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Ping Scheller - Let's chat Obama

ObamaCare's Secret Mandate Exemption

ObamaCare's Secret Mandate ExemptionHHS quietly repeals the individual purchase rule for two more years.


ObamaCare's implementers continue to roam the battlefield and shoot their own wounded, and the latest casualty is the core of the Affordable Care Act—the individual mandate. To wit, last week the Administration quietly excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance or else pay a tax penalty.

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

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

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

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

This lax standard—no formula or hard test beyond a person's belief—at least ostensibly requires proof such as an insurer termination notice. But people can also qualify for hardships for the unspecified nonreason that "you experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance," which only requires "documentation if possible." And yet another waiver is available to those who say they are merely unable to afford coverage, regardless of their prior insurance. In a word, these shifting legal benchmarks offer an exemption to everyone who conceivably wants one.

Keep in mind that the White House argued at the Supreme Court that the individual mandate to buy insurance was indispensable to the law's success, and President Obama continues to say he'd veto the bipartisan bills that would delay or repeal it. So why are ObamaCare liberals silently gutting their own creation now?
The answers are the implementation fiasco and politics. HHS revealed Tuesday that only 940,000 people signed up for an ObamaCare plan in February, bringing the total to about 4.2 million, well below the original 5.7 million projection. The predicted "surge" of young beneficiaries isn't materializing even as the end-of-March deadline approaches, and enrollment decelerated in February.

Meanwhile, a McKinsey & Company survey reports that a mere 27% of people joining the exchanges were previously uninsured through February. The survey also found that about half of people who shopped for a plan but did not enroll said premiums were too expensive, even though 80% of this group qualify for subsidies. Some substantial share of the people ObamaCare is supposed to help say it is a bad financial value. You might even call it a hardship.

HHS is also trying to pre-empt the inevitable political blowback from the nasty 2015 tax surprise of fining the uninsured for being uninsured, which could help reopen ObamaCare if voters elect a Republican Senate this November. Keeping its mandate waiver secret for now is an attempt get past November and in the meantime sign up as many people as possible for government-subsidized health care. Our sources in the insurance industry are worried the regulatory loophole sets a mandate non-enforcement precedent, and they're probably right. The longer it is not enforced, the less likely any President will enforce it.

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

McKinsey: Only 14% Of Obamacare Exchange Sign-Ups Are Previously Uninsured Enrollees

The Obama administration has, for months now, been peddling nice-sounding numbers as to how many people are gaining health coverage due to Obamacare. But their numbers have been inflated on two fronts. First, not everyone who has “selected a marketplace plan” under Obamacare has actually paid the required premiums, payment being required to actually gain coverage. Second, only a fraction of people on the exchanges were previously uninsured. A new survey from McKinsey gives us a better view into the real numbers. Of the 3.3 million people that the White House has touted as Obamacare exchange “sign-ups,” less than 500,000 are actual uninsured people who have actually gained health coverage.

Many Obamacare ‘enrollees’ aren’t actually enrolled

McKinsey, the leading management consulting firm, has been conducting monthly surveys of the exchange-eligible population under the auspices of its Center for U.S. Health System Reform. McKinsey’s most recent survey, conducted in February with 2,096 eligible respondents, found that only 48 percent had thus far signed up for a 2014 health plan. Within that 48 percent, three-fifths were previously insured people who liked their old plans and were able to keep them. The remaining two-fifths were the ones who signed up for coverage on the Obamacare exchanges.


Of the Obamacare sign-ups, only 27 percent had been previously uninsured in 2013. And of the 27 percent, nearly half had yet to pay a premium. (By contrast, among the 73 percent who had been previously insured, 86 percent had paid.)

Put all those percentages together, and you get two key stats. Only 19 percent of those who have paid a premium were previously uninsured. Among those that the administration is touting as sign-ups, only 14 percent are previously uninsured enrollees: approximately 472,000 people as of February 1.

Those not signing up cited affordability of plans as biggest issue

This is the biggest problem with the way the “Affordable Care Act” approached coverage expansion. The reason why so many Americans are uninsured is because health insurance in this country is too expensive. Obamacare increases the underlying cost of health insurance, and then uses taxpayer-funded subsidies to offset those costs for some.

AP: 4.7 million Americans have had their plans canceled

Keep in mind another fact: According to the Associated Press, at least 4.7 million Americans who shop for coverage on their own have had their plans canceled because they don’t conform to Obamacare’s regulations. So Obamacare has disrupted the coverage of millions of Americans, requiring many to purchase costlier policies with higher deductibles and narrower doctor networks, for a fairly modest expansion of coverage.

According to the administration, total sign-ups now exceed 4 million. But on a recent HHS conference call, Obamacare implementation point man Gary Cohen was asked the key question: how many of the people who have signed up for Obamacare were previously insured? His response: “That’s not a data point that we are really collecting in any sort of systematic way.”

So. The whole point of Obamacare was to expand coverage to the uninsured. But for the tens of thousands of regulations that the law has imposed on the country, its authors never bothered to try to measure the one thing that they were actually trying to achieve. That about sums it all up.


More @ link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapoth...red-enrollees/
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Copy and paste:

34c06cc2778d738866347140742ebc77.jpg
 
jc100 said:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/gigs...-snowden-docs-reveal-obama-alien-hitler-plot/

Holy crap...it's on google..it must be true.

Very upset that you haven't cited this guy yet Mike.. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/...-enlist-aliens-and-canadians-to-rule-america/

Again...on Google..must be the word of god.

Holy crap..this copy and paste malarky is awesome...
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lmao... oh no... you ready for the google beat down you're about to receive :violent1:

My personal favorite Snowbike Mike source for 'educational material' is Eaglerising.com

Clearly a well respected, unbiased, credible source of replicable statistical data :rolleyes:
 
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Death panels a-coming....

March 14, 2014
By Stuart Schwartz


We have been so absorbed by the cavalcade of government incompetence and individual hurt produced by the rollout of ObamaCare that it is easy to forget the tragedy-in-waiting should this federal healthcare takeover stay in place: the death panel, also known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). This is the group of political appointees designed to allow the federal government to use a combination of medical and social criteria to determine the healthcare an individual receives.

Or, to put it as bluntly as Sarah Palin did, to determine who lives and who dies. Why am I thinking about that now? Because my wife and soul-mate of 33 years, Sharon Harrah Schwartz, died at the age of 62 in January. Her passing put an end to a slow-motion death from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, ALS, popularly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. She would have occupied the bottom portion of an IPAB treatment list.

Her suffering and passing was and remains wrenching for her family and friends. It was especially difficult over the last year as her illness accelerated, destroying her muscles and, consequently, her ability to speak, to eat, and ultimately to breathe. A variety of drugs and equipment kept her reasonably comfortable, while medical technology helped clear the fluids collecting in her lungs. She enjoyed, as much as possible, the last months with her family. An advanced directive, worked out in concert with ALS healthcare professionals, proscribed the treatment limits. For almost two years, her healthcare relied on a myriad of individual decisions based on relationships with both the ones she loved and with healthcare providers. The most significant one: she and I -- lovers and best friends for more than three decades -- had decided together that, barring a miracle and/or last-minute medical research breakthrough, we would allow the disease to take its course, keep her as comfortable as possible, and let God do the rest.

This illustrates something that President Obama and his party, in its zeal to use healthcare as a driving force in transforming American society, accrue power, and expand centralized government, have ignored: that the foundation of what has become the uniquely American and consequently world-class healthcare system is individual decision-making and values, resting upon a multitude of relationships that work best when left to those with a stake in it -- healthcare professionals, patients and their families. The government has a role, yes; but its role should be limited, allowing the marketplace of providers and patients to work.

At its most basic level, healthcare is individual and personal, depending upon relationships and particular values. Our faith, our love for each other and belief in the sacred responsibility of marriage underlaysleepless nights, caring for her when she could no longer care for herself, servicing the machines that alleviated some of the symptoms, the decisions that allowed just a few more months to live and love with her family and friends.

Her… our struggles with this terminal disease -- she referred to it as the “beast” in her body -- illustrate the government-sponsored agony awaiting so many families just over the horizon. Love informed our decisions in consultation with those providing treatment. I valued her life as sacred and God-given, acknowledging the debt I owed to someone who had joyfully served as wife, mother, and friend.

But looming on the horizon is a whole other set of criteria. ObamaCare has established an agenda-driven political board that will shift the loci of healthcare decisions from individual and relationship to the application of social justice concepts. Even a cursory reading (something that few, if any, of the Democrats foisting this law upon us took the time to do) of the pages and footnotes of this intrusion and the writings of its designers -- many so-called medical policy experts from academia -- makes it clear that progressive social engineering by government-appointed experts will largely determine medical treatment.

Peruse the publications and reports of the thinking of the architects of ObamaCare. Their various scoring systems, their social priorities would have put my wife at the bottom of the list for treatment. Obamacare architects perceive healthcare, as they do income, as a zero-sum game -- every dollar spent on her treatment is a dollar taken away from someone else. Never mind that this notion, like so much of ObamaCare, is a deliberate lie with no foundation in fact; healthcare, like wealth, in the United States has expanded as new medical technologies, techniques and research have brought ever more accessible and better care.

But centralized control needs to declare medical resources finite, which in turn demands rationing, and rationing needs, of course, a government board to decide who gets treatment and when, who gets to live… and die. My wife, under a fully implemented ObamaCare, would have been among the last in line for treatment. She was a retiree (too old!) with a terminal disease (too expensive with a limited future!), a woman who had chosen to spend most of her adult life raising children (that’s not really societally valued employment, the architects might sniff) and who lived simply and lovingly, taking pride in her family and her role as a homemaker (what --no greater ambitions?)

Sharon was loved by her family, her friends and, above all, by God. We devoted a considerable portion of our energy and resources to making sure she felt loved during her last year. We could do no less, as love is a basic tenet of our faith, a Christianity that says her worth depends solely on her standing as a creation of God -- not a federal bureaucracy. Such was the sanctity of Sharon’s life, a human life. That is the opposite of Obamacare which, if fully implemented, would likely have robbed us of much of her past year. To a centralized and progressive federal bureaucracy, Sharon’s worth was the totality of the probabilities of her contribution to the good of a theoretical community, as defined by Washington politicians and technocrats.

But for us, it was much simpler: She was God’s gift, to whom we owed our love and resources and energy until she passed from life in this world.

It is time to repeal Obamacare.



Dr. Stuart Schwartz is on the faculty of Liberty University and has been a frequent contributor to American Thinker. His wife, Sharon, passed away on January 7 at their residence in Lynchburg, Virginia.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/my_wifes_last_days__and_the_coming_obamacare_death_panel.html
 
The Obamacare lies and lawbreaking continues....

The Obama administration has decided that the sequester's mandatory spending cuts no longer apply to part of Obamacare.

The health care law provides subsidies to help low-income people cover some of their out-of-pocket costs. Last year, the administration said those subsidies were taking a 7 percent cut because of the sequester, which imposed across-the-board reductions in federal spending.

But now, the White House has changed its mind. It removed the cost-sharing subsidies from its list of programs that are subject to the sequester, eliminating the 7 percent cut for 2015.



The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which noticed the change, said the reversal would likely restore about $560 million to the subsidies—and require $560 million in cuts to other programs to make up for it.

The cost-sharing subsidies are expected to total $8 billion this year and $156 billion over the next decade.

Who benefits from the change? The low-income families who qualify for these subsidies, as well as the White House and insurance companies.

Some consumers have complained about high out-of-pocket costs in the plans they've purchased through the health care law's exchanges. This change will help reduce those costs, at least for low-income families. And because the subsidy is paid directly to insurance companies, the change means more money for insurers as well.

The cost-sharing subsidies aren't the Obamacare subsidies that get the most attention.

Those higher-profile incentives are tax subsidies to help people cover the cost of their insurance premiums. Those subsidies weren't affected by the sequester because they're administered as tax credits. Rather, the subsidies at issue here are designed to help low-income people reduce their out-of-pocket spending—costs like co-pays and deductibles.

An administration official said the two types of subsidies were combined, and that's why the out-of-pocket subsidy is no longer subject to sequestration.
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http://www.nationaljournal.com/heal...-longer-applies-to-part-of-obamacare-20140313
 
Please someone....put a lockable cover on this mans keyboard and disable the mouse/trackpad.

ps. Googling your own opinion and posting the results is not proof.
 
jc100 said:
Please someone....put a lockable cover on this mans keyboard and disable the mouse/trackpad.

ps. Googling your own opinion and posting the results is not proof.
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Care to provide any refuting/supporting information of your own on any of the Obama topics I've listed including but not limited to:

1. Obamacare and the disaster it is including death panels, affordability, accessibility
2. Obama overstepping the constitution and his rampant uses of EO's
3. Obama's weak foreign policy
4. Benghazi
5. The socialist welfare state he is creating
6. Fast and the Furious
7. Lies, lies and more lies
8. and many many more

Making sweeping, but unsupported, discrediting statements that you don't like the sources of the info I've posted, or saying Googling is somehow bad is simply deflection/projection/grasping at straws.....

Post up JC100 (And the rest of you....). If there is zero merit in any of the info I've posted (from a wide wide wide variety of sources including some, but not all, that are more extreme ), then join the conversation and post up.

Support your man Obama!
 
The kind thing to do with nutters is not to encourage them or engage them but to politely and gently guide them onto the right track.

When you have learned to distinguish diatribe from fact we'll join in your little game.
 
jc100 said:
The kind thing to do with nutters is not to encourage them or engage them but to politely and gently guide them onto the right track.

When you have learned to distinguish diatribe from fact we'll join in your little game.
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Well then sensei, guide away........
 
JC100,

Obama said when he was selling Obamacare. "If you like the plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you’ll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold," said Obama in his weekly address on June 6, 2009.
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but wait.... Obama has been saying recently that Americans might actually have to change their doctor:

http://m.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-you-might-lose-your-doctor-under-obamacare_784941.html

Is this to much diatribe and not fact? Or can you look past the author whom you may consider to "out there" and consider the content?
 
So, Obama supporters have been known to say that Obama deported more illegals than Big Bad Bush.

But wait:

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson acknowledged Tuesday that his department’s deportation numbers are now mostly made up of illegal immigrants caught at the border, not just those from the interior, which means they can’t be compared one-to-one with deportations under President Bush or other prior administrations.

The administration has argued it is tougher on illegal immigration than previous presidents, and immigrant-rights groups have excoriated President Obama, calling him the “deporter-in-chief” for having kicked out nearly 2 million immigrants during his five-year tenure.

But Republican critics have argued those deportation numbers are artificially inflated because more than half of those being deported were new arrivals, caught at the border by the U.S. Border Patrol. Previous administrations primarily counted only those caught in the interior of the U.S. by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Under the Obama administration, more than half of those removals that were attributed to ICE are actually a result of Border Patrol arrests that wouldn’t have been counted in prior administrations,” said Rep. John Culberson, Texas Republican.

“Correct,” Mr. Johnson confirmed.

That would mean that in a one-to-one comparison with the final years of the Bush administration, deportations of those same people under Mr. Obama had actually fallen, according to immigration analysts who have studied the data.

In 2013, ICE was responsible for about 133,000 of the 368,000 immigrants removed. The Washington Times calculated that meant a less than 1 percent risk of an illegal immigrant living in the interior of the U.S. being deported.

Mr. Johnson said they are prioritizing those they think deserve deportation. In the past, illegal immigrants from Mexico who had just illegally crossed the border would often times be returned, only to try again almost immediately. Now, many of them are put into full deportation proceedings.

“We are enforcing the law. We are enforcing the law vigorously and effectively, which results in the removal of over 300,000 people a year over the last several years,” Mr. Johnson said. “We are using the resources Congress gave us to remove those we believe are threats to national security, public safety and border security. And they result in the numbers that you see.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle Tuesday pleaded with Mr. Johnson for more information on the status of immigration enforcement, saying it is tougher to pass a comprehensive immigration-reform bill.

That was a frequent complaint from Congress to Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, former DHS Secretary Janet A. Napolitano, who left the office last September.

Mr. Johnson has promised to be more responsive, saying he will answer lawmakers’ questions and try to get them information.

“Better information may not be the way to reach consensus on every question of border and immigration enforcement policy, but it would help us. It would elevate the discussion to one based on empirical evidence and agreed-upon data,” said Rep. David Price, North Carolina Democrat.

The Senate last year passed a broad immigration bill legalizing most illegal immigrants, boosting border security spending by tens of billions of dollars and rewriting the legal immigration system.

But House Republicans have balked, arguing they don’t trust Mr. Obama to enforce the laws — and they point to his carving up of deportation policy as one example.

Mr. Johnson, though, countered that passing a legalization bill would actually enhance security because it would get illegal immigrants to come forward and report, and would allow the department to more narrowly focus its resources.

In one key step, the Obama administration this year is calling for a cut in detention beds that hold immigrants awaiting deportation, from the 34,000 level mandated by law to slightly more than 30,500.

“We believe that is not the best and highest use of our resources, given our current estimates of who we need to detain, who we regard as public safety, national security, border security threats,” Mr. Johnson said.

Homeland Security officials argue that rather than holding illegal immigrants in detention facilities, they can be given supervised release, which he said is more cost-effective.
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Source is Washington times. Let me know if they are an "allowable" source or not.
 
Snobike Mike said:
JC100,



but wait.... Obama has been saying recently that Americans might actually have to change their doctor:

http://m.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-you-might-lose-your-doctor-under-obamacare_784941.html

Is this to much diatribe and not fact? Or can you look past the author whom you may consider to "out there" and consider the content?
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Aha! A fact! Yup, he screwed up there, and it doesn't look like he's about to set it right. Strike one against him.

Keep 'em coming.
 
I guess my view on Rob Ford is a bit like Snobike Mike's view on Obama.

But I'm sane.

;)
 
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