Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, March 12, 2014


Geezus...!

Planes disappearing in mid-flight...

Buildings blowing up...

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

5 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2578645/White-House-STILL-wont-say-Obamacare-enrollees-paid-plans-announces-4-2-million-total-February-just-60-cent-original-goal.html

* HEADLINE...

White House STILL won't say how many ObamaCare enrollees have paid for plans, but announces 4.2 million total through February – just 60% of original goal

AND BULLET POINTS...

As March 31 deadline approaches, the administration is nowhere near its original goal of 7 million signups – or its revised target of 6 million

The administration hasn't said how many have paid their premiums, claming their accounts-payable system isn't yet set up to compute totals

Seven U.S. states, however, have released their paid/unpaid numbers, and those figures indicate that just 3.3 million have paid for insurance

The White House has asked insurers to cut delinquent enrollees some slack, but some insurance execs say they won't do it

A troubling survey from a health care consultancy found last week that just 27% of enrollees were previously uninsured

* NOTICE, FOLKS... THE FOREIGN PRESS...

(*SHRUG*)

* AGAIN, FOLKS, WHILE IT'S TRUE I'VE BEEN LAX WITH NEWSBITES OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS, WHAT'S ALSO UNDENIABLE (BECAUSE I'M EXPERIENCING IT!) IS THAT NEWSBITES ARE BECOMING HARDER AND HARDER TO COME BY.

* AM I SAYING THERE'S SOME CENTRALLY DIRECTED MEDIA CONSPIRACY? NOPE. BUT WHAT I AM POINTING OUT IS THAT MOST REPORTERS AND EDITORS ARE LIBERAL AND THESE PEOPLE KNOW THAT THERE'S AN ELECTION COMING IN NOVEMBER AND THE SENATE IS IN PLAY.

William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304250204579433312607325596?mg=reno64-wsj

ObamaCare's implementers continue to roam the battlefield and shoot their own wounded, and the latest casualty is the core of the Affordable Care Act — the individual mandate.

* HEY, FOLKS... REMEMBER HOW THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE WAS RULED A TAX BY CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT AND SUPREME SCUMBAG ROBERTS AND THE OTHER ANTI-CONSTITUTIONISTS? WHERE IN THE CONSTITUTION DOES IT GIVE THE PRESIDENT THE POWER TO SIMPLE "WAIVE" TAX LAW...??? JUST ASKING...

To wit, last week the Administration quietly excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance or else pay a tax penalty.

* OF COURSE THE SCUMBAG RINOs AREN'T FIGHTING FOR THE CONSTITUTION... BUT THAT'S ONLY THE PISS MOISTENING THE SHIT SANDWICH.

This latest political reconstruction has received zero media notice, and the Health and Human Services Department didn't think the details were worth discussing in a conference call, press materials or fact sheet. Instead, the mandate suspension was buried in an unrelated rule that was meant to preserve some health plans that don't comply with ObamaCare benefit and redistribution mandates. Our sources only noticed the change this week.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

That seven-page technical bulletin includes a paragraph and footnote that casually mention that a rule in a separate December 2013 bulletin would be extended for two more years, until 2016. Lo and behold, it turns out this second rule, which was supposed to last for only a year, allows Americans whose coverage was cancelled to opt out of the mandate altogether.

In 2013, HHS decided that ObamaCare's wave of policy terminations qualified as a "hardship" that entitled people to a special type of coverage designed for people under age 30 or a mandate exemption. HHS originally defined and reserved hardship exemptions for the truly down and out such as battered women, the evicted and bankrupts.

* AGAIN, FOLKS... YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I HATE CONGRESS - BOTH THE DEMS AND THE RINOs - BUT "LIKE 'EM OR NOT," WHAT I LOVE IS THE CONSTITUTION. OVER THE PAST FIVE PLUS YEARS AMERICA HAS BECOME FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES A DICTATORSHIP OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH.

But amid the post-rollout political backlash, last week the agency created a new category: Now all you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your plan was cancelled and that you "believe that the plan options available in the [ObamaCare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your cancelled health insurance policy" or "you consider other available policies unaffordable."

* BUT IT'S CALLED THE A*F*F*O*R*D*A*B*L*E HEALTHCARE ACT...!!! THE ACT HAS BASICALLY REGULATED THE PRICES! THE EXCHANGES WERE BY DEFINITION SUPPOSED TO BE OFFERING AFFORDABLE HEALTH INSURANCE...!!!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

* AND NOW... BACK TO JUSTICE SCUMBAG ROBERTS AND THE SUPREME COURT AND THE ADMINISTRATION'S "WINNING" ARGUMENT THAT THE OBAMACARE LEGAL MANDATE IS A "TAX"...

Keep in mind that the White House argued at the Supreme Court that the individual mandate to buy insurance was indispensable to the law's success, and President Obama continues to say he'd veto the bipartisan bills that would delay or repeal it.

* BTW...

HHS is also trying to preempt the inevitable political blow-back from the nasty 2015 tax surprise of fining the uninsured for being uninsured, which could help reopen ObamaCare if voters elect a Republican Senate this November. Keeping its mandate waiver secret for now is an attempt get past November and in the meantime sign up as many people as possible for government-subsidized health care.

Our sources in the insurance industry are worried the regulatory loophole sets a mandate non-enforcement precedent, and they're probably right. The longer it is not enforced, the less likely any President will enforce it.

* AGAIN, FOLKS... WHAT YOU'VE JUST READ THERE IS A REPORTER/EDITOR WHO SIMPLY ASSUMES AS A MATTER OF FACT THAT FROM NOW ON... AMERICAN PRESIDENTS WILL ENFORCE ONLY THOSE LAWS THEY AGREE WITH...

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

* YEAH... I'M THE CRAZY MAN... I'M THE PARANOID DELUSIONAL MALCONTENT...

The larger point is that there have been so many unilateral executive waivers and delays that ObamaCare must be unrecognizable to its drafters, to the extent they ever knew what the law contained.

William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

** NOTE: THE WRITING/TRANSCRIPT WAS SO POOR THAT I WAS FORCED TO EDIT (A BIT) FOR READABILITY. HEY... ANYONE NOT TRUSTING ME... YOU HAVE THE LINK!

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/11/Exclusive-Rubio-Warns-Democrats-Angling-For-Single-Payer-Healthcare

In an exclusive phone interview on Tuesday afternoon, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) warned that Democrats in Congress appear to be angling to move toward a single payer healthcare type system as the disastrous roll-out of ObamaCare continues to march on.

“Secretly and not so secretly, it’s a desire many on the Left have had for a very long time,” Rubio said, noting that liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chairman of a key Senate subcommittee, just held a hearing laying out the case for single payer Tuesday. “I believe single payer is always the goal that they wanted. In fact, I think ObamaCare was designed to eventually lead us to that point. What I think you’re going to see now is as ObamaCare begins to fail, instead of recognizing it as a failure you’re going to find the Left increasingly saying that ObamaCare's failure proves we need a single payer system."

Recent history is replete with signs that top Democrats dearly desire a single payer system. President Obama vigorously backed it until around 2003 – and said that's how he'd design the system “from scratch” in the 2008 campaign. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in October, said she “would’ve preferred single payer or public option” to the “compromise” that was ObamaCare. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last summer infamously said ObamaCare was “absolutely” a step toward single payer.

Rubio warned “Single Payer is ObamaCare on steroids.”

“Single payer basically is the government takes over healthcare, the government becomes the only insurance company in America, and as a result it controls everything from who gets care to what kind of care they get,” Rubio said, adding, "It would completely eviscerate the quality of our healthcare.”

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

“This is a government that struggles to deliver the mail accurately,” he said. “This is a government that struggles to provide veterans benefits to our men and women who have fought in uniform. Now you’re going to put them in charge of our entire healthcare industry? Make them the only insurance company in charge of getting you the care you need in a timely fashion? Put yourself in the place of a hospital or a doctor or an innovator coming up with new medicines or new treatments or new diagnostics or new procedures, once the government becomes in charge of that you’re going to get what you get in all of these countries where government dominates healthcare - and that’s rationed medicine that’s lower quality with less choices.”

Rubio added that while much of the blame for ObamaCare's failures rests in its flawed policy prescriptions, some lies with President Barack Obama’s and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ failure to regularly meet, as documented by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI).

(GAI found in a study late last year that from July 12, 2010, to Nov. 30, 2013, the president’s public schedule records zero one-on-one meetings between Obama and Sebelius.)

(A subsequent story from The Hill, based on 750 pages of Sebelius' draft schedules obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, found seven instances Obama had been scheduled to discuss health care with Sebelius over nearly a year and that Sebelius had attended other White House meetings as well.)

Rubio said the unusual dearth of interaction between the two principals is unsettling. “I don’t think that there’s any explanation for that,” Rubio said. “You have his signature piece of legislation collapsing. You have the agency head in charge of its implementation not coming to the White House to have regular meetings? I mean, a person who has their hands firmly on the steering wheel would be calling people in on a regular basis about what’s happening and how it’s working. So I’m not quite sure what explanation they have for not having more meetings or the president not being involved, but clearly this president - whether it’s on foreign policy or this - doesn’t seem to be fully engaged in managing the country.”