Bailing Out Health Insurers and Helping Obamacare

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.” How can this be? Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them. The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers.

For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation. Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies. It’s even worse that Obamacare is trying to coerce Americans into buying those same insurers’ product (although there are escape routes). It’s almost unbelievable that it will also subsidize those same insurers’ losses.

But that’s exactly what it will do—unless Republicans take action. As Laszewski explains, Obamacare contains a “Reinsurance Program that caps big claim costs for insurers (individual plans only).” He writes that “in 2014, 80% of individual costs between $45,000 and $250,000 are paid by the government [read: by taxpayers], for example.”

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Report: NSA’s Fourth Amendment Violations Have Zero Impact on Terrorism

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Photo Credit: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images

Photo Credit: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images

A public policy group says a review of U.S. terrorist arrests shows the government’s collection of bulk phone records does little to prevent terrorism, adding fuel to a debate over whether the spy program should be ended.

The nonprofit New America Foundation, based in Washington, analyzed cases involving 225 people recruited by al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups and charged in the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The majority of cases started with traditional techniques, such as use of “informants, tips from local communities, and targeted intelligence operations,” according to a report today from the group, which has been critical of the NSA spy programs.

“Our investigation found that bulk collection of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group,” Peter Bergen, director of the foundation’s national security program, said in a statement.

The National Security Agency’s collection and use of bulk phone records, such as numbers dialed and call durations, is one of several surveillance programs exposed by former government contractor Edward Snowden. The disclosures have prompted calls both domestically and overseas for the U.S. to discontinue or alter the programs.

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The Benghazi Transcripts: US Military Woefully Unprepared for Attack, Documents Show

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Hundreds of pages of declassified transcripts from the U.S. military’s top commanders present a picture of a woefully ill-postured military force whose assets were not in a position to quickly respond to the Benghazi terror attack — or other hot spots across Africa and the Middle East.

The 450 pages of newly declassified transcripts detail testimony from secret, closed hearings last year before Congress. They provide fresh insight into the military’s decision-making that night from the very commanders who staged the rescue efforts, including the top commander in Africa at the time Gen. Carter Ham.

Among other details, they reveal gaps in the military’s positioning of assets around the world.

For example, no attack aircraft were placed on high alert on Sept. 11, and the closest F-16 fighter planes to any of the trouble spots in North Africa were in Aviano, Italy. None were armed, and the closest air refuellers were positioned 10 hours away at a base in Great Britain.

No Defense Department AC-130 gunships were within a 10-hour flight to Libya, according to committee members who heard commanders’ testimony over the past 15 months. And the commander’s in-extremis force, which included a unit of 23 special operators who are used at the commander’s discretion, were training in Croatia that day. They did not make it to a staging base in Sigonella, Italy, for another 19 hours after the attack began, according to committee members.

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Officers Acquitted in Homeless Man’s Death

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Photo Credit: AP/BRUCE CHAMBERS

Photo Credit: AP/BRUCE CHAMBERS

Two former California police officers were acquitted Monday in the death of a homeless man after a violent struggle with officers that was captured on surveillance video.

It was a rare case in which police officers were charged with a death involving actions on duty.

Former Fullerton police officer Manuel Ramos was acquitted of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. Former Cpl. Jay Cicinelli was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter and excessive use of force.

Cincinelli embraced his lawyer and put his face in his hands as the verdict concluded.

Outside court, Kelly Thomas’s parents condemned the verdict.

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Famous Name Leads Boy Scouts in ‘Gay’ Change

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The man who led the U.S. Defense Department through its transition to allowing openly acknowledged homosexuals to serve in the military is set to take over the Boy Scouts of America as the iconic youth organization undergoes a similar historic change.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who made news last week with the release of a memoir in which he harshly criticizes President Obama’s leadership, was chosen last October to begin a two-year term as BSA president in May 2014.

The Boy Scouts of America began allowing openly “gay” scouts for the first time Jan. 1 after a controversial vote last May by its National Council.

Gates, as defense secretary, backed Obama’s withdrawal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Congress repealed the ban in 2010, and it was lifted in 2011.

Gates earned the BSA’s highest honor, Eagle Scout, as a teen.

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Police Interview Shown in Case of Slain DC Writer

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supreme-court-building-washington-d-c-dcscJurors in the trial of a German man charged with killing his 91-year-old wife were shown bloody crime scene photographs Monday and a portion of an interview with homicide detectives in which he referred to the couple’s relationship as a “marriage of convenience.”

Albrecht Muth, 49, also describes in matter-of-fact fashion how he found the lifeless body of his wife, Viola Drath, in a bathroom of their home but decided that it would be futile to even try to resuscitate her.

“The obvious was obvious,” Muth can be heard telling the pair of detectives.

Muth is charged with first-degree murder in the August 2011 beating and strangulation death of Drath, a German journalist and socialite. He faces life in prison if convicted.

The interview, recorded in a cramped police interrogation room in the days between the discovery of Drath’s body and her husband’s arrest, gave jurors their closest look yet at the defendant: Muth has been absent from the trial, participating passively through videoconference, after doctors said his self-imposed starvation made him too weak to appear in court. He has been fasting off-and-on for what he says are religious reasons.

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MSNBC: Joe Miller is Retiring? Not So Fast. . .

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If you were watching MSNBC Live this morning, you might be wondering why former and current Alaska Republican senatorial candidate Joe Miller is retiring in the middle of his campaign. It’s an unorthodox political strategy for someone who is not currently embroiled in scandal, and who stands a reasonable chance of walking away with the nomination for a second time.

Joe Miller MSNBC

It appears that reports of his political death have been exaggerated. And so has his conversion to the Democratic Party, his relocation to California, and his service to the United States Congress since the early 1970s.

Someone at MSNBC confused candidate Joe Miller with George Miller, 21-term Democratic congressman from California who came out with a statement today declaring his upcoming retirement.

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Taxpayers Paid Nearly $175M for Penis Pumps Between 2006 and 2011

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Photo Credit: Andromedical Indonesia Flickr

Photo Credit: Andromedical Indonesia Flickr

Taxpayers paid nearly $175 million for vacuum erection systems (VES), commonly known as “penis pumps,” from 2006 to 2011, according to an inspector general report released on Monday.

The federal government paid more than double the retail price for VES, the Department of Health and Human Services IG found. Medicare prices for the systems, the report said, “remain grossly excessive compared with the amounts that non-Medicare payers pay.”

Medicare paid 473,620 VES claims during calendar years 2006 through 2011, according to the IG report.

Health care policy experts said the revelations in the IG report are a troubling indication of what they describe as wasteful spending in federal health programs.

“The fact that taxpayers have spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars over the past decade on penis pumps via Medicare is obscene and insulting – even more so when you consider that this is an arena of Medicare expenditures rife with fraud and where the government doesn’t even bother to assess medical necessity,” said Ben Domenech, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute.

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Beware of the Left-Wing-Funded “Main Street” Republicans

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

What do George Soros, labor unions and money-grubbing former GOP Rep. Steven LaTourette all have in common? They’re control freaks. They’re power hounds. They’re united against tea party conservatives. And they all have operated under the umbrella of D.C. groups masquerading as “Main Street” Republicans.

LaTourette heads up the so-called “Main Street Partnership,” which claims to represent “thoughtful,” “pragmatic,” “common sense” and “centrist” Republican leadership. Reality check: The pro-bailout, pro-debt, pro-amnesty, anti-drilling group founded by former liberal New York GOP Congressman Amory Houghton includes three liberal Senate Republicans (John McCain, Mark Kirk and Susan Collins) and 52 center-left House Republicans. LaTourette himself is a self-serving Beltway barnacle who held office for nearly two decades. Now he’s leveraging his new tea party-bashing platform to benefit a family-operated lobbying business.

The New York Times shed light on LaTourette’s tangled web of GOP establishment outfits last week. But that story just scratched the surface. As the paper reported, the Main Street Partnership is a nonprofit group that charges members up to $25,000 per year to rub elbows with Washington’s rich and powerful. The Main Street Advocacy Fund and the Defending Main Street SuperPAC are political satellites planning to amass $8 million to bolster Republican liberals and moderates facing tea party challengers in 2014. McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies is LaTourette’s lobbying firm.

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Darrell Issa: Obama Administration Waging ‘a War on Guns’ with ‘Rogue’ ATF Sting Operations

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Darrell-Issa-2853California Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, accused the Obama administration of waging “a war on guns” after new reports of “rogue” sting operations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) conducted during 2013.

Issa spoke to Fox News’ Shannon Bream Sunday about a report by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which claimed that ATF agents operating firearm stings in 6 separate cities “took advantage of the mentally ill, set up stings near churches and schools and made decisions which some claim actually increased crime in their neighborhoods.” Issa and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to ATF Director Todd Jones this week to demand answers on the tactics and how often they’ve been used.

But Issa believes he already knows what’s going on.

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