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Hometown Paper that Endorsed Obama Calls for Repeal

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Photo Credit: Breitbart Barack Obama’s hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, endorsed the president twice for president. Friday, the same Chicago Tribune called for ObamaCare to be immediately repealed before it can do any more damage:

Stop digging. Start over.

As Friday dawns, here’s what a health insurance crisis looks like to many millions of Americans: Barely six weeks shy of 2014, they do not know whether they will have medical coverage Jan. 1. Or which hospitals and doctors they might patronize. Or what they may pay to protect themselves and their families against the chance of medical and financial catastrophe. How much, that is, they may pay in order to satisfy the Democratic politicians and federal bureaucrats who are worsening a metastasizing health coverage fiasco. …

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The 23 Most Revealing Words Obama Spoke

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Photo Credit: art_es_annaPresident Obama uttered a surprisingly revealing 23-word sentence Thursday that reveals so much about his thinking and why his second-term is shaping up as worse than Jimmy Carter’s last.

But, first, let’s get this straight right off the bat: President Obama is not a dummy.

He acts like a dummy, an arrogant one at that. The chief executive of the United States tries to convince the world he’s a dummy, bizarrely claiming he didn’t know so many stupid, illegal, corrupt, partisan, lying things were going on in his administration lo these past 1,760 divisive days.

He naively expected Iran to cave to the kind of political muscle that works back home in the Windy City. Obama painted himself into a red-lined corner on Syria, only to have his south side saved humiliatingly by Russia’s shirtless President Putin.

And apparently the White House did not pay its cable bill this fall. Because according to Kathleen Sebelius, the president was unaware the ObamaCare rollout was an utter disaster for days after the Oct. 1 limp launch. Does anyone ever talk to anyone else on Obama’s team?

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White House Defends Obama’s Executive Authority to Act on Health Insurance Without Congress

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Photo Credit: AP/ Evan VucciWhite House press secretary Jay Carney defended President Barack Obama’s authority to take unilateral action on health insurance plans – even comparing it to the administration’s action last year not to prosecute certain illegal immigrants.

Carney also reiterated the pledge to veto House bill to allow people to keep their insurance plans cancelled as a result of Obamacare, even after 39 Democrats joined the House Republican majority to support the bill.

The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) would allow anyone who had a health insurance policy cancellation, or would get a cancellation, to keep their plan, thus keeping Obama’s broken promise that if you like your health care, you can keep it. The administration objects because it would allow new policies that do not comply with Obamacare to still be sold.

Thus Obama unveiled his own plan on Thursday, to preempt the House vote, that would administratively waive insurance companies from having to comply with Obamacare standards for one year, but also require those insurance companies inform consumers that tax credits and other benefits of the Affordable Care Act plans.

But some have questioned Obama’s ability to take such an action without Congressional authorization. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney took a question about the president’s authority, and said that the health care law defers certain discretion to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

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Five Jaw-Dropping Quotes from the Catastrophically Awful Obamacare Press Conference

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President Obama had three goals coming into yesterday’s press conference: First, to shift responsibility for the Obamacare fiasco onto insurers by saddling them with mid-implementation changes. Second, to quell Democratic panic on Capitol Hill. And third, to nudge the media toward turning the page on his healthcare debacle. He accomplished none of these things. Indeed, he made things worse — sinking his presidency to a new nadir. A few jaw-dropping quotes:

(1) “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.” Really, Mr. President? You’re “discovering” this minor detail three years after you forced through a massive, unpopular overhaul of the entire system? This statement is a breathtaking admission of abject dereliction and incompetence. ABC News’ Rick Klein also notes that the administration’s long-time talking points assured skeptical consumers that Obamacare would be easy to buy. That’s what all of the “just like Expedia!” comparisons were about. Now, with millions getting booted from their plans, with a horribly broken website exacerbating the pain, Obama suddenly sees the light. A disgrace.

2) “What we’re essentially saying is the Affordable Care Act is not going to be the factor in what happens with folks in the individual market.” Points for candor, I guess. Here the president explicitly spells out the motivation behind his so-called “fix” — which even liberal wonks and industry experts are admitting are unworkable and will make the law’s problems worse. The goal is not to repair the damage; the goal is to scapegoat someone else for the Obamacare wreckage that awaits. Insurance companies are the new villains. Insurers, who’ve been in bed with Obama on this law from the beginning, aren’t going to take the demonization lying down. Obama is decreeing a 13th-hour disruption that they cannot comply with at this stage, and that will throw their finances into chaos. They will, in turn, hike premiums even more next year. This is the death spiral, ladies and gentlemen. And Obama will try to stand to the side and point at his former Obamacare partners as the culprits. It’s shameful. And I suspect it won’t work. His credibility is in the tank.

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Obama Announces One Year Optional Delay In Requiring Insurance Companies To Cancel Policies (+video)

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Photo Credit: Breitbart By David Espo and Julie Pace.

Bowing to pressure, President Barack Obama on Thursday announced changes under his health care law to give insurance companies the option to keep offering consumers plans that would otherwise be canceled.

The administrative changes are good for just one year, though senior administration officials said they could be extended if problems with the law persist. Obama announced the changes at the White House.

“This fix won’t solve every problem for every person, but it’s going to help a lot of people,” the president said.

But it was unclear if state officials, who would have to implement the changes, would go along. Insurers also had concerns.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners said the president’s proposal could undermine the new health insurance markets his law seeks to create.

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‘Fairy Tale’ Continues as Obama Proposes Extralegal Obamacare Fix

By Daniel Halper.

Earlier this week, former President Bill Clinton advised President Obama to “honor the commitment” he made and to allow Americans to keep their health care plans, if they like them. That was a central promise Obama made when he sold Obamacare, but one that turned out not to be true when Obamacare began to be implemented last month.

“So I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got,” Clinton in an interview released Tuesday.

Now President Obama is taking Clinton’s advice and trying to honor that commitment. In remarks today at the White House today, Obama said, “I completely get how upsetting this can be” to lose insurance plans that I promised Americans would be able to keep. “To those Americans, I hear you loud and clear.”

But there’s a catch with president’s proposed solution. The president is not proposing that the law be changed to allow all health insurance plans grandfathered into Obamacare’s eligibility requirements.

No, instead the White House is saying that it will use “enforcement discretion” to allow illegal health insurance plans to be able to still be sold. That is, the Obama administration will not enforce the penalty on individuals for not having eligible health insurance plans and they’ll allow the insurance companies to still sell so-called bad plans — plans they technically can’t sell under Obamacare.

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Obama Likens Health Care Law To Forcing People to ‘Buy a New Car’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles DharapakBy Melanie Hunter.

President Barack Obama on Thursday compared the grandfather clause in Obamacare to telling people they have to buy a new car right now even if they can’t afford it – when cars were first required to have seat belts or air bags.

“So what we’re saying now is if you’re buying a new car, you’ve got to have a seat belt. Well, the problem with the grandfather clause that we put in place is it’s almost like we said to folks, ‘You gotta buy a new car, even if you can’t afford it right now,’” he said during Thursday’s press conference on how to fix the Affordable Care Act.

“And sooner or later, folks are going to start trading in their old cars, but if their life circumstance is such that for now at least, they want to keep their old car even if the new car is better, we should be able to give them that option, and that’s what we want to do,” Obama said.

According to healthcare.gov, grandfathered health insurance plans “are those that were in existence on March 23, 2010 and haven’t been changed in ways that substantially cut benefits or increase costs for consumers. Insurers must notify customers with these policies that they have a grandfathered plan.”

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Photo Credit: APObama: ‘I Must Win Back Credibility’

By Ben Shapiro.

On Thursday, President Obama took to the White House podium to explain that he would be unilaterally allowing insurance companies to continue selling health insurance plans Americans liked and wanted to keep. Obamacare has already wiped away those plans, and will undoubtedly drive up rates in both the now-broken individual market and the high-risk pool of people likely to enter the Obamacare exchanges.

President Obama was half an hour late to his press conference, which was supposed to begin at 11:35 a.m. ET. During his comments, he never called Obamacare by that name; instead, he reverted to terming it the Affordable Care Act. “Today I want to update the American people on our efforts to implement and improve the Affordable Care Act,” Obama said.

From there, Obama turned to the horrendously low Obamacare enrollment numbers. He noted that 106,000 Americans had selected a health insurance plan. “Is that as high a number as we’d like?” Obama said. “Absolutely not. But it does mean that people want affordable healthcare.” After blaming the website again, Obama said, “there’s no question that there’s real demand for quality affordable health insurance.”

Later, when asked by National Journal’s Major Garrett why he had continued to pump the website just one week before launch, and whether he had been informed about the technical problems, President Obama claimed ignorance. “I was not informed directly that the website was not working,” Obama said. “If I’d been informed, I wouldn’t have gone out and said ‘The website is going to be great.’” He added, “I don’t think I’m stupid enough” to compare the website to Amazon or Travelocity knowing it would fail.

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State Insurance Regulators ‘Concerned’ about Obama’s Proposed Health Care Fix

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Photo Credit: ThinkstockAt a Thursday press conference, President Obama, in attempt to calm the backlash from millions of Americans losing their insurance coverage, announced that insurers would no longer be bound by the requirements of his health care law for plans currently in effect.

He said that now the issue would be up to insurers and state regulators.

But Jim Donelon, president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (the organization representing state insurance commissioners), said that state regulators are “concerned” about Obama’s announcement and aren’t clear on how it could be workable.

Here is the full statement from Donelon, emailed through a NAIC spokesman:

We share the President’s and Congress’ concerns about policy cancellations and issues including gaps in coverage that may result from them, and fully understand the anxiety of the residents of our states who have received these notices. This anxiety is especially heightened given the issues with the federal exchange.

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Ben Stein: Obama Making ‘Annihilation’ of Jews Possible

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Photo Credit: Murray State/flickrCommentator Ben Stein said on Thursday that President Barack Obama’s “deeply naïve” premise that Iran would suddenly end its nuclear activities in exchange for an easing of sanctions that have crippled its economy for five years would make the “annihilation” of Jews possible.

“Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terror,” Stein said in The American Spectator. “The Iranians in the recent past have pledged to destroy the Jewish people in the Middle East.

“Some of their leaders have boasted that if Iran gets nuclear weapons, Iran will have ‘a holocaust in an afternoon’ by rocketing a few nuclear weapons into Israel,” Stein added. “Naturally, the Israelis are desperately worried.”

A round of talks between Iran and world powers in Geneva fell short of an expected deal on Sunday after French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius objected, saying the terms of a preliminary agreement were too easy on Tehran.

The deal would not have required Iran, for instance, to close any of its 18,000 uranium centrifuges or its heavy water reactor in Arak, which would serve as a source of plutonium when it starts operations in about two years.

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Rep. Trey Gowdy: Are You Going to Believe What Obama Tells You?

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama announced an Obamacare “fix,” but who will believe him, a conservative Republican asked ahead of the president’s appearance in the White House briefing room Thursday.

“Are you going to believe what he tells you at 11:30 this morning?” Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) asked during a Thursday morning interview on Fox News.

“Twenty-seven different times he told you, you and I would never be having this conversation, because if you liked your insurance you could keep it. And for those who weren’t paying attention, he said ‘period.'”…

Gowdy said Obama is seeking a “political remedy” — “because his dream of retaking the House has now turned into the nightmare of, he may lose the Senate — because half of the people that he works for don’t believe what comes out of his mouth.”

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Rush Limbaugh: Obama ‘Playing Dictator’ With Healthcare

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Photo Credit: APRadio talk show host Rush Limbaugh played President Barack Obama’s announcement about the troubled healthcare law on his show Thursday, commenting as he went and likening the president to a dictator.

When the president had finished explaining his proposed change to Obamacare, which would allow individuals to keep their plans for another year, Limbaugh told his audience:

“He’s doing two things: He’s telling the insurance companies, as a dictator would, what they can and can’t do or what they must or must not do, or what they have to and don’t have to do. He is suggesting … that if you have your plan now and you like it, you can keep it for one more year so that you don’t get any angrier at Democrats than you are now and vote against them next November.”

The Palm-Beach, Fla., based commentator continued, “If your plan has been canceled, he has just ordered the insurance company to make it available to you, so that you can go back and get that plan. The problem is that that plan was canceled precisely because it conflicts with his law, with Obamacare.”

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