Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts

Sunday, October 27, 2013

TIMELY: Senator Joe "Steaming Sack of Fail" Manchin Complaining About Obamacare

I would call Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) duplicitous, but that would understate how two-faced he is. In West Virginia, he postures and crows like a conservative, but back in DC he votes with the radical leftists who control the Democrat Party.

Now, just a few weeks after ignoring the masterful efforts by Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) to defund Obamacare, Manchin is whining about the catastrophic effects of the law.

"Senator Manchin, you get the last word," said the ABC host this morning. "Are you seeing any indication from anyone in the administration that they are willing to go along with some sort of a delay?"

"I'm not sure," said Manchin. "I haven't spoken in detail with them. But I can tell you: if we have a bipartisan group, which we've had before ... George, nobody should be forced to buy a policy that costs more than what they had and is inferior to what they had. Those things have to be worked out."

Gee, Joe, "nobody should be forced to buy a policy that costs more than what they had and is inferior to what they had"?

Perhaps you could've thought about that before you supported this fustercluck.

One would hope that West Virginians are already working on a recall of this fraud.


Hat tip: BadBlue News Service.

JUST ONE CALAMITY AMONG MILLIONS: Obamacare Throws Pregnant Woman Off Her Policy, Leaves Her Uninsured

Step back for a moment and consider the hubris required to believe that a single law -- tens of thousands of pages of regulations -- could replace all of the decisions made regarding one-sixth of the economy... and could do so without harming millions of individuals.

With that as a backdrop, please consider just one of those millions of horror stories.

Fullerton resident Jennifer Harris thought she had a great deal, paying $98 a month for an individual plan through Health Net Inc. She got a rude surprise this month when the company said it would cancel her policy at the end of this year. Her current plan does not conform with the new federal rules, which require more generous levels of coverage.

Now Harris, a self-employed lawyer, must shop for replacement insurance. The cheapest plan she has found will cost her $238 a month. She and her husband don’t qualify for federal premium subsidies because they earn too much money, about $80,000 a year combined.

It doesn’t seem right to make the middle class pay so much more in order to give health insurance to everybody else,” said Harris, who is three months pregnant. “This increase is simply not affordable.”

The Harris family is but one household among millions who have lost coverage, lost hours at work, or have lost their jobs altogether. A quick search on Twitter confirms the inconvenient truth.

In short, Obamacare's website is the very least of its problems.



Hat tip: BadBlue News.

The 25 Best Quotes Explaining the Obamacare "Glitch"

Guest post by Tyler Durden

While some have proclaimed the 36,000 enrollment in The Affordable Care Act "a good start," the online marketplaces that Obamacare has become more infamous for have been plagued with problems in the brief two weeks since launch. Politico provides 25 of the most telling and colorful comments made about the "glitches" the online exchanges have faced...

1. “I hope they are working day and night to get this done. When they get it fixed, I hope they fire some people that were in charge of making sure that this thing was supposed to work.” — former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on MSNBC’s “Now with Alex Wagner,” Oct. 14

2. “A thousand Social Security numbers being sent to the wrong people is not a glitch!” — CNBC contributor Carol Roth on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Oct. 12

3. “How can we tax people for not buying a product from a website that doesn’t work?” — House Speaker John Boehner, Oct. 10

4. “Despite the widespread belief that the administration was not ready for the health law’s Oct. 1 launch, top officials and lead IT contractors looked us in the eye and assured us all systems were a go. Instead, here we are 10 days later, and delays and technical failures have reached epidemic proportions.” — Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) in a statement, Oct. 10

5. “We’re going to do a challenge. I’m going to try and download every movie ever made and you are going to try to sign up for Obamacare — and we’ll see which happens first.” — Jon Stewart to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on "The Daily Show," Oct. 7

6. “It’s a new rule: If something doesn’t work, you get rid of it! If the post office is late today, let’s get rid of the post office! If the plane is late an hour, get rid of airplanes! It’s ridiculous!— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Oct. 12

7. “There’s so much wrong, you just don’t know what’s broken until you get a lot more of it fixed.” — Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, Oct. 14

8. “They had three years to get this ready. If they weren’t fully ready, they should accept the advice Republicans are giving them: Delay it for a year, get it ready and make sure it works.” — CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Oct. 9

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

4 Interesting Snippets o' Wisdom Heard on Last Night's Mark Levin Show

Four minutes of Mark Levin is akin to an hour of anyone else. Some random items from last night's show, paraphrased:

1. Even the Karl Rove consultant class could have led Republicans to victory in 2012 had Obamacare's individual mandate kicked in October 1st of last year. The rollout has been such an unmitigated disaster that even Humpty Dumpty could have beaten the incumbent.

2. Yet another member of the media -- a Washington Post reporter named Laura Blumenfeld -- has joined the Obama administration. That makes "16 journalists who have officially become absorbed into the Obama administration. Countless others, such as CNN’s Candy Crowley and everyone at MSNBC, have been unofficial members."

In short, journalists now use their ostensibly unbiased, independent news reporting as auditions for a gig in Democrat politics. So much for the Fourth Estate.

3. The infernal cross-pollination of "journalists" and administration officials may explain why no one in vintage media has bothered to total up the number of Americans who have lost coverage thanks to Obamacare. In Florida alone, a single insurer is terminating 300,000 policies -- or 80 percent of its individual block of business. That's just one insurer in a single state. The total of those who have lost their health care plans must number in the tens of millions, but you wouldn't know it by reading The New York Birdcage Liner.

4. Speaking of unreported, the total number of Americans not in the labor force "has increased by 10,102,000 during Obama's presidency." While CNS News is reporting that figure, where is the rest of the media?


Want to read Mark Levin's latest bestseller? Click here for The Liberty Amendments.

Ted Cruz Negotiates Delay in Obamacare's Individual Mandate

Did I say Ted Cruz?

Sorry, I meant Barack Obama. You know, the guy who repeatedly bleated "I WILL NOT NEGOTIATE" over delaying any aspect of Obamacare's oppressive and capricious mandates.

Guess what? Obama has decided to delay Obamacare's oppressive and capricious mandates. Of course, it has absolutely nothing to do with Healthcare.gov, the only website ever built that crashes in 150 languages.

The Obama administration said Wednesday night that it will give Americans who buy health insurance through new online marketplaces an extra six weeks to obtain coverage before they risk a penalty...

...Administration officials said the change is unrelated to the many problems that the marketplace’s Web site, HealthCare.gov, has had in its first three weeks. Instead, they said, the shift relates to what they called a “disconnect” among dates in new rules for buying coverage...

...under the new rule, anyone who buys coverage during the open enrollment period will avoid a penalty, whether their coverage has started by April 1 or not. Administration officials said Wednesday that they will issue formal guidance in the next few days about the change. An HHS official said it remains unclear whether the deadline shift will apply to Americans who buy insurance without using the exchanges...

You know how the White House used human props a few days ago to advertise how great Obamacare was working?

Why don't Republican leaders (I know, an oxymoron) arrange a virtual town-hall meeting of the millions of Americans who have lost their health insurance thanks to Obamacare?

I mean, if a single blogger like Matt Walsh can do it, perhaps even the feckless RINO establishment can pull it off.


Tuesday, October 22, 2013

THANK A DETROITOCRAT: The Number of Americans Who Left the Labor Force Hits Another All-Time High

I'm trying to get the term "Detroitocrats" -- referring, of course, to the members of the hard left Democrat Party who ruin everything they touch -- popularized. Today's jobs report can only help my cause.

...The number of Americans who are 16 years or older and who have decided not to participate in the nation's labor force has climbed to a record 90,609,000 in September...


...In January 2009, when President Barack Obama took office, there were 80,507,000 Americans not in the labor force. Thus, the number of Americans not in the labor force has increased by 10,102,000 during Obama's presidency...

Please take a closer look at the chart. Notice that around May of 2010, when Obamacare was jammed through Congress without a single Republican vote, the labor-force participation rate started heading south. And it hasn't let up since.

In fact, less than 150,000 people in the U.S. -- total -- found work last month. That's less than 3,000 people per state -- or about the number of people who attend a high school football game.

...just 148,000 people found work last month.

"I think it is an absolute disaster," says Brian Sozzi, chief equity strategist at Belus Capital Advisors in the attached video, where he calls today's release a "horrifically depressing report."
As Sozzi sees it, "there's stuff going on out there in the economy that nobody is talking about."

Specifically, he cites the need to listen to what companies such as Stanley Black & Decker (SWK) and Hasbro (HAS) are telling us this earnings season, and to take heed of the restructuring plans, earnings misses, and soft revenue results.

The Detroitocrat Party is literally turning all of America into Detroit.

They have no blueprint, no master plan, no overarching document describing their endgame they can share with us. They will continue to tinker, to social-engineer, to "fix" society using increasingly totalitarian methods to address the "non-compliant".

And like D.C., like Chicago, and -- yes -- like Detroit and all of the other bankrupt cities in California, jobs, opportunity and hope will disappear from the landscape like a wheat field devastated by a swarm of locusts.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

AWESOME: IRS gives away $4.2 billion to illegal aliens while attacking Tea Party, Christian and Pro-Israel Groups

Guest post by Kenric Ward

WASHINGTON, D.C. — While harrying and stalling tea party groups seeking nonprofit status, the Internal Revenue Service mailed $4.2 billion in child-credit checks to undocumented immigrants.

Critics say midlevel IRS bureaucrats continue to abuse the Additional Child Tax Credit program by dispensing $1,000 checks to families in this country illegally.

“The law needs clarification that undocumented immigrants are not eligible,” Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told Watchdog.org in a statement.

AP file photo

LEGAL RESIDENTS ONLY: Sen. Charles Grassley says it was never Congress’ intent for the IRS to issue tax-credit checks to people in this country illegally.

To make Congress’ intent clear – that only legal U.S. residents are entitled to ACTC credits — Grassley co-sponsored a clarifying amendment with Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wy.

“Unfortunately, the majority leader (Harry Reid, D-Nev.) cut off debate, so we weren’t given the chance to offer our amendment,” said Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The IRS’ practice of paying out billions to undocumented-immigrant families never received full congressional scrutiny, said David North, a fellow at the enforcement-oriented Center for Immigration Studies.

“I’ve been in government and I know kind of how these things work out,” North told the Washington Times.

“It struck me that (GS) 15s and 16s got together at some point and decided this is how we should handle it, and it stuck,” said North, who wrote “Paying Illegals to Stay,” an analysis of how benefit programs increase illegal immigration.

The IRS has said it doesn’t believe the ACTC law allows the agency to deny payment to undocumented immigrants.

Watchdog reported in June that disbursement of ACTC credits has grown rapidly — and suspiciously — with increased issuance of Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers as substitutes for Social Security numbers.

ITIN holders are not required to prove legal residency, and ITIN applications are running at the rate of 1 million a year.

Federal investigators identified one address in Atlanta where 23,994 ITIN refunds totaling $46,378,040 were delivered. A single bank account there received 8,393 refunds.

Records indicate that undocumented immigrants in Virginia received $87.9 million in ACTC cash from the IRS. Watchdog reported that $163,711 went to a single address in the tiny eastern shore town of Parksley.

In lightly populated Iowa, Grassley’s home state, undocumented immigrants got an estimated $30 million.

With an average of 15 percent of ACTC refunds directed to undocumented households nationally, North calculates that roughly half of the money went to ITIN holders who paid “little or no income taxes.”

An audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration stated:

“We believe legislation is needed to clarify whether or not refundable tax credits such as the ACTC may be paid to filers without a Social Security number. Such a legislative change could result in cost savings to the federal government of $1.8 billion annually.

“As it now stands, the payment of federal funds through this tax benefit appears to provide additional incentive for aliens to enter, reside and work in the U.S. without authorization, which contradicts federal law and policy to remove such incentives.”

The recommendations of that audit, conducted in 2009, have yet to be acted on.

Meantime, the IRS continues to be dogged by controversy over its handling of tax-exempt requests by tea party groups and other conservative organizations.

Judicial Watch this month filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the agency asking the District Court for the District of Columbia to compel the IRS to produce records of all communications relating to the review process for organizations seeking 501(c)(4) non-profit status since Jan. 1, 2010.

On May 14, the Treasury inspector general concluded the IRS had singled out groups with conservative-sounding terms such as “patriot” and “tea party” in their titles when applying for tax-exempt status.



Hat tips: BadBlue News and @KenricWard.

THERE, FIXED IT FOR YOU: Healthcare.gov Modified for Accuracy

It's the least I could do.






Sean Hackbarth has additional insight into the half-billion dollar website failure.


Monday, October 21, 2013

Quantitative Easing Worked for the Weimar Republic, Too. For a While.

Guest post by Michael Snyder

There is a reason why every fiat currency in the history of the world has eventually failed.

At some point, those issuing fiat currencies always find themselves giving in to the temptation to wildly print more money. Sometimes, the motivation for doing this is good. When an economy is really struggling, those that have been entrusted with the management of that economy can easily fall for the lie that things would be better if people just had "more money".

Today, the Federal Reserve finds itself faced with a scenario that is very similar to what the Weimar Republic was facing nearly 100 years ago. Like the Weimar Republic, the U.S. economy is also struggling and like the Weimar Republic, the U.S. government is absolutely drowning in debt. Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve has decided to adopt the same solution that the Weimar Republic chose.

The Federal Reserve is recklessly printing money out of thin air, and in the short-term some positive things have come out of it. But quantitative easing worked for the Weimar Republic for a little while too. At first, more money caused economic activity to increase and unemployment was low. But all of that money printing destroyed faith in German currency and in the German financial system and ultimately Germany experienced an economic meltdown that the world is still talking about today. This is the path that the Federal Reserve is taking America down, but most Americans have absolutely no idea what is happening.

It is really easy to start printing money, but it is incredibly hard to stop. Like any addict, the Fed is promising that they can quit at any time, but this month they refused to even start tapering their money printing a little bit. The behavior of the Fed is so shameful that even CNBC is comparing it to a drug addict at this point...

The danger with addictions is they tend to become increasingly compulsive. That might be one moral of this week's events.

A few days ago, expectations were sky-high that the Federal Reserve was about to reduce its current $85 billion monthly bond purchases. But then the Fed blinked, partly because it is worried that markets have already over-reacted to the mere thought of a policy shift.

Faced with a choice of curbing the addiction or providing more hits of the QE drug, in other words, it chose the latter.

So why won't the Fed cut back on the reckless money printing?

Break Out the Champagne, Everyone! The Fiscal Crisis is Over!

Gosh, I was so worried when the federal government was shut down. It was nerve-wracking. I don't know about you, but all of the stores here in California were closed, there was no electric power, and someone ran over an endangered swamp mollusk on the 101 to San Jose.

Thank goodness that crisis is over! Jon Gabriel explains:

The D.C. press corps was giddy last night, declaring that the fiscal crisis had ended. Senators praised "honorable friends" from "great states," congressmembers gave standing O's to their stalwart leaders, and the president saluted bipartisanship while ridiculing Republicans, bloggers, activists and pretty much anyone else who dared oppose him.

If the whole thing seemed a bit surreal, it's because the whole thing was a bit surreal. America's fiscal crisis is not that our debt ceiling isn't quite high enough — it's that we have too much debt.

It's as if I had $250K in credit card debt and I told my wife, "Great news, honey — our fiscal crisis is over! I just got a new Visa!" If she didn't hit me over the head with a rolling pin, she would most assuredly tell me where I should place it.

To help visualize how up the creek we find ourselves, I created [the] infographic [at right]...

...When a conservative hesitates before raising the debt ceiling, he's portrayed as a madman. When Paul Ryan offers a thoughtful plan to pay down debt over decades, he's pushing grannies into the Grand Canyon and pantsing park rangers on the way out.

Forget sustainable — how is this sane?

In today's Wall Street Journal, renowned money manager Stanley Druckenmiller pilloried the catastrophic irresponsibility of the president when it comes to the nation's finances:

...this president, despite what he says, has shown time and time again that he needs a gun at his head to negotiate in good faith. All this talk about, 'I won't negotiate with a gun at my head.' OK, you've been president for five years."

His voice rising now, Mr. Druckenmiller pounds his fist on the conference table. "Show me, President Obama, when the period was when you initiated budget discussions without a gun at your head."

Druckenmiller is more optimistic than I am.

He says that America's debt-to-GDP ratio, which is the amount of debt the country has compared to all the goods and services it produces, will hit the Greece level of collapse by 2030. I personally don't think we have nearly that long. When the system becomes imbalanced, chaos and fear trump rationality.

If you're a Democrat, I want you to remember that sentence. Be sure and tell your kids and grandkids what you did to destroy their futures.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

10 Epic Quotes About the Colossal Failure of Obamacare's Rollout

Guest post by Travis Perry and Dustin Hurst

What is Obamacare?

We already know what politicians think it could be. Republicans believe the health law will soon bring about the apocalypse. Democrats, on the other hand, think the law will bring peace to the earth and begin a utopian state of peace and tranquility for all.

For right now, though, the law — represented by the online marketplaces set up by governments across the land — is pretty terrible. Well, at least that’s what a whole bunch of pundits and news outlets are saying.

Sure, the exchanges, powered by a central operated by the federal government, might make purchasing health insurance easier someday, but first they have to, you know, work. But they don’t. One buyer in Delaware, for example, tried purchasing coverage for 11 days straight before finally succeeding.

The project cost a mere $400 million, or just another drop in the bucket for the federal government.

Here are 10 epic quotes that reveal just how bad the Obamacare rollout has been:

1. Nick Gillespie, The Daily Beast:

daily beast

2. Robert Gibbs, former Obama administration spokesman:

fired2

Newsweek's David Freedlander (Who? Exactly) Has Never Heard of Mark Levin, Best-selling Author, Famed Litigator, and Top Radio Host

I daresay that anyone reading the old, failed Newsweek Magazine -- now renamed The Daily Beast -- is well aware of Mark Levin. Levin, the author of five New York Times bestsellers and the president of Landmark Legal Foundation, is heard by roughly 10 million people each week.

Yet someone named "David Freedlander" -- if that is his real name -- begins a lengthy article with the bizarre assertion that a wide swath of Democrats, liberals and other miscreants are unfamiliar with Levin. I assure you that's not the case. Entitled "Radio’s Mark Levin Might Be the Most Powerful Conservative You Never Heard Of", his amateurish "exposé" is riddled with typos, grammatical gaffes, and problematic diction:

• "...understand the issues form a different perspective..."

"Form"? Is that a new turn of phrase? Or just the hastily typed missive of a hack?

• "...He has no problem rewriting statues..."

"Statues"? Someone's rewriting statues?

• "I don’t why when..."

Eh?

• "...but are rally just leaders of their own movement..."

Rally? Really?

• "... have you ever heard of a party attacking its base."

Is that a question?

The article is flatly embarrassing, but -- frankly -- not unexpected for a magazine that was recently sold for a tidy, shiny silver dollar.

I suspect if Levin had known how pathetic Freedlander's writing skills were, he'd never have agreed to spending time discussing economics, philosophy, law and history with him.

Here's a heads up, David. The reason Levin and other conservatives have mobilized millions is because we are losing our country.

Democrats are openly calling for the arrest of their political opponents.

The administration has tripled warrantless wiretaps of U.S. citizens (according to the ACLU) and is data-mining all of the phone records of 300 million Americans.

The president lied -- repeatedly -- to the American people about the murder of a U.S. ambassador and has never revealed what actions he took when first informed of the terror attack.

The Obama White House also unquestionably used the IRS to target its political opponents prior to the 2012 reelection campaign; this was one of the proposed articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon.

The president ignored the Senate's advice and consent role, becoming the first to unilaterally declare the upper chamber in recess over a long weekend to name radical leftists to the National Labor Relations Board. This lawless act was completely rejected by two separate U.S. Courts of Appeal.

The administration also was held in contempt of Congress for unlawfully hiding documents on its "gun-walking" program in which Eric Holder's Justice Department knowingly sent thousands of firearms and grenades to Mexican drug cartels. This effort was clearly intended to demonize American gun-owners and set the stage for further erosion of the Second Amendment.

The administration has become increasingly hostile to the press, targeting wide numbers of journalists at the Associated Press and even wiretapping the parents of Fox reporter James Rosen.

The White House even "developed its own network of websites, social media and even created an online newscast to dispense favorable information and images," an act unprecedented in American history and consistent with the actions of a dictatorship.

And that's just the short list. The complete list is here.

So, Davey -- can I call you, Davey? No? Too bad -- we regular Americans see that we're in the process of losing our country to fanatical, hard left progressives that are doing their level best to install what can only be called a fascist government in the United States.

This isn't the Democrat Party of JFK, a tax-cutting advocate for strong national security. The Democrat Party is now controlled by radical sixties retreads who continue expanding the welfare state even as the country runs up massive deficits. These tactics are called "Cloward-Piven Government" and are naked attempts to destroy capitalism.

The facts are unassailable.

Because he is cognizant of history, facts, logic and reason -- and Freedlander clearly is not -- Levin has attracted millions of like-minded Americans who worry about massive deficits, lawless presidents, and a Beltway elite that is more concerned with the needs of illegal aliens than their own constituents.

David Freedlander's writing appears to be consistent with the level of his intellect, which is to say: he's a drone.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

The Most Terrifying Chart You'll See All Week

At the excellent econ blog Q&O, Dale Franks illustrates what should be obvious to even the most obtuse observer (which excludes all Democrats and Utopian Statists).

[In 2012 we] spent $3,795.55 billion, while taking in $2,469 billion in taxes and receipts. That gave us a deficit for the year of $1.326.55 billion.

Much of the spending is required by law. Mandatory spending includes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and retirement benefits for the military and federal workers. In addition, interest on the national debt of $227.73 billion must also be paid, by law. Overall, $2543.51 billion in spending was legally required. That’s 67% of all federal spending.

Keen observers will note that revenues of $2,469 billion do not cover that amount of mandatory spending. So, we missed being able to pay for required spending alone by by $74.51 billion. Essentially, we borrowed money to pay one-third of the interest on the money we’ve already borrowed.


Actually, we’re pretty lucky when it comes to the whole interest payments deal, because the average interest rate on the debt is hovering at around 2%. Every additional percentage point in that interest rate translates to about $115 billion dollars in additional interest charges every year. If interest rates were to rise to the historical average of 6%, that would add about $575 billion per year to cost of servicing the debt. That would raise the annual debt service costs from $228 billion to $803 billion. That’s about $44 billion more than we currently pay for defense. So, let’s hope for a weak, struggling economy, right? Gotta keep those interest rates at historical lows.

Anyway, the remaining spending is all discretionary, so, we chose to spend another $1,252.53 billion in discretionary spending. $759.11 billion was spent on killing foreigners. Everything else the Federal Government does—all of the executive departments, science and medical research, the Judicial branch, and giving money to heathen foreigners to try and make them our friends—cost us $492.42 billion. Giving money to the heathen foreigners—also known as foreign aid—accounted for about $38 billion for the year, or 1% of federal spending.

So, what can we extrapolate about the future? Well, we know that, even in interest rates stay steady, mandatory spending on entitlements will rise as the huge population bolus that is the Baby Boom generation begin retiring. Without either significant new taxes and/or significant entitlement cuts, re. That means that, in the not-too-distant future, revenues will not cover even the cost of mandatory entitlement spending.

We can—and probably will—ameliorate this by slashing defense. It’s what the Europeans have done, after all...

Here's the executive summary: the core function of the federal government -- national security -- will be sacrificed on the altar of redistributionist, Utopian fantasies.

The Chinese are creating a nuclear-capable Navy. The Iranians are practicing launches of EMP nuclear weapons. And Hezbollah is operating in the American southwest, thanks to the Democrats' open borders policies.

All is going according to plan. That is, if you seek the destruction of the American Experiment.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Who Are the Gang of Five Funding Radical Leftist Terry McAuliffe?

Click the illustration to see a great ad.


If you have the means, please consider helping out Ken Cuccinelli, a true stalwart in the fight against Obamacare's destruction of jobs and health care.


Friday, October 18, 2013

HELPFUL CHART: Here's How Much You'll Be Paying For Health Care in the Obamacare State Exchanges

I can summarize this chart in a single sentence: Obamacare is working just as well its website.

...Individuals in most states will end up spending more on the exchanges. It is true that in some states, the experience could be the opposite. This is because those states had already over-regulated insurance markets that led to sharply higher premiums through adverse selection, as is the case of New York. Many states, however, double or nearly triple premiums for young adults. Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, and Vermont see some of the largest increases in premiums.
Click to Explodify
...The Obama Administration is desperate for younger people to enroll to prevent an adverse selection death spiral.

...Our findings confirm that younger populations see larger percentage increases in premiums. A state that exhibits this clearly is Vermont, where the increase for 27-year-olds is 144 percent and the increase for 50-year-olds is still 60 percent, but far less. All states exhibit this relationship.

Charles C. W. Cooke helpfully summarized the litany of (quite obvious) lies the President and his sycophants told Americans in order to jam Obamacare through Congress.

• “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

• “For people with insurance, the only impact of the health-care law is that their insurance is stronger, better, and more secure than it was before. Full stop. That’s it. They don’t have to worry about anything else.”

• "If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less.”

• "I want to be very clear: I will not sign on to any health plan that adds to our deficits over the next decade."

• "Health care reform will cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year."

Every major promise regarding Obamacare was a lie.

As Scott Johnson astutely observes, "If only we had a free press, Obamacare would be a bloody, unrelenting scandal, like Abu Ghraib, or Watergate. As it is, it is only business as usual for liberals and liberalism.."


Hat tips: Maggie's Notebook and BadBlue News.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Obamacare Success Story #3,405: Health Care Premiums Skyrocket in President's Home State of Illinois

Guest post by Investors Business Daily

Regulation: From lost jobs to fewer hours to premium hikes that would make a loan shark drool, Barack Obama's home state is a case study in why the first rule in health care reform, as in medicine, should be to do no harm.

The president and his cohorts in the media have long accused Republicans of being out of touch with ordinary people. Remember the concocted story about President Bush the elder being so out of touch he was unfamiliar with supermarket bar-code scanners?

But it's President Obama who's out of touch with ordinary people and the damage his Affordable Care Act is doing to them as they lose their doctors and current health insurance while being forced under penalty of heavy fines to buy plans they can't afford on a website that doesn't work.

He need only return home to Illinois for a rude awakening. He could talk to Adam Weldzius, a nurse practitioner and 33-year-old single father living in Carpentersville.

The Chicago Tribune did and found that if Weldzius wanted to keep the same level of coverage next year as what he has now with the same insurer and the same network of doctors and hospitals as Obama promised he could do, his monthly premium of $233 would more than double.

To keep his premiums at the same level for himself and his 7-year-old daughter, his annual deductible would be $12,700 vs. $3,500 today.

"I believe everybody should be able to have health insurance," Weldzius told the Tribune. "But at the same time, I'm being penalized. And for what?"

Good question, and one unlikely to be asked at the next presidential press conference.

And Weldzius is not alone, for as the Tribune discovered, "21 of the 22 lowest-priced plans offered on the Illinois health insurance exchange for Cook County have annual deductibles of more than $4,000 for an individual and $8,000 for family coverage."

Plans with the least expensive monthly premiums, touted by state and federal officials as proof that the new law will keep costs low for consumers, have deductibles as high as $6,350 for individuals and $12,700 for families such as Weldzius and his daughter.

FreedomWorks Announces: "A Health Care Contract With America"

Guest post by Dean Clancy

For years, FreedomWorks has urged ObamaCare opponents in Congress to enunciate very clearly what they are “for.” 

We've also advocated a series of reform ideas, the top ten of which we are now pulling together into a single, easy-to-understand set of principles.

Here is what FreedomWorks is for:

A Health Care Contract with America

1) Allow everyone to maintain his current health insurance. No exceptions. (And treat everyone the same, including all Members of Congress and government employees.)

2) Allow people to own their own medical insurance and take it with them from job to job.

3) Allow all taxpayers to receive tax deductions for medical expenses, including personal Health Savings Accounts.

4) Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines.

5) Help people with pre-existing medical conditions through significant transitional block grants to states.

6) Provide all citizens advance knowledge of their health care costs (excluding medical emergencies).

7) Provide reasonable maximums for “pain and suffering.”

8) Avert Medicare’s bankruptcy by providing fewer benefits to the wealthy.

9) Allow the elderly and all doctors the choice between private insurance and Medicare.

10) Eliminate first-dollar coverage. Everyone should pay at least something for each medical service.

These principles balance boldness with achievability, injecting much-needed “patient power,” choice, and competition into the system.

It lets people choose whether to have insurance or pay for health care with cash, lets them choose the kind of insurance that actually meets their real needs (including bare bones coverage, if that's what they want), and helps them save for medical expenses without being penalized by the tax code.

(Note that the plan doesn't "throw Grandma over the cliff" -- i.e., fundamentally change Medicare in such a way that the Left can easiliy mischaracterize the reform as "harming" seniors -- nor does it force people to buy health insurance they don’t want or need [ObamaCare's individual mandate].)

If fully implemented, this plan would lower health care costs and improve access to care (as well as reduce the number of uninsured Americans) -- by voluntary rather than coercive means.

We know this reform plan will work, because we know freedom works. 

TAKE ACTION -- HELP SPREAD THE WORD



Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

The Tea Party is Both Sensible and Victorious

Guest post by Keith Koffler

I realize that sounds quite delusional to many people, particularly here in Washington. But it makes total, absolute sense.

The muttering class Inside the Beltway is very pleased with itself: The doomed Tea Party strategy is foundering on the shoals of idiocy, just like they said it would. The Republican “brand” has been downgraded yet again. America looks foolish abroad: “The world has reacted mostly with disbelief that a superpower could fall into such dysfunction,” wrote the New York Times today. Reasonable people will soon be back in charge so they can do reasonable things in a reasonable way without all these Tea Party lunatics stirring up trouble.

Let me tell all of you something:

THIS COUNTRY IS ALREADY IN A STATE OF TOTAL DYSFUNCTION, AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS.

A state of dysfunction, mind you, brought to you by the “reasonable” people who have been striking deals for years that have created $17 trillion in debt and a possibly irreversible degree of Socialism that is lobotomizing our tradition of independent thinking and creativity, crippling free enterprise, and carving the soul out of the moral, God-fearing ethic that has made this nation the greatest on earth.

You’ll see them all on the Sunday talk shows, concurring solemnly with each other about the need to avoid such shenanigans again so our system can resume functioning in a normal manner.

But as you and I know, “normal” has become a state of somnolence in which our leaders steadily sleepwalk us into the abyss.

We are adding new entitlements, even as the old ones are tens of trillions of dollars in debt. That’s right, tens of trillions. That’s what it will cost to make sure our children get the same Medicare and Social Security benefits their grandparents are enjoying.

We have begun a vast new economic arrangement, Obamacare, imposed by one ruling Party on the entire nation, that will ensure our children will one day die needlessly from a ruined health care delivery system and that will invite the federal government into countless aspects of our lives.

The “crisis” that would ensue if we breach the debt ceiling is not something caused by the Tea Party. It is a manifestation of the crisis that already exists. WE ARE ALREADY UNABLE TO PAY OUR BILLS WITHOUT THE HELP OF COMMUNIST CHINESE BUREAUCRATS. WAKE UP AMERICA!

That’s all the Tea Party is saying to people. That’s all that’s happening here. The economic chaos and harm that might ensue if there is breach of the debt ceiling is no more than a preview of the meltdown that is on the way once all the bills catch up with us and once the U.S. has declined to the point that the savages replace us as the world’s preeminent economic and military power.

Man’s ability to ignore uncomfortable truths and live in a preferred reality is remarkable. People spend years avoiding problems they know will cause them great harm down the road. But when it’s the government, this tendency is multiplied. No one really is responsible, and everyone will simply point the finger at someone else when things collapse and then go out and campaign for reelection as the only ones who can “fix” things.

The Tea Party, with its willingness to demand a stop to this freak show by shuttering the government and halting debt payments, is revolutionary, but not radical. Because sometimes revolutionary action is the reasonable course. The Tea Party is no more radical than were our Founding Fathers, who also staged a revolution when there was no other choice.

Summarizing some polling data, the Wall Street Journal today presents a picture of who the Tea Party regulars are:

Many frustrated liberals, and not a few pundits, think that people who share these beliefs must be downscale and poorly educated. The New York Times survey found the opposite. Only 26% of tea-party supporters regard themselves as working class, versus 34% of the general population; 50% identify as middle class (versus 40% nationally); and 15% consider themselves upper-middle class (versus 10% nationally). Twenty-three percent are college graduates, and an additional 14% have postgraduate training, versus 15% and 10%, respectively, for the overall population. Conversely, only 29% of tea-party supporters have just a high-school education or less, versus 47% for all adults.

Many tea-party supporters are small businessmen who see taxes and regulations as direct threats to their livelihood. Unlike establishment Republicans who see potential gains from government programs such as infrastructure funding, these tea partiers regard most government spending as a deadweight loss. Because many of them run low-wage businesses on narrow margins, they believe that they have no choice but to fight measures, such as ObamaCare, that reduce their flexibility and raise their costs—measures to which large corporations with deeper pockets can adjust.

In other words, the Tea Party is comprised of SENSIBLE PEOPLE hoping to restore some sense to the nonsense prevailing in Washington. They have come to the conclusion that, faced with a president who wants nothing but to expand government and a Congress unable to impose the thorough restructuring necessary to save the union, extraordinary measures are needed.

And, with tears in my eyes as I write this, I tell you, I don’t know if they will ever succeed. I don’t know if good people with the values that would save this country can withstand the monumental, grinding combined force of a government that sucks the life from the nation so it can itself live and a population that has grown habituated to the guarantee that other people’s money will be – and must be – provided to them.

But the people comprising this movement are right to give it a try. Surprising things do happen. And what other alternative is there?

The Tea Party is making a stand. The pundits will say, if legislation reopening the government and raising the debt limit passes, that the Tea Party has been defeated today. But to the extent conservatives have revived a movement, drawn attention to the problem, and even forced a president with his eye on the next deadline into negotiations, there will be victory in defeat.

 
Visit White House Dossier for more of Keith Koffler.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Obamacare Meltdown Continues: $171 Million State Exchange Website Running on Paper; Many States Have Zero Signups

A health insurance website reveals the ugly debacle that is Obamacare:

HHS has released no comprehensive data on how many people have enrolled for health insurance using the HealthCare.gov system...


...Oregon hasn't even tried to open its exchange website ... Vermont -- a thinly populated state -- received a large, $171 million grant to run its exchange and upgrade its technology, but its exchange system is still so buggy that officials are relying on paper applications ...

...In Oregon and Colorado, the official number of completed applications is still zero.

...As of Thursday, Delaware -- a state relying on HHS to handle enrollment -- had not yet confirmed news of any insurer making a single enrollment through the HealthCare.gov system.

As we predicted all along, Obamacare is a complete and utter clusterbungle. And it hasn't really even kicked in yet.

All the efficiency of the DMV combined with the compassion of the IRS. That's Obamacare.


Hat tip: BadBlue Money News.

BOOM: Ironclad Proof That "This shutdown was orchestrated and planned [by] the White House"

Guest post by "Friend of a Friend"

I have worked in the government on and off for 40 years. During that time I became quite familiar with requisitions, bidding, awarding contracts etc. It is a time consuming process with bean-counters and pencil-necked bureaucrats every step of the way.

The simplest request takes months not days or hours.

In less than 8 hours of the shutdown, miraculously, professionally printed 3-by-4 foot signs appeared all over the country in the tens of thousands saying this [park, facility, etc. with custom logos] closed due to government shutdown.

There has not been a government shutdown in 17 years.

These signs were designed, specifications were determined, signs were then requisitioned, bids were posted and vetted, government contracts were awarded.

The materials were then ordered and the signs manufactured then distributed by the USPS or freight companies.

This shutdown was orchestrated and planned well in advance at least 6-8 month ago.

Likewise with all of the government websites that instantly flipped over to landing pages that read "due to the lapse in federal government funding, this website is not available."

Millions of tax dollars were appropriated and spent in this process.

Let me repeat that: millions of your tax dollars were spent preparing for this.

There is a paper trail a mile long leading directly to the White House.


Hat tip: Heisenberg.