Obamacare Slashes Senior Home Health Care Services

In early April, the Obama Administration delayed cuts in the Medicare Advantage program mandated by Obamacare. These plans, used by 30% of Medicare beneficiaries, supplement traditional Medicare coverage. The planned cuts to the MA program risked a political firestorm just months before the midterm elections. While MA received a short-term pardon, the Obama Administration is going forward with dramatic cuts to home health care services for seniors.

by Mike Flynn 23 Apr 2014, 7:59 PM PDT  -  Breitbart.com: Over 3.5 million seniors receive health care services in their home. Over 60% of the recipients are women. These beneficiaries tend to be older, poorer and sicker than the overall Medicare population. Because of this, they often lack transportation, making home health care services critical for their well-being. Those impacted by the ongoing cuts are the most vulnerable and at-risk seniors. 

Obamacare gave the Obama administration wide latitude in containing spending in the program. In a decision that baffled critics, however, the administration chose to impose the maximum cuts allowed, cutting reimbursements by 14% over the next four years. The announced cuts will dramatically shrink the home health care sector and leave over a million seniors without access to health services. 

“Despite the broad discretion granted to it by Obamacare, the Administration decided to impose the deepest possible cut, which is already having a dire impact on jobs, women and vulnerable seniors,” Eric Berger, CEO of the Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare said. “Without relief, these Medicare cuts will continue to impact the home health professionals upon whom millions of the Medicare program’s most vulnerable seniors depend.” 

In issuing its reimbursement guidelines, the administration acknowledged that "approximately 40%" of the more than 11,000 home health care agencies would be losing money by 2017. 

Home health care services had been one of the fastest growing sector for jobs. In December, 2013, however, on the eve of the cuts taking effect, the sector shed almost 4,000 jobs, the largest loss of jobs in the sector in more than a decade. Over 1.2 million Americans currently work in the home health care sector, 90% of whom are women. An analysis by Avarle Consulting estimated that almost half of these jobs, 498,000, are threatened by the Obamacare cuts.

Technorati Tags: Seniors,ObamaCare,Watch the Other Hand,ObamaCare Delays,ObamaCare Surprises,Medicare,Medicare Advantage,ObamaCare Mandates,Elderly,Medicare Cuts

Sebelius' Shameful Legacy

Outgoing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will be remembered by most for the insanely botched roll-out of ObamaCare, but her most shameful legacy to those of us who remember it, will always be her disgraceful tenure as Governor of Kansas because of her unwavering support for illegal late term abortions, and her role in vilifying the attorney general who was trying to put a stop to them.

By Debra Heine – Breitbart.com  -  Cross-Posted at AskMarion: Infamous late term abortionist,  Dr. George Tiller, who practiced his shady, sordid business in Wichita, was able to game the system through strategic donations to Democrat politicians, most particularly, Kathleen Sebelius.

Kansas City resident Jack Cashill remembers the history well, and wrote about it today at the American Thinker.

During Sebelius’s six years as governor, women came from 48 states and points beyond to have late-term abortions in Kansas.

They came not because Kansas had uniquely liberal abortion laws.  They came because Sebelius was uniquely hostile to the law’s enforcement.  The state’s most efficient practitioner of this dubious art, the late Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, boasted on his website of having “more experience in late abortion services with fetuses over 24 weeks than anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere.”

What Tiller’s website did not say is that during the six years of Sebelius’s reign as governor, he ended the lives of thousands of healthy babies ready to be born, in full violation of state law.  Nor did the website tell how Sebelius personally intervened to let the carnage continue.  This was no small task.  To succeed, she had to destroy her Republican attorney general, Phill Kline, who was hot on Tiller’s trail.

Local Democrats and their media accomplices vigorously engaged in the "othering" of Kline.

Othering is a way of defining and securing one’s own positive identity through the stigmatization of an “other.” Whatever the markers of social differentiation that shape the meaning of “us” and “them,” whether they are racial, geographic, ethnic, economic or ideological, there is always the danger that they will become the basis for a self-affirmation that depends upon the denigration of the other group.

As Andrew Stiles recently noted at The Washington Free Beacon, liberals are in the process of trying to destroy Ted Cruz by "othering" him.  

But before the othering of Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, there was the particularly vicious othering of another effective conservative, Phill Kline.

The story could begin in any number of places, but a likely starting place is 2002, the year Sebelius ran for governor and Kline ran for attorney general.  As a state representative five years earlier, Kline had helped draft legislation to check the state’s then thriving late-term abortion business.  The new law allowed for a late-term abortion on a viable baby only “to preserve the life of the pregnant women” or to prevent her from suffering “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”

Tiller poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a variety of PACs and cut-outs, making what should have been an easy win for Kline in 2002 into "a nail-biter." 

Four years later, he invested close to $2 million to Democrats.  

He had to.  For the three previous years, Kline had plied an unsympathetic state judiciary to get access to Tiller’s case file, and he was finally poised to succeed. 

Tiller and his political patrons, chief among them Sebelius, resisted at every step.  To block Kline, Sebelius persuaded  popular Republican district attorney Paul Morrison to switch parties and run against Kline on her ticket.  The Democrats, Tiller’s paid proxies, and the media then launched a vicious campaign to portray “Snoop Dog Kline” as a “panty-sniffer” with no greater interest than invading the privacy of Kansas women.

So relentless were The Kansas City Star’s attacks on the “anti-choice extremist” Kline that he lost the election, and the Star won Planned Parenthood’s top media honor, the “Maggie Award,” named for its eugenicist founder, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. 

Margaret Sanger’s ideas are live and well in the Obama White House! Here is Ultra Left Wing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ Spin (Remember, Sibelius was an ardent supporter of murdered partial birth abortionist, Tiller and her extreme record on abortion has sadly been ignored (or hidden) by the media.) Sebelius has also been exposed as a major player in the Obama War on Religion.

Three months after Kline was forced out, Sebelius hosted an elegant but extremely discreet soirée at Cedar Crest, the governor’s mansion, for Tiller and his staff.  What made this event newsworthy was that just a few months earlier, Kline had filed 30 counts against Tiller for performing illegal late-term abortions.

Photos from the "soiree", include Sebelius proudly holding up a tee shirt given to her by Tiller which reads “Trifecta 2006: Sebelius, Parkinson, Morrison.”

Cashill has much more at The American Thinker with this biting conclusion:

I cannot imagine that Ms. Sebelius is having much fun this week, but if she is known going forward only for the humiliation of ObamaCare, she will have a better legacy than she deserves.

Agreed. And the most disturbing aspect of the sordid tale is the fact that she was chosen by Obama to be his HHS Sec. not despite this shameful legacy - but because of it.

And only in Obamaland, where Progressivism runs wild, could this women entertain running for the Senate with a record and history like hers!!

*Lucky for us there are 3 numbers that show a Sebelius Senate run is all but doomed.

Technorati Tags: Sebelius,ObamaCare,Tiller,Late-Term Abortions,ObamaCare Rollout,Kansas,Progressive,Abortions,Kathleen Sebelius,Obamaland,Phill Kline

A Dose of Reality… As Harry Reid Calls Terminally Ill Americans Liars - Updated

The only major news outlet that covered Harry Reid calling Americans who have lost their health insurance liars was Fox News… so many Americans haven’t heard anything about this.

NewsBusters: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid insulted victims of ObamaCare on Wednesday – and the three major networks didn’t seem to care. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

Then today in another blatant political move, the administration has moved the date for the effectiveness of most of those losses or any further loses until after the 2014 Election in the hope that the low-informed won’t catch on… Please spread the word.

 

Video: A Dose of Reality 

By Marion Algier  -  Cross-Posted at AskMarion

Harry Reid Calls Terminally Ill Americans “Liars”

“The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.” – Stephen King

Video: Reid Calls All Americans Saying That They Have Been Hurt By ObamaCare "Liars"

Last Resistance:

--#-- 

Are there a disproportionate number of liars in politics than anywhere else? Possible, but I’d wager that liars abound everywhere, regardless of occupation.

The frightening thing about liars in positions of power, rather than just liars in general, is that those in power can use their lies to persuade large groups of people. Those for whom lying is a gift can use politics as a means of mass destruction. One of the most gifted liars in politics is Senator Harry Reid. Harry Reid can always be counted on to spin a tale whenever Obama needs him to. Most recently, Reid has tried to discredit all of the Obamacare horror stories we’ve been hearing. But rather than make implications, or claim that the stories are embellished, Reid is simply calling them lies.

“Despite all that good news, there’s plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue, but they’re being told all over America…The leukemia patient whose insurance policy was canceled [and] could die without her medication, Mr. President, that’s an ad being paid for by two billionaire brothers. It’s absolutely false. Or the woman whose insurance policy went up $700 a month–ads paid for around America by the multibillionaire Koch brothers, and the ad is false….We heard about the evils of Obamacare, about the lives it’s ruining in Republicans’ stump speeches and in ads paid for by oil magnates, the Koch brothers.”

Wait a minute. Let’s think about this for a second. Harry Reid’s accusations are logically flawed. Out of hand, he discounts stories simply because they’ve been made into attack ads. He claims that because of the involvement of money from the evil Koch brothers, the stories of those negatively impacted by Obamacare are lies. He is arguing that correlation proves causation, which is a well known fallacy.

Harry Reid is not only being ridiculous, and an idiot, he is being extremely cruel. Can you imagine being called a liar in front of millions of people simply because you shared your story? These people, some of whom are terminally ill, decided to speak up, and they are now being shamed by the Senator from Nevada.

The worst part of this story is that Harry Reid’s acolytes will help spread his lies. Harry Reid’s outright lies will be repeated by liberal pundits everywhere, and there will be many Americans who fall for it, because they are uninformed, and completely uninterested in doing their own research.

Harry Reid just lied to all of us. He used fallacious arguments to persuade Americans that Obamacare is just so darn great, and that we should all ignore those cancer-stricken jerks who are slandering our wondrous president. In one paragraph, Harry Reid insulted numerous terminally ill Americans, and defended a healthcare system that was conceived as a means to accrue power, rather than help anybody.

Harry Reid doesn’t deserve to serve the American people. #FireHarry 

Video: Senator Reid On Obamacare Horror Stories . All Of Them Are Untrue All Liars The Kelly File – Unfortunately the Obama Gremlins have once again scrubbed the Internet of this video and other related videos…

Emilie’s Story: ObamaCare is hurting people like me

GOP Senators’ Obamacare Replacement Beneficial to Young People says Senator Colborn as He Loses His Own Cancer Doctor in the Midst of His Cancer Fight

Cancelled – Stories Behind HC Policy Cancellations Because of ObamaCare 

Cancer and Obamacare Survivor, plus His Hero Audited – Interview 

Pray For Jim Hoft Over At Gateway Pundit

Related: 

Obamacare: The Final Nail In The Coffin For The Middle Class

Attention Main Stream Media. Regarding Obamacare… I Told You So!

The TRUTH about Preexisting Conditions

Wake-Up… ObamaCare Eliminates Your Plan by Design

The Dirty Secret Behind ObamaCare No One’s Talking About 

Report: Cancer patient critical of Obamacare targeted by IRS for audit

Megyn Kelly - Did Obama win election by lying about Keeping your Healthcare; Still Lying 2 Cover up

Dr. Ben Carson, family and friends target of IRS harassment for criticizing Obama

In the Meantime Read: Beating Obamacare

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,ACA,Reid,Constitution,Financial,Politics,Survival,Taxation,Harry Reid,Progressivism,Liar,Megyn Kelly,ObamaCare Casualties,Watch the Other Hand,Mitch McConnell,#FireHarry,Cancellations,Stand-Up America

Stephen Blackwood: ObamaCare and My Mother's Cancer Medicine

The news was dumbfounding. She used to have a policy that covered the drug that kept her alive. Now she's on her own.

WSJ: When my mother was diagnosed with carcinoid cancer in 2005, when she was 49, it came as a lightning shock. Her mother, at 76, had yet to go gray, and her mother's mother, at 95, was still playing bingo in her nursing home. My mother had always been, despite her diminutive frame, a titanic and irrepressible force of vitality and love. She had given birth to me and my nine younger siblings, and juggled kids, home and my father's medical practice with humor and grace for three decades. She swam three times a week in the early mornings, ate healthily and never smoked.

And now, cancer? Anyone who's been there knows that a cancer diagnosis is terrifying. A lot goes through your mind and heart: the deep pang of possible loss (what would my father and all of us do without her?), and the anguish and anger at what feels like injustice (after decades of mothering and managing dad's practice, she was just then going back to school).

We, as a family, were scared and angry, but from the beginning we knew we would do all we could to fight this disease. We became involved with fundraising for research, through the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation in Boston; we blogged; we did triathlons (my mother's idea) and cherished our time together as never before.

Carcinoid, a form of neuroendocrine cancer, is a terminal disease but generally responds well to treatment by Sandostatin, a drug that slows tumor growth and reduces (but does not eliminate) the symptoms of fatigue, nausea and gastrointestinal dysfunction. My mother received a painful shot twice a month and often couldn't sit comfortably for days afterward.

Getty Images

As with most cancers, one thing led to another. There have been several more surgeries, metastases, bone deterioration, a terrible bout of thyroiditis (an inflammation of the thyroid gland), and much more. But my mother has kept fighting, determined to make the most of life, no matter what it brings. She has an indomitable will and is by far the toughest person I've ever met. But she wouldn't still be here without that semimonthly Sandostatin shot that slows the onslaught of her disease.

And then in November, along with millions of other Americans, she lost her health insurance. She'd had a Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan for nearly 20 years. It was expensive, but given that it covered her very expensive treatment, it was a terrific plan. It gave her access to any specialist or surgeon, and to the Sandostatin and other medications that were keeping her alive.

And then, because our lawmakers and president thought they could do better, she had nothing. Her old plan, now considered illegal under the new health law, had been canceled.

Because the exchange website in her state (Virginia) was not working, she went directly to insurers' websites and telephoned them, one by one, over dozens of hours. As a medical-office manager, she had decades of experience navigating the enormous problems of even our pre-ObamaCare system. But nothing could have prepared her for the bureaucratic morass she now had to traverse.

The repeated and prolonged phone waits were Sisyphean, the competence and customer service abysmal. When finally she found a plan that looked like it would cover her Sandostatin and other cancer treatments, she called the insurer, Humana, HUM -2.81% to confirm that it would do so. The enrollment agent said that after she met her deductible, all treatments and medications—including those for her cancer—would be covered at 100%. Because, however, the enrollment agents did not—unbelievable though this may seem—have access to the "coverage formularies" for the plans they were selling, they said the only way to find out in detail what was in the plan was to buy the plan. (Does that remind you of anyone?)

With no other options, she bought the plan and was approved on Nov. 22. Because by January the plan was still not showing up on her online Humana account, however, she repeatedly called to confirm that it was active. The agents told her not to worry, she was definitely covered.

Then on Feb. 12, just before going into (yet another) surgery, she was informed by Humana that it would not, in fact, cover her Sandostatin, or other cancer-related medications. The cost of the Sandostatin alone, since Jan. 1, was $14,000, and the company was refusing to pay.

The news was dumbfounding. This is a woman who had an affordable health plan that covered her condition. Our lawmakers weren't happy with that because . . . they wanted plans that were affordable and covered her condition. So they gave her a new one. It doesn't cover her condition and it's completely unaffordable.

Though I'm no expert on ObamaCare (at 10,000 pages, who could be?), I understand that the intention—or at least the rhetorical justification—of this legislation was to provide coverage for those who didn't have it. But there is something deeply and incontestably perverse about a law that so distorts and undermines the free activity of individuals that they can no longer buy and sell the goods and services that keep them alive. ObamaCare made my mother's old plan illegal, and it forced her to buy a new plan that would accelerate her disease and death. She awaits an appeal with her insurer.

Will this injustice be remedied, for her and for millions of others? Or is my mother to die because she can no longer afford the treatment that keeps her alive?

Like every American, I want affordable health care, and I'm open to innovative solutions of all kinds—individual, corporate, for-profit, nonprofit and public. It will take all of these, and all the intelligence, creativity and self-discipline we have, as well as everything we can offer one another as families, neighbors, friends and citizens—and it still won't be perfect. But it is precisely because health care for 300 million people is so complicated that it cannot be centrally managed.

The "Affordable" Care Act is a brutal, Procrustean disaster. In principle, it violates the irreducible particularity of human life, and in practice it will cause many individuals to suffer and die. We can do better, and we must.

Mr. Blackwood is the president of Ralston College, a planned liberal-arts institution in Savannah, Ga., and is on the board of the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation. His mother, Catherine, manages the Family Medicine Center in Virginia Beach, Va.

Technorati Tags: Cancer,ObamaCare,Wake-Up,ObamaCare Surprises,Socialized Medicine,Carcinoid,Neuroendocrine Cancer,ObamaCare Casualties,Obamaland

Fourth Georgia hospital closes due to Obamacare payment cuts

DailyCaller: The fourth Georgia hospital in two years is closing its doors due to severe financial difficulties caused by Obamacare’s payment cuts for emergency services.

The Lower Oconee Community Hospital is, for now, a critical access hospital in southeastern Georgia that holds 25 beds. The hospital is suffering from serious cash-flow problems, largely due to the area’s 23 percent uninsured population, and hopes to reopen as “some kind of urgent care center,” CEO Karen O’Neal said.

Many hospitals in the 25 states that rejected the Medicaid expansion are facing similar financial problems. Liberal administration ally Think Progress has already faulted Georgia for not expanding Medicaid as Obamacare envisioned.

But the reality is more complicated. The federal government has historically made payments to hospitals to cover the cost of uninsured patients seeking free medical care in emergency rooms, as federal law mandates that hospitals must care for all patients regardless of their ability to pay.

Because the Affordable Care Act’s authors believed they’d forced all states to implement the Medicaid expansion, Obamacare vastly cut hospital payments, the Associated Press reports.

The Supreme Court ruled that states could reject the Medicaid expansion in 2012, as part of the decision that upheld Obamacare generally. Since that decision, the Obama administration has so far instituted 28 unilateral delays and changes to the health care law’s implementation without congressional approval, Fox Business reports.

From verifying eligibility for subsidies to enforcing employer requirements, the Obama administration has already taken a hacksaw to the health care reform law, but it has made no changes to the provision raising problems for half the nation’s hospitals.

While the feds wait for financial pressure to force states to act, several state governments have been taking things into their own hands. Some have criticized these moves as “hospital bailouts.”

Follow Sarah on Twitter

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,Medicaid,Hospitals,Georgia

Dr. Ben Carson Becomes Chairman of Save Our Healthcare

Dear Friend,

I’ve got some exciting news to share with you.

My friends at American Legacy PAC are launching an important new project called Save our Healthcare - and I will be serving as Chairman.

Let me tell you a bit more about what we’ll be doing, and how you can help.

When I spoke just feet away from President Obama about the dangers of political correctness at last year’s National Prayer Breakfast, many were surprised.

After all, my background is medicine, not politics.

But it doesn’t take a brain surgeon like me to see that America is facing serious problems. And right now, the number one problem is Obamacare. 

Dropped coverage, failing websites, skyrocketing premiums - the list goes on and on.

I wish I could snap my fingers and make Obamacare disappear tomorrow, but we both know that won’t happen.

That’s why we’re launching Save our Healthcare - a national citizens’ effort to hold Washington accountable, re-center the healthcare debate around doctors and patients, and begin to answer the question of “What’s next?” - because real reform is absolutely vital.

Please join me, and sign our petition at SaveOurHealthcare.org.

It is our goal to recruit every American that believes we can do better than Obamacare, and make sure that our message is received loud and clear by every elected official and candidate in 2014.

Please sign up to support this project, and ask your friends and family to do the same.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ben Carson

Chairman, Save Our Healthcare

American Legacy PAC

 

Video: Dr. Ben Carson:  Let’s Save Our Healthcare 

And for anyone who missed this speech:

Video: Dr. Benjamin Carson's Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Published on Feb 15, 2013:  A politically incorrect speech by Dr. Benjamin Carson; criticizing government policies at the National Prayer Breakfast, attended by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Books:

America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great (Kindle)

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (Kindle)

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,ObamaCare Alternatives,Books,Obamaland,Choices,National Prayer Breakfast,Dr. Ben Carson

Emilie’s Story: ObamaCare is hurting people like me

Video: Emilie’s Story: ObamaCare is hurting people like me

Here is comment I received from a gal, a reader of mine named Emmie over at AskMarion.  Neither of these women are alone or exceptions… their situations are repeated hundreds of times daily…

I wanted to contact you privately but cannot find an email address for you anywhere. So I will write here and hope you see it.

I was all for healthcare reform because I found it unacceptable that so many Americans were unable to get it. This sounded like a good thing. So I tried to allay the fears of people like you whenever I heard concerns being raised. Boy, was I ever played!

I am currently between jobs. Cobra will run me about $500 a month – more than half of my mortgage. Not an option. Okay, I’ll go through healthcare.gov and see what they have to say. Well, that will run me more than $300 a month. Unemployment won’t garner me enough money to consider this and I’m not poor enough to qualify for any tax credits. Forget what my situation is – they don’t care that a bad economy, a major illness and two job losses, one of which resulted in gross underemployment, has led to a growing pile of bills. They don’t ask those kinds of questions. They don’t care. So I click on one of the two options remaining in IL, and I call Assurant. Sure, they can get me something for under $200 a month, but it won’t cover any pre-existing conditions. Wait, wha??? I thought that was part of the reform!?! Only if you go with the ACA plans! This fixed coverage won’t pay for much, certainly not major med if something happens, and since it’s not one of ACA plans, I’ll have to pay a penalty for using it. WHAT?! Oh, yes! There is a penalty, I was told by the nice lady at Assurant. Is this something you’ve read about anywhere? I’ve read that people will face a penalty if they have NO insurance, but I can’t seem to find anything about a penalty if they opt to go with a cheap plan outside of the ACA plans.

Now, how in God’s name are we supposed to pay for a government insurance policy that costs so much money we cannot afford it, yet if we don’t go that route we’ll be penalized anyway? If I was once considered middle class, and I’m struggling, how the heck will those who couldn’t afford healthcare before suddenly be able to afford it now?

I know it says there are exceptions and that people who face financial hardships will be excluded from penalties, but guess what? My hardships are never hard enough, apparently. I never qualify for any kind of aid or assistance or help of any kind. I guess it’s time I start considering filing bankruptcy since I’m losing faith. I long ago lost the hope Obama had the audacity to pedal.

AskMarion~

Related: 

Attention Main Stream Media. Regarding Obamacare… I Told You So! 

GOP Senators’ Obamacare Replacement Beneficial to Young People says Senator Colborn as He Loses His Own Cancer Doctor in the Midst of His Cancer Fight 

Pray For Jim Hoft Over At Gateway Pundit

 

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,ACA,Insurance Exchanges,Lies,Obamaland,Wake-Up,Stand-Up,Reality,Get-Involved,Elections Have Consequences,Assurant,Election 2014,Election 2016,Healthcare.gov,Healthcare Exchanges,Read the Bills,Socialized Medicine,Repeal and Replace ObamaCare,Trainwreck

Moody's Downgrades Health Insurers, Cites ObamaCare Uncertainty

New American: In announcing credit rating firm Moody’s downgrade of all health insurers, Senior Vice President Stephen Zaharuk placed the blame firmly and directly on the Obamacare rollout and implementation:

The ongoing and unstable and evolving environment is a key factor for our outlook change. The past few months have seen new regulations and announcements that impose operational changes well after product and pricing decisions were finalized.

Translation: Health insurers could lose their shirts if the assumptions they made in their premium calculations prove false. So far, it doesn’t look good. Zaharuk cited some of those uncertainties, including the demographics of those enrolling for coverage. The insurers assumed that the Obama administration was right when it estimated that at least 2.7 million young and healthy individuals aged 18 to 34 would sign up by the end of March. Only 24 percent of the 2.2 million enrolled by the end of the year fall into that category. Put another way, so far just 528,000 of the 2.7 million needed to make the math, and the economics, work out are in that category.

That’s why, in its report, Moody’s cut its earnings estimate for all insurers by a full third, while expecting enrollments will fall short by two-thirds.

There are other uncertainties, including the decision by the administration to allow insurers to continue to offer “bare bones” (read: low profit margin) coverages in response to pressure from those previously insured who had their present insurance plans terminated. The administration delayed the premium payments deadline (delaying expected cash flows to the insurers), delayed the sign-up date, pushed back the second-year enrollment period until after the November elections, and extended the enrollment deadline for those with pre-existing conditions.

There’s also the industry’s new tax on medical devices that insurers somehow had to factor into their calculations. Said Zaharuk: “While some insurers built this tax into their premium calculations, the amounts [they receive] may still be insufficient to cover their share of the assessment.”

Also, many ObamaCare enrollees are actually pouring into the states’ Medicaid programs, and insurers have no direct way to offset those increased expenses and will have to eat any losses, perhaps for years. Zaharuk explained: “The Medicaid business is particularly vulnerable to this disconnect as insurers cannot pass on additional costs to consumers, and it remains to be seen whether states will permit insurers to factor in the assessment costs in determining Medicaid reimbursement rates.”

Health insurers are vulnerable on other fronts as well. Gallup just published its latest “Well-Being Index,” which shows the uninsured rate to be virtually the same as it was two years ago, despite the enormous marketing efforts by the administration touting the wonders of ObamaCare, and actually significantly higher than it was in January 2008, long before the federally mandated law was birthed in the hothouse of central planning. In addition the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that, even under the most favorable circumstances, by 2016, when Obamacare was assumed to be fully functioning, 31 million citizens will remain uninsured. This means insurers can’t count on that huge block of customers to enhance their revenue streams.

Moody’s was not optimistic:

In 2015, insurers will need to deal with the implications of the employer mandate and the second year of the individual mandate. Both require substantial lead time with respect to product development and pricing. Ad hoc changes to these provisions, as experienced at the end of 2013 … add additional risks and financial uncertainty.

When asked by Kate Rogers of Fox News what it would take for Moody’s to reverse its downgrade, Zaharuk said:

We would need [to see] some positive enrollment numbers, the back-end problems with the exchanges fixed, and the regulatory environment … stabilized.

Positive news would help the situation.

How likely is that? Responded Zaharuk:

The first test comes in March when we will see what enrollment looks like, if the back-end issues are fixed, if people are getting access to health care, and what the costs … are.

If these things don’t work, it may have a longer and more detrimental effect on the industry as they struggle under the new law. 

Whether intended or not, this disruption in the healthcare marketplace is having its consequences, nearly all of them negative. First experienced by the consumers, they are now spilling over, inevitably, to the insurers. 

A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.

Here comes Obama’s solution to the disastrous Affordable Care Act: National Health Care a.k.a. the Single Payer System

Betsy McCaughey: Obamacare designed to vastly expand single payer Medicaid by eviscerating Medicare 

Bailing Out Health Insurers and Helping Obamacare

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,Health Insurers,Moody's,Economics,Bailouts,Downgrades,Single-Payer,The Plan,Socialized Medicine,Watch the Other Hand,Wake-Up

HEALTHCARE REFORM'S FIRST BIG TEST

“The portion of this email which I have highlighted in red is what HMO's have been doing all along. I watched a 2020 televised  expose on Humana doing this 20 years ago (but this is the first time I've seen it in print). All the money they don't spend to treat us they get to divide  up among themselves. Does that sound like an incentive to give us the healthcare many older Americans will/may need?? Not in my book.” Deonia Copeland

PEORIA, Illinois (Reuters) - By all accounts, Sandy Wright of Mackinaw, Illinois, is a challenging patient. The spunky 69-year-old with a rare autoimmune disease has been in the hospital more than a dozen times since she was first diagnosed in 1997.

"You name it, I've had it," Wright says. "I'm a very hard case."

Now, patients like Wright are at the forefront of an experiment, under way in Peoria, Illinois, and hundreds of other U.S. cities, that could transform the way doctors, nurses and hospitals deliver care to patients. Amid the barrage of criticism over the rollout of Obamacare, groups known as Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are quietly going about the business of testing the potential for healthcare reform.

The efforts, born of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, are part of the biggest experiment yet to fix the costly and error-plagued U.S. healthcare system. The new models of care, which encourage providers to form networks to coordinate care and cut costs, involve close monitoring of the sickest patients to address budding health problems before they cause a costly trip to the emergency room or an extended hospital stay. Providers that succeed in keeping patients healthy and cutting costs are rewarded with a portion of the savings.

In Peoria, a city of 116,000 that is often seen as the archetypal middle American community, two hospital systems - OSF Healthcare and UnityPoint Health - are taking on the challenge.

Progress so far is largely anecdotal, but early data showing declines in readmissions and emergency room visits offers a tantalizing glimpse into the potential for reform. Still, there are no guarantees that the savings will exceed the costs.

OSF is in its second year of participating in the federal Pioneer Accountable Care Organization, a pilot program involving 32 hospital systems across the country that aims to improve quality while cutting costs in the government's Medicare insurance program for the elderly.

The program rewards doctors and medical centers that show gains on 33 measures of quality, including routine cancer and depression screenings, while still managing to cut overall costs. In its first year, 13 hospitals reported savings. OSF was not one of them, but it came close.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has not allowed providers to disclose their full first-year results, but Tara Canty, chief operations officer of OSF's Accountable Care Organization, said the hospital system saw a 30 percent drop in emergency room admissions and a 20 percent drop in inpatient stays among Medicare participants.

Canty sees the first two years as a learning process but says she will be "upset personally" if OSF is not achieving savings by year three.

Dr. Keith Knepp, chief information officer at UnityPoint Health-Methodist, says reforms are needed, but he sometimes finds it hard to stay optimistic. "Will there be reimbursement to reward the improved quality, or will we spend more money to take in less?"

Success may depend on controlling costs among high-use patients like Wright. She is among the 5 percent of OSF patients who consumes more than 50 percent of the care delivered by the system.

FOCUS ON THE 5 PERCENT

Wright spends most of her days in her tidy home in Mackinaw, outside Peoria, tooling around in a motorized wheelchair. Her legs swell up, making her prone to blood clots. Two years ago in November, she had a major complication from her blood thinner drug, Coumadin.

"My brain started bleeding. They had to drill holes in my head," Wright recalls of the ordeal, which kept her in the hospital for nearly a month. "I nearly died twice."

Wright was among the first of OSF's Pioneer patients to be assigned a care manager, a nurse charged with keeping her healthy and out of the hospital.

"The theory here is if you focus on the people with chronic disease who are your highest utilizers of care … and make a better outcome for those patients, you are able to invest that savings into some of the care for the larger population of patients," said Michelle Conger, OSF's chief strategy officer.

Like most providers across the country, Peoria's hospitals have been hit by federal budget cuts and burdened by an outdated reimbursement system focused on how many services they perform rather that quality.

OSF, a system of eight acute-care hospitals with $6 billion in annual patient revenue, needs to cut $200 million over the next five years in response to reimbursement cuts from Medicare and other payers. It has adopted the ACO model to help it get there.

An actuarial firm is combing through claims data for the 34,000 Medicare patients in OSF's ACO to help identify patients like Wright, whose high-risk conditions are likely to require more emergency room visits or admissions. The system assigned 35 care managers to work with these patients and come up with ways to prevent more acute health crises.

Sometimes that means simply helping patients keep track of their medications or arranging transportation to a pharmacy, said Priscilla Romans, a nurse who works in OSF's call center.

It also means routine checks on high-risk patients. During a call last month, a heart failure patient complained of shortness of breath and a headache. Romans asked whether she could put her shoes on that day. She was only able to get one on, a sign of fluid buildup, and she couldn't wear her rings.

Romans had the woman take her blood pressure, which was too high, and reported the findings to her doctor. The physician doubled the patient's dose of Lasix to cut the swelling in her hands and feet, and started her on a blood pressure medication.

When Romans called the next day, a Friday, the woman felt much better. Romans believes the time she spent on the phone with this patient helped avert a much more costly ER visit.

Often, the issues driving health costs are social. In one case, OSF discovered that a patient who kept getting readmitted to the hospital for emphysema had not been taking her medication.

"She was squirreling away her money to fix her roof," said Dr. Stephen Hippler, OSF's senior vice president for clinical excellence. The Catholic hospital system tapped into a charity program and made the repairs.

'GREAT SIGNALS'

UnityPoint Health-Methodist, Peoria's second-biggest provider, has been taking part in Medicare's Shared Savings ACO, a transitional program in which hospitals assume less risk than in the Pioneer ACO but have fewer potential rewards.

The hospital has cared for about 10,000 Medicare ACO patients since July 2012.

In November, UnityPoint acquired the 220-bed Procter Hospital, Peoria's third-largest provider, giving it access to new addiction recovery services and skilled nursing care. The Procter deal follows Methodist's decision in 2011 to join Iowa-based UnityPoint Health, the 13th-largest non-profit health system in the United States with annual revenue of $2.7 billion.

The moves are part of a national consolidation trend among hospitals trying to fill out their menu of services and bring costs under centralized control.

"There is a need for size and scale in the new environment," said Terry Waters, vice president for strategy and development at UnityPoint Health. "You have to be able to diversify your financial risk over a larger patient population."

According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, an estimated 14 percent of the U.S. population is covered by some form of accountable care organization, including 4 million Medicare beneficiaries.

WILL IT WORK?

OSF could not say whether it has saved money on Wright's care in the two years since she has been in care management because the system does not release financial information about individual patients.

But Canty said the system "has seen significant and sustained declines in the cost of care for patients in care management."

As for Wright, she appreciates the quick access she now has to her doctors, but she still needs a lot of care.

In May, a hip implant had become infected and had to be replaced. While recovering, Wright developed a bothersome cough that turned out to be pulmonary fibrosis, a dangerous scarring of the lungs. "Between May 21 and July 19, I had been released and admitted five times. Five times! It was dreadful."

Romans, who has helped coordinate some of Wright's care, said her job is to try to keep patients out of the hospital, but that's not always possible. "Here we are trying to be financially prudent with our dollars, but the patient needed the care."

Now, the goal is to stretch out the period between visits.

Wright went from July to September with only one hospitalization. "It was quick. She went back home, and she hasn't been back to the hospital since," Romans said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Douglas Royalty)

A Failing Grade for Obamacare

By: Zack Slingsby  -  The Forge

GK Chesterton once said, when asked to describe what it was about the world that made him believe in a divine creator, that he regrettably found himself dumbstruck, ill-prepared, at a loss for words. When he surveyed his surroundings, he explained, it was not that one thing pointed toward a celestial hand; it was that everything did.

Politicians and pundits of verifiable eloquence have similarly found themselves humbled before the mountain of evidence towering in tribute to President Obama’s calamitous Affordable Care Act. The heap has grown at such a rate that it is getting difficult to stand back far enough to see it all at once. How can anyone squeeze the multitude of weekly revelations into a digestible sound bite?

It is not merely the premise of redistribution at issue, not merely the suffering the law has inflicted on the populace directly (via policy cancellation and the structured marginalizing of small business interests), not merely the constitutional flippancy with which the Executive has unilaterally amended and implemented the bad law at will, but rather the coalescence of all these factors, and their myriad implications, that confounds opponents when asked, Well, what is so wrong with Obamacare?

The case for repeal is made plain by the simple fact that the law sold to us as a magical fix-all has thus far rendered every step of the healthcare insurance process completely broken.

The immense failure of the Obamacare rollout has evidently emboldened the media to use a painless litmus test for its success. If the administration’s tech savvies can catch up to the flaws of the website, if they can sign people up and stifle the groans of cancellation, and really make a go of the exchanges, then all is well and all is bright. This is the wrong test.

From the moment of the bill’s inception, the President has claimed his signature overhaul will improve the essence of healthcare for the people of America. Not simply make it as good. The numbers he has to compete with have been plainly recorded. In 2009, the Washington Post conducted a survey revealing that approximately 81% of US citizens were satisfied with their health insurance coverage and 88% were satisfied with the quality of the healthcare they received.

If the President wants to remake the economy under the guise of providing coverage to 15 million uninsured Americans—a goal that could have been reached through the tested-means of capitalism—his program will have to produce satisfaction returns that not only meet but exceed the statistical enthusiasm of 2009 (and do so, as he promised, without contributing to the reckless tax-and-spend trend of new progressivism). As it stands today, on the precipice of full-scale implementation and with the administration’s arbitrary revision tactics quickly become a new fact of governing, the President must contend with seven in ten Americans who, at minimum, would like to see the law’s one-year delay.

He will have to ignore them all to stay the course. And that he will. So when the White House wishes you a Merry Christmas via press conference, pundit promise or passing pop-up ad, remember to thank them for Obamacare: the gift that keeps on giving, whether you want to return it or not.

Technorati Tags: Constitution,Financial,Politics,Survival,Taxation,ObamaCare,Failure,Tranwreck

Memo: Administration bungled Obamacare long before GOP had power to obstruct

Washington Examiner: An emerging theme from Democrats struggling to explain the Obamacare fiasco is that stubborn Republican opposition has hobbled the administration's efforts to implement President Obama's complex national health care scheme. If you want the particulars, just glance at "The Obamacare sabotage campaign" by Politico's Todd Purdum.

But a memo revealed in a new Washington Post examination of the rollout shows the administration was already on a disastrous path in May 2010, just two months after Obamacare was signed into law -- and six months before Republicans won control of the House and more Senate seats in the November 2010 elections. At the time the memo was written, Democrats still had the huge majorities in the House and Senate with which they had passed Obamacare on party-line votes.

In the memo, dated May 11, 2010 and sent to top administration economic official Larry Summers, Harvard professor and health care expert David Cutler, a supporter of the administration's efforts, wrote that "the early implementation efforts are far short of what it will take to implement reform successfully." Cutler continued: "For health reform to be successful, the relevant people need a vision about health system transformation and the managerial ability to carry out that vision. The President has sketched out such a vision. However, I do not believe the relevant members of the Administration understand the President's vision or have the capability to carry it out."

Cutler laid out a set of problems: 1) poor leadership at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a key organization in creating Obamacare; 2) clueless management at the Department of Health and Human Services on the subject of setting up exchanges; 3) an ineffective effort to work with insurers in implementing reform; and 4) general incompetence. "The overall head of implementation inside HHS, Jeanne Lambrew, is known for her knowledge of Congress, her commitment to the poor, and her mistrust of insurance companies," Cutler wrote. "She is not known for operational ability, knowledge of delivery systems, or facilitating widespread change."

All that was at a time when the administration had control of Congress. Although the election of Scott Brown had ended the Democrats' filibuster-proof control of the Senate, the fact is, Republicans had no control of anything. Later, after their landslide victory in the 2010 midterms, House Republicans could block funding increases the administration needed to pay for Obamacare's inevitable cost overruns. And Republican governors could make use of a feature Democrats wrote into the law that allowed states to decline to create their own exchanges, leaving the job to the federal government. But Cutler's memo shows the administration was well on the road to a disastrous debut of Obamacare long before Republicans could do anything to make the job harder.

See: Original MEMO Document (PDF) » 

What this memo does is again bring us back to the question:  Are they (Obama and cronies) really that inept?  Or was the plan really always that ObamaCare in its present state was meant to fail, leaving it to the government to swoop in and create a new single-payer (socialized medicine) plan.  Obama and Harry Reid have both said it was the second. 

So beware and watch the other hand.  The only real answer, either way, is to clean house in Washington D.C. in both Congress and the White House in the next two elections (2014 and 2016) and in the process repeal and replace this disaster  known as ObamaCare with a free market solution that really will help the average American and those without affordable healthcare insurance. ObamaCare does neither!!

**And if you understand that, it means no Hillary Clinton and no Chris Christie, who might as well be a Democat half the time, but rather real change… AM~ 

Yes, the Democrats' Plan Was to Create a Transition to Single Payer 

First Battle of 2014 and 2016 Elections: Next Tuesday and the Fate of ObamaCare

Obamacare Hype - ' The Land Of Oz ' Lies! - Judge Jeanine Pirro Opening Statement 

Wake-Up… 1,492,000 HC Plan Cancellations and Counting… All Part of the Plan to Force All But the Elite Into a Single Payer Socialized Medicine…  It has always been: 

The Dirty Secret Behind ObamaCare No One’s Talking About

Woman Who Could Not Afford ObamaCare Tries to Kill President

Photo Credit – The Blaze

After the initial report of mayhem in Washington D.C. and the originally reported shooting of a guard in the Capitol, it changed to that a woman, with a baby in her car, tried to ram the barriers in front of the White House in an attempt to kill the president after not being able to afford ObamaCare… an ever disappointing promise for many.

The facts on this event have been a disorganized moving target, but it now appears that the woman did not have a gun, that the car chase by police after the unarmed suspect led to the Capitol where it was reported that a guard or policeman was shot by a stray police bullet.

Capitol has re-opened within about an hour after shots were fired but the actual events are still evolving.

*The latest update is that the suspect tried to get through a check point at the far southern point of what is now considered White House grounds, blocks away from the actual White House.  The President was never in danger.  It seems that the suspect was hit and killed, but that is not verified, and the baby was not hit and is fine.  It also now appears that the formerly reported shooting of the guard or policeman was a false reporting and that the policeman injured himself in the police car crash below… one police car hitting another.

*(4:22p.m.) It has now been confirmed that the suspect, who appears to be an African-American, is dead and although the officer was hurt during the impact of their cars, no officers were killed.  A witness reports that she was shot in the head; not confirmed.  It appears that the suspect backed into a police vehicle at one point, but short of trying to escape she did not appear to be violent or have any weapons. So did the police over-react? Was there excessive force used?

*(4:52P.M.) The questions are now surfacing… Why are there no photos of the baby or of a baby being removed from the car.  If there was a baby, with the back windows of the car blown out, was that baby injured?  Could this situation have been accelerated by bad judgment?  Why is any normally released information not being released, yet nobody bothered to blur out the the victim’s car license plate number on many photos?  Why was it originally reported that this was a reaction to the woman’s disappointed with ObamaCare and now that fact has already been buried?

What this incident does do is add a whole new dynamic to the ObamaCare debate and perhaps a glimpse into the reality for many who will find themselves in the same place as this woman… feeling duped by the President’s promises surrounding ObamaCare. 

At this point there is much speculation, but there seem to be more questions than answers. 

AskMarion~

Blaze Report: Shots Fired Outside U.S. Capitol; One Officer Injured (Live Updates HERE) 

Related: 

• Capitol Hill Shooting
• Video

A woman driving a black Infiniti with a young child inside tried to ram through a White House barricade Thursday, then led police on a chase toward the Capitol, where police shot and killed her, witnesses and officials said.

Tourists watched the shooting unfold on Constitution Avenue outside the Capitol as lawmakers inside debated how to end a government shutdown. Police quickly locked down the entire complex temporarily, and both houses of Congress went into recess.

Read our previous posts and updates below to see how it all unfolded.

UPDATE 7:25 p.m. ET: Via the Hartford Courant:

A Stamford dental hygienist with a history of mental health issues was killed after a chase and shooting near the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, a source with knowledge of the investigation said.

The source said Miriam Carey, 34, was the woman who was driving the black Infiniti coupe with Connecticut license plates that tried to pass a security check point at the White House, led police on a chase through central Washington and died after being shot near the U.S. Capitol.

–

UPDATE 6:06 p.m. ET: Police would not reveal any information on the female suspect, but they did confirm that she has been “pronounced” dead.

There were two officers injured during the pursuit, and both are in good condition, police said.

The child who was traveling in the suspect’s car is reportedly in protective custody.

–

UPDATE 5:35 p.m. ET: The Washington Posts says that the suspect involved in the incident was a woman in her 30s and that a child taken from the car could be as young as one. The Post also cites two sources who say the woman did not have a gun.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told Fox News the woman was “African-American.”

–

UPDATE 5:15 p.m. ET: Eyewitnesses describe the frantic scene in the aftermath of the incident.

“I didn’t really have time to think; if I had I probably wouldn’t have gone outside,” one witness told TheBlaze’s Oliver Darcy.

“I really didn’t know what to think. I heard the seven or eight shots. There were dozens of officers. So much so that you really couldn’t even see what was happening. There were officers in police vehicles on every side, swarming, and more coming in every second.”

Read more in our separate post.

UPDATE 5:33 p.m. ET: Suspect’s, now said to be, 1-year-old child is said to be in protective custody and doing fine.

UPDATE 5:06 p.m. ET:  An onsite reporter said that all witnesses were removed from the area after her shooting, including one who said the suspect appeared to be just a scared woman…

UPDATE 5:06 p.m. ET:  The report of a baby in the car has now been changed to a 3 to 5 year old; still no photos or reported citings of the child?!?

UPDATE 4:42 p.m. ET:  Sen. Richard Blumenthal (R-Conn.) tells NECN that the black car involved in Thursday’s police chase had Connecticut plates.

NBC Connecticut is also reporting that the “car involved in the incident outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday is owned by a Connecticut resident, NBC News learned.”

WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 03: A police officer checks out a car on grass with his canine near the U.S. Capitol October 3, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The US Capitol and the White House were placed on lockdown after an ‘active shooter’ situation was reported. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

UPDATE 4:26 p.m. ET: Fox News’ Chad Pergram reports that the female suspect involved in the car chase near the U.S. Capitol is deceased.

Tweeter: Chad Pergram ✔@ChadPergram -  Capitol Hill sources confirm suspect in WH/Capitol incident is deceased.  -  1:19 PM - 3 Oct 2013

–

UPDATE 4:25 p.m. ET: New video of a late model black (possibly G-35 Sports Coup) car involved in the incident has emerged

UPDATE 4:05 p.m. ET: Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice Jordan Sekulow witnessed some of the chaos that unfolded on Thursday and recalled the surreal incident in an interview with TheBlaze.

Sekulow says he could see the crime scene outside his office window in Washington, D.C. He also said there were sirens before gun shots rang out.

“Then we hear, ‘boom, boom, boom!’ and someone said, ‘that’s gunfire, everybody needs to get down,’” he recalled. “There was what I can only describe as an army of police responding at what is literally our intersection.”

–

UPDATE 4:00 p.m. ET: New video obtained by NBC News shows people running away after shots were fired outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.

UPDATE 3:51 p.m. ET: Sergeant at Arms Terrance Gainer is now telling a local Fox affiliate that the incident split into two locations. In other words, there are two crime scenes that police are investigating.

That seems to be corroborated by TheBlaze’s own Oliver Darcy, who reports Capitol Police have told him they have “multiple crime scenes.”

Gainer said there were shots fired at both locations and the suspect sped away from the first incident and fled to the second crime scene.

Reports indicate that the female suspect rammed a security barricade near the White House before speeding away and being stopped by police at the second crime scene.

UPDATE 3:44 p.m. ET: TheBlaze’s Oliver Darcy reports live from Washington, D.C.:

–

UPDATE 3:30 p.m. ET: Sergeant at Arms Terrance Gainer told a local Fox affiliate that the incident does not appear to be related to terrorism and is an isolated incident.

He also said it appears that shots were fired by law enforcement. It’s unclear if the suspect involved in the incident ever fired shots or if all shots were fired by police.

The child who was reportedly in the suspect’s car was taken to the hospital but she was not believed to be injured, Gainer said.

During a press conference, the police chief said it appears that no officers were shot in the incident. Injuries sustained by one officer after reportedly being struck in his squad car are not believed to be life threatening.

–

UPDATE 3:24 p.m. ET: TheBlaze’s Oliver Darcy is on the scene at the U.S. Capitol. We will continue bringing you breaking updates.

Tweet:  Oliver Darcy@oliverdarcy: Capitol police tells me they have "multiple crime scenes" they are trying to secure near Capitol.  -  12:22 PM - 3 Oct 2013

–

UPDATE 3:06 p.m. ET: Fox News confirms that a female driver tried to ram the security barrier at the White House with her car. Ed Henry reports Capitol Police then chased the suspect toward the Capitol.

Fox also reports the woman had a child in the car, whose status is unknown.

In addition to ABC News, WJLA is also reporting that a female suspect was shot and killed. There are also conflicting reports saying that the female suspect has been taken into custody.

 

Executive Director of the ACLJ Jordan Sekulow tweeted the following picture that shows a black car surrounded by police:

Tweet: Jordan - Sekulow@JordanSekulow -  This appears to be the vehicle that crashed in police station at 2nd/Constitution #capitolhillshooting  -  11:52 AM - 3 Oct 2013

Police have reportedly lifted the lockdown at the U.S. Capitol.

–

There are reports of shots fired near the U.S. Capitol, according to several news organizations. There are unconfirmed reports of one officer injured and possibly others.

The shots came from outside not inside the U.S. Capitol, Reuters reports. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) also reported hearing shots fired.

Police say the U.S. Capitol had been put on a security lockdown since reports of possible shots fired outside the building emerged. However, the lockdown was lifted at around 3 p.m. ET.

Several news organizations are reporting that one suspect is in custody.

Another source tells ABC News that a female suspect is reportedly dead on scene at U.S. Capitol.

Credit: Tampa Bay Times reporter Alex Leary (@learyreports)

Fox News is reporting that the shooting may have been the result of a high-speed car chase that began outside the U.S. Capitol.

People standing outside the Supreme Court across the street from Congress were hurried into the court building by authorities.

In a notice distributed by email, the U.S. Capitol Police advised everyone to “close, lock and stay away from external doors and windows.The notice said gunshots have been reported on Capitol Hill. There are unconfirmed reports of an officer injured.

Executive Director of the ACLJ Jordan Sekulow was able to capture a photo of at least one person being carried out on a stretcher following the reports of shots fired.

Source: Twitter, @JordanSekulow

en. Bob Casey, D-Pa., told reporters he was walking from the Capitol to the Senate Russell Office Building across the street when he noticed several police officers driving fast up Constitution Avenue on motorcycles.

“Within seconds of that,” Casey said, “we heard three, four, five pops,” which he assumed were gunshots. He said police ordered Casey and nearby tourists to crouch behind a car for protection.

In about two minutes, he said, the officers moved everyone into the Capitol.

FBI agents rushed to the scene and Senate Sergeant at Arms Terrance Gainer confirmed: “There are reports of injuries.

This is an evolving story… so check back for updates.

Marion Algier – Cross-Posted at Ask Marion

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,White House,you be the judge,shooting,Washington D.C.,shootings,TheBlaze,News,Breaking News,NewsMax,Mental Illness,Disappointment,ObamaCare Costs,low-informed voters,ObamaCare Surprises,ObamaCare Consequences