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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Medicare</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/tag/medicare/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
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	<item>
		<title>Illegal Alien Benefit Free-for-All</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/illegal-alien-benefit-free-for-all/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=illegal-alien-benefit-free-for-all</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/illegal-alien-benefit-free-for-all/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Nov 2014 05:56:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246137</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How Obama's amnesty will give non-citizen law-breakers access to a “wide array” of programs -- and an advantage in the job market. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/obama-immigrationjpeg-0107f_c0-67-2700-1640_s561x327.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-246138 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/obama-immigrationjpeg-0107f_c0-67-2700-1640_s561x327.jpg" alt="obama-immigrationjpeg-0107f_c0-67-2700-1640_s561x327" width="315" height="285" /></a>Apparently President Obama’s unilateral decision to grant de facto amnesty to five million illegal aliens was insufficiently outrageous. On Tuesday, a White House official <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/illegal-immigrants-could-receive-social-security-medicare-under-obama-action/2014/11/25/571caefe-74d4-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> the <i>Washington Post</i> that many illegals now protected from deportation will be eligible to receive a “wide array” of government benefits, including Social Security and Medicare.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The admission verifies that, once again, Americans are forced to endure another lie perpetrated by the president. When he announced his <a href="http://politics.suntimes.com/article/washington/obama-immigration-executive-order-speech-transcript/thu-11202014-903pm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">executive action</span></a> last Thursday, Obama was adamant. &#8220;It does not grant citizenship, or the right to stay here permanently, or offer the same benefits that citizens receive—only Congress can do that. All we’re saying is we’re not going to deport you,” he insisted.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Not exactly. The status conferred by the president activates the <a href="https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0300204010"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996</span></a>, which states that the government &#8220;will pay monthly title II and title XVIII benefits to a claimant/beneficiary who is present in the U.S. and who is a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or <i>lawfully present alien</i> as determined by the Attorney General” (italics mine). It further states that payment provisions &#8220;apply to retirement, survivors or disability benefits. This rule also applies to payments made for Medicare services rendered.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Illegals would be required to pay a <a href="http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc751.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA)</span></a> tax, which includes separate payments made to Medicare and Social Security. Once they do that, benefits await. “If they pay in, they can draw,” White House spokesman Shawn Turner told the <i>Post</i> by e-mail.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Turner further noted that such eligibility does not extend to benefits such as student financial aid, food stamps, housing subsidies or ObamaCare. Yet as critics of the president’s plan rightly explain, this administration’s “flexible” approach to the rule of law and the Constitution leaves the door wide open for additional “adjustments” to the program.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“Deferred action and parole-in-place don’t fit neatly into statutory definitions that prohibit access to benefits, mostly because deferred action and parole-in-place have no statutory basis themselves,” Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) communications director Bob Dane <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/17/Exclusive-Report-Obama-s-Executive-Amnesty-Will-Put-Illegal-Aliens-On-Welfare-Public-Benefits-Like-Obamacare-and-More"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> Breitbart News. “Congress has never imagined a rogue president pulling rabbits out of a hat to justify a broad, transformational makeover of the country by way of amnesty. There will always be thousands of loopholes in the law and backdoor methods to achieve a desired agenda, but ultimately the intent of Congress is preeminent. It may be that the courts will have to review that.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">If a recent <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/11/25/court-denies-arizona-request-to-block-drivers-licenses-for-undocumented-immigrants/?wp_login_redirect=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">ruling</span></a> by a three-judge panel at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is any indication, there may be little relief in sight. On Monday, they rejected Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s request to rehear a case related to her 2012 executive order denying about 20,000 illegals access to drivers’ licenses. The Court determined that the Obama administration&#8217;s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), allowing illegals brought here as children before June 15, 2007, and born after 1981 to be protected from deportation, included the right to obtain those licenses.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In other words, we <i>already</i> <i>have</i> exactly the kind of court-sanctioned “extrapolation&#8221; of a constitutionally-dubious executive order that completely belies Turner’s assertion. Thus it is more than likely a president interested in a “fundamental transformation” of the nation—one that includes the transparent attempt to make the Democrat Party an unassailable power—would be more than OK with pulling a few more “rabbits out of a hat” to realize that agenda.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">According to the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector, the current level of benefit access <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/24/Robert-Rector-Amnestied-Illegal-Immigrants-to-Cost-Taxpayers-2-Trillion-Over-Their-Lifetime"><span style="color: #1255cc;">imposes</span></a> a staggering cost on the nation. &#8220;The net cost&#8211;which is total benefits minus total benefits paid in&#8211;of the amnesty recipients I estimate will be around $2 trillion over the course of their lifetime,” Rector <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/24/Robert-Rector-Amnestied-Illegal-Immigrants-to-Cost-Taxpayers-2-Trillion-Over-Their-Lifetime"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> Breitbart News Monday. “What [Obama] is doing is he is putting these 4 million people&#8211; who on average have a 10th grade education&#8211;into the Social Security and Medicare programs. Given their expected earnings, from someone that has a 10th grade education, they will draw about three dollars worth of benefits out of those programs over their lifetimes for every dollar they put into them. But the overall cost in outlays will be around a trillion dollars for those programs alone,” he added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Rector’s calculations were based on a figure of 4 million illegals living an average of 50 years each. The additional trillion dollars of his estimate is based on an assumption that is the mother’s milk of the American left: incrementalism. Rector assumes that additional legislation—or another executive order—will eventually grant amnestied illegals unrestricted access to America’s welfare state. He further envisions that once the citizen children of the amnestied illegals turn 21, they could petition the government for green cards to be granted to their parents, without those parents having to leave the country to get them. “After 5 years with a green card status they are eligible for all the welfare programs,” he explained.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Ironically—or perhaps more accurately, inevitably—the push to expand amnestied illegals access to benefits will be driven by ObamaCare. As the <i>Washington Times</i> <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/25/obama-amnesty-obamacare-clash-businesses-have-3000/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">explains</span></a>, the current executive order gives up to 5 million illegal immigrants three years of legal presence in the country that includes the ability to obtain work permits—but not ObamaCare. As a result businesses that hire amnestied illegals will not have to pay the $3000 ObamaCare penalty for denying them healthcare coverage. Since that penalty would apply to native-born workers, ObamaCare has established a perverse incentive to favor illegal employees over American employees</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Rep. Lamar Smith lamented that reality. “If it is true that the president’s actions give employers a $3,000 incentive to hire those who came here illegally, he has added insult to injury,” he contended. “The president’s actions would have just moved those who came here illegally to the front of the line, ahead of unemployed and underemployed Americans.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Or as mentioned earlier, it would provide the administration with a springboard to expand ObamaCare coverage to include amnestied illegals. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to envision the administration pursuing mainstream media-assisted sales pitch that such a scenario is a “win-win” for illegals who get healthcare coverage, and American workers who no longer have to worry about that perverse incentive.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Republicans were ostensibly surprised that amnestied illegals would be eligible for Social Security and Medicare. “First with Obamacare we were told we should pass it and then read it to find out what was in it,” noted Republican National Committee (RNC) spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski. “Now Obama overreached and acted unilaterally on immigration, which should have been vetted and authorized by Congress, and we’re finding out there’s more to the story than Obama and the Democrats originally told Americans.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">All well and good, but one suspects Americans have little sympathy for a reactive GOP, one “finding out” that the same president and party who lie on a regular basis would once again engage in subterfuge to further their agenda. Credit the normally clueless Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for having a clue this time around. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said the best way to get rid of the loophole is to get rid of the employer mandate itself, adding that next year’s GOP majority should hold a vote on such a proposal.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That would theoretically put the president between a rock and a hard place—unless he unilaterally decided to grant temporary access to ObamaCare to amnestied illegals. There is little doubt a president who makes it up as he goes along would dismiss such an idea out of hand. Another solution would be to once again postpone the business mandate. Again, in the age of the Imperial President, all things are possible.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In the meantime, Obama reminded the nation why he remains one of the most divisive individuals to ever occupy the Oval Office. “There have been periods where the folks who were already here suddenly say, ‘Well, I don’t want those folks,’ even though the only people who have the right to say that are some Native Americans,” he <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/immigration/august_2014/voters_strongly_oppose_obama_s_amnesty_plan_for_illegal_immigrants"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> a Chicago audience Monday, completely dismissing the concerns of millions of Americans, including <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/immigration/august_2014/voters_strongly_oppose_obama_s_amnesty_plan_for_illegal_immigrants"><span style="color: #1255cc;">62 percent</span></a> of likely voters who opposed his unilateral efforts. He further insisted migrants “will boost wages for American-born workers.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">There are <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/09/immigration-boost-economy-widens-wealth-gaps-says-harvard-report/?print=1"><span style="color: #1255cc;">conflicting reports</span></a> with regard to that statement, depending on whose ideology is being served. Yet the most basic rule of supply and demand cannot be ignored: when you have more of something, as in a larger pool of foreign and native-born workers competing for jobs, each unit of that something, in this case wage levels, are worth less. Yet as far as this president and his party are concerned, the well-being of Americans and illegals are now inseparable agendas. One is left to wonder how long American citizens will put up with that.</p>
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		<slash:comments>19</slash:comments>
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		<title>Obama Budget Cuts Medicare, Boosts Medicaid</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-budget-cuts-medicare-boosts-medicaid/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-budget-cuts-medicare-boosts-medicaid</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-budget-cuts-medicare-boosts-medicaid/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 15 Mar 2014 19:24:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicaid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220774</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Wealth redistribution from senior citizens to welfare voters.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/oibama-grandma.jpg"><img class="alignnone  wp-image-220778" alt="oibama grandma" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/oibama-grandma.jpg" width="367" height="258" /></a></p>
<p>Obama <a href="http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/obama-s-budget-for-2015-10-points-for-hospitals-know.html">continues his campaign of wealth</a> redistribution from senior citizens to welfare voters. His new budget makes further cuts to Medicare payments.</p>
<blockquote><p>Reduction of Medicare bad debt payments to providers. Medicare reimburses hospitals, physicians and other providers 65 percent of bad debts that result from Medicare patients not paying their deductibles and coinsurance. This occurs after providers have made &#8220;reasonable&#8221; efforts to recoup the unpaid bills. The budget proposes slashing that rate to 25 percent. In FY 2015, this provision would cost hospitals and other providers $340 million. From 2015 through 2024, it would save more than $30.8 billion. This was proposed in last year&#8217;s budget but was not enforced.</p></blockquote>
<p>The reimbursements create an incentive for providers to see Medicare payments. The cuts will encourage more providers to stop seeing Medicare patients. The process is already underway due to earlier Medicare cuts.</p>
<blockquote><p>Payment reductions to post-acute providers. Inpatient rehabilitation facilities, long-term care hospitals and home health agencies would have their Medicare reimbursements slashed by 1.1 percent each year from 2015 through 2024, resulting in $97.9 billion in savings.</p>
<p>More contributions from high-income Medicare beneficiaries. Starting in 2018, high-income Medicare beneficiaries would pay more in premiums, which the government projects would increase revenue by almost $53 billion through 2024.</p></blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile Medicaid will be getting a boost.</p>
<blockquote><p>Continuation of enhanced Medicaid payments for primary care physicians. Beginning  Jan. 1, 2013, and running through Dec. 31, 2014, states started increasing Medicaid payments for certain primary care physicians (like those in family medicine or internal medicine) to Medicare rates, with the federal government covering 100 percent of the difference. The president&#8217;s budget proposal would extend that enhanced rate through Dec. 31, 2015, costing $5.4 billion during the next two years.</p></blockquote>
<p>Medicare is turning into Medicaid. Meanwhile Medicaid is turning into Medicare. Doctors are being given incentives to drop Medicare and accept Medicaid patients.</p>
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		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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		<title>Under ObamaCare, Seniors to Receive Worse Treatment than Medicaid Patients</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/under-obamacare-seniors-to-receive-worse-treatment-than-medicaid-patients/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=under-obamacare-seniors-to-receive-worse-treatment-than-medicaid-patients</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/under-obamacare-seniors-to-receive-worse-treatment-than-medicaid-patients/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Jan 2014 21:01:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicaid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=216686</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Doctors will be paid less to treat a senior than to treat someone on Medicaid]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/this-infamous-granny-over-the-cliff-ad-shows-how-democrats-will-destroy-paul-ryan.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-216688" alt="this-infamous-granny-over-the-cliff-ad-shows-how-democrats-will-destroy-paul-ryan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/this-infamous-granny-over-the-cliff-ad-shows-how-democrats-will-destroy-paul-ryan.jpg" width="400" height="301" /></a></p>
<p>Obama has his priorities and Medicaid patients voted for him by a much higher margin than senior citizens. And even if they hadn&#8217;t, the left is still the left and it is <a href="http://www.aim.org/guest-column/obama-dooms-seniors-to-ravages-of-aging/">as predictable as a broken clock and far more malignant.</a></p>
<blockquote><p>On Oct. 1, 2012 the Obama administration started awarding bonus points to hospitals that spend the least on elderly patients. It will result in fewer knee replacements, hip replacements, angioplasty, bypass surgery and cataract operations.</p>
<p>These are the five procedures that have transformed aging for older Americans. They used to languish in wheelchairs and nursing homes due to arthritis, cataracts and heart disease. Now they lead active lives.</p>
<p>But the Obama administration is undoing that progress. By cutting $716 billion from future Medicare funding over the next decade and rewarding the hospitals that spend the least on seniors, the Obama health law will make these procedures hard to get and less safe.</p></blockquote>
<p>Which will reduce the quality of life of senior citizens making it easier to put them on a pathway to euthanasia.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the gameplan here. First open the door to cutting spending on the so-called &#8220;last 2 months of life&#8221;, though that can&#8217;t be reliably predicted unless you ensure that they really will be the last 2 months.</p>
<p>Then decrease treatment options so that more and more seniors fall into those last 2 months. And that will free up money to spend on obesity programs for inner city kids, abortion, sex change operations and all the other social change obsessions of the left.</p>
<blockquote><p>The Obama health law creates two new entitlements for people under age 65 – subsidies to buy private health plans and a vast expansion of Medicaid. More than half the cost of these entitlements is paid for by cutting what hospitals, doctors, hospice care, home care and Advantage plans are paid to care for seniors.</p></blockquote>
<p>The doctors and hospitals will be there, they will just have been &#8220;nudged&#8221; with rewards and punishments to provide the kind of treatment or lack of treatment that the authorities favor.</p>
<blockquote><p>Astoundingly, doctors will be paid less to treat a senior than to treat someone on Medicaid, and only about one-third of what a doctor will be paid to treat a patient with private insurance.</p>
<p>On July 13, 2011, Richard Foster, chief actuary for Medicare, warned Congress that seniors will have difficulty finding doctors and hospitals to accept Medicare. Doctors who do continue to take it will not want to spend time doing procedures such as knee replacements when the pay is so low. Yet the law bars them from providing care their patients need for an extra fee. You’re trapped.</p></blockquote>
<p>Which will make Medicare, instead of Medicaid, the unwanted insurance. Punish the privileged white people, favor welfare minorities.</p>
<blockquote><p>Foster warned Congress that 15% of hospitals may stop treating seniors once the Obama-Care cuts go into effect. The rest will have to lower the standard of care. Hospitals will have $247 billion less over the next decade to care for the same number of seniors as if the health law had not been enacted.</p></blockquote>
<p>Everyone will eventually have the same or a worse level of treatment than Medicaid, whether they are senior citizens or working people with private insurance. That was one of the major goals of ObamaCare.</p>
<blockquote><p>President Obama seems to think too many seniors are getting these procedures. At a town hall debate in 2009, he told a woman “maybe you’re better off not having the surgery but taking the painkiller.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Somehow I doubt the Prince of Chicago will be making do with painkillers when the time comes.</p>
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		<slash:comments>12</slash:comments>
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		<title>No Privacy for Obamacare Patients</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/no-privacy-for-obamacare-patients/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=no-privacy-for-obamacare-patients</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/no-privacy-for-obamacare-patients/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 26 Dec 2013 05:44:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[patients]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Privacy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=213918</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And watch how they lie about it.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>And watch how they lie about it:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/uOk0vOup4yA" height="315" width="420" 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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		<slash:comments>13</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>The Unaffordable Mandate Act</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/howard-hyde/the-unaffordable-mandate-act/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-unaffordable-mandate-act</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/howard-hyde/the-unaffordable-mandate-act/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 10 Dec 2013 05:10:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Hyde]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[choice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[health plan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=212671</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The key word is choice.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/obamacare99.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-212674" alt="obamacare99" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/obamacare99-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>&#8220;If you like your (sub-standard, lousy, bottom-feeding) health plan, you can keep it, period. No matter what. Unless it changed. Unless we change the rules. Unless you can&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
<p>Right. We all heard that loud and clear, twenty-how-many times in 2009 and 2010. Those Republicans (and non-political citizens, and union members&#8230;and Democrats) who are shocked by the millions of policy cancellations forcing people into dysfunctional government exchanges need to just get over their misunderstanding of the president’s unequivocal words (no doubt taken out of context) and talk about the real issue. What really matters is how sub-standard, lousy and bottom-feeding the old plans were and how much better the plans offered on the exchanges are… going to be, once a few minor bugs are ironed out of the crony outsourced half-billion-dollar no-bid dot-com/dot-gov product.</p>
<p>Stage-4 cancer patient Edie Sundby, whose United Healthcare plan has paid over $1 million without hassle but which has now been cancelled due to non-compliance with the ACA, leaving her without recourse to continue treatment from the three medical centers in two states that have kept her alive for the past seven years, might disagree. So might millions of others.</p>
<p>But let’s take them at their words: &#8220;Sub-standard&#8221;, &#8220;lousy&#8221;, &#8220;bottom-feeding&#8221;. Are they talking about iPhones? Toyotas? Oranges? Mutual funds? French Wine? No, these products are relatively freely sold in highly competitive markets across not just state lines but national borders. Nokia (Finland) has to be better at making cell phones than Apple (California) or it will lose customers and could get acquired by Microsoft (oh, wait &#8212; that really did happen). Florida oranges dominate the juice market, even in California. French wine makers cannot rest on their laurels in a world market that includes California.</p>
<p>Health insurance, on the other hand, for decades prior to Obamacare, has been offered in severely and increasingly constrained markets, forced to comply with the dicates of 50 different state insurance commissioners, each with their own favored list of mandatory coverage provisions. Competition is limited; bureacracy and compliance are king. Patient/consumer choice is reduced. If any plans are &#8220;sub-standard&#8221;, &#8220;lousy&#8221;, or &#8220;bottom-feeding&#8221;, that’s the reason why; serving regulators is not the same thing as serving customers.</p>
<p>Not everyone needs or wants pre-paid maternity services, contraception, fertility treatments, quitting smoking, acupuncture, chiropractic, naturopathy or massage therapy. The top priority of insurance has always been and of necessity must be: protection against health and financial catastrophe, something that Obamacare is rapidly banishing from the market. Hair plugs don&#8217;t qualify for that definition (I know I&#8217;ll get hate mail for that).</p>
<p>People who want additional non-catastrophic services could have the choice to pay for them directly without having their costs added to their insurance premiums. But by mandating these services and more, state insurance commissioners and now Obamacare drive 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, more choices of doctors – or just more insurance companies willing and able to participate in the market and compete for the patient/consumer’s dollar.</p>
<p>The key word is choice.  Mandates are the choice killer that drive competitors out of the market.</p>
<p>Mandates, whether pre- or post-Obamacare are a dead weight on the economy, forcing 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>In a free market, if the consumers want the coverage, they will demand it anyway and the mandate is superfluous except to enable the rooster (government) to take credit for the sunrise. 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 mandates, 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 just one more way that politicians can pretend to be Santa Claus to some, buying votes along the way, while imposing hidden costs on the less well-organized and connected.</p>
<p>In a free market, instead of having just a handful of insurance companies and plans available, toeing the line to the extensive rules and regulations of the particular state government, consumers would be able to choose among dozens of providers from any state in the union. And for that matter, from any nation on Earth: insurance is a <i>financial</i> product, and the British, Japanese, Singaporeans and Swiss are rumored to have some financial skills. 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 in traditional and social media, and word-of-mouth from friends and family members to guide them. Insurance companies, operating under uniform and stable rule of law and under no mandates other than what consumers demand, with neither subsidies nor presumptions of guilt, like companies in any other industry competing in open 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;, unless it operated within a government-protected so-called “exchange”.</p>
<p>Which is why real reform that actually has the chance of bending the cost curve downward for consumers must increase competition among a multitude of providers, nationally and internationally, rather than herding wholesale swaths of the population into increasingly restrictive regulatory corals at Healthcare.gov.</p>
<p>The President’s and his supporter’s sales pitch seems to have shifted to “If you like your health plan, you can change the subject.” But harping on the failings of the status quo ante is an indictment of government intervention, not of free-market capitalism.  We’re going to have to move in the direction of the latter if we ever hope to achieve anything super-standard, un-lousy or top-feeding.</p>
<p><em>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 on Amazon.com in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pull-Plug-Obamacare-Citizen-Pamphlet/dp/0615765939">Paperback</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pull-Plug-Obamacare-ebook/dp/B00BNXX4F6">Kindle</a> editions.  He is editor of the website <a href="http://www.hhcapitalism.com/">www.HHCapitalism.com</a>. He may be reached at <a href="mailto:HHCapitalism@gmail.com">HHCapitalism@gmail.com</a>, and/or follow on Twitter @HowardHyde.</em></p>
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		<title>Do Americans Prefer Deception?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/do-americans-prefer-deception/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=do-americans-prefer-deception</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/do-americans-prefer-deception/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Nov 2013 04:15:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[employee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[payroll taxes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Taxes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=211032</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Do employers really pay half of all Medicare and Social Security taxes? Or do workers pay it all? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/social-security-taxes.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211046" alt="social-security-taxes" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/social-security-taxes.jpg" width="289" height="181" /></a>There&#8217;s more to the deceit and dishonesty about Social Security and Medicare discussed in my recent columns. Congress tells us that one-half (6.2 percent) of the Social Security tax is paid by employees and that the other half is paid by employers, for a total of 12.4 percent. Similarly, we are told that a Medicare tax of 1.45 percent is levied on employees and that another 1.45 percent is levied on employers. The truth of the matter is that the burden of both taxes is borne by employees. In other words, we pay both the employee and the so-called employer share. You say, &#8220;Williams, that&#8217;s nonsense! Just look at what it says on my pay stub.&#8221; OK, let&#8217;s look at it.</p>
<p>Pretend you are my employer and agree to pay me $50,000 a year, out of which you&#8217;re going to send $3,100 to Washington as my share of Social Security tax (6.2 percent of $50,000), as well as $725 for my share of Medicare (1.45 percent of $50,000), a total of $3,825 for the year. To this you must add your half of Social Security and Medicare taxes, which is also $3,825 for the year. Your cost to hire me is $53,825.</p>
<p>If it costs you $53,825 a year to hire me, how much value must I produce for it to be profitable for you to keep me? Is it our agreed salary of $50,000 or $53,825? If you said $53,825, you&#8217;d be absolutely right. Then who pays all of the Social Security and Medicare taxes? If you said that I do, you&#8217;re right again. The Social Security and Medicare fiction was created because Americans would not be so passive if they knew that the tax they are paying is double what is on their pay stubs — not to mention federal income taxes.</p>
<p>The economics specialty that reveals this is known as the incidence of taxation. The burden of a tax is not necessarily borne by the party upon whom it is levied. The Joint Committee on Taxation held that &#8220;both the employee&#8217;s and employer&#8217;s share of the payroll tax is borne by the employee.&#8221; The Congressional Budget Office &#8220;assumes — as do most economists — that employers&#8217; share of payroll taxes is passed on to employees in the form of lower wages than would otherwise be paid.&#8221;<a id="itxthook0" href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/walter-williams.html#" rel="nofollow">Health</a> insurance is not an employer gift, either.</p>
<p>It is paid for by employees in the form of lower wages.</p>
<p>Another part of Social Security and Medicare deception is that the taxes are officially called FICA, which stands for Federal Insurance Contributions Act. First, it&#8217;s not an insurance program. More importantly, the word &#8220;contribution&#8221; implies something voluntary. Its synonyms are alms, benefaction, beneficence, charity, donation and philanthropy. Which one of those synonyms comes close to describing how Congress gets Social Security and Medicare?</p>
<p>There&#8217;s more deceit and dishonesty. In 1950, I was 14 years old and applied for a work permit for an after-school job. One of the requirements was to obtain a Social Security card. In bold letters on my Social Security card, which I still possess, are the words &#8220;For Social Security Purposes — Not For Identification.&#8221; That&#8217;s because earlier Americans feared that their Social Security number would become an identity number. According to the Social Security Administration website, &#8220;this legend was removed as part of the design changes for the 18th version of the card, issued beginning in 1972.&#8221; That statement assumes we&#8217;re idiots. We&#8217;re asked to believe that the sole purpose of the removal was for design purposes. Apparently, the fact that our Social Security number had become a major identification tool, to be used in every aspect of our lives, had nothing to do with the SSA&#8217;s getting rid of the legend saying &#8220;For Social Security Purposes — Not For Identification.&#8221;</p>
<p>I wonder whether political satirist H.L. Mencken was right when he said, &#8220;Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.&#8221;</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>Medicare Spent $28 Million on Drugs for 4,139 Illegal Aliens</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/medicare-spent-28-million-on-drugs-for-4139-illegal-aliens/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=medicare-spent-28-million-on-drugs-for-4139-illegal-aliens</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/medicare-spent-28-million-on-drugs-for-4139-illegal-aliens/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 10 Nov 2013 22:50:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fraud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Aliens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=210166</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[That comes out to around $7,000 per illegal alien,]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Rubiophone.png"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-210167" alt="Rubiophone" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Rubiophone-450x337.png" width="450" height="337" /></a></p>
<p>That comes out to around $7,000 per<del> illegal alien, </del>no sorry,<del> undocumented immigran</del>t, nope beautiful unlicensed DREAMER. But there are just some jobs that Americans won&#8217;t do. Like <a href="http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=212044">illegally collect $28 million in Medicare</a> Part D prescription drugs.</p>
<p>Immigration reform now. Alongside medical reform. <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/feds-spent-29-million-prescription-drugs-4139-illegal-aliens">Because $28 million is just too little</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p> The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) spent almost $29 million to cover Medicare Part D prescription drugs for 4,139 individuals “unlawfully present” in the U.S. and thus ineligible to receive federal health care benefits, according to an audit by Daniel Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health &amp; Human Services.</p>
<p>Medicare Parts A and B cover hospitalization, skilled nursing care, doctor visits, and other medical services and supplies. The IG previously reported in January that CMS had also paid $91.6 million to health care providers to cover 2,600 ineligible illegal aliens.</p>
<p>The unallowable payments were made by CMS despite the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which prohibits illegal aliens from receiving federal health care benefits, and CMS’ own 2003 memo warning: “Make no payments for Medicare services furnished to an alien beneficiary who is not lawfully present in the United States.”</p>
<p>The IG recommended that CMS “develop and implement controls to ensure that Medicare does not pay for prescription drugs for unlawfully present beneficiaries” by preventing them from enrolling, disenrolling those already in the Medicare Part D system, and “automatically rejecting PDE records submitted by sponsors for prescription drugs provided to this population.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Don&#8217;t worry. Obama and the Republican Amnesty crowd already have this covered.</p>
<p>And if only 4,139 illegal aliens racked up $28 million in Medicare Part D bills, imagine how much 12 million illegal aliens will rack up?</p>
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		<title>ObamaCare&#8217;s Dirty Little Secret &#8212; on The Glazov Gang</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Nov 2013 04:00:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov Productions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Glazov Gang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama lied]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[plan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209426</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Get ready for the lines you see at the DMV.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/secret.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-209790" alt="secret" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/secret.jpg" width="300" height="300" /></a>The Glazov Gang was joined by titans <strong>Mell Flynn</strong>, a Hollywood actress and the president of the <a href="http://www.hollywoodrepublicans.com/home.htm">Hollywood Congress of Republicans,</a> <strong>Kai Chen</strong>, a former basketball star on the Chinese national team and the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/One-In-Billion-Journey-Freedom/dp/1425985025">One in a Billion</a>, and <strong>Monty Morton</strong>, a Conservative Entrepreneur and walking Encyclopedia of Economics.</p>
<p>The Gang gathered to discuss <em>ObamaCare&#8217;s Dirty Little Secret</em>. The discussion occurred in <strong>Part II</strong> and warned Americans to ready for the lines that they see at the DMV. The segment also shed light on <em>What The $17 Trillion Debt Really Means</em><em>,</em> <em></em><em>Mao&#8217;s Kitchen in Los Angeles </em>and<em> <em>Sean Penn&#8217;s Call for Ted Cruz and Tea Party Members to be Institutionalized:</em></em></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/EvWpGxlczm0" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>In <strong>Part I</strong> the Gang focused on <em>To Lie for ObamaCare</em>, shedding light on the falsehoods told by the president to force his socialist medicare plan on the American people.  The guests also dissected the catastrophe that ObamaCare will inflict on America.</p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dj3lOEvbNHM" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>To watch previous <i>Glazov Gang</i> episodes, </b><a href="http://jamieglazov.com/"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><strong>To sign up for </strong><em><b>The Glazov Gang</b></em><strong>: </strong><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><b>Click here</b></a><strong>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Entitlement Madness: Is There a Way Out?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/entitlement-madness-is-there-a-way-out/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=entitlement-madness-is-there-a-way-out</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Oct 2013 04:10:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[charity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[entitlement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicaid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spending]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=208952</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Can budget-busting programs be reined in before they collapse? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/shutterstock_money_whirlpool.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-208954" alt="shutterstock_money_whirlpool" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/shutterstock_money_whirlpool-436x350.jpg" width="262" height="210" /></a>According to a recent Fox News poll, 73 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, up 20 points from 2012. Americans sense that there&#8217;s a lot going wrong in our nation, but most don&#8217;t have a clue about the true nature of our problem. If they had a clue, most would have little stomach for what would be necessary to arrest our national decline. Let&#8217;s look at it.</p>
<p>Between two-thirds and three-quarters of federal spending, in contravention of the U.S. Constitution, can be described as Congress taking the earnings or property of one American to give to another, to whom it does not belong. You say, &#8220;Williams, what do you mean?&#8221; Congress has no resources of its very own. Moreover, there&#8217;s no Santa Claus or tooth fairy who gives it resources. The fact that Congress has no resources of its very own forces us to recognize that the only way Congress can give one American one dollar is to first — through intimidation, threats and coercion — confiscate that dollar from some other American through the tax code.</p>
<p>If any American did privately what Congress does publicly, he&#8217;d be condemned as an ordinary thief. Taking what belongs to one American to give to another is theft, and the receiver is a recipient of stolen property. Most Americans would suffer considerable anguish and cognitive dissonance seeing themselves as recipients of stolen property, so congressional theft has to be euphemized and given a respectable name. That respectable name is &#8220;entitlement.&#8221; Merriam-Webster defines entitlement as &#8220;the condition of having a right to have, do, or get something.&#8221; For example, I am entitled to walk into the house that I own. I am entitled to drive the car that I own. The challenging question is whether I am also entitled to what you or some other American owns.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s look at a few of these entitlements. More than 40 percent of federal spending is for entitlements for the elderly in the forms of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing and other assistance programs.</p>
<p>The Office of Management and Budget calculates that total entitlement spending comes to about 62 percent of federal spending. Military spending totals 19 percent of federal spending. By the way, putting those two figures into historical perspective demonstrates the success we&#8217;ve had becoming a handout nation. In 1962, military expenditures were almost 50 percent of the federal budget, and entitlement spending was a mere 31 percent. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that entitlement spending will consume all federal tax revenue by 2048.</p>
<p>Entitlement spending is not the only form of legalized theft. The Department of Agriculture gives billions of dollars to farmers. The departments of Energy and Commerce give billions of dollars and subsidized loans to corporations. In fact, every Cabinet-level department in Washington is in charge of handing out at least one kind of subsidy or special privilege. Most federal non-defense &#8220;discretionary spending&#8221; by Congress is for handouts.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that today&#8217;s increasing levels of federal government spending are unsustainable, there is little evidence that Americans have the willingness to do anything about it. Any politician who&#8217;d even talk about significantly reining in unsustainable entitlement spending would be run out of town. Any politician telling the American people they must pay higher taxes to support handout spending, instead of concealing spending through deficits and running up the national debt and inflation, would also be run out of town. Can you imagine what the American people would do to a presidential candidate who&#8217;d declare, as James Madison did in a 1794 speech to the House of Representatives, &#8220;Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government&#8221;?</p>
<p>If we are to be able to avoid ultimate collapse, it&#8217;s going to take a moral reawakening and renewed constitutional respect — not by politicians but by the American people. The prospect of that happening may be whistlin&#8217; &#8220;Dixie.&#8221;</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>ObamaCare: Exposing Citizens to Identity Theft, Fraud</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/obamacare-exposing-americans-to-identity-theft-fraud/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacare-exposing-americans-to-identity-theft-fraud</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 26 Sep 2013 04:15:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Volpe]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[exchanges]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fraud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[house]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[identity theft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=205407</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[House Republicans' warning to America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/fraud-scam.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-205412" alt="Definition of fraud" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/fraud-scam.jpg" width="270" height="179" /></a>A congressional report, issued by Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on September 18, 2013, is warning that a key portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) program is being mismanaged and is under threat for abuse and fraud. This report follows another report on the same Obamacare program which also warned the program was susceptible to fraud.</p>
<p>Exchanges were set up in Obamacare to provide a marketplace for individuals not covered by their employer’s health insurance or by Medicare/Medicaid. These exchanges were supposed to be set up by each individual state, but about half refused and forced the federal government to set up exchanges in those states.</p>
<p>“Navigators” were written into the law to be individuals who would help consumers navigate the exchanges and help consumers understand their option to choose the best insurance plan. Because half the states didn’t set up exchanges, “navigators” weren’t set up either. As a result, the Obama administration has set up the federal program of “assisters” a group of federally funded individuals who will help consumers navigate exchanges to find the best deal.</p>
<p>According to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, there is clear language in Obamacare which specifies that only state, not federal funds, be used to fund the “navigator” program, making this new program an end run around the clear language of the statute, according to the report.</p>
<p><a href="http://oversight.house.gov/release/oversight-report-on-obamacare-enrollment-programs-reveals-risk-of-fraud-misinformation/">In a press release,</a> the Committee identified five specific areas of concern for fraud in the “navigator” program: 1) The Administration created the Assisters program without congressional approval, 2) top HHS officials have admitted that the enrollment outreach programs are prime targets for fraud, 3) consumers have no way to verify that someone taking their application or encouraging enrollment is actually a Navigator or Assister, 4) HHS officials were concerned about security risks, but did not look into whether or not they could require background checks, 5) HHS has criticized direct phone calls, door-to-door solicitation, but has not banned them, and in some states, Navigators and Assisters are paid based on the number of persons they enroll, creating a conflict of interest.</p>
<p>The report also pointed out that navigators won’t go through a background check, be required to only have twenty hours of training, and have access to all sorts of personal information which they’ll be authorized to enter into a central database. The congressional report said:</p>
<blockquote><p>Individual Navigators and Assisters will have access to many applicants’ personally identifiable information (PII), including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, email addresses, and in many cases the PII for other members of the applicant’s household. Such information may also be stored on computers and scanners owned by Navigator and Assister organizations. Furthermore, unlike agents and brokers, Navigators and Assisters bear no personal liability if they give taxpayers misinformation that damages their financial interests.</p></blockquote>
<p>An email to the HHS media relations department for comment on this story was left unreturned.</p>
<p>The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wasn’t the only committee expressing concern about the navigator program. <a href="http://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/letters/20130920CCIIO.pdf">Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee also fired off a letter last week to Gary Cohen,</a> the Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, expressing their concerns that the navigator grant program was also ripe for fraud.</p>
<p>This is not the first time that fraud has become an issue in the health care exchanges. <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/how-obamacare-will-expose-americans-personal-information/">In August an HHS Office of Inspector General report warned that security in the information technology</a> system that would put all health care plans in each exchange on-line was so far behind schedule in its implementation that the final test would only happen on September 30, the day before the exchanges were due to be fully operational.</p>
<p>Separately, <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/obamacares-unraveling/">the $2 billion loan program to augment Health Care</a> Co-ops is now the subject of four separate investigations with allegations of fraud being so systemic the program has been shut down entirely while the investigations go on. Health care Co-ops are non-profits, which would offer health insurance in certain state exchanges to compete with for profit health insurance providers.</p>
<p>With less than a week before Obamacare is to be fully implemented, most news stories are concerned with the economic effects of the law. Fraud, identity theft, and other crimes should be of concern as well since this complicated program is being put together on the fly, with all sorts of individuals being hired to help implement, whether they are qualified to do so or not.</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>R.I.P. Britain&#8217;s Patient-Killing &#8216;Pathway to Death&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/r-i-p-britains-patient-killing-pathway-to-death/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=r-i-p-britains-patient-killing-pathway-to-death</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/r-i-p-britains-patient-killing-pathway-to-death/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Jul 2013 04:15:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dying]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IPAB]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Liverpool Care Pathway]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sick]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UK]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=197231</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And how ObamaCare will bring it to America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/97769252.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-197242" alt="General Election - National Health Service" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/97769252-450x298.jpg" width="270" height="179" /></a>Americans who wonder how their medical care will evolve once the Affordable Healthcare Act is fully implemented should turn their attention to the UK. After a sustained campaign by the UK&#8217;s <i>Daily Mail</i>, the so-called Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) that provided end-of-life care to thousands of patients in Britain&#8217;s government-run National Health Service (NHS) will be <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2362436/NHS-death-pathway-scrapped-year-following-damning-report.html">phased out</a> over the next six to 12 months. This is due to the reality that an independent review board found &#8220;shocking examples of abuse&#8221; regarding the treatment of the system&#8217;s most vulnerable patients.</p>
<p>&#8220;We need a whole new system of better end of life care tailored to the needs of individual patients and involving their families,&#8221; said Care and Support Minister Norman Lamb. &#8220;I took the decision to launch this review because concerns were raised with me about how patients were being cared for and how families were being treated during this difficult and sensitive time.&#8221;</p>
<p>The review was <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/independent-review-of-liverpool-care-pathway-to-be-chaired-by-baroness-neuberger">undertaken</a> by Baroness Julia Neuberger, Senior Rabbi at the West London Synagogue, and former Chief Executive of the King’s Fund. Lady Neuberger, who has written about care for the dying, was tasked with talking to patients, families and medical professionals; reviewing hospital complaints; examining incentive payments made to hospitals for putting patients on the LCP; and analyzing literature informing the public about the benefits and limitations of the program.</p>
<p>The report, &#8220;More Care&#8211;Less Pathway,&#8221; <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2363543/Catalogue-abuse-killed-Liverpool-Care-Pathway.html">said</a> that while LCP was working well in many places, numerous examples of abuse made it impossible to continue its implementation.</p>
<p>According to excerpts obtained by the <i>Daily Mail, </i>patients were <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2363543/Catalogue-abuse-killed-Liverpool-Care-Pathway.html">subjected</a> to a catalogue of indignities. These included patients so heavily drugged they could no longer communicate with family members, completely eliminating the chance to say goodbye. &#8220;There have been too many coming forward to the review panel to say they left their loved one in a calm and peaceful state, able to communicate, for a short time, or with a doctor or a nurse for a check-up only to return and find a syringe driver had been put in place and their loved one was never able to communicate again,&#8221; the report states.</p>
<p>Patients had also been put on the pathway without consent. The <i>Mail</i> notes that last year as many as 60,000 patients &#8220;placed on the scheme were never asked for their consent, or their families were not asked, further revealing that many of those involved &#8220;found out by accident, and others recovered fully after relatives found out and got their loved ones taken off the pathway.&#8221;</p>
<p>With regard to protocols that call for nurses to moisten the lips of the dying after food and water have been withdrawn, many family members noted that their loved ones were sucking on the sponges, indicating that the LCP&#8217;s promise of &#8220;comfortable death&#8221; was misleading&#8211;and in some cases, possibly premature. Family members further reported that they were forced to hydrate their loved ones in secret, &#8220;disobeying instructions from medical staff to withhold fluids&#8221; according to the report.</p>
<p>Those instructions were part of what were described as a &#8220;tick box&#8221; approach to medical care, where standard practices trumped the needs of individual patients. &#8220;Where care is already poor, the pathway is sometimes used as a tick-box exercise, and good care for the dying patient or their relatives or cares may be absent,&#8221; the report reveals.</p>
<p>Far more damning is a 2012 investigation by the <i>Mail</i> in which they <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223286/Hospitals-bribed-patients-pathway-death-Cash-incentive-NHS-trusts-meet-targets-Liverpool-Care-Pathway.html">alleged</a> that hospital trusts were being &#8220;bribed&#8221; with cash payments to insure that a certain percentage of patients were put on the LCP. According to the paper, payments were made though a system known as Commissioning for Quality and Innovation, or CQUIN. One trust that confirmed such targets was Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. They received $462,000 for the financial year that ended in March 2012, when 42 percent of their patients were placed on the LPC, versus a target number of 35 percent. On the other side of the equation, Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust had CQUIN payments <i>cut</i> nearly in half for failing to reach targets where a certain percentage of patients on the LCP would be discharged to die at home. They were tasked with hitting a rate of 47.6 percent. When they only reached 45.5 percent their payment was reduced from $54,588 to $27,900. In 2012, the <i>Daily Telegraph</i> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10177308/Liverpool-Care-Pathway-to-be-axed-in-favour-of-individual-treatment-plans.html">confirmed</a> that two thirds of NHS trusts using the LCP had received millions of pounds in payouts for hitting similar targets.</p>
<p>Neuberger&#8217;s report found no evidence of misuse regarding such payments, a telling revelation in and of itself, given the reality that monetary incentives for reaching such targets undoubtedly colors decisions made by healthcare professionals. Yet Minister Lamb refused to dance around the allegations, saying he thought the &#8220;bribes&#8221; make such a bad impression that they should be ended. The Department of Health apparently agreed, noting they will be abandoned under whatever new system is created.</p>
<p>As Melanie Phillips <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2363772/MELANIE-PHILLIPS-Hope-pathway-death--NHS-hole-heart-be.html">notes</a> &#8220;it is far from clear, despite the advance reports of the LCP’s demise, that the Government will do more than usher in a merely cosmetic change, rather than tackle the attitudes which lie at the very heart of this problem.&#8221; Minister Lamb promises that any new system will be tailored for individual patients, but Phillips contends that idea &#8220;fails to identify the very confusion at the core of this problem. This arises over the issue of medical staff being able to identify correctly when someone’s life is about to end.&#8221;</p>
<p>Phillips then gets to the meat of the problem. &#8220;Health care professionals either did not understand that someone who was extremely ill or mentally incapable was not actually dying&#8211;or, worse, they thought such a life was not worth extending and so terminated it.&#8221; According to Phillips, this &#8220;deeply troubling modern development&#8221; centers around &#8220;the progressive inability to distinguish between someone who really is dying and someone who it is thought should be dying because they are deemed to have such a poor quality of life.&#8221; As a result, &#8220;decency, compassion and simple kindness&#8221; have been trumped in far too many cases by &#8220;hatchet-faced self-interest, an arrogant and unchecked abuse of professional power and a brutal utilitarianism which has substituted a tendentious judgment of usefulness for innate respect for human life.&#8221;</p>
<p>If this sounds familiar, it&#8217;s because it describes the essence of command-and-control, big-government bureaucracy where the needs of the many outweigh the concerns of the individual&#8211;all for the &#8220;greater good.&#8221;</p>
<p>Here in America, &#8220;brutal utilitarianism&#8221; will be embodied in ObamaCare&#8217;s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). Dr. Tracy C. Miller succinctly explains what the IPAB is all about&#8211;and why the much-maligned description of it as a “death panel” is on the mark:</p>
<blockquote><p>Although intended to be a pejorative term, the term ‘death panel” accurately reflects decisions that have to be made about whom to save when resources are scarce. We simply do not have the resources to provide as much health care as people might desire for prolonging their lives or the lives of their loved ones. If government pays for health care, as it does for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, limited funds necessitate that sometimes people will be denied access to care.</p></blockquote>
<p>The IPAB will <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2013/05/30/independent-payment-advisory-boards-death-panels-should-not-be-implemented/">consist</a> of 15 members, presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed, serving staggered, six year terms. They will be tasked with helping to <a href="http://m.freedomworks.org/blog/dean-clancy/top-ten-reasons-to-repeal-ipab-rationing-board">cut</a> $500 billion out of Medicare over the next decade, and providing reports to Congress about how to keep Medicare spending within limits outlined by the law. When the IPAB acts, ObamaCare <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324634304578539823614996636.html">stipulates</a> that there &#8220;shall be no administrative or judicial review&#8221; of the board&#8217;s decisions, which can only be overturned by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress.</p>
<p>As bad as that is, it gets worse. If the president fails to nominate, or Congress fails to confirm, IPAB board members, then a smaller board&#8211;or even a single individual, the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary (currently Kathleen Sebelius), can unilaterally impose cuts to Medicare that affect tens of millions of Americans.</p>
<p>Since Congress is currently at <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/obamacare-ipab-boehner-mcconnell-death-panels-2013-5">loggerheads</a> regarding the IPAB&#8217;s creation, and can only kill off the IPAB completely with a three-fifths supermajority vote that can only take from Jan. 1 to Aug. 15 <i>in 2017, </i>ceding unprecedented power to Sebelius or her successor seems increasingly likely. That would be the same Kathleen Sebelius who was recently willing to let a 10-year-old girl named Sarah Murnaghan die, rather than allow her access to the adult lung-transplant list. The little girl was saved only after a judge overruled the HHS Secretary.</p>
<p>Equally important, the IPAB absolves Congress from having to make critical decisions about the future of Medicare, shifting that responsibility to the executive branch of government. The Democratically-controlled Congress that enacted ObamaCare also made the IPAB exempt from sunshine laws, even as it “may accept, use, and dispose of gifts or donations of services or property.”</p>
<p>In other words, Americans will have their healthcare decisions adjudicated by an unelected group of unaccountable bureaucrats whose decisions can be influenced by lobbyists, undoubtedly willing to provide gifts or donations of services or property to board members for favorable treatment.</p>
<p>The IPAB&#8217;s defenders note that the healthcare law mandates that even as the board is required to make deep cuts to Medicare, rationing of healthcare itself is prohibited. This nonsensical provision means that cuts to service <i>providers</i>, as in doctors, hospitals and other healthcare entities, will be the only viable cost-cutting alternative to pursue. Many doctors are already limiting the number of Medicare patients they take due to current cuts in reimbursements. As for hospitals, Medicare&#8217;s Chief Actuary estimated that ten years of IPAB cuts will force 15 percent of America&#8217;s hospitals to go out of business.</p>
<p>Thus, the &#8220;brutally utilitarian&#8221; wheels of ObamaCare have been set in motion. Yet Americans must never lose sight of the reality that, as far as progressives are concerned, the current healthcare law is merely the penultimate part of a journey whose final destination is the complete government takeover of our healthcare system.</p>
<p>As imperfect and aggravating as the current system is, Americans can still access private sector alternatives when seeking treatment denied by the government. Once those alternatives are eliminated, we will be just like Great Britain &#8212; pathway and all.</p>
<p>A modest suggestion: Americans should demand that every member of Congress, the Executive branch, every other government employee currently enjoying their “Cadillac” healthcare plans, be required to use the same healthcare system being imposed on the rest of us. That demand should be an integral part of the 2014 election campaign. &#8220;Brutal utilitarianism&#8221; should apply to everyone &#8212; or no one.</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>Medicare Not Paying for Diagnostic Cancer Tests, May Cover Sex Change Operations</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/medicare-not-paying-for-diagnostic-cancer-tests-may-cover-sex-change-operations/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=medicare-not-paying-for-diagnostic-cancer-tests-may-cover-sex-change-operations</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Mar 2013 22:55:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicaid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[transexuals]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=183624</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the UK thousands of patients are starved to death in hospitals, but unnecessary and wasteful sex change procedures are paid for. In Canada, it's the same story. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/medicare-not-paying-for-diagnostic-cancer-tests-may-cover-sex-change-operations/thepitts/" rel="attachment wp-att-183625"><img class="alignnone  wp-image-183625" title="thepitts" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/thepitts.jpg" alt="" width="305" height="232" /></a></p>
<p>Call this the NHSization of Medicare and Medicaid. In the UK thousands of patients are starved to death in hospitals, but unnecessary and wasteful sex change procedures are paid for.<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2012/06/08/calgary-gender-reassignment-surgery-funding-reaction.html"> In Canada, it&#8217;s the same story</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>While some are celebrating the Alberta government&#8217;s decision to reinstate funding for gender reassignment surgeries, official opposition leader Danielle Smith says it&#8217;s not in line with the health care priorities of Albertans.</p>
<p>“We have unacceptable wait times for medically-necessary surgery, growing backlogs of seniors waiting for long-term care, seniors in long-term care being fed inedible food and a bureaucracy that prevents money from getting to the front lines,” she said in a release.</p>
<p>“If the government is going to pay for additional health care, it should consider things like dentistry, insulin pumps, and hearing aids for seniors first. While we respect the freedom of individuals to seek this procedure, it is clear there are more pressing priorities and needs for Albertans that must be put first.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Now under Obama Inc, this same Politically Correct insanity is headed to the United States. <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/medicare-faces-unfunded-liability-386t-or-328404-each-us-household">Medicare has over 38 trillion in unfunded liabilities</a> and <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottgottlieb/2013/03/27/medicare-has-stopped-paying-bills-for-medical-diagnostic-tests-patients-will-feel-the-effects/">it has stopped paying for diagnostic tests</a>.</p>
<p>So naturally we can look forward to senior citizens facing death panels while mentally ill people get their genitals mutilated to make them feel better about themselves&#8230; at taxpayer expense.</p>
<blockquote><p>In response to a formal request from a transsexual woman, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on March 28 that it has launched a formal &#8220;reconsideration&#8221; of its current refusal to cover surgical treatment for &#8220;gender identity disorder.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to CMS, Surgical Treatment for Gender Identity Disorder (formerly referred to as transsexual surgery in chapter 140.3 of the Medicare National Coverage Determinations Manual) is currently not covered under the Medicare Part A and Part B programs.</p></blockquote>
<p>Considering Obama Inc. mandating that men in dresses be allowed to use the ladies room at colleges, this is a no brainer. It&#8217;s going to happen. The only question is whether Republicans will have the guts to challenge this by pointing out the 38 trillion in unfunded liabilities and how badly seniors are struggling already.</p>
<blockquote><p>One formal request to reconsider the denial of coverage came in an Aug. 21, 2012 letter to CMS: &#8220;I am writing to initiate a review of NCD 140.3 Transsexual Surgery,&#8221; Emily Pittman Newberry wrote in a letter to the CMS Coverage and Analysis Group.</p></blockquote>
<p>&#8220;Emily&#8221; is actually the guy you see in the photo above who claims to be raising money for his sex change op. <a href="http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/emily-s-transformation?website_name=transformingemily">Apparently his name is Sterling</a> and he just wants what everyone wants, unnecessary and destructive cosmetic surgery paid for by the taxpayers.</p>
<blockquote><p>My campaign was always about much more than raising money for my own surgeries.  I said from the start that I think it is terrible I should even have to ask for these contributions; these surgeries should be covered by Medicare and all other insurance companies.</p>
<p>I worked for 30 years at good paying jobs, paying my Medicare taxes gladly because I believed in the system.  And now, when I need it most, that system has let me down.</p></blockquote>
<p>Currently Sterling/Emily is only up to 11 grand, but I&#8217;m sure Uncle Barry will be happy to kick in the other 90 thou. And while I&#8217;m not going to speculate as to what sort of productive jobs Sterling worked at, he&#8217;s currently a &#8220;poet&#8221; with a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Dickinson College, a graduate certificate in conflict resolution from John F. Kennedy University and a graduate of Authentic Happiness Coaching.</p>
<p>So yes indeed. NHS here we come. Death panels for seniors. Politically correct surgeries for idiots.</p>
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		<title>Obama Picks Welfare over Seniors, Will Cut Medicare, But Not Medicaid</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-picks-welfare-over-seniors-will-cut-medicare-but-not-medicaid/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-picks-welfare-over-seniors-will-cut-medicare-but-not-medicaid</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Feb 2013 23:55:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicaid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=175798</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Death panels, yes. Chicago voters getting a job, no.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/?attachment_id=175800" rel="attachment wp-att-175800"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-175800" title="death-panel-obamacare" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/death-panel-obamacare-423x350.jpg" alt="" width="423" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>Now that Obama has won his final election, he has begun showing his true face. And that includes <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/medicaid/280401-white-house-adviser-obama-willing-to-cut-medicare-but-not-medicaid?utm_campaign=hillhealthwatch&amp;utm_source=twitterfeed&amp;utm_medium=twitter#ixzz2JaNp2fi0">prioritizing his welfare base </a>over America&#8217;s seniors.</p>
<blockquote><p>The White House is willing to make bigger Medicare cuts in order to protect Medicaid, senior economic adviser Gene Sperling said Thursday. Sperling said the White House is no longer willing to make even the Medicaid cuts it had previously supported, but acknowledged that puts more pressure on Medicare.</p>
<p>“We are not willing to accept even the Medicaid savings that we had once put on the table … Medicaid savings, Medicaid cuts, for this administration, are not on the table,” Sperling said at a conference organized by the advocacy group Families USA.</p>
<p>Medicaid has long been seen as an easier political target than Medicare, because Medicare serves older Americans. Although congressional Republicans support dramatic cuts in Medicare benefits, the party has also hammered President Obama for reducing payments to doctors and insurance companies by roughly $716 billion.<br />
But the administration has decided to accept a fight over Medicare in order to protect Medicaid, Sperling said.</p>
<p>“It means we’re going to have to look harder for Medicare savings, and those savings may be more difficult politically because of he choices we’ve made,” Sperling said. “If you decide you are going to protect Medicaid more, it means you’re going to have to make some tough choices in other places.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Let&#8217;s translate that into English. Death panels, yes. Chicago voters getting a job, no.</p>
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		<title>A Nation of Takers Hurtles Toward the Fiscal Abyss</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/a-nation-of-takers-hurtles-toward-the-fiscal-abyss/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-nation-of-takers-hurtles-toward-the-fiscal-abyss</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Dec 2012 04:58:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Obama shows the future of the country is the last thing on his mind. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/a-nation-of-takers-hurtles-toward-the-fiscal-abyss/money-3/" rel="attachment wp-att-168580"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-168580" title="Money" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Money1-450x337.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="202" /></a>The on-going negotiations over avoiding the tax hikes and spending cuts we call the “fiscal cliff” are the simply the latest act in a farce of self-serving political denial. For decades now both parties have overseen and nurtured the expansion of the entitlement state all the while ignoring the slow-motion economic implosion whose predictable end can be seen today in a bankrupt Greece currently surviving on EU handouts. But American voters and politicians are so marinated in expectations of endless federal and state largess that modest reductions in spending, such as those proposed earlier this year by Congressman Paul Ryan, are attacked as draconian “cuts” that will “shred” the safety net and throw millions into Dickensian penury.</p>
<p>And make no mistake. The “cliff” might not be reached in January, even without a deal. But it’s still waiting down the road. Baby Boomers, 75 million strong, are retiring at a rate of 200,000 a month, and they can expect to live on average until 84 if they make it to the retirement age of 65. The two big drivers of entitlement spending, Social Security and Medicare, weren’t designed to transfer money to retirees for so long, or pay for artificial knees and hips for Boomers who want to be active in their 70s and 80s. If left unreformed, spending just on Social Security and Medicare will eat up 14% of GDP in 40 years, necessitating even more federal borrowing than the 40 cents currently borrowed for every dollar the feds spend. That’s not a cliff, that’s an economic abyss.</p>
<p>Reining in entitlement spending, then, is the major problem that everybody needs to focus on. And a good place to start is Nicholas Eberstadt’s <em>A Nation of Takers</em>. Eberstadt’s grim documentation of the reckless expansion of what he calls the “vast and colossal empire of entitlement payments that it [the state] protects, manages, and finances,” and his analysis of the ill effects such transfers have had on the American character should be read by everyone serious about the fiscal threats to our way of life.</p>
<p>Redistributing wealth through programs like income maintenance, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and unemployment insurance has become the federal government’s most important function. This development would have astonished the Founders, who codified national security and defense as the national government’s primary role. And this momentous shift has led to an accelerating number of Americans on some sort of dole. In the early 1980s, 30% of Americans received at least one government benefit. By 2011 just over 49% were. The costs of this increase have accelerated as well. In 1960, entitlement spending by government at all levels was $24 billion in today’s dollars. In 2011, the cost was almost $2.2 trillion. As Eberstadt glumly prophesizes, we are heading for “the day in which entitlement spending comes to exceed all other activities of all levels and branches of the U.S. government.”</p>
<p>The costs of such profligacy, however, are more than economic. These wealth transfers have had deleterious effects on traditional American character. Observers of the American character traditionally had remarked on what Eberstadt describes as a “fierce and principled independence” and “proud self-reliance.” This independence extended to financial self-reliance as well. Americans “viewed themselves as accountable for their own situation through their own achievements in an environment bursting with opportunity,” Eberstadt writes, and had “an affinity for personal enterprise and industry” and a “horror of dependency and contempt for anything that smacked of a mendicant mentality.” Accepting help or handouts was considered “an affront to their dignity and independence.” These are the strengths of character and virtue that have created the richest, freest, and most powerful nation in world history. But the federal government’s ever- increasing handouts––which these days are not considered signs of shame, but deserved legal and civil rights––are eroding these virtues.</p>
<p>This corruption of character insidiously spreads throughout the culture, enabling politicians to expand these benefits in order to create electoral clients. One malign result has been what Eberstadt calls the “male flight from work.” The government has replaced husbands and fathers as providers, leading to “the proliferation of fatherless families and an epidemic of illegitimacy.” This change can be seen in the decline of men participating in the labor force. Between 1948 and 2011, male labor force participation sank from 89% to 73%, a drop twice as large as the number of men who left the workforce because of the Great Recession. For more and more Americans food stamps and welfare have replaced the wages of a working male.</p>
<p>Or consider the abuse of Social Security disability insurance. In 1960, Eberstadt reports, an average of 455,000 workers were receiving monthly disability payments. In 2010, 8.2 million were, four times the number of people on welfare. Worse yet, the average age of those receiving disability insurance has lowered. In 2011 the rate of workers in their thirties and forties receiving disability was more than double that of the same cohort in 1960. Given the big improvements in health care and longevity during that time, these increases do not reflect a more dangerous work environment. What happened was the addition of “mood disorders” and “musculo-skeletal” ailments to the diagnostic categories that made workers eligible for disability. Since doctors can’t disprove the existence of potentially subjective conditions like “depression” or “back pain,” we shouldn’t be surprised that these days nearly half of all disability claims are based on these ailments.</p>
<p>The costs of food stamps, welfare, or disability insurance, however, are spare change compared to the monstrous costs of Social Security and Medicare, which in fiscal 2012 totaled $1.2 trillion, 37% of non-interest federal spending. Nor are these programs “earned” through payroll taxes that were saved. As economist Robert Samuelson wrote recently, “But they weren’t saved; they paid the benefits of earlier retirees. Even had they been saved and earned interest, they typically wouldn’t cover lifetime Social Security and Medicare benefits, estimate the Urban Institute’s C. Eugene Steuerle and Caleb Quakenbush. A couple with average wages retiring in 2010 would receive $966,000 in benefits against taxes of $722,000.” Rather than endowments funded by worker contributions, Eberstadt writes, Social Security and Medicare funding are “accounting contrivances built upon a mountain of future IOUs.” And this problem will only worsen as the number of retired Boomers reaches 72 million by 2030. According to the Heritage Foundation, Social Security alone is projected to run a $344 billion deficit in 2035. Looking farther down the road, the unfunded liabilities of Social Security for the next 75 years is $8.6 trillion, and those of Medicare from $27 to $37 trillion.</p>
<p>The monstrous deficits and debt the government has been amassing for four decades correspond in part to the need to borrow money to pay for these two programs. But this downward spiral of increasing entitlements and growing debt––which in Obama’s first term has increased 83%–– will damage more than just our budget and character. We have already seen defense budgets targeted for reductions, even though we spend 3 times as much on entitlements as on defense. When President Eisenhower in 1961 warned of the “military-industrial complex,” the ratio was 2-1 in favor of defense spending, which represented 9.4% of GDP compared to 4.8% in 2010. And we are looking at another half a trillion of cuts over the next decade, on top of the half a trillion Obama has already slashed. The point is not that we can’t afford to spend more on defense, but that we have other priorities. As Eberstadt notes, “By the calculus of American policymakers today, then, U.S. defense capabilities seem to be the primary area sacrificed to make the world safe for the unrestrained growth of American entitlements.”</p>
<p>Yet despite this looming disaster, President Obama and the Democrats have taken entitlement reform off the table in the current negotiations over the “fiscal cliff.” Indeed, Obama’s latest offer included $600 billion in vague future spending cuts, but $200 billion in new spending along with $1.6 trillion in new taxes. According to economist <a href="http://keithhennessey.com/2012/12/03/potus-offer-1/">Keith Hennessy</a>, in reality this offer would lead to a spending <em>increase</em>, not a reduction. Clearly, Obama is not interested in heading off the fiscal disaster Eberstadt documents. Rather, he is pursuing the old progressive dream of income equality through the redistribution of wealth. Unfortunately, for future generations that dream will be a nightmare of bankruptcy at home and compromised national security abroad.</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>Joe Biden Unhinged</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/joe-biden-unhinged/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=joe-biden-unhinged</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 04:55:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Although much younger than Biden, Ryan was the only adult sitting at the VP debate table.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/joe-biden-unhinged/1juz6o-em-156/" rel="attachment wp-att-148093"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-148093" title="1juZ6o.Em.156" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/1juZ6o.Em_.156.gif" alt="" width="315" height="233" /></a>As I observed the words and demeanor of Vice President Joe Biden all throughout last night&#8217;s debate, a line from <em>Hamlet</em> kept running through my mind.</p>
<p>&#8220;That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain,&#8221; William Shakespeare wrote. How better to sum up the most unctuous, disingenuous vice president in this writer&#8217;s lifetime?</p>
<p>The radical left-wing Delawarean showed the same loathsome traits that he displayed during his debate with Sarah Palin four years ago. But this time, because he wasn&#8217;t facing a woman he wasn&#8217;t walking on eggshells, terrified of offending female voters. This allowed his worst characteristics to rise to the surface, unburdened by natural inhibitions.</p>
<p>While his opponent, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), was relatively relaxed, Biden was everyone&#8217;s obnoxious, overbearing, opinionated relative who makes up for the weakness of his arguments by making them loudly.  As conservative comedian Brian Sack tweeted, the debate was &#8220;Too Chill Boy vs. Obnoxious Grandaddy.&#8221;</p>
<p>Throughout the debate Biden made no attempt to conceal his contempt for Ryan. It is hard to say if Biden showed greater disdain for his adversary than President Obama showed for Mitt Romney in the Colorado conversation last week.</p>
<p>Some observers, buoyed by impossibly high expectations, were destined to be disappointed unless Ryan landed a devastating knockout. Ryan did well but such a punch never came. A knockout always seemed unlikely because Biden is so well known for exaggerating, telling tall tales, and saying downright absurd things.</p>
<p>&#8220;The vice president knows sometimes the words don&#8217;t come out of your mouth the right way,&#8221; Ryan said.</p>
<p>Even though Ryan clearly seemed to be feeling the pressure, he wasn&#8217;t cowed by Biden. He taunted the vice president, noting that Biden is &#8220;under a lot of duress to make up for lost ground&#8221; after Romney pulverized Obama during the debate last week.</p>
<p>Ryan lamented that &#8220;hope and change&#8221; had been replaced by &#8220;attack, blame, and defame.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;President Obama had his chance,&#8221; Ryan said. &#8220;He made his choices.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ryan rejected the fundamental transformation of America sought by Obama. &#8220;We will not try to replace our founding principles,&#8221; Ryan said. &#8220;We will reapply our founding principles.&#8221; Although much younger than Biden, Ryan was the only adult sitting at the table.</p>
<p>One thing is for sure: both Obama and Biden are hardcore haters whose self-esteem exceeds their actual abilities.</p>
<p>Last night the senescent Biden resented being taken on by the sometimes brash, young, handsome, genuinely brilliant lawmaker from Wisconsin.</p>
<p>Never before was so much pricey dental porcelain displayed on live television as the unstatesmanlike Biden, chuckled, mocked, and guffawed his way through the 90-minute encounter. His constant, obnoxious interruptions were tolerated by the moderator, left-wing journalist Martha Raddatz, who frequently challenged Ryan, demanding specifics from the challenger. Raddatz asked little of Biden.</p>
<p>Barely a word of truth escaped the vice president&#8217;s lips.</p>
<p>Biden threw the intelligence community under the bus in order to support the Obama administration&#8217;s ongoing coverup of the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. From the start the administration portrayed the assault as a spontaneous uprising sparked by anger over an anti-Islam video. For two weeks officials tried to pretend that terrorists weren&#8217;t involved.</p>
<p>In the debate Biden said intelligence agencies failed to do their jobs and fed the White House bad information.</p>
<p>The administration didn&#8217;t initially know the attack was instigated by terrorists and hadn&#8217;t received requests from officials for additional security, Biden said, lying on both counts. Evidence now establishes that the administration learned about the attack before it happened. There is also proof that the late Ambassador Chris Stevens, believing he was marked for death by terrorists, pleaded with the administration to provide additional security. Each day brings new revelations of administration malfeasance in the sorry affair.</p>
<p>Biden dramatically swore to find the killers. &#8220;We will track you to the gates of Hell,&#8221; he vowed.</p>
<p>Ryan countered that what happened in Benghazi was proof of the &#8220;unravelling&#8221; of Obama&#8217;s foreign policy of weakness and appeasement. Obama has refused to admit that the Islamic world hasn&#8217;t abandoned its hostility to the U.S. That would conflict with his messianic narrative in which diverse peoples across the planet are united and inspired by the president.</p>
<p>Romney&#8217;s controversial criticism of the Obama administration&#8217;s condemnation of an anti-Muslim video nobody saw and that apparently played no role in the Benghazi attack was admirable, Ryan explained.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s never too early to speak up for our values,&#8221; Ryan said.</p>
<p>The best Biden could do was to note that left-wing journalists agreed that Romney should have kept his mouth shut. Romney&#8217;s criticism of Obama&#8217;s apology for the video was &#8220;panned by the media all around the world.&#8221;</p>
<p>Predictably, the Vice President made a number of characteristically ridiculous assertions.</p>
<p>Biden said that Syria was five times larger than Libya. As Newt Gingrich tweeted, Biden was &#8220;absurdly&#8221; and &#8220;totally&#8221; wrong. Libya, a huge North African country, is 679,362 square miles compared to Syria which is merely 71,500 square miles in size.</p>
<p>Biden condemned super PACs as &#8220;abominations&#8221; even though the Obama-Biden team uses them enthusiastically. Priorities USA Action super PAC unleashed the Joe Soptic ad, probably the most dishonest –and certainly the most vicious – presidential campaign ad since Lyndon Johnson’s apocalyptic “Daisy” ad in 1964 painted Barry Goldwater as a budding Dr. Strangelove.</p>
<p>The ad features Soptic explaining directly to the camera how his wife died after Bain Capital, the firm Romney once ran, bought the steel company he worked for and dissolved it. Soptic blames Romney for the loss of his health insurance and subsequent death of his wife.</p>
<p>The Soptic ad was funded by the super PAC’s donors. Among those donors are the alleged comedian Bill Maher and the Service Employees International Union.</p>
<p>Biden invoked class warfare too many times to count and blamed Republicans for the nation&#8217;s ballooning debt levels. He said Democrats had saved Medicare by cutting $700-odd billion from the program, a lie Ryan nailed him on. Democrats &#8220;got caught with their hands in the cookie jar,&#8221; taking the $700 billion and using it to fund Obamacare, Ryan said. If the cuts aren&#8217;t reversed Medicare patients will have a much harder time getting seen by doctors.</p>
<p>It wasn&#8217;t so much a debate as an argument between a mature person and a toddler.</p>
<p>Clint Eastwood seems to understand what a nonentity Biden is.</p>
<p>During his surprise appearance at the Republican convention in Florida, Eastwood seemed to share my frame of mind about the Cheshire Cat temporarily residing in the U.S. Naval Observatory.</p>
<p>In his extemporaneous riff before an empty chair representing the empty suit that is Barack Obama, Eastwood said, “You’re getting as bad as Biden. Of course we all know Biden is the intellect of the Democratic Party. Just kind of a grin with a body behind it.”</p>
<p>The more Joe Biden smiles, the more voters realize he&#8217;s not the man the media built him up to be.</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>Why Ryan’s Medicare Is Better for Seniors Than Obamacare’s Medicare</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/peter-thomas-and-peter-ferrara/why-ryan%e2%80%99s-medicare-is-better-for-seniors-than-obamacare%e2%80%99s-medicare/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-ryan%25e2%2580%2599s-medicare-is-better-for-seniors-than-obamacare%25e2%2580%2599s-medicare</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Oct 2012 04:43:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Peter Thomas and Peter Ferrara]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The plan that really turns the government program into a "death trap" for its beneficiaries. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Paul_Ryan6295.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-146945" title="Paul_Ryan6295" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Paul_Ryan6295.gif" alt="" width="375" height="248" /></a>Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz described the Medicare reforms proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) as “literally a death trap for seniors.”  White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that Ryan’s reforms would “change Medicare as we know it.”</p>
<p>But it was Obamacare that already changed Medicare as we know it, transforming it literally into a death trap for seniors.  Obamacare cuts Medicare by $716 billion over the next 10 years alone, mostly by slashing Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals.  And that is just a downpayment on what is to come.</p>
<p>Medicare’s Chief Actuary Rick Foster reports that by the end of this decade, Medicare will be paying less to doctors and hospitals for health care for seniors than Medicaid pays for health care for the poor.  And Medicare will be falling farther and farther behind Medicaid each year.</p>
<p>Already, Medicaid does not pay enough for the poor on the program to get timely, essential health care, particularly the sickest and those most in need of the best health care.  Academic studies show that the poor suffer worse health outcomes as a result, including premature death.</p>
<p>But under Obamacare, soon enough, seniors will be lined up behind welfare mothers in trying to find doctors who will see them, and hospitals that will admit them.  These cuts affect seniors already retired today, not just those years into the future.</p>
<p>Foster reports that, even before these cuts, two-thirds of hospitals were already losing money on Medicare patients.  In a few short years, hospitals serving seniors in particular will begin closing, and retirees will have increasing difficulty obtaining access to care.  As Harvard University health economist Joe Newhouse explains, seniors will likely have to seek care at community health centers and safety net hospitals.</p>
<p>And this does not even count any further cuts that may be adopted by Obamacare’s Medicare “death panel,” the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).  That Board will be composed of unelected, appointed, Washington bureaucrats with the power to adopt still more Medicare cuts that would become effective even without the approval of Congress.</p>
<p>Contrary to the childish silliness of Wasserman Schulz and Carney, Ryan’s Medicare reforms, in sharp contrast, would simply extend the more modern, popular, and successful policies of Medicare Parts C and D to the old fashioned Medicare Parts A and B.</p>
<p>Medicare Part D is the prescription drug program.  Just like Ryan’s proposed Medicare reforms, Part D provides premium support payments to seniors, which they use to purchase the private prescription drug coverage of their choice.  Because of private market competition, and incentives for seniors to choose lower cost plans, Part D costs have run 40% below projections.  Compare that to Parts A and B, which, by 1990, cost 10 times the original projections for that year when the program was adopted.</p>
<p>Medicare Part C is Medicare Advantage, under which nearly 25% of seniors have already chosen private insurance to provide all of their Medicare coverage.  Seniors believe they get a better deal through this highly popular program due to choice and competition.</p>
<p>Ryan would empower workers under age 55 today, when they retire in the future, with the choice of a private plan competing alongside traditional Medicare.  Medicare would provide these seniors with a premium support payment they could use to pay for, or offset, the premium of the private health insurance they chose, providing at least the exact same benefits as Medicare.  That premium support payment is set by competitive bidding under rules ensuring it will be enough to pay for at least two of the competing plans providing at least the same benefits as Medicare.  Or seniors, even in the future, could just stay in Medicare just like it is today.</p>
<p>Unlike under Obamacare, these reforms would involve no change for anyone retired today.  This plan was actually developed by a bi-partisan commission under President Clinton and chaired by Democrat Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana.</p>
<p>Ryan’s reforms are better for seniors than Obamacare’s Medicare, most of all because they free seniors from the cuts and government health care rationing involved in Obamacare’s mangling of Medicare, by allowing them to choose private insurance, paying market rates instead.  Only through such private insurance will seniors be able to continue to enjoy the high-quality, most advanced care they have come to expect from Medicare.</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>How Obama and Allies Are Suppressing News of Economic Disaster Ahead</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/obama-suppressing-news-of-economic-disaster-ahead/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-suppressing-news-of-economic-disaster-ahead</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/obama-suppressing-news-of-economic-disaster-ahead/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Sep 2012 04:45:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[european union]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[growth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sequestration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Unemployment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=145971</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Even the European Union is delaying key decisions until after November.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/aaaa-obamax-large.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-145996" title="aaaa-obamax-large" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/aaaa-obamax-large.gif" alt="" width="375" height="254" /></a>On May 7th, it was <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/obama-s-senior-swindle_642177.html?nopager=1">revealed</a> that the Obama administration spent $8.35 billion on a “demonstration project” designed to postpone the vast majority of Obamacare’s Medicare Advantage cuts until after the election. On July 31st, it was <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/07/31/sequestration-layoffs">revealed</a> that the Labor Department warned defense contractors against notifying workers of impending layoffs before the election as well, despite the fact that it would require violating the law to do so. On September 21, it was <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9558771/Greek-troika-report-delayed-by-US-elections.html">revealed</a> that a report on the Greek bailout will also be postponed until after the U.S. election. On September 13th, Fed Chief Ben Bernanke <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/09/qe3-fed-launches-third-attempt-to-stimulate-economy.html">announced</a> that he will be pursuing a third round of Quantitative Easing (QE3), once again under the auspices of &#8220;stimulating&#8221; the economy. The over-arching theme here is clear: anything that constitutes an &#8220;inconvenient reality&#8221; for this president, especially with respect to economics, will be delayed until after the election.</p>
<p>Thus, the president can continue to campaign on the &#8220;heartless&#8221; cuts a Romney administration will administer to healthcare in general, and seniors&#8217; healthcare in particular, even as those same seniors remain oblivious to the reality that $7.4 billion <a href="http://news.investors.com/092112-626668-medicare-advantage-enrollees-face-515-benefit-cut-in-2013.aspx?src=HPLNews">will be cut</a> from the Medicare Advantage program in 2013. As a result, enrollees will lose an average of $515 in benefits. Americans remain equally oblivious to the reality that family health insurance premiums have <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/obamacare-isnt-reducing-health-care-costs/article/2509026">gone up</a> by an average $2,730, despite a 2008 promise Obama made to lower premiums by $2500 by the end of his first term.</p>
<p>With respect to layoffs of employees who work in the defense industry, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act is quite clear: employers are required to give employees 60 days notice before mass layoffs take place. As a result of the failure of the congressional super-committee to reach a budget deal during the debt ceiling negotiations last August, automatic cuts in defense spending, aka sequestration, are scheduled to kick in on January 2nd. If the WARN Act were enforced, thousands of defense employees would <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/07/31/labor-dept-delay-layoffs-until-after-election/">receive</a> their layoff notices on November 3rd&#8211;three days before the election.</p>
<p>Enter the Labor Department, which released new <a href="http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL_3a_12_acc.pdf">&#8220;guidelines&#8221;</a> on July 30th, in which the rationale for delaying the notices is the idea that &#8220;[A]lthough it is currently known that sequestration may occur, it is also known that efforts are being made to avoid sequestration. Thus even the occurrence of sequestration is not necessary foreseeable.&#8221; As a result it &#8220;would be inappropriate&#8221; to notify the affected workers. That would be the same Department of Labor which previously concluded it had “no administrative or enforcement responsibility under [the WARN Act]” and “cannot provide specific advice or guidance with respect to individual situations.” Apparently when there&#8217;s an election at stake, anything is possible, even if the rule of law is tossed aside in the process.</p>
<p>With respect to Greece and the rest of the European Union, keeping the welfare state scheme from imploding is a task becoming more daunting with each passing day. The <em>Daily Mail</em> <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2207958/Greece-crisis-EU-finance-chiefs-discover-Greece-owes-TWICE-money-thought.html?ito=feeds-newsxml">reveals</a> that Greece&#8217;s debt is double what that nation had previously claimed, standing at a staggering $25 billion. Greece denied the report, and the resulting disagreement had the desired effect: despite the European Commission wanting a final decision on a Greek bailout to take place at the next EU summit on October 18th and 19th, Germany insists that reliable figures needed to determine the next move won&#8217;t be available &#8220;until November.&#8221; Undoubtedly that means November 7th at the earliest.</p>
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		<title>Medicare May Be Obama’s &#8216;Waterloo&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/medicare-may-be-obama%e2%80%99s-waterloo/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=medicare-may-be-obama%25e2%2580%2599s-waterloo</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 16 Aug 2012 04:47:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bankrupt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mitt romney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paul Ryan]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=140724</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Republicans confront a golden opportunity to address the forbidden "third rail" of politics. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ap_barack_obama_mr_120813_wblog.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-140734" title="ap_barack_obama_mr_120813_wblog" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ap_barack_obama_mr_120813_wblog.gif" alt="" width="375" height="242" /></a>In the Battle of Waterloo a resolute leader defeated a dangerous, imperious tyrant. The metaphor lives on today in American politics.</p>
<p>During congressional hostilities over Obamacare Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) famously urged Republicans to push hard “to stop” President Obama’s signature legislation because killing the bill would “break him.” It would be Obama’s “Waterloo.” It would “show that we can, along with the American people, begin to push those freedom solutions that work in every area of our society.”</p>
<p>After Democrats used gangster tactics that made defeat impossible, former Bush speech writer David Frum <a href="http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo/">scolded</a> “conservatives and Republicans.” He blamed “[c]onservative talkers on Fox and talk radio [who] had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible.”</p>
<p>“We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat,” he wrote. The process ended in “Waterloo all right: ours.”</p>
<p>It now appears both DeMint and Frum were wrong.</p>
<p>Obamacare, it turns out, is not Obama’s Waterloo – but Medicare just might be.</p>
<p>Through a preternatural confluence of events Republican Mitt Romney could evict the Saul Alinsky radical in the White House by running a successful campaign on reining in the obscenely expensive Medicare program and introducing market reforms.</p>
<p>Yes, you read that right.</p>
<p>Moreover, Romney may be able not only to touch this supposed “third rail” of American politics and survive but to ride the lightning all the way into the history books.</p>
<p>This is because the coolest, smartest president ever is hellbent on <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/14/romneys-right-obamacare-cuts-medicare-by-716-billion-heres-how/">extracting</a> $716 billion from the popular health care entitlement for senior citizens. The effect on Medicare patients will be devastating but Obama doesn’t care. He’s got to have the money in order to pay for Obamacare, an unproven, unpopular, and largely unknowable program that makes patients and businesses justifiably nervous and alienates seniors, a hugely important voting bloc.</p>
<p>And he’s locked into the ultra-toxic Medicare cuts. In late 2009 Obama gave an authoritative “yes” as an answer when Jake Tapper of ABC News asked if he would “veto any bill that tries to restore funding you took from Medicare?” The election is now less than three months away. Obama is committed.</p>
<p>In 2008 candidate Obama went on record against a similarly sized Medicare cut.</p>
<p>“How would your golden years turn out under John McCain? His health care plan would cut Medicare by $800 billion &#8212; that means a 22 percent cut in benefits. Higher premiums and co-pays &#8230; after a lifetime of work, senior’s health care shouldn’t be a gamble. John McCain’s plan, it’s not the change we need.”</p>
<p>All of this is a political godsend. Republicans get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play Santa Claus while normally spendthrift Democrats become Christmas-stealing grinches. Paradoxically, GOPers also get to position themselves as compassionate defenders of Medicare while acting like fiscally responsible grownups saving America from the monster of Obamacare.</p>
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		<title>Why Liberals Behave the Way They Do</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ann-coulter/why-liberals-behave-the-way-they-do/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-liberals-behave-the-way-they-do</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ann-coulter/why-liberals-behave-the-way-they-do/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 Aug 2012 04:40:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ann Coulter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[demonization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Liberals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mentality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mobs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=140664</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Only slogans and fear-mongering delight mobs.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/alg_occupy-wall-street-police-plaza.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-140666" title="alg_occupy-wall-street-police-plaza" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/alg_occupy-wall-street-police-plaza.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>My smash best-seller &#8220;Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America&#8221; has just come out in paperback &#8212; and not a moment too soon! Democrats always become especially mob-like during presidential election campaigns.</p>
<p>The &#8220;root cause&#8221; of the Democrats&#8217; wild allegations against Republicans, their fear of change, their slogans and insane metaphors, are all explained by mass psychology, diagnosed more than a century ago by the French psychologist Gustave Le Bon, on whose work much of my own book is based.</p>
<p>Le Bon&#8217;s 1896 book, &#8220;The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind,&#8221; was carefully read by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in order to learn how to incite mobs. Our liberals could have been Le Bon&#8217;s study subjects.</p>
<p>With the country drowning in debt and Medicare and Social Security on high-speed bullet trains to bankruptcy, the entire Democratic Party refuses to acknowledge mathematical facts. Instead, they incite the Democratic mob to hate Republicans by accusing them of wanting to kill old people.</p>
<p>According to a 2009 report &#8212; before Obama added another $5 trillion to the national debt &#8212; Obama&#8217;s own treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, stated that in less than 10 years, spending on major entitlement programs, plus interest payments on the national debt, would consume 92 cents of every dollar in federal revenue.</p>
<p>That means no money for an army, a navy, rockets, national parks, food inspectors, air traffic controllers, highways, and so on. Basically, the entire federal budget will be required just to pay for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security &#8212; and the cost of borrowing money to pay for these programs.</p>
<p>When Social Security was enacted in 1935, the average lifespan was 61.7 years. Today, it&#8217;s almost 79 and rising. But liberals believe the age at which people can begin collecting Social Security must never, ever be changed, even to save Social Security itself.</p>
<p>Mobs, according to Le Bon, have a &#8220;fetish-like respect&#8221; for tradition, except moral traditions because crowds are too impulsive to be moral. That&#8217;s why liberals say our Constitution is a &#8220;living, breathing&#8221; document that sprouts rights to gay marriage and abortion, but the age at which Social Security and Medicare benefits kick in is written in stone.</p>
<p>Le Bon says that it is lucky &#8220;for the progress of civilization that the power of crowds only began to exist when the great discoveries of science and industry had already been effected.&#8221; If &#8220;democracies possessed the power they wield today at the time of the invention of mechanical looms or of the introduction of steam-power and of railways, the realization of these inventions would have been impossible.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>Ryan Plan Would Save Medicare; Obamacare Will Destroy It</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/ryan-plan-would-save-medicare-obamacare-will-destroy-it/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ryan-plan-would-save-medicare-obamacare-will-destroy-it</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:26:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Funding]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mitt romney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paul Ryan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ryan Plan]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=140412</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why Obama's new central attack against the Romney campaign is a failure.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/120812_paul_ryan_plan_ap_328.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-140421" title="120812_paul_ryan_plan_ap_328" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/120812_paul_ryan_plan_ap_328.gif" alt="" width="375" height="243" /></a>The Obama campaign has wasted no time trying to scare the elderly with lies that Mitt Romney&#8217;s selection of Representative Paul D. Ryan as his running mate signifies Romney&#8217;s plan to destroy Medicare.  Obama senior campaign advisor David Axelrod claimed on ABC&#8217;s &#8220;This Week,&#8221; for example, that Medicare would be in &#8220;a death spiral under this plan.&#8221;  Not content with that scary prognosis, Axelrod doubled down with the bogus assertion that the Ryan budget plan was an &#8220;attempt to do away with Medicare&#8221; and &#8220;a Trojan horse that ultimately will spell its demise.&#8221;</p>
<p>That&#8217;s interesting, considering President Obama&#8217;s own characterization back in January 2011 of the Ryan plan as &#8220;an entirely legitimate proposal.&#8221; Obama recognized that spending for Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements were &#8220;the major driver of our long-term liabilities&#8221; and that the right solution deserved &#8220;a healthy debate.&#8221;  But the Obama administration has ducked trying to solve this problem completely. In fact, it is making the problem even worse by sweeping over $700 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare, which will rob today&#8217;s seniors of the choices they now have under the current Medicare program.</p>
<p>&#8220;Who is in charge: the government or the patient?&#8221; Paul Ryan asked during a speech about health care last September at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.</p>
<p>Obamacare&#8217;s answer is the government &#8212; to the detriment of <em>today&#8217;s seniors</em>.</p>
<p>Ryan has come up with an alternative market-based plan that prevents Medicare from self-destructing because of out-of-control spending, without substituting government mandates and rationing for the choices that are better left to patients, including seniors, and their doctors.</p>
<p>With their usual demagoguery, however, the Democrats are fraudulently distorting what the Ryan plan for Medicare reform would do now and in the future.  They are maliciously scaring seniors with the downright lie that they will be thrown off the cliff if the Ryan plan is enacted, as one Democratic ad literally shows with a Ryan look-alike pushing poor grandma to her death.</p>
<p>The truth is that seniors now on Medicare, as well as those 55 and older, would not be affected at all by Ryan&#8217;s proposed Medicare reforms.  The reforms would only come into play for younger generations, who would have decades to prepare for their retirement. Younger people would still be able to choose Medicare as it is structured today or they could select among private insurance policies, with premium support provided by the federal government.</p>
<p>As Mitt Romney explained during a <em>60 Minutes </em>interview in which he and Paul Ryan participated:</p>
<blockquote><p>There’s only one president that I know of in history that robbed Medicare, $716 billion to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call Obamacare.</p>
<p>What Paul Ryan and I have talked about is saving Medicare, is providing people greater choice in Medicare, making sure it’s there for current seniors. No changes, by the way, for current seniors, or those nearing retirement. But looking for young people down the road and saying, &#8220;We’re going to give you a bigger choice.&#8221; In America, the nature of this country has been giving people more freedom, more choices. That’s how we make Medicare work down the road.</p></blockquote>
<p>Not only is the Obama administration robbing Medicare to pay for its new Obamacare entitlement, but Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) and the regulations being churned out by the Department of Health and Human Services are all about top-down, government mandated health care rationing which will potentially deny seniors the means to pay for life-saving treatments if such treatments are not deemed cost-effective for elderly patients.</p>
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