Photo Credit: APAs the nation enters the third week of the Obamacare health exchange implementation, it’s worth taking a second look at some interesting comments made in August by one of the chief architects of the law.
In short, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., never really thought the exchanges would work.
He just sees the Affordable Care Act as the first step to a fully government-run health care system, something that could be easier to achieve after the glitch-riddled, problematic opening of the federal health insurance exchanges this month.
During an appearance on a Las Vegas PBS program in August, Reid said he sees a national single-payer health system as the natural next step for health care in America. Reid said the nation had to “work its way past” insurance-based health care, according to a recap provided by the Las Vegas Sun newspaper.
“What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever,” Reid said.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-10-22 00:50:262016-04-11 11:15:52Harry Reid: Obamacare First Step to Single-Payer System
Photo Credit: Reuters/LandovFormer Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin may have taken another step toward seeking the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination with a combative op-ed on Breitbart.
Recalling that she had once beaten crooked Republican politicians in Alaska – who’d brazenly tagged themselves “the Corrupt Bastards Club” – Palin rhetorically asked: “Doesn’t it seem like [today] we have a Corrupt Bastards Club in D.C.? On steroids?”
Disloyal Republicans are enabling President Barack Obama to march the country toward socialism while denouncing Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and tea party-aligned House members who have been trying to defund Obamacare, Palin charged.
Establishment GOP politicians failed to use the power of the purse to halt Obamacare’s implementation. Instead, “they balked, waved the white flag, and joined the lapdog media in trashing the good guys who fought for us,” Palin wrote.
She challenged the Republican establishment to unite behind conservative grassroots efforts to block Obamacare before it is too late.
Photo Credit: newsbusters.orgJohn Dickerson could not have been more blunt on Monday’s CBS This Morning about the political damage HealthCare.gov’s well-established technical difficulties is already causing President Obama: “It’s been far worse than a glitch. It’s been a total fiasco, as Senator McCain said. And the problem here is that the administration could get into, sort of, a credibility death spiral.”
The liberal political director, who is usually an Obama apologist, also surprisingly acknowledged that conservatives were right in their longstanding criticisms of ObamaCare: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
JOHN DICKERSON:
There has always been charges from the right that the President’s health care promises didn’t turn out to be true. But then, some of those charges turned out to have some merit. The President said, if you had your own health care plan and if you were satisfied with it, you’d be able to keep it. Well, that didn’t quite turn out to be true.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-10-22 00:47:062016-04-11 11:15:52CBS’s Dickerson: White House Risks ‘Credibility Death Spiral’ Over ‘Total Fiasco’ of ObamaCare Site (+video)
President Barack Obama delivered an Obamacare speech Monday that sounded a lot like hold music.
With a staunch defense of the law and a hint of outrage over its problems, Obama sought to buy time with Congress, potential customers and the public while his administration rushes to fix HealthCare.gov, the beleaguered website that threatens the viability of his signature domestic achievement.
But as congressional oversight committees circle, he has to hope that improvements to the website ramp up more quickly than do the calls for suspending or delaying enrollment.
“There’s no sugarcoating it. The website has been too slow,” Obama said in the White House Rose Garden. “People have been getting stuck during the application process. And I think it’s fair to say that nobody’s more frustrated by that than I am. Precisely because the product is good, I want the cash registers to work, I want the checkout lines to be smooth, so I want people to be able to get this great product.
It’s not the GOP that President Barack Obama has to worry about in defending his botched health care rollout, it’s fellow Democrats.
They voted for the law, sang its praises for three-plus years and still believe in the promise of health care reform. But now they face a conundrum: stay in lock step with Obama and risk their credibility as advocates for the law’s benefits or publicly criticize the administration for its recent problems — especially a failure to more quickly acknowledge, and rectify, the major malfunction of its Internet marketplace.
It’s a particularly vexing question for Democrats worried about their party’s chances in the 2014 midterm elections, and, increasingly, they’re opting for the latter strategy.
“What has happened is unacceptable in terms of the glitches,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on ABC’s “This Week.” “They were overwhelmed to begin with. There is much that needs to be done to correct the situation.” It was the second time in a week that Pelosi had gone public with her dismay over the implementation of a law that she carried to enactment by winning tough votes on the House floor in 2009 and ’10.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-10-22 00:43:272016-04-11 11:15:52Obama: Your Call is Important to Us (+video)
Photo Credit: APTwenty-three-year-old Megan Lynn Young, who was recently crowned Miss World 2013 at the Miss World Pageant, said she is pro-life, does not use contraceptives, opposes divorce, and thinks the way to avoid unwanted sex is to “just say no.”
Miss Young was born in Virginia to a Filipino mother and an American father. She lives in the Philippines and represented that nation at the Miss World Pageant held in Bali, Indonesia on Sept. 28.
In an interview on the Filipino news show ANC Headstart, as first reported by LifeSite News on Oct. 14, host Karen Davila asked Young about a controversial reproductive health (RH) law currently in limbo in the courts in the Philippines and related topics.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2013-10-22 00:37:162016-04-11 11:15:52Miss World: ‘I’m Against Abortion,’ ‘Against Divorce’ and ‘Sex is For Marriage’ (+video)
Photo Credit: Getty ImagesChristian craft store Hobby Lobby today filed papers with the Supreme Court asking it to take it case against the Obama administration, which is attempting to make it comply with the HHS mandate that compels religious companies to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs for their employees.
In July, a federal court granted Hobby Lobby a preliminary injunction against the HHS abortion-drug mandate. The injunction prevented the Obama administration from enforcing the mandate against the Christian company, but the Obama administration appealed that ruling recently. The government’s appeal makes it highly likely that the Supreme Court will decide the issue in the upcoming term.
The Obama administration submitted papers in September and Hobby Lobby filed its own papers today.
Hobby Lobby asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review its case and decide whether the Green family will be required to provide and pay for life-terminating drugs and devices in violation of their religious beliefs, according to an email from its attorneys to LifeNews.
“Hobby Lobby’s case raises important questions about who can enjoy religious freedom,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead lawyer for Hobby Lobby. “Right now, some courts recognize the rights of business owners like the Green family, and others do not. Religious freedom is too important to be left to chance. The Supreme Court should take this case and protect religious freedom for the Green family and Hobby Lobby.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-10-22 00:35:462016-04-11 11:15:52Hobby Lobby Appeals to Supreme Court to Stop Obama Admin From Forcing it to Obey HHS Mandate
Photo Credit: Charles Dharapak, APThe international telecommunications company Verizon has been tasked with helping the government fix the federal health exchange, USA TODAY has learned.
An informed source in the telecommunications industry said Verizon’s Enterprise Solutions division has been asked by the Department of Health and Human Services to improve the performance of the HealthCare.gov site, which is a key component of the Affordable Care Act. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not been made official.
HHS office said Sunday the department would reach outside its government contractors to civilian companies that might be able to solve HealthCare.gov’s problems more quickly.
“Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov,” an HHS blog post said on Sunday.
HHS did not respond to a request for confirmation about Verizon. The company also declined to comment.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-10-22 00:35:092016-04-11 11:15:53HHS Brings in Verizon to Help HealthCare.gov
Photo Credit: Wikimedia CommonsThe Department of Homeland Security is set to spend $80 million dollars on hiring a raft of armed guards to protect IRS and other government buildings in upstate New York during “public demonstrations” and “civil disturbances,” once again prompting concerns that the federal agency is preparing for food stamp riots, anti-tax demonstrations or some other form of domestic unrest.
According to a solicitation posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website, the Federal Protective Service (a unit of the DHS), is looking for a contractor to supply armed Protective Security Officers (PSOs) to guard a variety of government buildings in the region, including “IRS buildings(s) during tax season.”
“PSOs will be required to be armed and some posts may require screening of visitors using x-rays/magnetometers,” states the solicitation.
The armed guards will be used during “public demonstration(s),” as well as “civil disturbances, or other unanticipated events on an as-needed basis.”
“This acquisition is for approximately 380,000 hours of Basic Service, 20,000 hours of Temporary Additional Services and 3,500 hours of Emergency Security Services per year. Currently, there are an estimated 205 guards protecting approximately 95 posts at over 55 buildings. The estimated value of this Contract is between $75M and $80M,” states the solicitation.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-10-22 00:33:092016-04-11 11:15:53Homeland Security Spends $80 Million On Armed Guards for “Civil Disturbances”
Photo Credit: REUTERSMembers of Congress are routinely using campaign committees as a personal “slush fund,” according to a detailed report by “60 Minutes.”
The report found that lawmakers are using what’s known as “Leadership PACs” to fund trips to high-ranking golf courses, NFL games and other destinations – and are even personally making money off the PACs by lending to them and charging steep interest.
In the most egregious examples, CBS’ “60 Minutes” found that Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Calif., loaned her PAC $150,000 – and made $228,000 over a 12-year period by charging 18 percent interest.
Napolitano admitted to doing it, and an ethics watchdog said the practice is technically legal. In fact, the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found at least 15 cases where politicians were making loans to their campaign funds.
Napolitano, though, conceded she wasn’t giving campaign donors the details of her personal loan. “Well, you don’t go out and publicize that, but they know that I had a campaign debt,” she said.
Photo Credit: Liberty News This is getting uglier by the day. Not only did Government waste more money than necessary to develop the first iPhone in creating the goliath lemon website HealthCare.Gov, it appears they’re about to spend yet another round of massive money trying to fix it. In fact, according to the New York Times, up to 5,000,000 lines of code need to be rewritten.
In interviews, experts said the technological problems of the site went far beyond the roadblocks to creating accounts that continue to prevent legions of users from even registering. Indeed, several said, the login problems, though vexing to consumers, may be the easiest to solve. One specialist said that as many as five million lines of software code may need to be rewritten before the Web site runs properly.
“The account creation and registration problems are masking the problems that will happen later,” said one person involved in the repair effort…
