plan, they don&#8217;t have to pay the tax penalty embodied in the original legislation. Moreover, they will qualify for a category of ObamaCare created for people under 30.</p>
<p>Section 1411(c)(5)(A) of the Affordable Care Act grants Sebelius the power to grant a “hardship exemption,” but as Forbes Magazine&#8217;s Avik Roy <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/12/20/utter-chaos-white-house-exempts-millions-from-obamacares-insurance-mandate-unaffordable-exchanges/" target="_blank">explains</a>, the Obama administration &#8220;has, in effect, declared that Obamacare’s regulations are themselves a &#8216;hardship&#8217; worthy of mass exemption.&#8221; He further notes that this latest change has &#8220;thrown the individual insurance market into chaos.&#8221;</p>
<p>That chaos is engendered by the reality that consequences for failing to enroll have been removed, <i>and </i>premium calculations for catastrophic insurance that were based on the idea that enrollees would be under 30, need to be reconfigured virtually overnight. Furthermore, there is nothing stopping Americans who have <i>already</i> enrolled in Obama from changing their minds. All that is necessary is filling out a form declaring the insurance options they face are unaffordable, even as the administration would have no basis for denying them an exemption.</p>
<p>The administration itself added fuel to that particular fire on Friday, when they suddenly <a href="http://b-i.forbesimg.com/theapothecary/files/2013/12/cancellation-consumer-options-12-19-2013.pdf" target="_blank">admitted</a> that many consumers will be exempt because they &#8220;were finding other coverage options to be more expensive than their cancelled plans or policies.” Couple that with the anger that many Americans undoubtedly feel for having been betrayed by an administration that had previously said there would be no waiver of the penalties, to the point where they had promised a veto of any such legislation enacted by Congress, and the trickle of cancellations could rapidly become a flood &#8212; courtesy of an administration that has never shied away from its unwavering commitment to &#8220;fairness.&#8221;</p>
<p>All of it will wreak havoc on the insurance companies, many of whom richly deserve such chaos for climbing into bed with Democrats and the Obama administration in the first place. And it happened only a week after Sebelius <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/sebelius-urging-insurers-cover-people-who-havent-paid" target="_blank">&#8220;urged&#8221;</a> insurance companies to adopt additional measures.  She “suggested” that they give consumers additional time to pay their premiums past today’s deadline for coverage beginning January 1, that they treat out-of-network providers as in-network, and refill prescriptions from previous plans.</p>
<p>If they don&#8217;t adhere to such urges and suggestions? &#8220;The regulatory fine print reveals that HHS intends to kick insurers off the exchanges if they don&#8217;t obey,&#8221; the <i>Wall Street Journa</i>l <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304355104579236782146903614" target="_blank">reveals</a>. &#8220;Having destroyed the old individual market, HHS will only certify the new &#8216;qualified health plans&#8217; if insurers &#8216;adopt policies to prevent disruptions in treatment of episodes of care.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>Tony Soprano would undoubtedly applaud such a &#8220;reasonable&#8221; effort to, as Sebelius put it, &#8220;smooth this transition&#8221; to ObamaCare.</p>
<p>Thus, as the administration&#8217;s chief water-carrier, aka the <i>New York Times,</i> puts it, &#8220;deadlines, which once seemed firm, are now somewhat flexible. Some state exchanges have enrollment and payment deadlines that differ by a few days from those of the federal exchange. Some insurers will provide retroactive coverage; others will not.&#8221;</p>
<p>All of it spells disaster for millions of Americans. And that&#8217;s <i>before</i> the chaos that erupts next year. That&#8217;s when the unilaterally delayed business mandate threatens another <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/20/second-wave-health-plan-cancellations-looms/" target="_blank">50-100 million</a> Americans who get their insurance through their employers with policy cancellations and premium hikes, right before the mid-term elections. Assuming there are no further &#8220;improvisations&#8221; on the &#8220;law of the land.&#8221;</p>
<p>Keep your onesie handy, Pajama Boy. Your work is just beginning.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>HealthCare.gov&#8217;s Date with Destiny</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/healthcare-govs-date-with-destiny/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=healthcare-govs-date-with-destiny</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/healthcare-govs-date-with-destiny/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Nov 2013 05:30:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=211685</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The deadline for fixing the broken site is looking more and more like a pipe dream.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/healthcare.gov_2-620x4011.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211686" alt="healthcare.gov_2-620x401" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/healthcare.gov_2-620x4011-450x324.jpg" width="315" height="227" /></a>By now, most Americans probably know that the Obama administration has promised to fix the HealthCare.gov website by November 30. It is equally likely that a majority of Americans know this administration&#8217;s definition of &#8220;fixed&#8221; is as elastic as the president&#8217;s promise regarding one&#8217;s ability to keep one&#8217;s current insurance plan and/or doctors. Unfortunately for millions of angry and confused Americans, the current prediction it is likely to be as hollow &#8212; if not more so &#8212; than the last one.</span></p>
<p>We begin with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius&#8217;s latest readjustment of reality, <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/health-website-remain-work-progress">announced</a> last Tuesday. &#8220;The 30th of November is not a magic go, no go date,&#8221; Sebelius told the Associated Press. &#8220;It is a work of constant improvement. We have some very specific things we know we need to complete by the 30th and that punch list is getting knocked out every week.&#8221;</p>
<p>Even the AP wasn&#8217;t buying it, noting that the administration&#8217;s contention the website will be properly functioning for the &#8220;vast majority of users&#8221; by the due date &#8220;has morphed in the past few weeks.&#8221; They recounted a statement by Sebelius at an October 30 Congressional hearing that an &#8220;optimally functioning website&#8221; would be in place by the end of November. On Nov. 5, Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, upped it to &#8220;fully functioning.&#8221; Last week, the president used the words &#8220;marked and noticeable&#8221; to describe the website improvements that will ostensibly be in place four days from now.</p>
<p>For those unfamiliar with the Obama administration&#8217;s definition of words such as &#8220;fully functioning,” or &#8220;marked and noticeable&#8221; improvements, it should be noted that they will consider <a href="http://HealthCare.gov/">HealthCare.gov</a> optimally functional if <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/healthcaregov-goal-80-percent-able-to-enroll-for-insurance-through-web-site/2013/11/16/04fa02a2-4e1a-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html">80 percent</a> of its users can buy healthcare online. Thus, what <i>Washington Post</i> describes as the &#8220;first concrete performance standard in the 3<sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub> years since the government began to design the health exchange&#8221; will leave one-in-five Americans searching for their government-mandated insurance policies twisting in the wind&#8211;even as it is deemed a success for doing so.</p>
<p>Yet while Sebelius was out pitching her latest hooey in Orlando and Miami, a panel of ObamaCare computer technicians was delivering more inconvenient truths at a House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hearing. Deputy Chief Information Officer Henry Chao of the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/tech-chief-didnt-see-march-obamacare-memo-100058.html">admitted</a> that as much as 40 percent of the IT systems supporting the healthcare exchange <i>have yet to be built</i>. “It’s not that it’s not working,” Chao told lawmakers. “It’s still being developed and tested.”</p>
<p>The most prominent part of what is being developed and tested is the ability to process and deliver payments to the insurance companies. An HHS source clarified that a bit for <i>Politico</i>, contending that customer payments can be delivered, but the government subsidies that accompany them cannot. Without this &#8220;reconciliation&#8221; process functioning properly, insurers cannot enroll customers in the proper plans. An unnamed insurance industry source illuminated the potential pitfalls. “If people are enrolling, but the back-end systems are not working, their coverage could ultimately be disrupted,&#8221; the source noted. &#8220;They may think they’re enrolled in a plan and they’re not. They may show up at the doctor’s office and not be covered.”</p>
<p>This particular aspect of Chao&#8217;s testimony is stunning, in that it came a full week after the Obama administration revealed that 106,185 people nationwide had “selected,&#8221; rather than actually &#8220;paid for&#8221; an ObamaCare health insurance plan. That number included 26,794 people who had used the federal website. If Chao&#8217;s testimony is accurate, it seems possible that <i>no one </i>who has used the federal website could have a policy that has been fully processed. The only thing more remarkable is that no one thought to ask if that was the case.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s the good news. when pressed on the issue of security, Chao insisted the website was safe. But once again, words mattered. Chao noted that the federal <i>data hub</i>, which verifies one&#8217;s eligibility to use the exchange, does not store information. He further explained that the website has a dedicated security team to monitor progress.</p>
<p>Yet <i>Politico</i> noted that contractors tasked with security who spoke to the committee &#8220;distanced themselves from any responsibility for overall security.&#8221; Jason Providakes, senior vice president and general manager at MITRE’s Center for Connected Government, a federally funded nonprofit, revealed the &#8220;nuances&#8221; in Chao&#8217;s remarks. He explained that while his organization was responsible for six different security assessments, they had &#8220;no view on the overall safety or security status of <a href="http://HealthCare.gov/">HealthCare.gov</a>,” and no role in end-to-end security testing. MITRE tested only “specific parts of <a href="http://HealthCare.gov/">HealthCare.gov</a> within specific parameters established by CMS and in almost all cases we succeeded,” Providakes said.</p>
<p>Whether success in <i>almost</i> all cases on <i>part</i> of a security system is supposed to reassure Americans is anyone&#8217;s guess.</p>
<p>Far less reassuring was the testimony of David Kennedy, head of TrustedSec, a company that offers to hack into private systems to determine their vulnerabilities. He contended that a cursory look at the site revealed numerous &#8220;exposures&#8221; that put it at &#8220;critical risk.&#8221;</p>
<p>Kennedy was one of four experts, including two academics and two private sector tech researchers, who testified that day. All four of them said the website was not secure, and three-out-of-four believed it should be shut down entirely until it is. In an interview following the meeting, Morgan Wright, CEO of Crowd Sourced Investigations, described the size of the code base needed to run the site as &#8220;indefensible.&#8221; Avi Rubin, director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said he wouldn&#8217;t use the site at all, because of the bugs he has learned about.</p>
<p>The administration&#8217;s response? &#8220;I feel like it&#8217;s safe. Absolutely,&#8221; said Sebelius, adding, &#8220;when there have been issues identified or flagged, it&#8217;s immediately fixed.&#8221; White House spokesman Jay Carney sounded even more clueless. &#8220;The privacy and security of consumers&#8217; personal information are a top priority,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Yet once again, one is left to wonder whether that &#8220;top priority&#8221; is part of the November 30 deadline for fixing the website. Last Friday, another evolution occurred. &#8220;There will not be a magic moment around the end of the month when our work will be complete,&#8221; <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/new-wiggle-room-obama-health-plan-sign-ups">said</a> Jeffrey Zients, a management consultant brought in by the administration to straighten out the website. He was speaking shortly after the Obama administration announced yet another &#8220;fix,&#8221; namely the addition of eight extra days to sign up for healthcare. The previous cutoff date of December 15 was moved to December 23. If one signs up by then, one can still get insurance by January 1, 2014, provided they are paid up by December 31&#8211;which depends on Chao and company reconciling the reconciliation process as noted above.</p>
<p>Note that all of the above is about the website. On Saturday, another empty promise was exposed. A analysis done by CNN <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/22/politics/obamacare-subsidies">reveals</a> that &#8220;in the largest city in nearly every state, many low-income younger Americans won&#8217;t get any subsidy at all.&#8221; Low-income is defined as anyone making less than $45,960 per year (four times the poverty level of $11,490). Because the actual cost of insurance is lower than what the Obama administration calculated it would be, many Americans with incomes far below that level will get no help buying their mandated insurance policy.</p>
<p>This contradicts testimony made by the ever-present Kathleen Sebelius to a congressional sub-committee last April, when she insisted that anyone making less than $45,960 would qualify for &#8220;an upfront tax subsidy,&#8221; while someone making $25,500 would &#8220;definitely qualify for a subsidy if he or she is purchasing coverage in the individual market.&#8221; CNN cited three individuals in three different states with incomes ranging from $25,500-$28,725&#8211;all of whom will get no subsidy at all.</p>
<p>HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters defended the change. &#8220;In some instances, because of the competition that the marketplace creates, premiums have come in so low that the premium is below the ceiling in the law,&#8221; she explained. &#8220;This means that, in some places, people will pay less than they would with a tax credit.&#8221;</p>
<p>That is true, but it ignores two salient factors. First, because premium prices increase with age, the younger, healthier Americans needed to keep ObamaCare afloat will be disproportionately affected by the subsidy elimination. Second, and far more important, the unexpected change amounts to one more instance where ObamaCare expectations fall short of ObamaCare reality.</p>
<p>Another arena of lowered expectations regards the president&#8217;s &#8220;fix,&#8221; theoretically allowing Americans to keep their old insurance policy for another year. The word theoretically is very apt, in that many of those policies are long gone. Moreover as of yesterday, the number of states rejecting the fix has <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/23/states-rejecting-obama-fix-shows-plan-will-have-little-impact-on-improving/">increased</a> from last week&#8217;s four to this week&#8217;s nine. Connecticut California, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington are rejecting the president&#8217;s offer, with Minnesota Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and others suggesting that the fix would destabilize their respective markets, and raise premiums for too many residents.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for millions of Americans, the most destabilizing element of all has yet to be realized. And once again, the nation’s date with destiny has been readjusted. Last week the Obama administration announced that the date for next year&#8217;s open enrollment season will be pushed back one month, from October 15 to November 15&#8211;putting it past the 2014 mid-term election. It should be quite an enrollment period, since the 61 million to 108 million Americans who are currently insured by their employer will be seeing the same cancellation notices next year that have hit 5 million Americans&#8211;and counting&#8211;in the individual market this year. As Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) rightly notes, this &#8220;cynical political move&#8221; is intended to prevent Americans from finding out how much insurance premiums for 2015 may spike &#8220;until after the election.&#8221;</p>
<p>That assumes the <a href="http://HealthCare.gov/">HealthCare.gov</a> website is working a year from now. Unbelievably, AP reporter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar actually states that if it malfunctions again, &#8220;Democrats could benefit politically. If lighting strikes twice and the website sputters again during the next open enrollment season, that second act would not take place until after the voting is done.&#8221;</p>
<p>Perhaps Alonso-Zaldivar should interview Debra Fishericks, a woman with kidney cancer who is <a href="http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/11/25/woman-battling-kidney-cancer-losing-company-health-plan-due-to-obamacare/">losing</a> her company-sponsored insurance due to ObamaCare. Or he could interview company owner Betsy Atkinson of Atkinson Realty in Virginia Beach, who discovered that none of the plans offered in place of her current employee plan is affordable. “We were happy, we had great insurance,” Atkinson told CBS News. “We had continuing care for our employees. On June 30, 2014, I will probably not be offering company insurance for my employees. I just can’t afford it,” she added.</p>
<p>Another due date, another disaster. That&#8217;s the real story behind ObamaCare. And fixing a lousy website won&#8217;t change it.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Pelosi: I Never Met &#8216;Anybody Who Liked His or Her Plan&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/larry-elder/pelosi-i-never-met-anybody-who-liked-his-or-her-plan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=pelosi-i-never-met-anybody-who-liked-his-or-her-plan</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/larry-elder/pelosi-i-never-met-anybody-who-liked-his-or-her-plan/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2013 04:15:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Larry Elder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=211246</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New levels of delusion from one of ObamaCare's most enthusiastic supporters. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/pelosi-gregory-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211247" alt="pelosi-gregory-1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/pelosi-gregory-1.jpg" width="225" height="188" /></a>Asked whether she needed to apologize to the formerly insured who have lost their health insurance plans, former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, &#8220;Did I ever tell my constituents that if they liked their plan they could keep it? I would have if I&#8217;d ever met anybody who liked his or her plan. But that was not my experience.&#8221;</p>
<p>Pelosi, whose net worth — combined with her husband&#8217;s — is estimated between $35 and $180 million, never &#8220;met anybody who liked his or her plan&#8221;? Her out-of-touch comment reminds one of then-New Yorker film critic, liberal Pauline Kael. In 1972, after Republican Richard Nixon crushed Democrat George McGovern, 49 states to one, a shell-shocked Kael said, &#8220;Nobody I know voted for Nixon.&#8221;</p>
<p>Pelosi&#8217;s world is that of rich people and government workers whose health care plans are better than those of their counterparts in the private sector. How would she know that, according to a pre-Obamacare ABC News-Kaiser Family Foundation-USA Today survey, &#8220;88 percent of the insured rate their coverage as excellent or good&#8221; and &#8220;89 percent are satisfied with the quality of care they receive&#8221;?</p>
<p>Ms. Pelosi, meet Kristen Powers, Fox News analyst and a Democratic strategist. After her policy was canceled and her premiums doubled, Powers said: &#8220;My blood pressure goes up every time they say that they&#8217;re protecting us from substandard health insurance plans, because there is nothing to support what they&#8217;re saying. &#8230; I am losing my health insurance. &#8230; If I want to keep the same health insurance, it&#8217;s going to cost twice as much. There&#8217;s nothing substandard about my plan.</p>
<p>&#8220;All of the things they say that are not in my plan are in my plan, all of the things they have listed. There&#8217;s no explanation for the doubling of my premiums other than the fact that it&#8217;s subsidizing other people. They need to be honest about that, that that&#8217;s the reason they don&#8217;t want to change it.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s because they&#8217;re basically taking the people who are responsible enough to get health insurance in the individual market and asking them to subsidize other people. So they&#8217;re taking young healthy people and asking them to subsidize other people.&#8221; Well, &#8220;shared sacrifice&#8221; — that&#8217;s the whole point behind Obamacare, isn&#8217;t it?</p>
<p>Democrats flat-out despise insurance companies. They&#8217;ve been called &#8220;immoral villains&#8221; (Pelosi), &#8220;deceptive and dishonest&#8221; (President Barack Obama), &#8220;fly-by-night&#8221; (former Gov. and DNC chair Howard Dean), &#8220;rapacious&#8221; (Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.) and &#8220;greedy&#8221; (Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.).</p>
<p>Are health insurance companies any greedier than any other for-profit sector of the economy? In 2009, before Obamacare, profit margins for the network and communications equipment industry averaged 20.4 percent; Internet services and retailing was 19.4 percent; pharmaceuticals averaged 19.3 percent; railroads 12.6 percent; gas and electric utilities 8.7 percent; and food consumer products 6.7 percent. Health insurance and managed care companies? They averaged 2.2 percent.</p>
<p>Follow the money.</p>
<p>Of the political contributions by the, say, communications/electronic industry in 2012, $94.6 million went to Democrats, and $55.7 million to Republicans. But from 1990 to the current 2014 cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org, insurance companies gave 63 percent of their political donations to Republicans versus 37 percent to Democrats.</p>
<p>Obamacare is now more unpopular than ever, in large part because of broken promises. At the televised health care summit in February 2010, just before passage of Obamacare, then-Minority Whip Eric Cantor predicted millions would lose their coverage. He had the following exchange with the President:</p>
<p>Cantor: I don&#8217;t think you can answer the question in the positive to say that people will be able to maintain their coverage, people will be able to see the doctors they want, in the kind of bill that you are proposing.</p>
<p>Obama: &#8220;The 8 to 9 million people that you refer to, that might have to change their coverage &#8230; would find the deal in the exchange better.&#8221; Yet Obama still publicly assured people that &#8220;no one&#8221; would take away their policy, if they liked it.</p>
<p>Finally, Obama still gets a pass on a tale he repeatedly told to sell Obamacare. How many times did we hear that Obama&#8217;s mom, dying of cancer, had to fight with her carriers to pay her medical and hospital bills? The story, crucial to humanizing the fight, turns out to be bogus. According to a book by an ex-New York Times reporter, the sole dispute was between Obama&#8217;s mother and an insurance company over a disability policy his mother had taken out. The insurance company said she&#8217;d had a pre-existing condition when she applied for that policy. But her medical bills — and this is what Obama insisted they fought over — were in fact paid by her health care insurer, directly and without dispute.</p>
<p>Yes, our health care system &#8220;suffers.&#8221; But it suffers from a lack of free markets. The antidote is more competition — reducing barriers to entry, health savings accounts, giving individuals the same health care tax breaks as given to business, competition across state lines, and for tough cases, charity.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Emperor&#8217;s New Rules</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/the-emperors-new-rules/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-emperors-new-rules</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Nov 2013 04:55:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=210774</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama decrees Americans can keep their health plans -- but can the damage be undone? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/600x39926.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210775" alt="600x39926" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/600x39926-443x350.jpg" width="266" height="210" /></a>Stung by public anger and his rapidly plunging approval ratings, President Obama wants to delay the cancellation of existing health care insurance policies for one year.</span></b></p>
<p>It has nothing to do with the public interest. It has everything to do with crass political calculations.</p>
<p>As an electoral tsunami gradually develops that threatens to drown Democrats and give Republicans a healthy majority in the Senate, Democrats remain focused. They are clinging to the increasingly unlikely prospect of recapturing the House of Representatives in next year&#8217;s elections, a move that would allow them to ram through more America-killing legislation. This, of course, assumes the Democrats keep control of the Senate, something that at the moment seems quite impossible.</p>
<p>President Obama yesterday played out a tableau that could easily have come from Hans Christian Andersen&#8217;s &#8220;The Emperor&#8217;s New Clothes.&#8221; Obama preyed on the most gullible Americans, the lowest of low-information voters, putting on a show for their benefit.</p>
<p>But even Americans who can&#8217;t name the Vice President of the United States know something about Obamacare, so they are not likely to be easily manipulated.</p>
<p>Obama might have gotten away with such a dimwit-friendly tack but for the fact that everyone in the country knows Obama lied about Obamacare allowing Americans to keep their health plans and their medical doctors. In addition, too many people are experiencing real hardship as the Affordable Care Act causes their insurance to be canceled &#8212; and they know who to blame for their pain and suffering.</p>
<p>In the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, the president and press corps may as well have been surrounded by unicorns, leprechauns, and satyrs as Obama threw pixie dust in the air and waved his magic wand after mispronouncing incantations in Austrian.</p>
<p>Obama exposed the residents of all 57 states of the nation to his lies yet again, promising that even now Americans would be able to keep their health insurance plans if they liked them.</p>
<p>&#8220;I completely get how upsetting this can be for a lot of Americans, particularly after assurances they heard from me that if they had a plan that they liked, they could keep it,&#8221; Obama <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/14/statement-president-affordable-care-act">said</a> in his by-now tiresome fake sympathy routine.</p>
<p>&#8220;And to those Americans, I hear you loud and clear. I said that I would do everything we can to fix this problem. And today I&#8217;m offering an idea that will help do it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama explained that a grandfather clause in the Affordable Care Act already allows people whose insurance plans don&#8217;t change to keep their plans. He didn&#8217;t bother to explain that that consumer protection measure is more or less moot because insurance plans change constantly.</p>
<p>&#8220;Today, we&#8217;re going to extend that principle both to people whose plans have changed since the law took effect, and to people who bought plans since the law took effect,&#8221; Obama said.</p>
<p>Except that His Imperial Majesty is doing no such thing. While taking credit on live television for appearing to do something about the cancelation crisis caused by the Obamacare law, Obama passed the buck to insurers and state regulators.</p>
<p>The president said state insurance commissioners retain authority to decide which plans can be sold in their states and insurance companies &#8220;can extend current plans that would otherwise be canceled into 2014, and Americans whose plans have been canceled can choose to re-enroll in the same kind of plan.&#8221;</p>
<p>Except that they can&#8217;t. The Obamacare statute says they can&#8217;t and the economics of the situation won&#8217;t allow it. The legal infrastructure of the health care insurance market has been changed. Policies were canceled because they don&#8217;t subsidize all the new services that Obamacare mandates. Those policies no longer exist for a reason. Insurers can&#8217;t just push a button and bring them back into existence.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s bizarre pronouncement reflects leftists&#8217; disdain and ignorance of market processes, and the president&#8217;s determination to proceed in defiance of those processes. A locomotive going 60 miles per hour can&#8217;t stop instantly when brakes are activated. Similarly, the Obamacare juggernaut has so many moving parts spread out over such a wide area that locking up one part of the beast won&#8217;t stop it from continuing to barrel forward.</p>
<p>Continuing his lunchtime stroll through La-La Land, Obama said,</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;We’re also requiring insurers to extend current plans to inform their customers about two things. One, that protections &#8212; what protections these renewed plans don’t include.  And number two, that the marketplace offers new options with better coverage and tax credits that might help you bring down the cost.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>It&#8217;s pure fantasy, of course, but lying, stalling, misdirecting, and stonewalling have served the Obama administration well over its first five years. Besides, extravagant healthcare subsidies begin to kick in next year, and all that free money floating around is bound to calm at least some irate consumers.</p>
<p>When consumers find out they&#8217;ve been hoodwinked, the Left is counting on them to blame the corporate world. Obama and desperate Democratic lawmakers are already blaming insurance companies for en masse cancelations, and saying insurers should let consumers keep their plans, seemingly oblivious to the fact that all this upheaval was caused by the Obamacare law.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s fanciful fix requires cooperation from insurance companies and state regulators, and so far he&#8217;s not getting it from either.</p>
<p>Health care insurers promptly slapped down Obama&#8217;s proposal and refused to accept the blame.</p>
<p>“This doesn’t change anything other than force insurers to be the political flack jackets for the administration,&#8221; <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/insurance-industry-rips-white-house-obamacare-fix">said</a> one insurance industry source. &#8220;So now when we don’t offer these policies the White House can say it’s the insurers doing this and not being flexible.”</p>
<p>&#8220;The only reason consumers are getting notices about their current coverage changing is because the ACA requires all policies to cover a broad range of benefits that go beyond what many people choose to purchase today,&#8221; said Karen Ignagni, CEO of America&#8217;s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers. Premiums have already been set for next year based on an assumption of when consumers will be transitioning to the new marketplace. If now fewer younger and healthier people choose to purchase coverage in the exchange, premiums will increase and there will be fewer choices for consumers. Additional steps must be taken to stabilize the marketplace and mitigate the adverse impact on consumers.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>State insurance regulators also threw cold water on the crazy proposal.</p>
<p>Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, a Democrat, said allowing state residents to keep their non-ACA-compliant policies would wreck his state&#8217;s health insurance exchange so the state won&#8217;t permit it. District of Columbia Insurance Commissioner William P. White, who was appointed by the city&#8217;s Democratic mayor Vincent Gray, said the proposal &#8220;undercuts the purpose of the exchanges, including the District&#8217;s D.C. Health Link, by creating exceptions that make it more difficult for them to operate.&#8221;</p>
<p>All of this chaos created by Obamacare and President Obama&#8217;s admission that his system isn&#8217;t working, vindicates the aggressive approach taken by conservatives who pushed hard to defund Obamacare before the partial shutdown of the federal government last month.</p>
<p>The Senate Conservatives Fund, which has been at the forefront of the fight, loosed a mass email after Obama&#8217;s speech yesterday, boasting that, &#8220;Ted Cruz was right. Republicans should have refused to fund Obamacare.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to the SCF,</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The president&#8217;s health care law is an unmitigated disaster and now Democrats in Washington are running for political cover. If Republicans had listened to Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), they could have won this fight and stopped Obamacare. Instead, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sabotaged the effort and now Americans are paying the price.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>The SCF points out that Congress will have another opportunity to defund Obamacare two months from now. &#8220;Obamacare funding expires January 15 and Republicans should not renew it,&#8221; the political committee says in the email. &#8220;If Democrats cause another government shutdown to protect this terrible law, Republicans should hold firm and use the showdown to push for full repeal.&#8221;</p>
<p>Although the House is expected today to take up Congressman Fred Upton&#8217;s (R-Mich.) largely symbolic legislation that would supposedly allow Americans to keep their insurance plans, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) urged repeal. &#8220;There is no way to fix this,&#8221; he said following Obama&#8217;s presser.</p>
<p>Even Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is now calling for the repeal of Obamacare. Just weeks ago McCain labeled those fighting Obamacare as &#8220;wacko birds.&#8221;</p>
<p>It should be noted that Obama&#8217;s midday press conference yesterday, which started more than a half hour late, came the day after the the administration&#8217;s latest lies about enrollment numbers were made public.</p>
<p>Leftist Greg Sargent of the <i>Washington Post</i>, ever the patient Obamacare cheerleader, eagerly conveyed the administration&#8217;s lies, claiming &#8220;[a]round 106,000 enrolled in new plans during October.&#8221; He linked to a <a href="http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2013/MarketPlaceEnrollment/EnrollmentPathv5_files/p1.png">grossly misleading flow chart</a> at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that tries to justify the make-believe enrollment figure.</p>
<p>The chart states with lawyerly precision that &#8220;106,185 have selected a Marketplace plan,&#8221; and that &#8220;396,291 Americans were determined or assessed eligible for Medicaid/CHIP.&#8221;</p>
<p>Therefore, the chart concludes, &#8220;For October 1-November 2, 502,446 (396,261 + 106,185) Americans are positioned to have health coverage in 2014 through the Marketplace, Medicaid and CHIP.&#8221; The 502,446 figure is interesting but irrelevant.</p>
<p>The indispensable Avik Roy of <i>Forbes</i> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/11/12/interactive-obamacare-enrollment-map-45865-have-selected-plans-in-19-states-7-of-total-first-year-goal/">says</a> the real enrollment figure (as of Nov. 8) was a pathetic 45,865 spread out over 19 states. That represents a laughable 0.7 percent &#8211;that&#8217;s seven-tenths of one percent&#8211; of the total first year enrollment goal of 7 million by March 15, 2014. There <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/11/12/the-obamacare-exchange-scorecard-around-100000-enrollees-and-five-million-cancellations/">have been</a> about 5 million cancellations nationwide, according to Roy.</p>
<p>Visiting <a href="http://healthcare.gov/">healthcare.gov</a> or a state exchange website, creating an an online account, applying for coverage, and choosing a government-approved exchange plan, doesn&#8217;t count as an enrollment, Roy reminds us. An insured person has to pay the initial premium to have coverage begin and for the action to count as an enrollment.</p>
<p>Unless the government meets its enrollment goal, tricking young, healthy persons into agreeing to heavily subsidize older, sicker persons, the Affordable Care Act cannot succeed, Roy writes. &#8220;Low exchange enrollment results in higher premiums for those who do enroll, as the costs of coverage and care are spread out among premium-paying enrollees.&#8221;</p>
<p>With all this news of Obamacare-created chaos descending on the nation, now is not the time to be cutting deals with pitiable Democrats.</p>
<p>Although Obamacare may already contain within itself the seeds of its eventual self-destruction, Americans who care about the future of this country have to keep the pressure on. We can&#8217;t assume this hideous program will go away on its own.</p>
<p>Conservatives have to keep pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes until they are blue in the face and ready to drop from exhaustion.</p>
<p>Now is the time to go on offense.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><strong>To watch this week’s episode of <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, which focuses on <em>When Obama Said He’s “Sorry”</em> and unravels the president’s peculiar apology about his ObamaCare lie, <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/when-obama-said-hes-sorry/">Click Here.</a></strong></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>ObamaCare&#8217;s Bros and Hos</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/michellemalkin/obamacares-bros-and-hos/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacares-bros-and-hos</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/michellemalkin/obamacares-bros-and-hos/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Nov 2013 04:03:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ads]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brosurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hosurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Insurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Progressive]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=210636</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The new lows of the president's degrading propaganda.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/colorado-nonprofit-sells-obamacare-as-brosurance-with-cringeworthy-viral-ad-campaign.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210637" alt="colorado-nonprofit-sells-obamacare-as-brosurance-with-cringeworthy-viral-ad-campaign" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/colorado-nonprofit-sells-obamacare-as-brosurance-with-cringeworthy-viral-ad-campaign-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>The &#8220;Got Insurance?&#8221; campaign is the lame brainchild of two &#8220;progressive&#8221; outfits with dubious nonprofit status: ProgressNow and the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative. Their previous claim to fame: a &#8220;Thanks, Obamacare&#8221; social media movement to propagandize praise and gratitude for the federal mandate.</p>
<p>Modeled after the &#8220;Got Milk?&#8221; ads, the latest print and web promos pander to young people with pop-culture memes and entitlement-friendly appeals. The dumbed-down website address: doyougotinsurance.com. Last month, while federal and state Obamacare exchange sites 404&#8242;ed, the Colorado marketing buffoons LOL&#8217;ed. Their &#8220;Brosurance&#8221; ads featured frat boys with red solo cups guzzling beer, playing golf and celebrating government with a &#8220;Thanks, Obamacare!&#8221; smile.</p>
<p>ProgressNow&#8217;s Alan Franklin boasted about his coverage. Media coverage, that is: &#8220;Within the first few weeks, &#8216;Brosurance&#8217; has been featured by The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, CNN, MSNBC, Conan O&#8217;Brien, Bill Maher and Roll Call, as well as the front page of Buzzfeed and Jezebel, just to name a few. Just in the first 24 hours of the campaign&#8217;s launch alone, #Brosurance was mentioned more than six million times on Twitter, and #GotInsurance more than 1.7 million times. Yes. The ads went viral.&#8221; Priorities.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, the groups launched phase two of their Obamacare bread and circuses. Aimed at young women, the ads show party gals with shot glasses lined up on a ski; &#8220;Hey, Girl&#8221; gags involving a cutout of actor Ryan Gosling; and the Sandra Fluke-inspired promo featuring birth control-wielding &#8220;Susie&#8221; and her &#8220;hot to trot&#8221; date, Nate. The caption reads:</p>
<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s Get Physical.</p>
<p>OMG, he&#8217;s hot! Let&#8217;s hope he&#8217;s as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers. I got insurance. Now you can, too.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s bad enough that these idiocracy-targeted ads reduce young people to perpetually partying boozers and traffic-bait boobs. But what&#8217;s truly toxic is the ad campaign&#8217;s cynical feint to draw attention away from Obamacare&#8217;s undeniable harm to responsible young people. Brosurance and Hosurance are trifling distractions from the federal law&#8217;s Nosurance consequences. Insurers started dropping child-only plans in Colorado, California, Ohio and Missouri in 2010 thanks to Obamacare-induced premium increases. Colleges across the country have canceled low-cost plans for students because of Obamacare rules. Thanks to the Obamacare mandate, young, healthy Americans face higher insurance premiums, decreased work hours and perverse incentives to enroll in Medicaid instead of remaining independent and off the dole.</p>
<p>Meanwhile back in Colorado, the state Division of Insurance reports that 250,000 people here have lost their insurance policies in the past few months. And while the &#8220;bros and hos&#8221; circus masters urge young people to sign up &#8220;easily&#8221; on the state exchange, the overseers of the $200 million program are singing a different tune. Last week, IT expert and Colorado health insurance exchange board member Nathan Wilkes blasted the process as &#8220;painful,&#8221; &#8220;odious&#8221; and &#8220;embarrassing.&#8221;</p>
<p>That&#8217;s an apt description of the ruinous policies, clown implementation and moronic marketing of all aspects of Obamacare. Sober up, young America. The &#8220;Affordable Care Act&#8221; is the progressives&#8217; wealth redistribution party from hell — and you&#8217;re paying for it.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Bad Apple President</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-bad-apple-president/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-bad-apple-president</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-bad-apple-president/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Nov 2013 04:53:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[cancelation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health Care]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209960</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One hundred million Americans will soon learn the bitter truth. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/d8650411ff5dda8044d7dc4d94ab8ac5.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209961" alt="President Obama Speaks On Health Care In Boston" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/d8650411ff5dda8044d7dc4d94ab8ac5-450x304.jpg" width="270" height="182" /></a>Turn on your television. Keep flipping the channels past the infomercials, the reality shows and the music videos and you&#8217;ll hear it.</p>
<p>The problem only affects a small (millions large) sliver of the population. The plans being cancelled were substandard. Health plans aren&#8217;t lost; they&#8217;re transitioning to new health opportunities. The private marketplace was an unregulated Wild, Wild West where villainous deductibles went around with guns blazing through the office of the town sawbones.</p>
<p>The insurers decided to cancel the plans for reasons having nothing to do with the government. These were &#8220;bad apple plans&#8221; that the insurers didn&#8217;t even want to sell anymore. They couldn&#8217;t sell the plans anymore because they had changed too much. (Such as increasing the co-pay by 5 bucks.)</p>
<p>Leave the television on CNN, MSNBC or your local news and between weather and sports, you&#8217;ll hear these lies peddled by Obama, his advisors and assorted Democratic Party figures reciting the same talking points about the Wild, Wild West where Bad Apple plans roamed the frontier</p>
<p>And every word of it is a lie.</p>
<p>The people losing their plans didn&#8217;t have substandard plans. They had a wide variety of plans from light to bulletproof. The insurance marketplace wasn&#8217;t unregulated. There is no such thing as an unregulated marketplace except when your neighbor&#8217;s kid start selling lemonade from a box crate; and even then the local authorities have been known to come by and demand a business license.</p>
<p>It isn&#8217;t a small sliver of the population that&#8217;s affected; even assuming that the population of a European country could be classified as a small sliver. Once the employer-based plans are affected, nearly 100 million people will lose their health plans. Or in Obamaspeak, will be transitioned to a new opportunity with higher premiums and deductibles for less coverage.</p>
<p>The forced cancellation of health plans for nearly 100 million people is not routine marketplace churn. It&#8217;s the result of regulations written for ObamaCare by Obama&#8217;s bureaucracy which are calculated to disqualify as many grandfathered plans as possible.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s new caveat to his infamous promise, &#8220;If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan,&#8221; but &#8220;only if it hadn&#8217;t changed since the law passed&#8221; neglects to mention that his people made it so that even the mildest and most meaningless of changes will kill a plan and dump another victim into the ObamaCare mess.</p>
<p>Repeat the same process nearly 100 million times and you have the opening round of ObamaCare; the law we had to pass to find out just how terrible it was. While the spokesmen spin the tragedy to make it seem as if the millions losing their health plans now will be the last ones; they&#8217;re only the first of many.</p>
<p>100 million people aren’t even a small sliver of China or India&#8230; let alone the United States. It&#8217;s more than the number of people who voted for Obama. It&#8217;s twenty times the size of his margin of victory. If that&#8217;s a small sliver of the population that can be disregarded when their insurance plans are taken out back and shot, then they can also be disregarded when they voted for Obama.</p>
<p>The problem is not that there were nearly 100 million bad apple insurance plans out there. The people complaining about losing their plans didn&#8217;t have bad apple plans&#8230; they had a bad apple president.</p>
<p>The man in the White House was a substandard model who relied on a Wild, Wild West of unregulated executive power to set up an illegal law, tamper with it freely and then dump it on the country, while protecting a small sliver of allies in key unions and the government from what he had done to the rest of the country.</p>
<p>The insurers weren&#8217;t angels, but they had no interest in screwing up health care for almost 100 million people. Businesses don&#8217;t think that big. Governments do.</p>
<p>American health care has grown worse with each government intervention. Doctors are accused of playing G-d, but it&#8217;s really the government bureaucrats, the politicians and the professional medical ethicists who have never treated a patient but insist on drawing up lists of who should live and who should die and which people are the biggest burden on health care, which do.</p>
<p>In 2012, voters had the opportunity to exchange their bad apple president for a better model. They chose to stick with their substandard model which lacked experience and ethics, was known to pull all sorts of bad apple scams and acted like it was the Wild, Wild West when it came to following the law.</p>
<p>Now the bad apple president has screwed up their health care in a big way and is blaming anyone and everyone except his bad apple self.</p>
<p>His spokesmen have blamed insurers, patients, Republicans, the internet and a solar eclipse for the chain of disasters that began with the ObamaCare website deploying like a parachute tied to an anvil and concluding with the Halloween Massacre of health care plans followed by rate hikes and empty promises of subsidies.</p>
<p>President Truman had a sign on his desk that said, &#8220;The buck stops here.&#8221; Barack Obama has a rug that reads, “The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself,”  “No Problem of Human Destiny is Beyond Human Beings,” “The Welfare of Each of Us is Dependent Fundamentally Upon the Welfare of All of Us” and “The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Towards Justice.”</p>
<p>Taken together they encourage action without contemplation. Fear is not the only thing that government should fear. It should also fear to destroy the fragile social compact between the people and their government that makes freedom possible. It should fear that its actions will cause more harm than good. It should also fear that it is not nearly as wise as it thinks it is.</p>
<p>The empty grandiosity of the rug across which the bad apple president walks flatters his ego. It is a long way from the memento mori of the Roman general whose servant would interject into displays of grandiosity the warning, &#8220;Remember thou art mortal.&#8221;</p>
<p>The grandiose rug is the reflection of a bad apple president who lies like a much cheaper rug. Every time one of his grandiose rug-inspired plans collapses, he rejects the implication of mortality with another barrel of bad apple lies.</p>
<p>The recognition of our own mortality teaches us our limitations. The worst tyrants and monsters, like Joseph Stalin, did not believe that they would die. The USSR&#8217;s persecution of doctors was motivated by its leader&#8217;s faith in his own immortality.</p>
<p>Obama has no humility and does not believe in his own immortality, but in his invincibility; political and otherwise. He really does believe that the only thing to fear is fear itself. And 100 million Americans will lose their health insurance plans because their bad apple president was too arrogant to question his own bad judgment.</p>
<p>That is why Healthcare.gov does not work. It&#8217;s why ObamaCare is such a disaster.</p>
<p>A standard model president understands risks and consequences. A substandard model like Obama does not. A good apple president apologizes when he chops down a cherry tree. A bad apple president blames Bush, the cherry tree, the axe and Global Warming.</p>
<p>The American people are being lied to every day by a bad apple president who covers up one lie with another lie and pastes an even crazier lie on top.</p>
<p>Unfortunately their opportunity to trade in their bad apple president for a fully regulated model that is compliant with the United States Constitution and all subsidiary documents will not come again until the next presidential open enrollment period.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Jamie Glazov&#8217;s</strong> video interview with <strong></strong> <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> about Obama&#8217;s Destructive Agenda, his Muslim Brotherhood Romance, the Anthony Weiner-Huma Abedin saga, and much, much more:</em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/hpyoCFF-iL8" height="315" width="420" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Kathleen Sebelius&#8217;s Mea Culpa Tour</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/kathleen-sebeliuss-mea-culpa-tour/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=kathleen-sebeliuss-mea-culpa-tour</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Nov 2013 04:30:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[cancel]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Kathleen Sebelius]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209830</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the public isn't buying it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/kathleen_sebelius_js_605.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209882" alt="kathleen_sebelius_js_605" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/kathleen_sebelius_js_605.jpg" width="224" height="189" /></a>The real-life version of &#8220;Groundhog Day&#8221; moved from the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week to the Senate Finance Committee yesterday, as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/06/Sebelius-faces-lawmakers-anew-on-health-care-law">brought</a> her mea culpa tour to Congress&#8217;s upper chamber. Despite the miserable rollout of President Obama&#8217;s &#8220;signature achievement,&#8221; Sebelius insisted that the <a href="http://healthcare.gov/">healthcare.gov</a> website had improved dramatically, even as she was forced to concede that &#8220;we&#8217;re not there yet&#8221; with regard to full functionality.</p>
<p>Senators from both parties held Sebelius&#8217;s feet to the fire. Committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) insisted the HHS Secretary must be &#8220;candidly, fully, totally&#8221; honest with Congress about the repairs, &#8220;so that we don&#8217;t wake up at the end of November and find out we&#8217;re not there yet.&#8221; He <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/11/06/us-usa-healthcare-delay-idUKBRE9A50PT20131106?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=healthNews&amp;rpc=451">expressed</a> his disappointment that administration officials never foresaw problems with the website. &#8220;When we asked for updates on the marketplaces, the responses we got were totally unsatisfactory,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We heard multiple times that everything was on track. We now know that was not the case.&#8221;</p>
<p>Baucus knew that was the case long before yesterday. The chief architect of the healthcare bill openly <a href="http://nationalreview.com/corner/363249/baucus-train-wreck-comment-being-twisted-malign-obamacare-andrew-johnson">expressed</a> his reservations to Sebelius at a hearing last April, when he told her he &#8220;saw a huge train wreck coming down.&#8221; That &#8220;train wreck&#8221; line was widely reported. Not so widely reported was Baucus&#8217;s reservations about the contractor hired by Sebelius. &#8220;I&#8217;m just worried that&#8217;s going to be money down the drain,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Baucus was prescient about one of the <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/21/technology/obamacare-website-contracts/">six largest</a> contractors involved insetting up the website. HHS <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/25/michelle-obamas-princeton-classmate-is-executive-at-company-that-built-obamacare-website/">awarded</a> a no-bid contract to CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company. A top executive at CGI, Toni Townes-Whitley, was First Lady Michelle Obama&#8217;s Princeton classmate. Moreover, HHS hired them despite a track record of <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/362255/obamacares-magical-thinkers-mark-steyn">failure</a> with regard setting up far smaller operational websites in Canada. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/bill-nelson-tells-sebelius-to-hold-obamacare-contractors-responsible---/2151172">deflected</a> blame away from Sebelius and onto the contractors for the website’s shortcomings. &#8220;I want you to burn their fingers and make `em pay for not being responsible and producing a product that all of us could be proud,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Nelson is aiming at the wrong target. On October 30, Bob Laszewski, who heads a consulting firm for big insurance companies, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/30/politics/obamacare-white-house-pressure/">contended</a> that the Obama administration is &#8220;exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations, to keep quiet&#8221; about the problems associated with the rollout. Despite denials by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, health-care consultant Larry Thompson <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/363161/insurance-executives-speak-out-against-aca-anonymously-eliana-johnson?utm_source=twitterfeed&amp;utm_medium=twitter">seconded</a> that assessment, telling National Review that insurance company executives &#8220;are afraid to say anything because they don’t want HHS all over them.”</p>
<p>Last week, House Oversight Committee chairman Darryl Issa (R-CA) was forced to <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57610277/issa-subpoenas-sebelius-for-healthcare.gov-documents/">subpoena</a> Sebelius for documentation regarding the rollout, because she refused to provide it without being forced to do so. And yesterday, Issa unveiled documents obtained from ObamaCare contractors revealing the October rollout was <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/06/documents-show-first-days-of-obamacare-rollout-worse-than-initially-realized/?hpt=hp_t2">far more</a> chaotic than previously reported.</p>
<p>In other words, the &#8220;most transparent administration in history&#8221; is back in stonewalling mode, and Nelson is attempting to obscure where the real blame for this failure should be placed.</p>
<p>Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) blasted Sebelius for the administration&#8217;s &#8220;cavalier attitude,&#8221; and its &#8220;broken promises&#8221; with regard to the millions of Americans who are seeing their insurance plans changed or cancelled. &#8220;More and more promises made at the time this law was passed are now crumbling under the weight of reality on a daily basis,&#8221; he said. “While I am glad that you are accepting responsibility for this disastrous rollout, I would have preferred that you and the rest of the administration were honest with us to begin with.&#8221; Hatch wants Sebelius to update Congress once a month regarding all progress being made. “No more excuses,” he warned her. “No more spin, just give us the truth.”</p>
<p>Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) was equally <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-sebelius-obamacare-delay-20131106,0,1021952.story#axzz2jtHgxYpD">blunt.</a> “The website’s not working, fine. But the law is not working,” he contended. He noted that many Americans will face far higher prices for insurance premiums when the law is fully in effect next year. Sebelius countered that premium prices are 16 percent lower than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated they would be. Yet when Crapo asked the Secretary if that meant prices for insurance would be lower next year compared to this year, Sebelius admitted it did not.</p>
<p>Whether or not the law is working, Sebelius dismissed any possibility it would be delayed. &#8220;Delay is not an option,&#8221; she insisted. &#8220;We are still at the beginning of a six-month open enrollment that ends at the end of March, and there&#8217;s plenty of time to sign up for the new plans.&#8221;</p>
<p>That sentiment runs contrary to the one <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/24/dems-join-call-to-delay-obamacare-mandate-amid-website-failures/">expressed</a> by members of both parties, particularly Democrats up for re-election in 2014. It would appear they are beginning to understand the lethal political liability of a law that may cause as many as <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/31/obama-officials-in-2010-93-million-americans-will-be-unable-to-keep-their-health-plans-under-obamacare/">93 million</a> Americans to lose their current insurance policies.</p>
<p>Democrats may have gotten even more nervous when Republicans expressed concerns about the security and testing of the website. Staying true to form, Sebelius <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/kathleen-sebelius-obamacare-senate-hearing-99449.html">insisted</a> that administration officials and security consultants saw no reason for delays. “No one suggested the risks outweighed the importance of moving forward,&#8221; she declared. She also <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57611063/sebelius-obamacare-delay-is-not-an-option/">noted</a> that experts have run &#8220;a series of diagnostics, looked at the entire system and determined that <a href="http://HealthCare.gov/">HealthCare.gov</a> is fixable and it isn&#8217;t fatally flawed.&#8221; That would be the same website that <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57611202/departing-obamacare-security-official-didnt-sign-off-on-site-launch/">never</a> received a single end-to-end security test prior to its launch.</p>
<p>Yet the website remains only part of the problem. During questioning by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Sebelius was forced to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/06/sebelius-back-in-hot-seat-on-capitol-hill-over-rocky-rollout-obamacare/">admit</a> there is nothing in the federal regulations that would prevent a <i>convicted felon</i> from becoming an ObamaCare navigator. “Isn’t it true there is no federal requirement for navigators to undergo a criminal background check, even though they will receive personal information from the individuals they help to sign-up up for the Affordable Care Act?” Cornyn asked. “That is true,” Sebelius replied. “States could have an additional background check and other features, but it is not part of the federal requirement.” Cornyn continued. “So a convicted felon could be a navigator and could acquire sensitive personal information from an individual unbeknownst to them?” Sebelius answered, “This is possible.”</p>
<p>Moving from the possible to the highly probable, yesterday the FBI <a href="http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy-policy/2013/11/05/fbi-gears-up-as-nearly-17m-poised-to-get-obamacare-tax-credits/">revealed</a> that they believe the “potential for crime in health care reform is huge,” including estimates of tax credit fraud projected to surpass $20 billion&#8211;because ObamaCare insurance subsidies will be doled out on the honor system.</p>
<p>The next shoe to drop was Sebelius&#8217;s <a href="http://www.kmbz.com/Sebelius-Obamacare-Sign-Ups-Will-Be-Quite-Low-/17705697">admission</a> that when the administration does release the enrollment figures for ObamaCare, they will be dismal. “The enrollment numbers which we will release next week, which will be the first month of enrollment, are likely to be quite low given that struggles people have had getting access to the site and getting information,” Sebelius conceded. “I’m hoping that with the site improvement we’ll see more robust numbers, but until the site is fully improved and we really kind of open up the doors wide to a lot of people, we’re going to have I think a struggle getting significant numbers to sign up,” she added.</p>
<p>Without significant numbers of enrollments&#8211;<a href="http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/11/05/what-happens-if-young-people-dont-sign-up-for-obamacare/">including</a> at least 2.7 million younger, healthier Americans out of the seven million people the system needs to sign up in year one&#8211;insurance premiums are likely to increase significantly in order to cover the pool of policyholders who are older and unhealthier. Rising premiums will discourage even more younger, healthier people from signing up, especially since the alternative fines are far cheaper. As the process repeats itself, a &#8220;death spiral&#8221; ensues.</p>
<p><a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303661404579178231174626314">According</a> to the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, current enrollees are &#8220;older than expected so far.&#8221; Furthermore, the fallback excuse&#8211;that younger healthier Americans will shy away from the glitchy, federally-run website, while older sicker Americans persevere&#8211;isn&#8217;t holding true. Smoother-running state exchanges are also seeing an ominous signup pattern. In Connecticut and Kentucky, both of which have enrolled more than 4,000 people, those older than 55 comprise the largest segment of ObamaCare enrollees, &#8220;much older than industry actuaries say they had anticipated.&#8221; And while the law contains a provision allowing the government (read: taxpayers) to reimburse insurers for some losses, unless the pool of enrollees meets the right age-related criteria, those reimbursements may not prevent insurers from losing money.</p>
<p>New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts have already experienced a death spiral. Like ObamaCare, older, sicker people could not be charged more for coverage than younger, healthier people. As a result, premiums in those states rose to double and triple the national average.</p>
<p>Finally, there was the subject Sebelius was undoubtedly eager to avoid. Several Republicans hammered away at the HHS Secretary regarding the president&#8217;s promise that if you liked your healthcare plan, you could keep your healthcare plan. Like a good soldier, Sebelius <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/kathleen-sebelius-obamacare-hearing-takeaway-more-bad-news-99479_Page2.html">embraced</a> the administration&#8217;s despicable effort to re-write history. “The president’s promise was written into the law from day one, and that was the grandfather clause,” she insisted.</p>
<p>Republican committee members weren&#8217;t buying it. “There weren’t any caveats on that at the time. It’s not like there were any asterisks or footnotes,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD). “We know that lying to Congress is a crime, but unfortunately, lying to the American people is not,” <a href="http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/06/21336093-sebelius-gets-grilled-by-both-democratic-and-gop-senators">said</a> Cornyn. Even Democrat Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) voiced the frustration of  “a couple million people, sadly, who are not going to be able to keep the policies that they want and are facing large increases in premiums.”</p>
<p>Yet is was Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KA) who encapsulated the fears, frustrations and anger felt by the millions of Americans regarding both ObamaCare and the unfettered arrogance of an administration determined to impose their will on the public, irrespective of the disastrous consequences that have ensued:</p>
<blockquote><p>Madame Secretary, you yourself know that this law has serious problems. You delayed over half of the mandate deadlines. You did it for employers, for unions, and for small business, but not for the exchanges&#8230;nor for millions of Americans that are losing their health care..Your main goal should have been to protect Americans, to lessen their risk, and to ensure their safety, but in your zeal to implement this law, not warnings, not advice, not counsel would deter you from implementing the exchanges. You have said America should hold you accountable, which is why today, Madame Secretary, I repeat my request for you to resign.</p></blockquote>
<p>With any luck, the American public will turn that request into a demand.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t miss this week’s <em>Glazov Gang</em>, which exposes <em><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang/">ObamaCare’s Dirty Little Secret</a></em>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Tour of Lies</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obamas-tour-of-lies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-tour-of-lies</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obamas-tour-of-lies/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Nov 2013 04:25:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cancelation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Insurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tour]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209748</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president asks the country to send his dozens of prior statements down the memory hole. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/1030-OBAMA-OBAMACARE-BOSTON-INSURANCE_full_600.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209749" alt="1030-OBAMA-OBAMACARE-BOSTON-INSURANCE_full_600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/1030-OBAMA-OBAMACARE-BOSTON-INSURANCE_full_600-450x300.jpg" width="270" height="180" /></a>President Barack Obama is a liar. Not a person who &#8220;misspoke,&#8221; as the <i>New York Times</i> editorial board <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/opinion/sunday/insurance-policies-not-worth-keeping.html?_r=2&amp;hp=&amp;adxnnl=1&amp;rref=opinion&amp;adxnnlx=1383680025-ijbsJRTuP/Zd7+nTKRkZgQ">ridiculously</a> asserted last Sunday. His promise that if Americans liked their healthcare plan they could keep it &#8212; made on at <i>least</i>  23 separate, <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/video-obama-keep-your-plan-compilation.html">videotaped</a> occasions &#8212; was not the &#8220;half true&#8221; statement the equally corrupt <a href="http://politifact.com/">politifact.com</a> website <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jun/29/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-under-his-health-care-law-those-/">contended</a> it was. Nor did the president make a &#8220;campaign pledge which did not hold up to the realities of governing,&#8221; as shameless TV host Bill Maher <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2013/11/02/wasserman-schultz-obamas-you-can-keep-your-plan-was-not-lie-maher-thinkshttp://www.foxnews.com/">declared</a>, before further noting it was a &#8220;moral complexity&#8221; he is &#8220;okay with &#8217;cause I&#8217;m not twelve.&#8221; It was a bald-faced lie. And on at least <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/10/30/obamas-pledge-that-no-one-will-take-away-your-health-plan/">one occasion</a> in June of 2009, it included a completely unambiguous qualifier: &#8220;if you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan, <i>period.&#8221; </i>(Italics mine). Yet Monday, in an Orwellian moment that provided the public with an unprecedented look at the president&#8217;s utter lack of credibility, Obama <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/05/obama-denies-you-can-keep-it-videotaped-promises/">insisted</a> he never made any such promises.</p>
<p>“What we said was you could keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law was passed,” Obama declared at the St. Regis hotel, in a room  containing around 200 of his staunchest Organizing for Action (OFA) supporters. He then went on defending the indefensible. “If we had allowed these old plans [to continue]… then we would have broken an even more important promise&#8211;making sure that Americans gain access to health care that doesn’t leave them one illness away from financial ruin,” he remarked. “So the bottom line is, is that we are making the insurance market better for everybody.”</p>
<p>Note the use of the word &#8220;we.&#8221; &#8220;We&#8221; didn&#8217;t make the same promise to the American people over and over and over again. Barack Obama did. &#8220;We&#8221; is a great indication the president is more than willing to once again absolve himself of responsibility, should this transparent effort to literally re-write history fail to gain the support of the American public.</p>
<p>Thankfully, it is an effort being undermined by revelation after revelation. On Monday, the AP <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HEALTH_OVERHAUL_ANGST?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2013-11-03-07-39-37">revealed</a> at least 3.5 million Americans have had their insurance policies cancelled so far. &#8220;So far&#8221; is a critical phrase for a number of reasons. As AP notes, &#8220;data is unavailable in a (sic) half the states.&#8221; Assuming the data is identical, getting the other half of it would theoretically double the cancellation total to 6 million.</p>
<p>Fortunately, an Obama administration talking point, or more accurately, a pathetic attempt to mitigate the damage regarding the president&#8217;s mendacity, inadvertently provided a far more accurate picture of how many Americans <i>they</i> expect will be losing their coverage. &#8220;We&#8217;re talking about 5 percent of the country,&#8221; <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/10/29/jay-carney-were-only-talking-about-five-percent-of-people-losing-their-health-plans-n1733027">explained</a> White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.</p>
<p>Five percent of the country equals 14 million people.</p>
<p>Yet even that number is pales in comparison to what Forbes Magazine&#8217;s Roy Avik <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/31/obama-officials-in-2010-93-million-americans-will-be-unable-to-keep-their-health-plans-under-obamacare/">discovered</a>. He notes that page <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2010-06-17/pdf/2010-14488.pdf">34,551</a> of the Federal Register, Vol. 75, No. 116&#8211;dated Thursday, June, 17, <i>2010</i>&#8211;reveals a great deal about what this administration knew and when they knew it. “In total, approximately 66 percent of small employers and 48 percent of large employers made a change in either cost sharing or premium contribution during 2009 that would require them to relinquish grandfather status if the same change were made in 2011,” it states. Avik reveals that the cancellations resulting from these subsequently non-grandfather plans in the employer-based market, coupled with the estimated losses in the individual market, raises the number of people who <i>can&#8217;t </i>keep their current plan if they like it up to a mind-boggling <i>93 million </i>Americans.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s almost one third of the entire country.</p>
<p>Moreover, the notion that Barack Obama might have been &#8220;unaware&#8221; his promise was untruthful was <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303843104579172002892623382">exploded</a> by the <i>Wall Street Journal.</i> They reveal that while the president was out making his pitch to the American people<i>, </i>White House officials &#8220;discussed whether that was a promise they could keep,&#8221; ultimately deciding &#8220;the assertion was fair.&#8221;</p>
<p>Their twisted rationale was best expressed by an unnamed former official. &#8220;You try to talk about health care in broad, intelligible points that cut through, and you inevitably lose some accuracy when you do that,&#8221; the official said. Jim Margolis, a media adviser to Obama&#8217;s campaigns in 2008 and 2012, made a similar assessment. &#8220;With 20/20 hindsight, maybe this should have been parsed more carefully,&#8221; he contended. Nonetheless, he reached the same destination &#8220;The president&#8217;s statement seems fair,&#8221; he decided.</p>
<p>Former senior White House advisor David Axelrod sunk even lower, claiming there was no intention to mislead the public, and that the failure of the <a href="http://healthcare.gov/">healthcare.gov</a> website is the real reason so many Americans are angry. &#8220;The great misfortune here is that the website debacle occurred at the same time as this issue arising,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Because, if the website hadn&#8217;t gone down, then lots of these people would be going online and figuring out, &#8216;Hey I&#8217;m getting a better insurance policy, and I&#8217;ll have to pay less money for it.&#8217; But they can&#8217;t, because the website is down.&#8221;</p>
<p>In other words, Americans would have been OK with being lied to, as long as they could have gotten cheaper insurance.</p>
<p>Administration officials buried themselves still deeper, insulting the public in the process. They told the <i>Journal </i>there was some second-guessing involved in reaching their decision, discussing the possibility that Obama &#8220;might use more in-depth discussions, such as media interviews, to explain the nuances of the succinct line in his stump speeches.&#8221; Yet they determined such details could &#8220;clutter&#8221; the president&#8217;s message, &#8220;confusing&#8221; Americans in the process. Some officials <i>did</i> object to the president&#8217;s assertions, but they were reportedly overruled by political aides.</p>
<p>In other words, they decided to lie by omission, because they believed Americans were too stupid to handle the truth. And once again, remaining true to form, the White House claims it never knew about the dissenters.</p>
<p>The <i>Washington Post&#8217;s</i> Mark Theissen, who worked in the Bush White House, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-obamas-dishonest-presidency/2013/11/04/841947c6-4561-11e3-b6f8-3782ff6cb769_story.html">reveals</a> the utter nonsense behind such a claim. After explaining the &#8220;staffing process&#8221; that determines whether anything even remotely questionable can be included in a speech by the president, noting that every line &#8220;is reviewed by dozens of senior officials, who offer comments and factual corrections,&#8221; he reaches an inexorable conclusion. “This was an (sic) premeditated deception,&#8221; he declares. &#8220;This wasn’t something Obama ad-libbed. It was a line in a presidential speech that was carefully reviewed by the entire White House senior staff. Obama’s political advisers were told by his policy aides the statement was inaccurate&#8211;but they decided to let Americans believe the falsehood.&#8221;</p>
<p>Like Obama himself, the president&#8217;s defenders are also engaged in Orwellian endeavors. “There was nothing about what President Obama or that I or any other Democrat supporting the Affordable Care Act said that was not true,&#8221; declared DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz. (Wasserman Schultz herself is a documented liar, caught on <a href="http://lonelyconservative.com/2012/09/debbie-wasserman-schultz-caught-in-another-lie/">videotape</a> attributing a statement to Israeli ambassador Michael Oren she subsequently denied making). The best the <i>Huffington Post&#8217;s</i> Jason Linkins <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/30/if-you-like-your-plan-you-can-keep-it-_n_4175715.html">can do</a> is take the president mildly to task for his &#8220;glib pronouncement,&#8221; even as he wonders &#8220;whether the media&#8217;s overarching attention to finding some cheap gotcha moments to bedevil political figures for a newscycle or three doesn&#8217;t end up adding to the confusion.&#8221; And while the National Journal&#8217;s Ron Fournier <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/lying-about-lies-why-credibility-matters-to-obama-20131105">criticizes</a> Obama for &#8220;misleading the public about his deception,&#8221; he subsequently concludes that on &#8220;history&#8217;s scale of deception, this one leaves a light footprint. Worse lies have been told by worse presidents, leading to more severe consequences, and you could argue that withholding a caveat is more a sin of omission.&#8221;</p>
<p>Since Fournier failed to identify any of those worse lies, one is left to ponder what particular &#8220;sin of omission&#8221; has resulted in more severe repercussions than the possibility of 97 million Americans losing their health insurance.</p>
<p>What one is not left to ponder is the depth to which the president and his apologists will sink to defend Obama’s outright lying, all of which can be reduced to the American left&#8217;s ultimate rationalization: we will get what we want by any means necessary. Thus they will furiously attempt to deflect reality, insisting that the president&#8217;s lie either doesn&#8217;t matter, or even worse, is justifiable because Americans can get <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HEALTH_OVERHAUL_WHITE_HOUSE?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2013-11-05-13-00-23">cheaper</a> insurance policies, they were being ripped off by what the left has taken upon itself to <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/obamacare-canceled-health-insurance">define</a> as “lousy” insurance policies (even as they couldn&#8217;t care less what policy holders <i>themselves</i> think), or that Americans simply <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jack-coleman/2013/11/05/americans-doughnuts-cheap-insurance-and-other-bad-things-sneers-mother">don&#8217;t know</a> what&#8217;s best for themselves.</p>
<p>They will even go so far as to <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2487518/Stage-4-cancer-sufferer-unhappy-Obamacare-gets-White-House-pushback.html">belittle</a> a stage 4 cancer patient named Edie Littlefield Sundby, because she had the temerity to pen a <i>Wall Street Journal</i> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304527504579171710423780446">editorial</a> revealing that she is losing both her insurance and her oncology doctors because of ObamaCare. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer used his official Twitter account to disseminate a blog by Think Progress blaming the woman&#8217;s insurance company for pulling out of the California market, rather than the reality that ObamaCare itself prompted the move.</p>
<p>Remarkably, Obama himself used market turnover as his rationale for contending he never lied to the American public. “People are acting like this is some new phenomenon… every year there was churn in this individual market,” he told his supporters Monday night. “We decided we need to build something better, no matter how hard it is.”</p>
<p>And no matter how much lying it takes to get there. It remains to be seen if this is the final straw for the American public. The latest Gallup <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx">poll</a> shows Obama&#8217;s approval ratings have fallen below 40 percent. &#8220;Obama has rebranded himself as a liar, forever. He will carry this new label to his grave,&#8221; <a href="http://nypost.com/2013/11/02/how-obama-crossed-the-line-from-bulls-t-to-dishonesty/">writes</a> the <i>NY Post&#8217;s</i> Kyle Smith. It is a new label that will be heavily reinforced by a critical mass of videotaped statements, <i>none</i> of which contain any mention of his new “if it hasn’t changed” qualifier&#8211;along with one cancelled policy after another, affecting millions.</p>
<p>Yet the true measure of this president comes down to one immutable reality. Faced with a choice of admitting he lied and apologizing to the public, or doubling down on thoroughly documented lie, he chose to double down. There&#8217;s only one reason he would do that: because he thinks he can get away with it. If he&#8217;s right, this nation truly has been &#8220;fundamentally transformed.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Don’t miss this week’s <em>Glazov Gang</em>, which exposes <em><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang/">ObamaCare&#8217;s Dirty Little Secret</a></em>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The White House Fable Factory</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/michellemalkin/the-white-house-fable-factory/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-white-house-fable-factory</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Nov 2013 04:10:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Phony tales built Obamacare. Real stories will bring it down.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/o-OBAMACARE-MEDIA-WAR-facebook.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209768" alt="Brack Obama, Kathleen Sebelius" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/o-OBAMACARE-MEDIA-WAR-facebook-450x345.jpg" width="270" height="207" /></a>Now that true horror stories of Obamacare&#8217;s wrecking ball are finally reaching the public, the White House doesn&#8217;t like &#8220;anecdotes.&#8221; Live by tale-telling; die by tale-telling.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney huffed that stage-four gallbladder cancer survivor Edie Littlefield Sundby&#8217;s personal account in The Wall Street Journal of seeing her health insurance plan canceled and her access to doctors cut off was &#8220;sensational.&#8221; Not a shred of compassion for her predicament. No sorrow for her loss. Must. Attack. Messenger.</p>
<p>There are millions out there like Sundby who are using Facebook, Twitter, Twitchy.com and a new website called MyCancellation.com to share their plights. White House flacks and hacks are working overtime to &#8220;debunk&#8221; their experiences, bash insurance companies and deride individual market consumers losing their plans as stupid dupes whose stories don&#8217;t add up.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the thing. This Alinsky-steeped administration has relied on an endless stream of sensationalized, phony personal dramas to sell Obamacare. Last month, Organizing for Action (previously Obama for America) promoted the &#8220;success story&#8221; of Chad Henderson, a supposedly random young person who miraculously enrolled in Obamacare while everyone else in America experienced major tech meltdowns and sticker shock.</p>
<p>Turned out Lying Chad was actually an OFA volunteer who hadn&#8217;t really enrolled in Obamacare yet because he was &#8220;joking.&#8221; No matter. Yesterday, Obama appeared before OFA to solicit even more stories from the group to help propagandize Obamacare. A refresher course on the White House Fable Factory&#8217;s greatest hits:</p>
<p>—Stanley Ann Dunham. Obama cited his mom&#8217;s deathbed fight with her insurer several times over the years to support the Obamacare ban on pre-existing condition exclusions by insurers. During a 2008 debate, he shared her plight: &#8220;For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they&#8217;re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don&#8217;t have to pay her treatment, there&#8217;s something fundamentally wrong about that.&#8221; But New York Times reporter Janny Scott discovered that Dunham&#8217;s health insurer had in fact reimbursed her medical expenses with nary an objection. The actual coverage dispute centered on a separate disability insurance policy.</p>
<p>—Otto Raddatz. In 2009, Obama publicized the plight of this Illinois cancer patient, who supposedly died after he was dropped from his Fortis/Assurant Health insurance plan when his insurer discovered an unreported gallstone the patient hadn&#8217;t known about.</p>
<p>The truth? He got the treatment he needed in 2005 and lived for nearly four more years.</p>
<p>—Robin Beaton. Also in 2009, Obama claimed Beaton, a breast cancer patient, lost her insurance after &#8220;she forgot to declare a case of acne.&#8221; In fact, she failed to disclose a previous heart condition and did not list her weight accurately, but had her insurance restored anyway after intense public lobbying.</p>
<p>—John Brodniak. A 23-year-old unemployed Oregon sawmill worker, Brodniak&#8217;s health woes were spotlighted by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as a textbook argument for Obamacare. Brodniak reportedly was diagnosed with cavernous hemangioma, a neurological condition, and was allegedly turned away by emergency room doctors. Kristof called the case &#8220;monstrous&#8221; and decried opponents of the Democrats&#8217; health care proposals as heartless murderers. The truth? Brodniak not only had coverage through Oregon&#8217;s Medicaid program, but was also a neurology patient at the prestigious Oregon Health and Science University in Portland (a safety-net institution that accepts all Medicaid patients). Kristof never retracted the legend.</p>
<p>—Marcelas Owens. An 11-year-old boy from Seattle, Owens took a coveted spot next to the president in March 2010 when Obamacare was signed into law. Marcelas&#8217; 27-year-old mother, Tiffany Owens, died of pulmonary hypertension. The family said the single mother of three lost her job as a fast-food manager and lost her insurance. She died in 2007 after receiving emergency care and treatment throughout her illness. Progressive groups (for whom Marcelas&#8217; relatives worked) dubbed Marcelas an &#8220;insurance abuse survivor.&#8221; But there wasn&#8217;t a shred of evidence that any insurer had &#8220;abused&#8221; the boy or his mom. Further, Washington State already offered a plethora of existing government assistance programs to laid-off and unemployed workers like Marcelas&#8217; mom. The family and its public relations agents never explained why she didn&#8217;t enroll.</p>
<p>—Natoma Canfield. The White House made the Ohio cancer patient a poster child for Obamacare in 2010 after she wrote a letter complaining about skyrocketing premiums and the prospect of losing her home. After Obama gave Canfield a shout-out at a health care rally in Strongsville, Ohio, and promised to control costs, officials at the renowned Cleveland Clinic, which is treating her, made clear that they would &#8220;not put a lien on her home&#8221; and that she was eligible for a wide variety of state aid and private charity care.</p>
<p>Phony manufactured tales built Obamacare. Real stories of Obamacare wreckage will bring it down.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t miss this week’s <em>Glazov Gang</em>, which exposes <em><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang/">ObamaCare&#8217;s Dirty Little Secret</a></em>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The 93 Million ObamaCare Lies</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/the-93-million-obamacare-lies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-93-million-obamacare-lies</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Nov 2013 04:56:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[It's far worse than you thought.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/RTR3FHI4.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209309" alt="U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the Affordable Care Act in Washington" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/RTR3FHI4-450x300.jpg" width="270" height="180" /></a>The Obama administration has known for three years that when the employer mandate is enforced in 2015 up to 93 million Americans will be forced out of their employer-sponsored health insurance plans.</span></b></p>
<p>This means President Obama has not only been lying to Americans for at least three years, reassuring them that they would be able to keep their current healthcare plans, but that a massive chunk of the nation&#8217;s insured will be hurt by his signature healthcare reform that leftist Democrats unethically rammed through Congress in the dead of night.</p>
<p>The disturbing 2010 analysis of insurance market upheaval conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/31/obama-officials-in-2010-93-million-americans-will-be-unable-to-keep-their-health-plans-under-obamacare/">revealed</a> yesterday by Avik Roy of <i>Forbes</i> magazine.</p>
<p>As one commentator <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/31/did-hhs-estimate-that-93-million-americans-will-lose-their-insurance/">puts it</a>, employers still have to decide by September 2014 if they will &#8220;pay the fine for non-coverage and force their employees into the individual exchanges, or absorb more of the skyrocketing premium costs we’re seeing this month.&#8221;</p>
<p>Employers &#8220;may opt for an in-between solution of private exchanges, but even that will force employees out of their current plans, contra[ry] to the Obama promise that Americans can &#8216;keep their plans.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>Such decisions will have to be made &#8220;just weeks before the midterm elections. Take the headlines and outrage we are seeing now for the impact that ObamaCare has on the individual market and perhaps as many as 12 million Americans, and then multiply it by six as employers make the rational decision to get out of the health-insurance business altogether. The delay of the employer mandate may end up being the worst decision made by Barack Obama except for the hyperpartisan pursuit of ObamaCare itself.&#8221;</p>
<p>All those who love America can only hope that an earth-shattering electoral backlash ensues that forever snuffs out the utopian nightmare of socialized medicine. We&#8217;ll see soon enough.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Americans are learning just how far behind schedule the Obama administration is in signing up Obamacare enrollees.</p>
<p>It turns out that enrollment has barely gotten off the ground. At a morning meeting of a &#8220;war room&#8221; within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Oct. 2, attendees learned that only &#8220;six enrollments have occurred so far,&#8221; investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57610328/obamacare-early-enrollment-numbers-very-small-documents-show/">reports</a>.</p>
<p>By the afternoon of Oct. 2, enrollments had risen to &#8220;approximately 100.&#8221; By the end of the day there were &#8220;248 enrollments&#8221; nationwide, according to CMS war room documents handed over to the House Oversight Committee chaired by Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).</p>
<p>CMS is aiming for 7 million enrollees in the so-called exchanges by March 31, 2014, the end of the initial six-month enrollment period. (That&#8217;s 248 down so far and just 6,999,752 to go in order to meet the official quota. <i>Forward!</i>)</p>
<p>The exchanges are artificial, bureaucrat-created cartels that merely mimic free, competitive markets, perhaps well enough to dupe people with little understanding of real-life commerce. It&#8217;s not really shopping, of course, if you have a gun to your head.</p>
<p>The Obama administration claims that millions of Americans have swamped the Obamacare website, HealthCare.gov, since it went live on Oct. 1 and that it registered an impressive 4.7 million unique visits in the first 24 hours despite barely functioning in that period. The administration <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obama-lied-healthcare-coverage-died/">refuses</a> to provide documentation to back up the difficult-to-believe unique visits figure.</p>
<p>Quite understandably, sane people don&#8217;t believe anything the Obama administration says nowadays, especially when it comes to Obamacare.</p>
<p>Issa certainly doesn&#8217;t. Yesterday the lawmaker <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57610277/issa-subpoenas-sebelius-for-healthcare.gov-documents/">subpoenaed</a> Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for information about the bungled HealthCare.gov launch that she&#8217;s refused to hand over voluntarily. Issa wants a complete accounting from HHS about the laughably incompetent website launch, including how many people tried to enroll in an insurance plan using the HealthCare.gov website and how many actually succeeded.</p>
<p>Issa and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) have repeatedly demanded the information from Sebelius.</p>
<p>Congress shouldn&#8217;t have to use legal compulsion to get the Obama administration to provide &#8220;basic information&#8221; about the exchanges, Alexander said. &#8220;But apparently that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s going to take.&#8221;</p>
<p>The senator said he hoped the subpoena &#8220;will force open the administration&#8217;s black box of secrets that are keeping Congress and the entire American public in the dark.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to Attkisson, the war room notes &#8220;leave no doubt that some enrollment figures, which the administration has chosen to keep secret, are available.&#8221;</p>
<p>Notes from the Oct. 2 morning meeting say, &#8220;[s]tatistics coming in.&#8221; The contractor &#8220;QSSI has a daily dashboard created every night.&#8221;</p>
<p>The notes also indicate that: &#8220;Direct enrollment is not working for any issuers&#8221;; Experian credit reporting agency is &#8220;creating confusion with credit check information&#8221;; and &#8220;Issuer phone numbers are not appearing correctly on the Pay Now page.&#8221;</p>
<p>The dysfunctional rollout lends a great deal of weight to the theory that Obamacare was designed to fail in order to clear the way for what the Left really wants: a one-size-fits-all single payer scheme that feeds the insatiable leftist fetish of equality &#8212; equally bad healthcare for all.</p>
<p>Our red-diaper baby president and his comrades have long wanted a single-payer system that suffocates healthcare choice. Obama&#8217;s slightly less diplomatic colleague, socialist Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), has gone on record saying she wants to crush insurance companies.</p>
<p>Now she&#8217;s telling Republicans complaining about Obamacare to drop dead. &#8220;You know, I want to say to my colleagues after a three-and-a-half year campaign to repeal, to discredit, to even shut down the government over Obamacare, I want to say: get over it,&#8221; Schakowsky said at a congressional hearing Wednesday.</p>
<p>Is kicking most American workers out of their health insurance plans a way to bring about the ghoulish, America-killing, single-payer system that Obama and Schakowsky so badly want? It may very well be.</p>
<p>President Obama and Democratic lawmakers are already blaming insurance companies, instead of the true culprit, sinister anti-market government policies, for the recent nationwide tsunami of Obamacare-related insurance policy cancellations. This week Obama even said Obamacare &#8220;will actually help lower the deficit,&#8221; an absolute fiscal impossibility.</p>
<p>On Wednesday Obama badmouthed the nation&#8217;s insurance companies, which is part of the old Saul Alinsky playbook. Obama had the gall to <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/10/30/remarks-president-and-governor-deval-patrick-affordable-care-act">justify</a> his fascistic takeover of the American healthcare system in historic Faneuil Hall, Boston, of all places, a fact that ought to make more than a few Founding Fathers turn over in their graves. During that address to an audience of trained blue-state seals, barely a word of truth escaped the chief executive&#8217;s lips.</p>
<p>Obama demonized insurance companies that provide affordable health care insurance as &#8220;bad-apple insurers&#8221; that &#8220;had free rein every single year to limit the care that you received, or use minor preexisting conditions to jack up your premiums or bill you into bankruptcy.&#8221; The <i>caudillo</i> from Chicago vilified insurers further by calling affordable plans that pre-date the misnamed, mandate-heavy Affordable Care Act &#8220;substandard plans.&#8221;</p>
<p>Remember, Obama is the same medical genius who <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2009/08/13/surgical-strike-surgeons-group-blasts-obamas-30k-50k-leg-amputation-clai">claimed</a> doctors delight in chopping off patients&#8217; appendages for fun and profit. In 2009 Obama said doctors get a &#8220;pittance&#8221; for treating obesity but are &#8220;immediately&#8221; reimbursed $30,000 to $50,000 for amputating a diabetic&#8217;s foot. In fact, a surgeon is more likely to get around $1,000 from Medicare for such an operation and no medical professional takes amputating a patient&#8217;s body parts lightly. But truth matters little when you&#8217;ve got a healthcare sector to nationalize.</p>
<p>Americans are also learning that Obama&#8217;s White House thugs are <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnn-insurance-insiders-fear-retribution-from-wh-amid-pressure-to-keep-quiet-about-obamacare/">threatening</a> officials at trade associations and insurance providers to keep their mouths shut about the chaos the so-called Affordable Care Act is causing in the healthcare industry.</p>
<p>CNN investigative reporter Drew Griffin said the White House is trying to prevent executives from detailing how the Obamacare law is forcing widespread cancelation of plans.</p>
<p>“If an insurance executive is quoted, speaks out, says anything negative about the Obamacare rollout, they, or more likely their bosses, are to get a call from inside the White House asking them to explain the comments,” Griffin said. “It’s being perceived as pressure to keep quiet.”</p>
<p>Multiple “sources within the industry” have told Griffin that “there is a reluctance to speak out because of these phone calls.”</p>
<p>Insurance industry insider Robert Laszewski said the White House &#8220;is exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations, to keep quiet.”</p>
<p>Griffin said that other industry sources told him they “fear retribution from the White House.”</p>
<p>Incidentally, the American Glob blog <a href="http://americanglob.com/2013/10/31/obama-in-2010-insurance-premiums-will-decrease-by-3000-percent/">reminds us</a> that during a speech in Strongsville, Ohio, on the Ides of March in 2010, Obama irresponsibly hurled numbers at the crowd.</p>
<p>The president claimed that under Obamacare premiums would drop by an arithmetically impossible percentage. For Americans &#8220;who get their insurance through the workplace &#8230; a lot of those folks, your employer, it&#8217;s estimated, would see premiums fall by 3,000 percent, which means that they could give you a raise.&#8221;</p>
<p>Presumably President Obama, who has never been accused of understanding economics, meant to say something other than &#8220;3,000 percent.&#8221;</p>
<p>But in the same speech, he rattled off other percentages that ought to resonate today with Americans who are now suffering from insurance sticker-stock as a result of Obamacare.</p>
<p>In the 2010 <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-health-care-reform-strongsville-ohio">speech</a>, Obama said, &#8220;I’m here because of the folks seeing their premiums go up 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 percent in a year.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Ohio, I am here because that is not the America I believe in and that’s not the America that you believe in.&#8221;</p>
<p>But that is exactly the healthcare regime that Obama is foisting on Americans. As a result of the extravagant healthcare mandates in the Obamacare law, many Americans are lucky to see their premiums jump as little as 20 percent to 60 percent in a year. Many others are seeing their policies canceled outright, rendering them uninsured or forced into an Obamacare exchange.</p>
<p>In the speech, Obama wheeled his dead mother around as a prop, lying about her final half year of life. He said she died of cancer, &#8220;and in the last six months of her life, she was on the phone in her hospital room arguing with insurance companies instead of focusing on getting well and spending time with her family.&#8221;</p>
<p>The story has been thoroughly <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/03/19/obama-nabbed-again-lying-about-mother-health-insurance-problem/">debunked</a> but Obama loves telling it. In reality the insurance company that covered Obama&#8217;s mother, Anne Dunham, reimbursed most of her medical expenses without making a fuss.</p>
<p>In a few short years there may be no private health insurers remaining and Americans may look back fondly on the days when they could talk to representatives of the insurance companies covering them.</p>
<p>If Obama gets his way, we&#8217;ll all be begging bureaucrats for medical treatment and death panels to spare our lives.</p>
<p><strong>Don&#8217;t miss this week&#8217;s <em>Glazov Gang</em>, which explores <em><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang/ ">To Lie for ObamaCare</a></em>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Sebelius&#8217;s Big Day of Big Lies</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/sebeliuss-big-day-of-big-lies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=sebeliuss-big-day-of-big-lies</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 31 Oct 2013 04:50:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[President Obama was never dishonest with the American people? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/kathleen-sebelius-to-congress-whatever.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209154" alt="kathleen-sebelius-to-congress-whatever" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/kathleen-sebelius-to-congress-whatever-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>Those Americans who watched Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius&#8217;s testimony yesterday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee might be forgiven for thinking they were in an alternate universe. Despite her assertion that Americans <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/10/30/sebelius-health-care-house-hearing/3308771/">should</a> &#8220;hold me accountable&#8221; for the ongoing debacle, Sebelius later claimed she was never warned by anyone that the scheduled roll out of the <a href="http://Healthcare.gov/">Healthcare.gov</a> website would be the disaster it turned out to be. Furthermore, she stood by the assertion that the president has been &#8220;keeping his promise&#8221; with regard to the idea that Americans who liked their insurance policies could keep them. Fittingly, <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/10/30/sebelius-on-whether-obama-is-responsible-for-obamacare-whatever-n1733368">during</a> the entire three and a half hours the Secretary testified, the <a href="http://Healthcare.gov/">Healthcare.gov</a> website was down.</p>
<p>Sebelius&#8217;s contention that she was not warned of the problems with the website is a lie. CNN <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/29/politics/obamacare-warning/index.html">reveals</a> they obtained a confidential report showing that while website creator CGI executives were publicly testifying about achieving milestones, they warned the administration a month before the launch that there were &#8220;a number of open risks and issues&#8221; associated with the website.</p>
<p>Undoubtedly, Americans are far more interested in the far bigger lie perpetrated by this administration, highlighted by the <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/sebelius-denies-obama-broke-promise-that-americans-can-keep-current-insurance">exchange</a> between Sebelius and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). “Before, during and after the law was passed the president kept saying if you like your health care plan, you can keep it, so is he keeping his promise?” asked Blackburn. “Yes, he is,” Sebelius replied. When Blackburn noted the reality that 300,000 people in Florida and 28,000 in Tennessee had their policies terminated, Sebelius contended that &#8220;they can get health insurance.&#8221;</p>
<p>The president didn’t promise people they could <i>get</i> health insurance. &#8220;No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you&#8217;ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what,&#8221; Obama <a href="http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/2013/10/30/gop_says_obama_broke_health_care.htm">said</a> in remarks made to the American Medical Association in 2009.</p>
<p>In 2010, after the law&#8217;s enactment, Obama <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/10/30/obamas-pledge-that-no-one-will-take-away-your-health-plan/?hpid=z1">made</a> the same promise. “And if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in the future.” he said.</p>
<p>Nothing <a href="http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/28/21213547-obama-admin-knew-millions-could-not-keep-their-health-insurance?lite">changed</a> in 2012. “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance,” reiterated Obama.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, it was Press Secretary Jay Carney&#8217;s turn when he <a href="http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/29/21237370-white-house-president-didnt-mislead-on-insurance-promise">claimed</a> the president &#8220;was clear about a basic fact. If you had insurance that you liked on the individual market, and you wanted to keep that insurance…you could,” he contended. The <a href="http://Whitehouse.gov/">Whitehouse.gov</a> website made the <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/healthcare-overview">same</a> assertion as recently as <i>yesterday.</i> &#8220;If you like your plan you can keep it and you don’t have to change a thing due to the health care law.&#8221;</p>
<p>As NBC News <a href="http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/28/21213547-obama-admin-knew-millions-could-not-keep-their-health-insurance?lite">reports,</a> the Obama administration knew as early as 2010 that assertion was a lie. Despite promising that some insurance policies in non-compliance with the current law would be &#8220;grandfathered&#8221; into the bill, the Department of Health and Human Services tightened the provisions for that grandfathering three months <i>after</i> the bill&#8217;s passage. If any part of a policy was significantly changed, such as a deductible or copay, it no longer qualified for grandfather status.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/10/30/obamas-pledge-that-no-one-will-take-away-your-health-plan/?hpid=z1">According</a> to the <i>Washington Post</i>, &#8220;significant&#8221; meant as little as a $5.00 change in one&#8217;s copay, &#8220;plus the medical cost of inflation&#8221; (which would have been $5.20 based on last year&#8217;s inflation rate of 4 percent), or <i>any</i> increase in the coinsurance rate above what it was when the law went into effect on March 23, 2010. Moreover, in the bill itself, there was a statement noting that the normal turnover in the insurance market would cause “40 to 67 percent” of customers to lose their policies.</p>
<p>Despite this reality, Sebelius essentially <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/30/politics/obamacare-sebelius/">testified</a> the American public was not only aware of these technical changes, but that they represented a &#8220;wide corridor&#8221; allowing Americans to keep their existing policies. Thus, contended Sebelius, the president was being truthful.</p>
<p>The <i>Post</i> inadvertently reveals the utter absurdity of that contention, noting that those technical changes Sebelius cites are contained in Vol. 75 of the <a href="https://webapps.dol.gov/federalregister/PdfDisplay.aspx?DocId=23967">Federal Register</a>, dated June 17, 2010, three months after the bill was passed, and the regulations themselves are listed on pages <i>34,560 through 34,562.</i></p>
<p>At a later point in her testimony, Sebelius contradicted herself, conceding that Americans remain largely uninformed about the healthcare bill, heartily <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/melanie-hunter/congressman-obamacare-can-save-me-money-subsidizing-my-33-yr-old-son">agreeing</a> with Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) that a &#8220;real marketing campaign&#8221; was necessary to make sure Americans, especially the young who must sign up to keep the system viable, get better informed about the healthcare website.</p>
<p>Doyle was at least affable. Most of his Democratic colleagues were far more interested in praising and protecting Sebelius, as well as castigating Republicans, than getting answers about the problems plaguing the roll out of the program. Republicans were alternately accused of &#8220;sabotaging the bill,&#8221; &#8220;rooting for failure,&#8221; and being on &#8220;the wrong side of history.&#8221; Democrats further extolled the virtues of ObamaCare, and the great benefits it was providing to millions of Americans, even as Sebelius steadfastly refused to release any figures regarding the number of people who have actually signed up for insurance. When asked if the administration would lift a gag order and allow insurance companies to provide those numbers to the public, Sebelius said no.</p>
<p>One of the more pointed <a href="http://freedomslighthouse.net/2013/10/30/gop-rep-mike-rogers-during-sebelius-testimony-obamacare-website-not-secure-will-you-shut-down-the-system-for-end-to-end-security-tests-video-103013/">exchanges</a> occurred between Sebelius and Rep. Mike Rodgers (R-MI). Addressing security issues with the website, Rodgers got Sebelius to admit that she did not know whether or not each code fix being added to the website was tested for security. Sebelius insisted that security is &#8220;an ongoing operation,&#8221; yet when Rodgers asked if the system had been tested &#8220;end to end,&#8221; Sebelius didn&#8217;t know the answer.</p>
<p>Rodgers did. He had documentation stating that the website would be rolled out despite the fact that security was only partially completed and that &#8220;this constitutes a risk that must be accepted before the marketplace day one operations.&#8221; Rodgers was incensed. &#8220;You accepted a risk on behalf of every user of this computer that put their personal financial information at risk, because you did not have even the most basic end-to-end test on the security of this system,&#8221; he said. When Rodgers asked if Sebelius would commit to shutting down the system until an end-to-end test of security was conducted she declined, and insisted that ongoing testing is underway. In other words, no end-to-end test has been conducted, and Americans’ confidential information remains at risk &#8212; all of which is apparently fine with Sebelius.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is fine because Sebelius has her own healthcare plan, a point <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/30/sebelius-rejects-enrolling-obamacare-exchanges/">emphasized</a> by Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO). He told Sebelius that he had rejected the Cadillac coverage offered Congress, and enrolled in a plan in the individual market, only to discover that plan was being discontinued due to ObamaCare. He asked the Secretary why she hadn&#8217;t subjected herself to a similar experience, drawing the only applause during the entire hearing. Sebelius claimed she wasn&#8217;t eligible, because she was covered by her employer.</p>
<p>The <i>Washington Post</i> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/30/sebelius-said-it-would-be-illegal-for-her-to-buy-obamacare-thats-not-quite-right/">discovered</a> that Sebelius was wrong. She could get coverage, but it wouldn&#8217;t be as good as the deal as she gets now. After further challenges by other Republicans, Sebelius <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/kathleen-sebelius-hot-mic-dont-do-this-to-me-obamacare-testimony-2013-10">contended</a> she would “gladly join the exchange” if she didn’t already have her federal plan.</p>
<p>In other words, she can, but she won&#8217;t.</p>
<p>With help from Democrats, the Secretary repeatedly extolled the virtues of ObamaCare, noting that even those who are losing their current insurance will be getting a better, more comprehensive product instead. That has been the fallback answer for this administration, even as it has been revealed that <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57609737/obamacare-more-than-2-million-people-getting-booted-from-existing-health-insurance-plans/">more</a> than two million Americans are losing their current healthcare plans, a total more than <i>triple</i> the number signing up for ObamaCare. &#8220;What we&#8217;re seeing now is reality coming into play,&#8221; said industry expert Larry Levitt, of the Kaiser Family Foundation. Many Americans are unaware that this is occurring because ObamaCare mandates 10 minimum standards, whether Americans need a particular kind of coverage or not.</p>
<p>Representative Renee Ellmers (R-NC) <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/362627/gop-rep-asks-sebelius-why-single-men-need-maternity-coverage-andrew-johnson">drove</a> that point home at the hearing, noting that some single men have to have maternity coverage included in their policy. Sebelius stated that this was necessary because &#8220;an insurance policy has a series of benefits whether you use them or not.&#8221; Thus, those buying insurance must pay for coverage they will never use, so other people can have coverage. In other words, in addition to taxpayer subsidies included in ObamaCare, those buying insurance are also subsidizing other insurance purchasers.</p>
<p>During the course of the hearing, Sebelius promised the website would be completely operational by November 30, but admitted there are no fallback options for those who have lost their insurance, even if they are unable to sign up for a new policy before their current one runs out.</p>
<p>As far as Sebelius taking responsibility for the current failure of the website, one should remember a similar statement was made by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with regard to Benghazi. Clinton&#8217;s acceptance of responsibility amounted to exactly nothing. Since Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest <a href="http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/10/30/obama-complete-confidence-sebelius/">announced</a> late yesterday afternoon that the &#8220;President has complete confidence in Secretary Sebelius,&#8221; she is likely to &#8220;suffer&#8221; the same fate.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, as is always the case with this administration and their media sycophants, the real action on healthcare is occurring largely under the radar. While Americans are having difficulty keeping old policies or buying new ones, Medicaid enrollment&#8211;as in enrollment in a single payer government run healthcare program&#8211;is <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505267_162-57609254/medicaid-enrollment-spike-a-threat-to-obamacare-structure/">exploding</a>. The numbers are stark. In Washington, 87 percent of the more than 35,000 people newly enrolled in the healthcare system signed up for Medicaid. In Kentucky, it was 82 percent of 26,000 new enrollments, and New York, Medicaid accounts for 64 percent of that state’s 37,000 new enrollments. &#8220;Medicaid experts say they&#8217;re not sure why they&#8217;re seeing the lopsided enrollment numbers, but point out it&#8217;s easier to enroll in Medicaid than private insurance,&#8221; reports CBS, apparently oblivious to obvious correlation.</p>
<p>What some Americans are <i>not</i> oblivious to is the threat this represents. &#8220;Either the private insurance enrollments come up somewhere around the expected amount or there&#8217;s going to be a problem. &#8230; You need a volume and you need a mix of people that are healthy as well as high users in private insurance, in order to have it be sustainable,&#8221; said Gail Wilensky, a former Medicaid director.</p>
<p>What Americans need to ask themselves is this: is the chaos surrounding the implementation of the healthcare bill, coupled with the explosion of Medicaid enrollments enabled by the same bill, happening by accident or design? “My commitment is to make sure that we’ve got universal health care for all Americans by the end of my first term as President,&#8221; <a href="http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/time-choosing/2013/oct/25/obama-has-failed-designing-system-was-intended-fai/">said</a> Barack Obama in 2007, at an SEIU union Healthcare Forum. Obama envisioned a 10 to 15 year rollout, and some critics contend the current ineptitude is happening too fast for Americans to swallow a wholesale transition to single-payer government run healthcare.</p>
<p>Yet millions of people losing healthcare coverage, with dim prospects of finding affordable alternatives at this moment in time, could conceivably alter that equation. If there is one thing the massive expansion of the welfare state has proven, it is the reality that a record-breaking number of Americans are willing to be subsidized by their fellow Americans. Furthermore, demonizing private insurance companies that many Americans already hold in contempt, to the point where they would be driven into bankruptcy, is certainly not unimaginable. The president did his part yesterday <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/10/30/obama-blames-bad-apple-insurers-for-canceled-insurance-plans/">blaming</a> “bad apple” insurance companies for canceling plans.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for Americans, the demonization may amount to little more than piling on: there is a good possibility the quality of current enrollment is already producing a death spiral in the industry.</p>
<p>The Obama administration has promised to reveal the number of enrollees in the new system the middle of next month. It could be one of the more historic announcements in recent history, as Americans will likely discover just how much of Barack Obama&#8217;s promise to &#8220;fundamentally transform the United States of America&#8221; has been realized. In the meantime, Sebelius and company will ostensibly be trying to &#8220;fix&#8221; the current system. The fix as they say, may already be in.</p>
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		<title>Obama Lied, Healthcare Coverage Died</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obama-lied-healthcare-coverage-died/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-lied-healthcare-coverage-died</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Oct 2013 04:58:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coverage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Insurance]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[lied]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209092</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Smoking gun emerges proving the president lied about his signature program.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/obcr.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-209095" alt="obcr" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/obcr.jpg" width="270" height="300" /></a>Although federal officials have known for at least three years that Obamacare would cause millions of Americans to lose health insurance coverage, that didn&#8217;t stop President Obama from lying repeatedly, reassuring voters the law would not adversely impact their existing coverage.</p>
<p>In an uncharacteristically media-savvy move aimed at capitalizing on current affairs, Republicans <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.nrsc.org/blog/13-democrats-that-knew-youd-lose-your-heath-insurance-but-promised" target="_blank">compiled</a></span> a list of 13 Democrats &#8211;including Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)&#8211; who deceived voters by obediently repeating Obama&#8217;s lies.</p>
<p>Providing another ground for impeachment to pile on to the growing list of Obama&#8217;s high crimes and misdemeanors, NBC News <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/28/21213547-obama-admin-knew-millions-could-not-keep-their-health-insurance?lite" target="_blank">reported</a></span> that four sources &#8220;deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act&#8221; said that</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a &#8216;cancellation&#8217; letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Many of those required to buy more expensive new policies will experience “sticker shock,” the sources said.</p>
<p>The administration generated an estimate in July 2010 that stated &#8220;that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them,&#8221; according to NBC.</p>
<p>But President Obama, who said the year before, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still promising in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”</p>
<p>For years President Obama has told the public over and over again that after Obamacare took effect, those who were satisfied with their current health coverage would be able to keep it. Obama&#8217;s constant reassurances anesthetized skeptical voters, downplaying the government takeover of the healthcare system. The president told Americans their health care premiums would fall $2,500 per year and they would retain their choice of medical providers. Many Americans, especially on the Left, projected their own fantasies onto Obamacare, and are only now beginning to realize that Obamacare isn&#8217;t actually a cost-free program that causes free health care to fall from the sky.</p>
<p>The 2010 estimate demonstrates that “when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either,” said consultant Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates. He says 80 percent of those in the individual market will be forced out of current policies and be compelled to purchase insurance that complies with the Obamacare statute, which mandates expensive benefits.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, it turns out that the company of First Lady Michelle Obama’s college friend <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/29/michelles-friend-at-cgi-federal-met-with-top-officials-at-white-house/" target="_blank">received</a></span> a no-bid contract to construct the malfunctioning Obamacare website. As the Daily Caller reports,</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Toni Townes-Whitley, who worked alongside her classmate Michelle Obama in multiple Princeton University student groups, became senior vice president of CGI Federal in May 2010. CGI was the only eligible company considered for the contract to build the disastrous HealthCare.Gov Obamacare enrollment site &#8230; Townes-Whitley maintained her relationship with the first couple after joining CGI, even enjoying &#8216;Christmas with the Obamas&#8217; at the White House in 2010.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>CGI Federal Inc., the primary contractor on the joke of a website, also <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obamacare-collapses/" target="_blank">screwed up</a></span> a Canadian-taxpayer funded project, a federal gun registry. The Canadian government canceled the company’s contract in 2007 after that country’s Auditor General determined that the Canadian Firearms Information System (CFIS) being built by CGI was “significantly over budget” and was repeatedly delayed.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Obama administration won&#8217;t say how many people have actually enrolled in the exchanges.</p>
<p>The administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Marilyn Tavenner, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/29/obamacare-chief-repeatedly-dodges-questions-on-number-of-obamacare-enrollees/" target="_blank">repeatedly refused</a></span> to give a straight answer to a congressional committee about how many Americans have signed up with the exchanges.</p>
<p>“We’ll have that information available for you in mid-November,” Tavenner said under questioning from House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.). Tavenner confirmed that CMS is aiming for 7 million enrollees by March 31 next year.</p>
<p>The bungled roll-out lends some credibility to the theory that Obamacare was designed to fail in order to clear the way for what the Left really wants: a one-size-fits-all single payer scheme that feeds the insatiable leftist fetish of equality &#8212; equally bad healthcare for all.</p>
<p>CMS&#8217;s Tavenner and Democratic lawmakers are already blaming insurance companies, instead of the true culprit, government policy, for the recent nationwide tsunami of Obamacare-related insurance policy cancellations.</p>
<p>Left-wingers are becoming downright kooky in their desperate efforts to explain away the Obama administration&#8217;s roll-out failures.</p>
<p><i>Washington Post</i> conspiracy theorist Ezra Klein, the creator of the &#8220;Journolist&#8221; propaganda machine, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/mind-boggling-blame-shifting/?singlepage=true" target="_blank">blames</a></span> Republicans for participating in a make-believe campaign to do &#8220;everything possible to sabotage&#8221; Obamacare. The GOP&#8217;s “plan to undermine the law worked too well,” Klein pontificates.</p>
<p>Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/dem-rep-jumps-out-of-chair-explodes-at-gopers-during-obamacare-hearing/" target="_blank">flew out</a></span> of his chair yesterday during a congressional hearing about the Affordable Care Act’s bungled launch. Pascrell accused Republicans of making up problems with Obamacare in order to justify repealing it.</p>
<p>Sixties civil rights protester John Lewis, now an undistinguished garden-variety <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6497" target="_blank">socialist Democrat</a></span> serving in the House of Representatives, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/29/rep-john-lewis-compares-opposition-to-obamacare-to-racism/" target="_blank">played</a></span> the racism card. Comfortably ensconced in a safe Atlanta, Ga., congressional district that would elect and reelect until the end of time anyone with a &#8220;D&#8221; after his or her name, Lewis said yesterday that Republican attempts to repeal Obamacare remind him</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;of another period in our history. Not so long ago during the 50s, many Southern senators signed a Southern Manifesto after the [<i>Brown v. Board of Education</i>] Supreme Court decision of 1954. And those senators — along with many Southern governors — subscribed to the doctrine of interposition and notification and some even massive resistance.”</p>
<p><b> </b>“That’s what we saw on the part of the Republican members of the House and some of the Republicans in the Senate,” he said of GOP attempts to strip away funding for Obamacare. Lewis conveniently ignored the fact that the 1956 manifesto of which he spoke, a document that opposed the racial integration that the high court cleared the way for, was signed by 99 politicians, 97 of whom were Democrats.</p></blockquote>
<p>Of course, Lewis likes to lie in order to advance causes he supports. In March 2010 Lewis and Congressman Andre Carson (D-Ind.) falsely claimed Tea Party supporters hurled the N-word at them as they walked past an anti-Obamacare rally outside the U.S. Capitol in March 2010. (Carson, a black Muslim who wants U.S. schools turned into Islamic madrassas, also told a black audience that Tea Party supporters wanted to see &#8220;you and me hanging on a tree.&#8221;)</p>
<p>The intellectually mediocre Clarence Page <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-77890657/" target="_blank">embraces</a></span> Obama&#8217;s self-serving explanation that the problems surfacing with Obamacare are the products of mere technological glitches rather than terrifying foreshadowings of the amply documented lethality of government-run healthcare.</p>
<p>The economically illiterate columnist shrugs that Obamacare may not be to blame for recent increases in insurance premiums, deductibles, and co-payments. &#8220;[A]fter decades of rising rates and reduced benefits, as well as rising health care costs, it&#8217;s hard to tell how much of the increase would have happened anyway.&#8221;</p>
<p>Even though the exchanges are artificial government-created cartels that have nothing to do with free markets, Page deludes himself into believing that Obamacare &#8220;opens up competition that &#8230; will reduce the increases in cost.&#8221; As the Jan. 1 deadline approaches for Obamacare coverage to take effect, &#8220;the law, like the federal website, needs more work,&#8221; he writes. No matter how awful the rollout may be, Obamacare is still &#8220;worth the effort,&#8221; according to the Obama lapdog.</p>
<p>No failure, no mountains of evidence, no body count, will ever be enough to convince left-wing true believers like Clarence Page that socialist healthcare is a bad idea.</p>
<p>The Left will continue rationalizing away the failures of Obama and Obamacare no matter how damning the evidence that emerges.</p>
<p>And Barack Obama will continue to be a saintly figure in their eyes as he gets away with  murder.</p>
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