Natural Cancer Cure? Man Cures Himself Then Thrown In Jail (YOU CAN'T CALL IT A CURE)

Video:  Natural Cancer Cure? Man Cures Himself Then Thrown In Jail ( YOU CAN'T CALL IT A CURE )

Beating the Odds - Part One

The Absence of Obamacare Credits in Federal Exchanges WAS INTENTIONAL – Designed to Force Compliance

By Tom White  –  VA Right  -  Cross-Posted at Ask Marion:Two recent court cases came to two different conclusions in the battle against Obamacare. The question was concerning the language of the bill when it comes to credits in Health Care Exchanges set up by the Federal Government when states decide not to set up State Health Care Exchanges.

The language is pretty clear in the fact that it does create credits for Exchanges set up by the states. These credits are substantial and are the only part of the entire Affordable Care Act that actually addresses affordability. Sadly, this is done by redistributing the wealth. By taxing the productive earners in order to subsidize non-productive earners.

Monthly premiums for silver plans – the standard insurance policy sold on the exchanges – cost an average of $345 a month this year for people who did not qualify for subsidies, a new analysis from the administration shows.  – See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/06/18/Average-Obamacare-Subsidy-3312-Paid-Date-47-Billion#sthash.OQTugto5.dpuf

According to The Fiscal Times:

Monthly premiums for silver plans – the standard insurance policy sold on the exchanges – cost an average of $345 a month this year for people who did not qualify for subsidies, a new analysis from the administration shows.

However, for the overwhelming majority of Obamacare enrollees (87 percent) who did qualify for financial assistance, the average monthly premium on the silver plan costs about $69. That’s an average tax credit of about $276 a month, or $3,312 a year. The administration’s report broke down the average monthly premium for each of the four plans offered on the federal marketplace – before and after tax credits. It also detailed the percentage of enrollees selecting each plan, with or without tax credits. Data was not available for the state exchanges, which make up about one third of the total 8 million enrollees.

On average, monthly premiums after subsidies run about $69.00. But without the subsidy, $345.00. And 87% of enrollees qualify for these huge subsidies.

So with all the mandates for coverage, mandates on what must be covered and what can be charged, it is the subsidies and the subsidies alone that make the product affordable. Without them, the cost of Health Insurance rises considerably due to mandatory expanded coverages.

The Affordable Care Act depends on states setting up Exchanges as called for in the law. However, when much of the law was in the process of being written, it was done in secret. No one knew exactly what was going into the mix and the authors were as yet unaware of the massive resistance the bill was about to encounter. But they anticipated at least some token resistance from the rascally Republican controlled states. And this expected resistance was addressed in the bill with various sneaky political weapons and landmines designed to nudge resistive states into setting up the exchanges.

One political weapon the Democrats love to use is abortion. Republicans are outraged when tax dollars are confiscated to pay for a procedure they consider infanticide. So one of the booby traps the architects of Obamacare used was abortion. This would be the first of several “lesser of two evils” options resistive Republican states would face in deciding to implement Obamacare. You may recall the Stupak Amendment that extended the Hyde Amendment wording that prevents the Federal Government from paying for abortions. There was a big argument in House over abortion and several pro life Democrats insisted that the ACA not pay for abortions as a condition of casting their vote for the bill. However, that was the House Bill which was scrapped after Scott Brown’s victory effectively cut off the Democrat’s super majority in the Senate.

The Conservative Intelligence Briefing put it this way:

Recall that after the special election of Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., in January 2010, Democrats were suddenly deprived of the flexibility they had expected to have in drafting the law’s provisions. They had expected a House-Senate conference committee in which they could iron out the kinks in the law and then pass it again through both the House and Senate. But suddenly, after Brown won, they realized they would never be able to pass any version of Obamacare through the Senate again. They no longer had the 60 votes they needed.

So the Democrats did the only thing they could: They took the version of the law they had already passed through the Senate on Christmas Eve 2009, and rammed it back through the House, warts and all. There was no second chance to consider this issue or any others in detail. In any event, most members had only a vague idea of what the bill did anyway.

- See more at: http://www.conservativeintel.com/the-briefing-vol-ii-issue-25/?utm_source=Intel&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=House#sthash.tC38djHj.dpuf

Recall that after the special election of Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., in January 2010, Democrats were suddenly deprived of the flexibility they had expected to have in drafting the law’s provisions. They had expected a House-Senate conference committee in which they could iron out the kinks in the law and then pass it again through both the House and Senate. But suddenly, after Brown won, they realized they would never be able to pass any version of Obamacare through the Senate again. They no longer had the 60 votes they needed.

So the Democrats did the only thing they could: They took the version of the law they had already passed through the Senate on Christmas Eve 2009, and rammed it back through the House, warts and all. There was no second chance to consider this issue or any others in detail. In any event, most members had only a vague idea of what the bill did anyway.

- See more at: http://www.conservativeintel.com/the-briefing-vol-ii-issue-25/?utm_source=Intel&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=House#sthash.tC38djHj.dpuf

Recall that after the special election of Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., in January 2010, Democrats were suddenly deprived of the flexibility they had expected to have in drafting the law’s provisions. They had expected a House-Senate conference committee in which they could iron out the kinks in the law and then pass it again through both the House and Senate. But suddenly, after Brown won, they realized they would never be able to pass any version of Obamacare through the Senate again. They no longer had the 60 votes they needed.

So the Democrats did the only thing they could: They took the version of the law they had already passed through the Senate on Christmas Eve 2009, and rammed it back through the House, warts and all. There was no second chance to consider this issue or any others in detail. In any event, most members had only a vague idea of what the bill did anyway.

So the truth is, there is no language in the Senate Bill itself that prevents the Federal Government from paying for abortions. And in order to get the pro life Democrats to vote for the Senate version of Obamacare, Obama issues an executive order #13535 that pretends to forbid Federal payment of abortion. None of the pro life groups were fooled, nor were the voters in Stupak’s District in Michigan. Stupak “retired” and the voters put a Republican in the seat.

But according to Wiki, there are incentives to entice states into setting up these Exchanges:

Under the law, setting up an exchange gives a state partial discretion on standards and prices of insurance, aside from those specifics set-out in the ACA. For example, those administering the exchange will be able to determine which plans are sold on or excluded from the exchanges, and adjust (through limits on and negotiations with private insurers) the prices on offer. They will also be able to impose higher or state-specific coverage requirements—including whether plans offered in the state are prohibited from covering abortion (making the procedure an out-of-pocket expense) or mandated to cover abortions that a physician determines is medically necessary; in either case, federal subsidies are prohibited from being used to fund the procedure. If a state does not set up an exchange itself, they lose that discretion, and the responsibility to set up exchanges for such states defaults to the federal government, whereby the Department of Health and Human Services assumes the authority and legal obligation to operate all functions in these federally facilitated exchanges.

And if having more control and discretion on the policies offered in each state isn’t enough to convince states to implement Obamacare, the Democrats added a big hammer. The Federal Government will come in and run things, leaving the states no say in how health care policies are sold in the state. Take that, you Republicans.

This Youtube video is a recording of the chief architect of the Senate Obamacare bill. The guy who put the political plums and hemlock in the bill, Jonathan Gruber. It is clear from listening to him speak that the intent was to use the lack of subsidies in the Federally run Exchanges as a mechanism to force states into compliance.

Video: Jonathan Gruber Once Again Says Subsidies Are Tied to State-Based Exchanges

But Gruber said that this was a mistake. A speak-o (as opposed to a typo). The intent was always to have the Federally run Exchanges give out the subsidies!

There is a video here that is nearly an hour long that has been making the rounds on the internet. I edited the same video down to about 5 minutes with the important parts being about the first 2 minutes. The rest of this is some pretty revealing comments Gruber made on the longer version.

Video:  Jon Gruber Condense Version

So it is abundantly clear that the intent was to use the lack of subsidies in the Federally run exchanges to pressure states into compliance.

So in the two recent court decisions in direct opposition to one another as FoxNews explains:

WASHINGTON –  Two federal appeals court rulings put the issue of ObamaCare subsidies in limbo Tuesday, with one court invalidating some of them and the other upholding all of them.

The first decision came Tuesday morning from a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The panel, in a major blow to the law, ruled 2-1 that the IRS went too far in extending subsidies to those who buy insurance through the federally run exchange, known as HealthCare.gov.

A separate federal appeals court — the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals — hours later issued its own ruling on a similar case that upheld the subsidies in their entirety.

The conflicting rulings would typically fast-track the matter to the Supreme Court. However, it is likely that the administration will ask the D.C. appeals court to first convene all 11 judges to re-hear that case.

In both instances the government argued that it is obvious that the intent was to include federal subsidies in the Federally run Exchanges if the states refused to do so. But listening to the guy that wrote the bill, the exact opposite is the case. The subsidies were left out on Federally run Exchanges to use as a weapon to either force Republican governors to implement a state exchange or face the voters to explain why they are paying more for health insurance and get no subsidies. The hope of this Democratic bill was to force Republicans to do something they did not want to do.

Now one of the arguments I have not heard made is that on the issue of abortion on Federally run Exchanges. One of the incentives for the Liberal states to jump in and implement exchanges is the ability to mandate expanded coverages such as 100% payment for abortions. And if we follow the same logic the government argued in the two conflicting ruling cases, that the Federal Government steps in and is essentially considered the state for all intents and purposes – something I find preposterous – then what is to stop the Federal government who suddenly finds itself a surrogate for the state from mandating abortion coverage (from Wiki linked above):

Under the law, setting up an exchange gives a state partial discretion on standards and prices of insurance, aside from those specifics set-out in the ACA. For example, those administering the exchange will be able to determine which plans are sold on or excluded from the exchanges, and adjust (through limits on and negotiations with private insurers) the prices on offer. They will also be able to impose higher or state-specific coverage requirements—including whether plans offered in the state are prohibited from covering abortion (making the procedure an out-of-pocket expense) or mandated to cover abortions that a physician determines is medically necessary;

So if the federal government can come in and replace the state in every way, then the same argued consideration as far as subsidies would extend to the other areas of “partial discretion” of the states. And the law could then go around the Obama executive order prohibiting federal funds from paying for abortion.

This must go to the Supreme Court and the 36 states without state run subsidies must stop receiving federal subsidies.

And as Gruber says in the long version of the video, repeal is unlikely to get rid of Obamacare. But neglect in the form of non compliance will cause it to implode in on itself. He uses a 3 legged as an example. The legs are eliminate pre existing conditions, insurance mandates and subsidies. Take away one of the legs and the law collapses. No one is fighting the pre existing condition elimination and the horrific Supreme Court ruling that held the mandates were a tax (and thus constitutional) is gone as a possible tool to kill the law. The last remaining leg is the subsidies. Without them, the law cannot survive. And since 36 states refused to set up exchanges, this is a huge threat to Obamacare’s survival.

With more and more information being unearthed every day about this bill, this is an important battle in the war on healthcare being prosecuted by the Obama Administration.

Update:

My theory is that if the Court rules that Federal Exchanges are essentially State Exchanges for the purpose of the subsidies, then the Feds are, essentially, the state. States are free to mandate abortion coverage, the Feds are not by Executive order. So if the Federal Government becomes a state for subsidies, then the Feds can mandate abortion coverage and also get around the Exec. Order.  Tom White

Huckabee's EXCLUSIVE interview with Justina Pelletier who was abducted by Mass DCF

Originally Posted on July 1, 2014 by Marion Algier -  Ask Marion

Governor Mike Huckabee played a critical role in getting Justina Pelletier released!

Thomas Sowell:

[...]

This arrogant abuse of power (speaking about the IRS in the previous paragraph0 does not end with the federal government. In Massachusetts, teenager Justina Pelletier was taken from her parents’ custody and held virtually incommunicado for over a year, because her parents preferred to continue to have her treated as the physicians at a medical facility associated with Tufts University had treated her, even though shrinks at Children’s Hospital in Boston said her problems were in her head, and took her off some of her medications.

This difference of opinion as to the best medical treatment for Justina Pelletier was enough to get a judge to side with headstrong bureaucrats and override her parents’ rights. So a girl who was ice skating before ended up in a wheelchair under the “care” of shrinks.

Fortunately, enough media attention, especially by former Governor Mike Huckabee on Fox News Channel, finally got this child freed. Perhaps we can hope that all is not lost — yet. But if this case is a symbol of Americans fighting back, it is also a symbol of why it is desperately important to fight back.

That spirit is the best birthday present for America… especially this birthday!

Video: Huckabee’s EXCLUSIVE interview with Justina Pelletier who was abducted by Mass. DCF (6 Mins)

Video: Huckabee’s EXCLUSIVE interview with Justina Pelletier who was abducted by Mass. DCF Part 2 (4:18 Mins)

Video: Huckabee’s EXCLUSIVE interview with Justina Pelletier who was abducted by Mass. DCF Part 3 & 4  (7:24 Mins)

This video includes the Intro, Opening statement and first segment interview – (13:49 Mins)  Justina starts at 4:54 Mins

Video: Kidnapping? – Justina Was Held By Mass DCF For 16 Month Over Medical Disagreement – Huckabee

  Reference: The making of another Justina?

Technorati Tags: Justina Pelletier,Asshats,Huckabee,Massachussetts,DCF,Obamaland,Wake-Up,Parental Rights,Healthcare,Big Brother Tactics,MIke Huckabee

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

Department of Veterans Affairs employees destroyed veterans’ medical records to cancel backlogged exam requests

Daily Caller: Employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) destroyed veterans’ medical files in a systematic attempt to eliminate backlogged veteran medical exam requests, a former VA employee told The Daily Caller.

Audio of an internal VA meeting obtained by TheDC confirms that VA officials in Los Angeles intentionally canceled backlogged patient exam requests.

“The committee was called System Redesign and the purpose of the meeting was to figure out ways to correct the department’s efficiency. And one of the issues at the time was the backlog,” Oliver Mitchell, a Marine veteran and former patient services assistant in the VA Greater Los Angeles Medical Center, told TheDC.

“We just didn’t have the resources to conduct all of those exams. Basically we would get about 3,000 requests a month for [medical] exams, but in a 30-day period we only had the resources to do about 800. That rolls over to the next month and creates a backlog,” Mitchell said. ”It’s a numbers thing. The waiting list counts against the hospitals efficiency. The longer the veteran waits for an exam that counts against the hospital as far as productivity is concerned.”

By 2008, some patients were “waiting six to nine months for an exam” and VA “didn’t know how to address the issue,” Mitchell said.

VA Greater Los Angeles Radiology department chief Dr. Suzie El-Saden initiated an “ongoing discussion in the department” to cancel exam requests and destroy veterans’ medical files so that no record of the exam requests would exist, thus reducing the backlog, Mitchell said.

Audio from a November 2008 meeting obtained by TheDC depicts VA Greater Los Angeles officials plotting to cancel backlogged exam requests.

“I’m still canceling orders from 2001,” said a male official in the meeting.

“Anything over a year old should be canceled,” replied a female official.

“Canceled or scheduled?” asked the male official.

“Canceled. … Your backlog should start at April ’07,” the female official replied, later adding, ”a lot of those patients either had their studies somewhere else, had their surgery … died, don’t live in the state. … It’s ridiculous.”

Listen:

 

El-Saden, according to Mitchell, was “the person who said destroy the records.” And her plan was actually carried out during the Obama administration’s management of VA.

“That actually happened,” Mitchell said. “We had that discussion in November 2008 and then in March 2009 they started to delete the exams. Once you cancel or delete an order it automatically cancels out that record” so that no record of the exam requests remained.

Mitchell tried to blow the whistle on the scheme and ended up being transferred out of his department and eventually losing his job.

“I actually filed a complaint with the VA [Inspector General] IG and the office of special counsel. The IG requested if I had any documentation. They wanted names. I gave them [about] a thousand names,” Mitchell said. ”The list I turned into the IG went all the way back to 1997.”

“I filed the initial complaint with the IG. … The IG instead of doing their own investigation just gave it to the facility and made them aware of my complaint.”

 

Video: Veteran's Medical Records Destroyed To Eliminate Backlog Requests - The Kelly File

Technorati Tags: Department of Veterans Affairs,Veterans,IG,VA,Shameful,Healthcare,Military Purge,Megyn Kelly,Fox,Radiology

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.gov Hackable? - Debate Over Security Risks - Fox News Sunday 1-19-2014

Video: Healthcare.gov Hackable? - Debate Over Security Risks - Fox News Sunday 1-19-2014

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare Security,Watch the Other Hand,Security,Obamaland,Fox News,CGI

What If Coffee Were Like ObamaCare? CoffeeCare: The Affordable Coffee Act

Video: What If Coffee Were Like ObamaCare? CoffeeCare: The Affordable Coffee Act

RealityAlwaysWins - Cross-Posted to AskMaron - h/t to MJ:

Published on Jan 13, 2014:

While the video above seems like it is a joke, here are the actual quotes from the healthcare.gov website:

From the penalty page:

If someone who can afford health insurance doesn’t have coverage in 2014, they may have to pay a fee. They also have to pay for all of their health care.

Fantastic. I get to pay for my healthcare, which is fine, but then also a fee on top of that. Why would I have to pay a fee if I already am paying for my own healthcare?

The fee is sometimes called the “individual responsibility payment,” “individual mandate,” or penalty.

Wouldn’t paying for your own healthcare mean taking responsibility for your own healthcare? The fee doesn’t seem to do anything other than not go to your own healthcare.

When someone without health coverage gets urgent—often expensive—medical care but doesn’t pay the bill, everyone else ends up paying the price.

Because we are forced to….by the government.

That’s why the health care law requires all people who can afford it to take responsibility for their own health insurance by getting coverage or paying a fee.

But if they pay for their own healthcare then they are taking responsibility for their own healthcare.
Paying a fee to a doctor for an individual’s own healthcare makes sense as the individual is exchanging their money to the doctor in return for the doctor’s service. The individual is responsible for their own healthcare. This is how capitalism works – a voluntary mutual exchange of value.

Paying a fee to the government means that individual is being forced to pay for someone else’s healthcare. This is how socialism works – from each according to ability, to each according to need.

People without health coverage who pay the penalty will also have to pay the entire cost of all their medical care. They won’t be protected from the kind of very high medical bills that can sometimes lead to bankruptcy.

Do you mean the extremely high medical bills that are the result of…..government intervention into the healthcare market? Such as the case of medicare reimbursements that don’t cover the cost of administering those treatments so hospitals are forced to shift those costs to individuals who want to pay out of pocket? Or other cases where insurance companies are legally required to provide minimal coverages that people don’t want, such as maternity care for single men?

  The penalty in 2014 is calculated one of 2 ways. You’ll pay whichever of these amounts is higher:

Great, I always like getting the worse of two options.

• 1% of your yearly household income. The maximum penalty is the national average yearly premium for a bronze plan.
• $95 per person for the year ($47.50 per child under 18). The maximum penalty per family using this method is $285.

The fee increases every year. In 2015 it’s 2% of income or $325 per person. In 2016 and later years it’s 2.5% of income or $695 per person. After that it is adjusted for inflation.
If you’re uninsured for just part of the year, 1/12 of the yearly penalty applies to each month you’re uninsured. If you’re uninsured for less than 3 months, you don’t have a make a payment.

Learn more about the individual responsibility payment from the Internal Revenue Service.

Why is the IRS involved in my healthcare decisions?

Enroll by March 31, 2014 and you won’t have to make the individual shared responsibility payment

Notice how it went from “individual responsibility payment” to “individual shared responsibility payment”?
Why don’t they just drop the individual word and go with ”shared responsibility payment”.

If you pay the penalty, you’re not covered

It’s important to remember that someone who pays the penalty doesn’t have any health insurance coverage. They still will be responsible for 100% of the cost of their medical care.

Yes, thank you for repeating that someone paying the fee receives nothing of value in return as they are already paying for their healthcare as well.

Minimum essential coverage

To avoid the fee you need insurance that qualifies as minimum essential coverage.

Shouldn’t an individual choose what that person deems essential?

And now from the minimal essential health benefits page (numbers added out for easier reading):

The Affordable Care Act ensures health plans offered in the individual and small group markets, both inside and outside of the Health Insurance Marketplace, offer a comprehensive package of items and services, known as essential health benefits. Essential health benefits must include items and services within at least the following 10 categories:

1) ambulatory patient services;
2) emergency services;
3) hospitalization;
4) maternity and newborn care;
5) mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment;
6) prescription drugs;
7) rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices;
8) laboratory services;
9) preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management;
10) and pediatric services, including oral and vision care

What if a 30 year old single male is purchasing health insurance? Why should he have to pay for “maternity and newborn care”? What if he doesn’t want chronic disease management? What if he doesn’t want substance abuse care?

Here’s a hint.  It really isn’t about healthcare…..it’s about money.  Specifically money from you to be redistributed to someone else.

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare Essential Health Benefits Page,ObamaCare,ObamaCare Surprises,Health Insurance Marketplace,Tea Party,CoffeeCare,ACA

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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)

The Twelve Days of ObamaCare

By: Opiate of the People  -  The People’s Cube

The Twelve Days of ObamaCare
(A non-sectarian holiday carol.)

On the first day of ObamaCare, Dear Leader gave to me
A website that crashed constantly!

On the second day of ObamaCare, Dear Leader gave to me
Two weeks of typing and
A website that crashed constantly!

On the third day of ObamaCare, Dear Leader gave to me
Three times the premium,
Two weeks of typing and
A website that crashed constantly!

On the fourth day of ObamaCare, Dear Leader gave to me
Four times the deductible,
Three times the premium,
Two weeks of typing and
A website that crashed constantly!

On the fifth day of ObamaCare, Dear Leader gave to me
Five cancelled policies!
Four times the deductible,
Three times the premium,
Two weeks of typing and
A website that crashed constantly!

On the sixth day of ObamaCare, Dear Leader gave to me
Six unneeded coverages,
Five cancelled policies,
Four times the deductible,
Three times the premium,
Two weeks of typing and
A website that crashed constantly!

On the seventh day of ObamaCare, Dear Leader gave to me
Seven scammers to hack me,
Six unneeded coverages,
Five cancelled policies,
Four times the deductible,
Three times the premium,
Two weeks of typing and
A website that crashed constantly!

On the eighth day of ObamaCare, Dear Leader gave to me
Eight phone reps dithering,
Seven scammers to hack me,
Six unneeded coverages,
Five cancelled policies,
Four times the deductible,
Three times the premium,
Two weeks of typing and
A website that crashed constantly!

On the ninth day of ObamaCare, Dear Leader gave to me
Nine journ0lists bloviating,
Eight phone reps dithering,
Seven scammers to hack me,
Six unneeded coverages,
Five cancelled policies,
Four times the deductible,
Three times the premium,
Two weeks of typing and
A website that crashed constantly!

On the tenth day of ObamaCare, Dear Leader gave to me
Ten dems a-dodging,
Nine journ0lists bloviating,
Eight phone reps dithering,
Seven scammers to hack me,
Six unneeded coverages,
Five cancelled policies,
Four times the deductible,
Three times the premium,
Two weeks of typing and
A website that crashed constantly!

On the eleventh day of ObamaCare, Dear Leader gave to me
Eleven million regulations,
Ten dem pols a-dodging,
Nine journ0lists a-bloviating,
Eight phone reps dithering,
Seven scammers to hack me,
Six unneeded coverages,
Five cancelled policies,
Four times the deductible,
Three times the premium,
Two weeks of typing and
A website that crashed constantly!

On the twelfth day of ObamaCare, Dear Leader gave to me
Twelve thousand excuses,
Eleven million regulations,
Ten dems a-dodging,
Nine journ0lists bloviating,
Eight phone reps dithering,
Seven scammers to hack me,
Six unneeded coverages,
Five cancelled policies,
Four times the deductible,
Three times the premium,
Two weeks of typing and
A website that crashed constantly!

Louie Gohmert warns about Obamacare ‘Secret Security Force’

Louie Gohmert has revealed yet another section of ObamaCARE that no one seems to have read. Believe it or not, there is a provision within Obamacare that creates an armed “secret security force”. Gohmert thus far as failed to get an answer from DHS as to why this secret security force provision is in ObamaCARE. This sounds like Obama’s brown-shirts. How long before Americans start having to wear patches on their sleves saying ‘healthy’ or ‘sick.’ This is absolutely outrageous.

Video: Congressman Exposes DHS Buildup for CIVIL UNREST & Secret Police Force- "NOT A CONSPIRACY"

Louie Gohmert warns about Obamacare ‘Secret Security Force’

FireAndreaMitchell: Referring to a section of the gargantuan Obamacare law which discusses “the president’s own commissioned and non-commissioned officer corps,” Gohmert drew attention to the notion that under the pretext of a “national emergency,” such individuals could be used to impose some form of medical martial law.
Under the Affordable Care Act, the Ready Reserve Corps is directed to “assist full-time Commissioned Corps personnel to meet both routine public health and emergency response missions.”

“It says it is for international health crises, but then it doesn’t include the word ‘health’ when it talks about national emergencies,” said Gohmert.
“I’ve asked, what kind of training are they getting….I want to know are they are they using weapons to train, or are they being taught to use syringes and health care items?” asked the Congressman, adding that “no clear answers” had been forthcoming on the issue.”

RUSH: GOP Will Be Tricked Into Saving ObamaCare

Audio: RUSH: GOP Will Be Tricked Into Saving ObamaCare

Perspective: New Law - "The Affordable Boat Act" 2014

The Hull Truth –  Stolen from another website - Cross Posted at AskMarion:

The U.S. government has just passed a new law called: "The affordable boat act" declaring that every citizen MUST purchase a new boat, by April 2014. These "affordable" boats will cost an average of $54,000-$155,000 each. This does not include taxes, trailers, towing fees, licensing and registration fees, fuel, docking and storage fees, maintenance or repair costs.

This law has been passed, because until now, typically only wealthy and financially responsible people have been able to purchase boats. This new law ensures that every American can now have a "affordable" boat of their own, because everyone is "entitled" to a new boat. If you purchase your boat before the end of the year, you will receive 4 "free" life jackets; not including monthly usage fees.

In order to make sure everyone purchases an affordable boat, the costs of owning a boat will increase on average of 250-400% per year. This way, wealthy people will pay more for something that other people don't want or can't afford to maintain. But to be fair, people who cant afford to maintain their boat will be regularly fined and children (under the age of 26) can use their parents boats to party on until they turn 27; then must purchase their own boat.
If you already have a boat, you can keep yours (just kidding; no you can't). If you don't want or don't need a boat, you are required to buy one anyhow. If you refuse to buy one or cant afford one, you will be regularly fined $800 until you purchase one or face imprisonment.

Failure to use the boat will also result in fines. People living in the desert; ghettos; inner cities or areas with no access to lakes are not exempt. Age, motion sickness, experience, knowledge nor lack of desire are acceptable excuses for not using your boat.

A government review board (that doesn't know the difference between the port, starboard or stern of a boat) will decide everything, including; when, where, how often and for what purposes you can use your boat along with how many people can ride your boat and determine if one is too old or healthy enough to be able to use their boat. They will also decide if your boat has out lived its usefulness or if you must purchase specific accessories,(like a $500 compass) or a newer and more expensive boat.

Those that can afford yachts will be required to do so...its only fair. The government will also decide the name for each boat. Failure to comply with these rules will result in fines and possible imprisonment.

Government officials are exempt from this new law. If they want a boat, they and their families can obtain boats free, at the expense of tax payers. Unions, bankers and mega companies with large political affiliations ($$$) are also exempt.

If the government can force you to buy health care, they can force you to buy a boat....or ANYTHING else..

So Yah...it's that stupid...  and that frightening!!

Mark Levin: ObamaCare Is A Purely Political Law And A Power Grab

Forum: What Do You Predict The Ultimate Fate Of ObamaCare Will Be?

Watcher of Weasels  - Cross-posted at AskMarion: Every week on Monday morning , the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day. This week’s question: What Do You Predict The Ultimate Fate Of ObamaCare Will Be?

The Independent Sentinel: I learned that no matter what the government does wrong, it will be the Republican’s fault.

Even Republicans will blame Republicans.

When Obamacare tanks, it will be the Republican’s fault for not trying hard enough to repeal it.

The Glittering Eye: Cutting to the chase, here’s what I wrote as a comment to this post of mine:

My off-hand conjecture is that on April 1, 2014 the scope of the problem of lack of healthcare insurance will be about the same as it was on February 1, 2009, healthcare will be substantially more expensive, and a bit more than five years will have been allowed to elapse without addressing the fundamental problem of cost.

There are no prospects for the PPACA being repealed until after 2016. Neither the president nor Senate Democrats will allow that to happen. As to its fate after 2016, who knows? The frequent assertion that once enacted into law entitlements are sacrosanct is incorrect—the long-term care benefit enacted and repealed during the Reagan Administration is an example that comes immediately to mind as does AFDC.

As of this writing it looks very likely as though the PPACA will run into cost overruns more rapidly than anyone could possibly have imagined. That’s clearly what will happen if 85% of those who sign up for insurance under the plan are enrolled in Medicaid and the balance are already sick and desperate enough for insurance that they’ll put up with the ordeal of registering for insurance under the federal exchanges.

Working together those will make decreasing healthcare’s outrageous costs all the more urgent than it was in 2009 and, sadly, the PPACA does very little beyond wishful thinking to do that.

The Right Planet  : There isn’t enough pixels in the universe to contain all my work on the #ObamacareFAIL.

Bookworm Room: I don’t care if Obamacare fails. I hate the thought of our country’s medical care and economy failing….. (Especially since my husband currently earns a nice living thanks to the medical care system.) I foresee lean times ahead.

Simply Jews : I know that I will, most probably, piss off my Republican friends on this forum. However, my answer is less about this specific (and very doubtful) implementation of healthcare, rather about what I wish to happen in USA regarding that painful issue. So, instead of the ultimate fate let’s talk about the ultimate hope.

As one who has experienced for several years one of the existing medical insurances in US, here is my impression:

1. Devilishly expensive, even for generally healthy people
2. The “pre-existing conditions” could probably kill one with time
3. Excellent medical care is followed (or even preceded in some cases) by a bureaucratic nightmare and a maze of phone calls with people who don’t understand, aren’t eager to help and in general couldn’t care less.
4. Out of work – out of luck, or very soon so.

My apologies if I am wrong in some details, some time has passed since. Besides, we were mostly healthy then.

What I wish to happen to my American friends: a complete reform of the medical care, based on successful examples that proved to work in some countries:Japan, Israel, France and several others. Make it simple and efficient and make it work. And yes, add optional private insurances for those who want some additional bells and whistles – I am not a commie enough to be against this.

If you look at this table, US has the most expensive healthcare. Meaning the money is already there, and there is more than anywhere else in the world.  It is just used (abused) by insurance companies very inefficiently. So the issue is not the lack of funding, rather the poor organization, spiraling uncontrolled insurance/care costs and chaotic oversight of the whole system, which by now became too complicated to manage successfully.

Will Obamacare succeed? They way it was set up – as a doubtful system of compromises and as an additional superstructure on top of the already crumbling base – I doubt it. But at least it may speed the process of destruction of the current status-quo and the birth of a really workable and working healthcare system.

And, by the way, there is another, but closely related, issue of litigation, ambulance chasing in simple words, that has helped the prices of treatment skyrocketing, doing the same to the insurance prices… this must be reigned in too.

GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD: Whale, I have absolutely no idea so I’m going with Skippy Klein’s Ouija board here:

1. Affordable Care Act is a success, and liberals build on it
Under this outcome, the law works as well as or better than its supporters predicted. After some initial hiccups, it expands insurance coverage to those in need without disrupting the health care experience for those who are already satisfied. The cost-control measures work, and providers are able to deliver better care at a lower price by taking advantage of government incentives to be more efficient. As a result, the government saves hundreds of billions of dollars on Medicare without seniors noticing any cuts to their benefits and access. Young and healthy Americans flood into the insurance market to offset the cost of providing insurance to older and sicker Americans, including those with pre-existing conditions. The new insurance exchanges are vibrant marketplaces offering beneficiaries a wide range of options, promoting competition that drives down the cost of premiums. Over time, more individuals and businesses demand access to the exchanges, and America evolves into an exchange-driven single-payer system.

2. Affordable Care Act is an epic disaster and it gets fully repealed
Under this scenario, the law unravels. The cost controls do not work, proving especially troublesome for smaller regional hospitals. They either start closing, stop accepting Medicare or cut services. This effectively reduces the benefits seniors can get out of Medicare, and they, along with industry lobbyists, pressure Congress into undoing the cuts that are one of the primary offsets to the law’s trillions in new spending. On top of this, new taxes kick in – mandate penalties, the insurance premium tax, the medical device tax, pharmaceutical tax, etc. – and businesses struggle to adjust to a raft of new regulations. The exchanges are swamped with technical problems and poorly administered, making it difficult for individuals to sign up. Not many insurers participate in the exchanges, meaning they don’t offer sufficient choices to promote competition. New regulatory requirements drive up the price of premiums, so young and healthy Americans decide they’d rather pay a penalty than invest in costly insurance. Without the younger and healthier people in the risk pool to offset the cost of sicker Americans, insurers raise premiums even further, prompting yet more individuals to exit the insurance market. And so, the dreaded insurance “death spiral” ensues. In the meantime, newly insured individuals start taking advantage of their free or heavily subsidized care, but the capacity of the health care sector does not grow quickly enough to meet demand, translating into long waits at doctors’ offices and difficulty getting appointments in the first place. The ensuing backlash from all fronts leads to a Republican takeover of the Senate in 2014 and helps elect a Republican president in 2016. At some point in 2017, a new Republican president signs a law wiping Affordable Care Act off the books.

3. Affordable Care Act is largely a disaster, but it survives, and possibly expands
At some point at least some constituency of voters will be deriving some benefits from the law. It’s one thing to support repeal when it means voting against theoretical subsidies for theoretical beneficiaries. But once the law goes into place, repealing the law would mean stripping away benefits from people actively receiving government aid. Let’s say, in 2017, there’s an incoming Republican president with – at best – control of the House and a narrow Republican Senate majority. Would he or she be willing to use reconciliation to push through a repeal bill when confronted with Democratic attacks that it would take millions off the Medicaid rolls and make millions more lose their subsidized private insurance? Republicans have not traditionally shown themselves to have the political fortitude to roll back entitlements once they are in place. At the same time, if Republicans do not respond with an alternative to clean up the mess, then liberals will begin to blame problems in the health care sector on the idea that Affordable Care Act left too much control in the hands of private industry. This will prepare the groundwork for a further move toward a socialized single-payer health care system, perhaps by, say, re-introducing a “public option.” There have been many times in American history when failures of government policy led to further expansions of government. Limited government advocates should be wary of this happening with Affordable Care Act.

4. Affordable Care Act is largely a disaster, and it gets reformed
Under this scenario, a combination of public backlash and adverse court decisions forces Congress to re-open Affordable Care Act. It doesn’t get fully repealed, but it gets reformed. Perhaps, for instance, exchanges remain, but there are far fewer restrictions on what type of insurance can be offered, broadening the range of options and providing more affordable choices for those who don’t have as many medical needs. States may be given actual flexibility on the operation of the exchanges, and Medicaid funds become block granted. Insurance is made accessible to those with pre-existing conditions without the “guaranteed issue” and “community rating” policies that force insurers to cover everybody who applies at a price effectively set by government. This allows Congress to get rid of the federal individual mandate.

Liberty’s Spirit:Note: I am going to address this as the parent of two special needs children. Someone who has had to pay hundreds of thousands for therapies, support systems and doctors that are not covered under any insurance plan. I have seen what the high cost of healthcare can do to do a family in this country and there is no question that there needs to be an overhaul of the entire system. So I am NOT against many of the provisions of Obamacare: allowing children to stay on their parents health insurance until they are 26 (for those of us with special needs children this is financial helpful. The cost for them for health insurance would have been staggering if our children could even get health insurance at all); not allowing insurance companies to deny a policy due to preexisting conditions (most insurance companies would not write a new policy for someone with autism, epilepsy and any other preexisting conditions); providing for autism treatments, etc. However, as the child of a parent on medicare advantage (Humana) I am concerned that this terrific program is going to end.

I am going to start off from another rather rebellious position….I think there is nothing wrong with requiring people to carry health insurance. If hospitals have to treat people when they get sick, there has to be some way that those bills get paid. Most people who have no insurance do not end up paying their hospital bills and that means the rest of us are left with the cost when we are sick. The problem is that the way the law is written it is still financially better for some people to pay the fine rather than carry health insurance. (Israel, which has one of the best healthcare systems in the world, requires their population to carry insurance plans.)

Also there is a huge issue with the general cost of medicine. Most nations that have socialized medicine negotiate with drug companies about how much they can charge, which means the American people end up paying the drug company’s loss when we by our medication. This has not been addressed.

The cost to educate a doctor is ridiculous. But that is the issue with the cost of higher education (another issue for another day). So many doctors coming out of medical school are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and need to find a position that allows them to live and pay off their student loans. This makes healthcare very expensive in this nation.

Death panels are a big issue. The idea that bureaucrats will decide whether someone has the right to medical care is frightening. However, at the same time, insurance companies decide whether they will pay for some medications, surgeries and therapies, which if you cannot afford these on your own, can become a form of a death panel as well. The idea that certain persons (age, illness) and those with disabilities, do not have the same right to life as those of a certain caliber is replete in society and as seen by the writings of those like Ezekiel Emmanuel, who helped craft Obamacare, eugenics is considered not only acceptable but for the betterment of society. Furthermore, the targeting of conservatives by the IRS does not engender competence that politics will not be used as a weapon to deny healthcare to those who challenge the policies of the executive branch (which is what happens in a fascist society.)

There is no provision in Obamacare where you can sue the government if you disagree with a ruling by the panel. The law is that you cannot sue the federal government unless they allow it (sovereign immunity.) Unlike at present where you can sue your insurance company if they rule against you for a treatment, Obamacare does not allow for this remedy. Administrative relief is not always enough.

The issue with Obamacare is that the provision that the republicans wanted, the right to sell insurance across state lines, which would have brought down the cost due to the real free market, was rejected. The reality is that instead of providing people with a lower cost, more effective form of health insurance, Obamacare is a nightmare and does nothing to reduce the costs of healthcare in this country.

The exchanges are too costly and do not offer most people the same type of insurance that they were used to carrying. This needs to be fixed. No I do not blame Obamacare per se that people’s insurance policies have been canceled. Instead of complying with Obamacare the insurance companies have simply decided to cancel the policies and push people into the exchanges. While this was foreseeable, it is the choice of the insurance companies.

It is embarrassing that the government website is such a disaster. It does not engender competence that DC will be able to fairly and effectively regulate healthcare.

Will it survive? Yes it will. Does it need tweaking? Absolutely.

JoshuaPundit:  ObamaCare as it is now will almost definitely fail. Among other things, it depends on young, healthy people applying for overpriced policies with scanty coverage and ridiculous deductibles that will not even cover them in the event they need emergency coverage from ‘out of network’ doctors. They’re staying away in droves, while the vast majority of people now signing up for the exchanges are people that qualify for MedicAid, there being an unlimited demand for free stuff at someone else’s expense. There is no way to fix  this basic problem without spending huge amounts of money, because medical providers will simply opt out in order to avoid going bankrupt. And actually, that’s  the whole idea.

Let’s start out with this basic truism – ObamaCare was never about healthcare per se. It is about increased taxation (and unconstitutional taxation at that, as anyone who can read the Constitution can discover for themselves) and government control.  As I wrote a week or so ago, the end game for ObamaCare is single payer with government mandated rationing and ultimately  the Sovietization of American healthcare. It was designed to fail, and as it does, the Left will hold out the carrot of single payer as a panacea.

I have always said that anyone unwilling to utter the words ‘tort reform’ and to deal with America’s problem with illegal aliens (another huge factor in driving up healthcare costs nobody wants to mention) is not serious about reforming healthcare and reducing the cost of it to the average citizen.

Tort reform hasn’t happened because the majority of members of congress are lawyers, many with practices back home, while the various trial lawyer associations are major donors to the Democrat party.And illegal aliens and those that advocate for them are becoming a constituency for a lot of politicians in Washington.Senator John  McCain’s chief financial backer, for example, is the owner of the Spanish language media giant UniVision.

ObamaCare is  the only major social legislation ever passed in America by one party alone, and the manner in which it was pushed through is in violation of rules that have governed how laws are passed by congress in our Republic for well over a century. It also is a perversion of the Constitution because it provides a precedent wherein the Federal government can use its police power to force its citizens to buy something  or not buy something  just  because.  The damage done to our institutions if ObamaCare stands as a precedent will be horrendous.

Another issue no one wants to discuss is the issue of social control. Government bureaucrats will decide who rates certain procedures and who doesn’t. Given how the IRS has been used in an unprecedented fashion to wage war on the Obama Administration’s political enemies and is in charge of enforcing ObamaCare, is anyone naive enough to believe that the huge amount of personal data accessible because of ObamaCare won’t be used to deny medical procedures outright to those whom don’t vote or donate correctly? Or at least send them to the back of the line?

And people actually laughed at Sarah Palin,  one of the first public figures  smart enough to point this out .

Will ObamaCare survive?  Not if we wish to remain a free people. The 2014 elections will be key in determining whether the law is simply frozen until it can be repealed or whether it eventually morphs into single payer.That is something the American people will decide.

The Colossus of Rhodey: I predict that ObumbleCare will survive — but in a drastically altered form. Let’s face it: The promises made by Boss Obama and his acolytes virtually ALL turned out to be lies. “Keep your doctor?” Yeah, right. (I can see Obama spinning that one: “You CAN keep your doctor. If you lost your coverage, it wasn’t because of a government mandate. Your insurer made that decision on their own!”) “Costs will go down?” A total fantasy for the vast majority of Americans.

If something substantial is not done in the next few months, the 2014 mid-term elections may make 2010 (and 1994) seem pitiful in comparison. The GOP House majority could become prodigious, and the Senate could flip to Republican control, perhaps by a sizable margin. There is almost nothing Boss Obama can do to pin the ObumbleCare disaster on the GOP; he and the-then Democrat controlled House and Senate passed this clusterf*** without a SINGLE Republican vote. Not. One. Obama and the Democrats own this. 100% completely.

I believe that some of the worst aspects of the law will be repealed; that is, unless the Democrats want to get crushed next November. By next summer we’ll see that the employer mandate will be excised, and the individual mandate will as well. What will replace the latter is not for me to say; perhaps Obama will propose some new tax on millionaires and/or corporations to pay for those who need health coverage. But HOW he will do this will be fun to watch given that he NEVER takes responsibility — or apologizes — for anything. Expect much ridiculous spin and blaming of the GOP, the Koch Brothers and, of course, “racism” along the way.

Rhymes With Right:Frankly, I have very little hope regarding ObamaCare. I don’t see it being overturned by the courts, I don’t see it being repealed by Congress, and I don’t see it working anything like it was advertised. The most likely outcome I see will be even worse for America than what is currently enacted into law.

Let’s be honest — the ruling by the Supreme Court in 2012, and the opinion written by John Roberts in particular, were a disaster. The notion that the penalties in the legislation are a tax is completely at odds with the legislative history of the bill (such as it is) and the claims of the Obama Administration. The president and his henchmen admitted as much at the time of the ruling and have continued to do so since then. Based upon admissions made within days of the ruling that the Solicitor General’s office had committed a fraud upon the Court by making the argument that the penalties were taxes and and their arguments that John Roberts and the liberal wing of the Court got the decision wrong, the losing parties in the case should have made an appeal for rehearing under the Supreme Court’s Rule 44. Unfortunately they did not do so, and so it is likely that any future Supreme Court decision will continue to abide by the precedent in place.. At most we will see some nibbling around the edges based upon First Amendment issues and statutory language regarding state vs. federal exchanges, but no judicial flip on the question of constitutionality.

As for repealing ObamaCare, we don’t have the votes in Congress to do it, or even delay it one second longer than Obama wants it delayed for. After all, The Democrats control the Senate, Harry Reid is refusing to run that body in a collegial fashion, and there is no way we can get a veto-proof majority in either house of Congress even if Reid allowed the Senate to consider repeal legislation. That means that Obama can stop any Congressional effort to repeal ObamaCare with a stroke of his pen. The same will be true after the new Congress is seated after the 2014 elections — there is no way the GOP will have the sort of landslide that it would take to get to a veto-proof majority, and without one Obama will still wield the veto pen.

Which leads to the question of the implementation of the law. We’ve already seen that it is a fiasco and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future. Software doesn’t work, prices are high, and millions are losing the medical insurance they like and the doctors they have been seeing, promises by Barack Obama notwithstanding. By 2016 it will be clear just how big a failure ObamaCare is — but too many Americans will already be dependent upon it. Republicans campaigning on a platform of repealing ObamaCare will be depicted by the Democrats and their media toadies as seeking to “take access to healthcare away from millions of Americans who cannot afford it”. Any Republican plan to replace ObamaCare with something else will be attacked by the lapdog media as even worse than the status quo. And into the fray will step Hillary Clinton and other Democrats who will declare that the failure of healthcare reform was the fault of Republicans who “opposed fixing the system” in 1993, refused to “work with us to care for the poorest Americans” in 2009, and whose efforts to thwart ObamaCare after the passage of the law was nothing short of a program of sabotage responsible for the every unpleasantness experienced by Americans due to ObamaCare’s failure. Their proposal will be nothing less than a single-payer system — perhaps “MediCare for All“. Presuming that the GOP does not manage to pull off a trifecta by holding the House, gaining a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and winning the White House, we will see the passage of a single-payer bill by the end of 2017. Any likely 2016 winner (and no, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Sarah Palin are not likely winners), regardless of party, will sign the resulting legislation on the basis that it will be better than ObamaCare — though I question whether that will prove to be the case over the long term. At that point we will have a federal health care system funded by massive tax increases for all but the poorest quintile.

Do I truly see such a dystopian future? Sadly, I do. The choices of the GOP since the adoption of ObamaCare have brought us to a position where we have failed to stop ObamaCare and are unlikely to find ourselves positioned to undo ObamaCare. The result will be the ultimate success of the sort of single-payer system that the Left has been seeking, the resulting expansion of federal power, and the increasing irrelevance of the Constitution as a blueprint for limited government and maximum individual liberty. The Reaganite vision of my youth will have failed, only to be replaced with an Obamunist state that will collapse within two generations.

The Razor: If you would have asked me four years ago, I would have said the Democrats would never stoop to using a legislative trick, reconciliation, to pass a law without a single Republican vote. Two years later I would have said there was no chance that a conservative supreme court justice would have allowed this mess to pass the test of constitutionality. Now I have to guess what it’s ultimate fate would be? Have you ever watched The Walking Dead? If this legislation doesn’t remind you of a zombie, I’m not sure what law would.

At this point I’m not sure what it would take to kill it, beyond a GOP triple play (owning both houses of Congress plus the White House). One that happens the GOP had better be ready with their own well thought out health care plan to replace this mess with.

Well, there you have it.

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