Medicaid Payment Crisis Highlights Major Flaws in Obamacare

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By Jennifer Popik. The Medicaid program, which provides insurance coverage for lower income Americans, has expanded under the Obama Health Care law and now covers over one-fifth of Americans. Yet it is now set to face big cuts in the new year . . .

The Obama Health Care law (Obamacare) contains a self-contradictory approach to both increase the number of Americans with health insurance, but also to limit the amount of money allowed to be spent on health care . . .

To increase coverage, one approach the Administration used was initially to funnel large amounts of money into state Medicaid programs so that states could expand who they covered–but then cut back on the funds . . .

According to the Pear article, “The impact will vary by state, but a study by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, estimates that doctors who have been receiving the enhanced payments will see their fees for primary care cut by 43 percent, on average.” (Read more about the major flaws in Obamacare HERE)

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Obamacare Architects Furious Over Not Being Exempt from Obamacare

By Tyler Durden. The brain incubator at Harvard, the place which according to legend, and certainly the US News and World Report’s annual paid college infomercial, is the repository for some of the smartest people in the world, is furious.

The reason – Harvard’s illustrious faculty has learned that they too will be subject to their own policy recommendations as relates to Obamacare, which they themselves helped conceive. As the left-leaning NYT reported earlier today, “for years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar.”

Because Harvard’s brilliant ivory tower economists and public policy wonks know precisely how to fix the world… as long as said fix never applies to them.

And sure enough, the faculty did everything in its power to make sure it never had to suffer the consequences of its own brilliance… (Read more from this story HERE)

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Civic Virtue in Decline, Expert Says “No Recovery” for US

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Photo Credit: The Patriot Post As we enter 2015, it’s worth looking back on some key cultural indicators from 2014. Here is one bad omen: According to a 2014 Associated Press-GfK poll, Americans’ sense of civic virtue is in serious decline. “I don’t see any recovery,” said Rutgers University Professor Cliff Zukin. “The people who were 40 two decades ago aren’t as engaged as the people who were 60 two decades ago. This generational slippage tends to continue.”

The poll was a reprise of questions asked in 1984, and it focused on six civic-oriented activities: voting, volunteering, jury service, reporting crimes, knowing English and keeping on top of news and public issues. . .Only 28% of Americans consider volunteering a “very important obligation.” And while 75% characterize voting a central obligation of citizenship, talk is cheap: Voter turnout in the last presidential election dipped to 57.5% of eligible citizens compared to 62.3% in 2008. Voter turnout in 2014? The 36.4% of eligible citizens who bothered to vote represented the lowest turnout in any election cycle since World War II.

Most Americans do feel some sense of duty to the nation, with 90% characterizing the reporting of a crime one has witnessed, voting in elections, knowing English and serving on a jury when called as “somewhat important” obligations of citizenship. And a majority of Americans consider them “very important” obligations. Yet with an exception for voting, those majorities have declined by an average of approximately 13 percentage points over the last three decades.

Leading the pack are adults under 30 years of age. In every category except volunteering, they were less likely than elder generations to see any obligation, and also felt less obligated than young people of the past. Even more ominously, nearly one in four feel no obligation to keep informed, volunteer or speak English.

. . . Ronald Reagan made it clear[] in his inaugural address as California governor: “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Civic virtue and the obligations of citizenship cannot be separated from the preservation of freedom. We allow their continued deterioration at our own peril. (Read more about U.S. civic virtue in decline HERE)

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Firebrand Louie Gohmert Takes on Establishment Darling John Boehner, Makes Run for Speaker

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesBy Zach Noble. It’s official: House Speaker John Boehner has multiple challengers gunning for his job.

Texas Republican Louie Gohmert announced Sunday morning on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” that he would throw his hat into the ring, saying he’s officially a candidate for the speaker gig.

Gohmert’s announcement comes as Boehner’s approval from conservative voters sags.

Gohmert’s office also sent a statement to TheBlaze on the announcement, in which Gohmert said that his bid — or other Republicans’ bids — for the speaker position don’t create a serious risk that Democrats could slip in a victorious candidate. (Read more from the story, “Gohmert Takes on Establishment” HERE)

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Why I will Not Vote for John Boehner to be House Speaker

By Rep. Jim Bridenstine. The day after Republicans won the largest majority in the House of Representatives in almost 100 years and won a significant majority in the Senate, our liberal activist president claimed to hear the voices of all the people who didn’t vote. It was another example of stunning obstinacy from this president.

It seemed Democrats were melting down, Republicans were unified, and all we had to do was buy enough time to get our Republican reinforcements to Washington in January.

Like President Obama, Speaker John Boehner must have heard voices that didn’t vote.

The CR/omnibus legislation sufficiently undermines the checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution that it warrants my pending vote against the speaker. John Boehner went too far when he teamed with Obama to advance this legislation. He relinquished the power of the purse, and with it he lost my vote. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Feds Approve and Pay For 74 Year Old Man’s Sex Change Surgery

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Photo Credit: NBC News[Editor’s note: Despite the pronouns used by the author below, it was apparently a man who underwent sex change surgery at taxpayers’ expense] Denee Mallon marveled at the view of Lake Michigan from her hospital bed in the Windy City, where she had just made history: the then 74-year-old transgender woman underwent a milestone sex reassignment surgery she’d sought for decades. “Here I am, finally, after all these years,” she said. “It happened.”

Her operation will be one of the first paid for by Medicare after she won a challenge in May to end the government insurance program’s ban on covering such procedures for transgender individuals. Mallon’s victory opened the door for other seniors to access this care and may influence whether more insurers – private and public – will cover them. LGBT advocates also hailed her case as another step forward to securing equal rights for transgender people. . .

The Medicare ban was imposed in 1989, stemming from earlier information years before that found there was a “lack of well controlled, long-term studies of the safety and effectiveness of the surgical procedures and attendant therapies.” It deemed such treatment “experimental” and noted a “high rate of serious complications”. . .

The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association are among the professional medical groups that have in the last decade endorsed sex reassignment surgery, which can include a number of procedures such as a complete hysterectomy, bilateral mastectomy and genital reconstruction. (Read more about the sex change surgery HERE)

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With Knife in His Head, Man Drives 3 Hours to Hospital and Survives (+video)

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How’s this for a miraculous outcome? A Brazilian man who was stabbed in the head during an argument survived despite the knife being lodged in his skull for over three hours.

Motorcycle taxi driver Juacelo Nunes de Oliveira was at a party in a bar in the city of Agua Branca, in northeastern Piaui state, last Sunday when he got into an altercation.

The 39-year-old was stabbed four times, three times in the torso, with one wound perforating a lung, and once in the head.

He was first taken for treatment at a nearby hospital before being transferred to the Emergency Hospital of Teresina, a city 100 kilometers (62 miles) away — with the knife handle protruding from his head all the while.

“It took him nearly three hours to arrive here at the hospital,” Dr. Gilberto Albuquerque, general surgeon and hospital director, told CNN on Friday. (Read more about how with the knife in his head, man drives 3 hours to hospital HERE)

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Devoted Christian Alice Cooper: “The World Belongs to Satan” (+video)

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Photo Credit: CNS News
Alice Cooper, the shock-rock megastar who makes Marilyn Manson look like a choir boy, stopped his hard-partying ways and returned to his Bible Christian roots in the late 1980s and today, still hugely popular and touring, says he isn’t shy about discussing his faith, says his early songs always warned against choosing evil, and contends that the world we live in “doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to Satan.”

“The world doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to Satan,” said Alice Cooper. “We’re living with that. We’re bombarded with that every day.”

“[A]lmost everything I wrote was good and evil,” he said. “Don’t pick evil. Even when I wasn’t Christian, I was saying that. God and the Devil. Don’t pick the Devil. It’s a bad idea.”

Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier) shot to mega-stardom in the 1970s and early 1980s with hits such as “I’m 18,” ‘Schools’ Out” and the 1973 album, Billion Dollar Babies. He also was notorious for his demonic makeup and costumes and macabre theatrics on stage, which included simulated suicide and the decapitation of baby-dolls, among other dark antics.

Alice Cooper was nominated for two Grammy Awards and he and his band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. He has played roles in several movies, including Wayne’s World with Mike Myers and Dana Carvey and, perhaps most ironically given his shock-rock music career, Cooper is an avid and skilled golfer. (Read more about the Christian Alice Coopers’ statement HERE)

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Missouri State Senator Makes Racist Threat Over “White Privilege”; Black Protesters Storm Restaurants, Target Whites

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Photo Credit: ExaminerBy Joe Newby. On Saturday, Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Democrat serving in the Missouri state Senate whose district includes Ferguson, issued what many took to be a racist threat against white people on her Twitter feed. Her message, while apparently escaping the notice of local media outlets, angered a number of people.

“LET ME BE CLEAR,” she screamed on Twitter. “When you exercise your #WhitePrivilege, don’t think I’m not going to remember. I will use it for the future. Uncomfortable?”

“The system has literally failed the people I represent,” she said hours later. “There is no hope that anything will change. We go through the motions (because) we have to.” She also said the country has failed. Ironically, the conservative blog Weasel Zippers observed, she made the comment while using an image of Communist dictator Fidel Castro as her background.

“If you r not a legislator representing #Ferguson & you have not communicated w me, yet u have a ‘resolution’, expect fire,” she said in another angry tweet. Several responded angrily to that message as well, calling her a racist and a bigot. One responded by telling her to quit having supporters direct violence at police officers.

“So, you are a racist & are saying as an elected official, you only represent select people,” one person said in response. Another person asked Chappelle-Nadal if she intends to round white people up and place them in internment camps. (Read more from the story, “Senator Makes Racist Threat” HERE)

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Black Protesters Storm Cafes, Scream at White People Eating Brunch

By Greg Campbell. In a purely unbelievable display of bigotry and anti-white zealotry, black protesters stormed multiple restaurants and cafes on Sunday and targeted white people for hatred and harassment, screaming at them and accusing them of being complicit in the “genocide” of black Americans.

Many tweeted about their activisities and offered thin defenses of their actions, claiming that white people deserve the harassment and that it, in fact, was not racism, since black people allegedly lack the power to be racist.

One tweet even claimed that white people “have no right to be here.” (Read more from this story and see the tweets HERE)

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The Establishment is Now Attempting to Make Jeb Bush Seem Inevitable

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Photo Credit: APThis time it’s the media’s attempt to get Jeb Bush the Republican nomination for President in 2016. Articles that fawn over Jeb, either from a formidability standpoint or in the vein that he’s a “reasonable” conservative are everywhere. There has also been a release of meaningless polls touting Jeb’s strength atop the potential Republican field. These have all surfaced from many of the same quarters that tried to sell the country similar notions about John McCain in 2007-08, Mitt Romney in 2011-12, and to some extent even Jon Huntsman.

Naturally, the GOP establishment was all in for McCain in ’08 and Mitt in 2012 as the two “most electable” Republicans, because they would appeal to the independents. They were not and did not. The establishment was wrong again. They always are.

From the Jurassic media standpoint, this is a fairly transparent attempt to soften the battlefield of ideas with shallow psy-ops by warning Republicans and conservatives what they must do to keep their party from becoming extinct. Consider some history: this is the same media that told us Romney was actually “too Republican and too conservative” in 2007-08. Some tried to assure us the Democrats really feared Huntsman more than anyone else in 2011-12. Later, we were told Romney was inevitable and that Newt Gingrich only appealed to “fans of cock fights,” racists, and “Tea Party extremists.” We were told soccer moms in Ohio didn’t want us to criticize Obama because he was so personally popular.

The establishment agreed with all of it. They savaged Newt, Sarah Palin’s pick, as the devil for six months—and then turned around and assured us “Obama is a nice guy who is just over his head.” Setting your opinion of Newt aside for a second, how well did this strategy work out? The establishment is so out of touch they failed to realize that Obama was “personally popular” because they were too frightened of the charge of racism to criticize him.

We’ve also been warned not to oppose amnesty, not to repeal ObamaCare, not to read anything into the 2010 election results, that the 2014 election means only that Republicans had better work with Obama to get things done, and that we better not support Ted Cruz and any more government shutdowns. Taking a look further back, this is the same media that warned Republicans not to nominate Reagan in 1980 and not to push the Contract with America in 1994. All of this based on the idea that Republicans must moderate to survive. (Read more about the attempt to make Bush seem inevitable HERE)

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The Power of the Online Pro-Life Movement

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Photo Credit: HellNIn 2012 LifeNews.com broke the story of Elisa Bauer, a mentally disabled Nevada woman who was nearly forced to have an abortion against her will. With the fate of the unborn baby’s life hanging in the balance, thousands of the pro-life news website’s readers took action, calling and emailing Nevada District Court Judge Egan Walker’s office by the thousands. . .

Bauer delivered a beautiful baby girl, Cierra Marie, and nearly two years later, her grandparents adopted her in, ironically, the same Nevada court where her life was once threatened.

Over the course of the last 11 years, the number of lives saved thanks in large part to LifeNews is far too many to count, let alone know. But it’s Elisa Bauer’s story that stands out to founder Steven Ertelt as a defining example of a time the news agency was able to make a direct impact.

“[Bauer] was pressured by the system, basically the foster care system, to have an abortion and her foster parents stepped in and were able to help stop that,” Ertelt tells Townhall. “LifeNews played a crucial role in connecting people together, getting prolife attorneys involved, working with pro-life groups, and getting people to lobby key players involved in that debate on what happens to her and her unborn child.”

Though LifeNews officially launched in 2003, Ertelt has been harnessing the power of the Internet as early as 1993 to spread the pro-life message, even walking away from dreams of becoming a stockbroker to focus on what he considers the human rights issue of our time. (Read more about the online pro-life movement HERE)

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NYPD Officers Turn Backs on de Blasio, Again

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By Peter Holley. Police, public officials and mourners from across the country gathered Sunday to honor a detective killed last month in an act of violence that has roiled New York City, with a large number of officers again making their frustrations with the city’s mayor apparent by turning their backs on him as he paid tribute to the slain officer.

Defying a request from Police Commissioner William Bratton, the strident display of protest began as Mayor Bill de Blasio took the podium at the Aievoli Funeral Home in Brooklyn to eulogize Detective Wenjian Liu, reinforcing entrenched feelings of hostility that have gripped the department in the weeks since Liu and Detective Rafael Ramos were fatally shot without warning on a Brooklyn street.

In highly controversial remarks, union leaders have criticized the mayor for expressing support for demonstrations against police brutality and accused him of fostering an environment that encourages attacks on police officers. (Read more about the officers turn backs on de Blasio HERE)

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Atrocious Anti-Cop Editorial: Still No Apology from New York Times

By David Asman. The New York Times is clearly feeling the heat over an atrocious editorial they published on Tuesday blaming New York City cops for feelings of “self-pity” and “victimhood” after two of New York’s finest were gunned down in cold blood as they sat in their patrol car.

The editorial, published just three days after the funeral of one of those cops, was not only offensive to the sensibilities of New Yorkers who are grateful to our “men in blue,” it was absolutely heartless in its timing. This was an editorial venal enough to rankle even liberal New Yorkers. . .

While I obviously don’t have access to phone records or emails between the mayor’s office and the Times’ editorial board, the mayor’s push with allies on Sunday and Monday and the editorial’s appearance on Tuesday seems more than coincidental. (Read more from this story HERE)

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