Posts

White House Violates Law with ObamaCare Delay

/15 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: breitbart

Photo Credit: breitbart

By Ken Klukowski. Obama administration officials are illegally delaying enforcement of a central provision in the president’s namesake legislation in a desperate attempt to manipulate the 2014 midterm elections and swell the ranks of those who look to government for healthcare.

The White House is beginning to sense that when Americans realize the price of “free” healthcare, they’re likely to take swift vengeance on those responsible.

Section 1513 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, better known as Obamacare) requires all large employers to provide health insurance for their employees. “Large employers” are those with at least 50 full-time employees, and “full-time” is defined as averaging 30 or more hours per week…

Yet in a blatantly illegal move, the Obama administration is presuming to rewrite the ACA by choosing not to enforce provisions that are causing visible problems. The IRS—which is tasked with enforcing the Employer Mandate—will simply not enforce it until 2015. Every large employer in the country is under the mandate. If they don’t comply, then they are breaking federal law.

But the IRS not enforcing Section 1513 is like a policeman who patrols a stretch of road who says for the next year, he won’t issue any speeding tickets. He has no authority to suspend the law, but if he chooses to violate his duty by failing to enforce the law, then to all the motorists on the road it’s as if the law does not exist. Read more from this story HERE.

______________________________________________________________

Obama admin delays major requirement of health law

By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar. In a major concession to business groups, the Obama administration Tuesday unexpectedly announced a one-year delay, until after the 2014 elections, in a central requirement of the new health care law that many companies provide coverage for their workers or face fines.

The move sacrificed timely implementation of President Barack Obama’s signature legislation but may help the administration politically by blunting an election-year line of attack Republicans were planning to use. The employer requirements are among the most complex parts of the health care law, which is designed to expand coverage for uninsured Americans.

“We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively,” Treasury Assistant Secretary Mark Mazur said in a blog post. “We have listened to your feedback and we are taking action.”

Business groups were jubilant. “A pleasant surprise,” said Randy Johnson, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. There was no inkling in advance of the administration’s action, he said.

“We commend the administration’s wise move,” said Neil Trautwein, a vice president of the National Retail Federation. It “will provide employers and businesses more time to update their health care coverage without threat of arbitrary punishment.” Read more from this story HERE.

______________________________________________________________

Obamacare’s employer mandate delayed to 2015

By Tom Howell Jr. Facing an outcry from businesses, the Obama administration Tuesday said it would delay a key part of the new health care law for an additional year, to 2015 — a stunning move that officials said gives them a chance to work out kinks over how to administer the so-called employer mandate.

In statements Tuesday evening, White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and Mark J. Mazur, assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury, said the goal was to give businesses more time to comply with the rules, though opponents said it was an acknowledgment of a looming disaster.

The delay is to the mandate requiring businesses with more than 50 workers to offer insurance to all full-time employees, or else pay a fine of $2,000 per worker. Business lobbied heavily against it, and now it will not go into effect until after the 2014 midterm elections.

“We have listened to your feedback. And we are taking action,” Mr. Mazur said.

The individual mandate, which applies to those who are self-employed or whose companies don’t offer insurance, is still in effect as of 2014, as are the state-by-state insurance markets, or “exchanges,” which are to be operating as of Oct. 1 and will allow small businesses and individuals without employer-based insurance to shop for health coverage with the help of government subsidies. Read more from this story HERE.

Doctors Perform Thousands of Unnecessary Surgeries (+video)

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Kevin Moloney

Photo Credit: Kevin Moloney

Tens of thousands of times each year, patients are wheeled into the nation’s operating rooms for surgery that isn’t necessary, a USA TODAY review of government records and medical databases finds. Some … fall victim to predators who enrich themselves by bilking insurers for operations that are not medically justified. Even more turn to doctors who simply lack the competence or training to recognize when a surgical procedure can be avoided, either because the medical facts don’t warrant it or because there are non-surgical treatments that would better serve the patient.

The scope and toll of the problem are enormous, yet it remains largely hidden. Public attention has been limited to a few sensational cases, typically involving doctors who put cardiac stents in patients who didn’t need them.

In fact, unnecessary surgeries might account for 10% to 20% of all operations in some specialties, including a wide range of cardiac procedures — not only stents, but also angioplasty and pacemaker implants — as well as many spinal surgeries. Knee replacements, hysterectomies, and cesarean sections are among the other surgical procedures performed more often than needed, according to a review of in-depth studies and data generated by both government and academic sources.

Since 2005, more than 1,000 doctors have made payments to settle or close malpractice claims in surgical cases that involved allegations of unnecessary or inappropriate procedures, according to a USA TODAY analysis of the U.S. government’s National Practitioner Data Bank public use file, which tracks the suits. About half the doctors’ payments involved allegations of serious permanent injury or death, and many of the cases involved multiple plaintiffs, suggesting many hundreds, if not thousands, of victims.

Read more from this story HERE.

American Factory Boss Says He’s Being Held Hostage by Scores of Workers in Beijing

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

An American executive said Monday he has been held hostage for four days at his medical supply plant in Beijing by scores of workers demanding severance packages like those given to 30 co-workers in a phased-out department.

Chip Starnes, 42, a co-owner of Coral Springs, Florida-based Specialty Medical Supplies, said local officials had visited the 10-year-old plant on the capital’s outskirts and coerced him into signing agreements Saturday to meet the workers’ demands even though he sought to make clear that the remaining 100 workers weren’t being laid off.

The workers were expecting wire transfers by Tuesday, he said, adding that about 80 of them had been blocking every exit around the clock and depriving him of sleep by shining bright lights and banging on windows of his office. He declined to clarify the amount, saying he wanted to keep it confidential.

“I feel like a trapped animal,” Starnes told The Associated Press on Monday from his first-floor office window, while holding onto the window’s bars. “I think it’s inhumane what is going on right now. I have been in this area for 10 years and created a lot of jobs and I would never have thought in my wildest imagination something like this would happen.”

Workers inside the compound, a pair of two-story buildings behind gates and hedges in the Huairou district of the northeastern Beijing suburbs, repeatedly declined requests for comment, saying they did not want to talk to foreign media.

Read more from this story HERE.

Largest Medical Military Hospital to Furlough Thousands, Putting Wounded Vets’ Care at Risk

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Thousands of civilian workers at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center — the country’s top facility for wounded combat soldiers — are facing furloughs this summer, as a result of sequester and other federal budget problems, according to the Defense Department.

Roughly 2,400 workers at the suburban Washington facility were recently notified by letter that the department needs them to take off as many as 11 days without pay this summer to help with “extraordinary and serious budgets challenges.”

The furloughs target a wide scope of non-combat facilities and civilian workers to “provide the war-fighters with what they need to protect national security,” states the May 28 letter, first obtained by Federal News Radio.

In a development that worries advocacy groups, the furloughs will impact about 94 percent of the Walter Reed civilian staff including doctors, nurses, lab technicians and physical therapists.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Will Share Personal Health Info with Federal, State Agencies

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

A new 253-page Obamacare rule issued late Friday requires state, federal and local agencies as well as health insurers to swap the protected personal health information of anybody seeking to join the new health care program that will be enforced by the Internal Revenue Service.

Protected health information, or PHI, is highly protected under federal law, but the latest ruling from the Department of Health and Human Services allows agencies to trade the information to verify that Obamacare applicants are getting the minimum amount of health insurance coverage they need from the health “exchanges.”

The ruling, explained on pages 72-73 of the book-thick guidance, does not mention any requirement that applicants first OK the release of their PHI. HHS already allows some exchange of PHI without an individual’s pre-approval, especially when for a “government program providing public benefits.” Officials said the swapping of information is simply meant to help figure the best insurance coverge of Obamacare users.

The new ruling surprised some congressional critics. “This sounds as if HHS will have access to protected health info to me,” said one top Hill aide worried about how well the administration will protect that information.

Read more from this story HERE.

Federal Agents Now Invade Hospital Exam Rooms, Thanks to HIPPA

/48 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

I recently endured my third round of invasion by the Joint Commission, or JCAHO (Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations). I am still reeling from the experience. Without my consent and without warning, the investigator invited herself into the sanctum of our exam room, explaining that she had verbal consent from the patient to observe, “and we learn so much!” I was caught completely off guard, and working as a private contractor in a government sponsored facility, I didn’t resist, but I can say now in retrospect…it will never happen to me again.

Never in more than 20 years of medical practice have I had a government agent invade the sacred space of my private exam room. Oh yes, I have acceded to the review of my private medical records by their auditors, holy ground that never should have been given, but this was too much. Ah, but she had HIPAA in her hand.

It has taken me a while to get the big picture. At first when I heard of HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) I was mystified, why should we need such a law? After all, the idea of doctor-patient confidentiality has been an essential foundation of western medicine for two thousand years before there ever was a United States of America, so we surely didn’t just think it up. Furthermore, if the King’s Court jesters (or shall we say ‘Supreme Court’) can find an “implied right to privacy” in the US Constitution for a woman to kill her unborn baby, why in the world would we need a new set of laws to protect privacy between a doctor and patient?

It’s really quite simple, the cost of medicine today has escaped us. When my Grand daddy was still around, he either paid for his medical care out of his pocket, or he didn’t get it, simple as that. Today, nobody can afford to pay their own medical costs, why a small cut on your finger with a trip to the emergency room for a few stitches could run over a thousand dollars, and a woman recently confided to me that her hysterectomy cost in excess of $65,000! Now think about how many women in this country will need a hysterectomy this year, can we afford this? How about a $90,000 heart catheterization and stent followed by a new blood thinner drug that will cost $2000 a month to keep it working? So we see that more and more we have to rely on our government to foot the bill of the things we could never pay for.

There it is… if the government is going to pay for health care, they want to get the ‘most bang for their buck’ so they need a way to measure, and to measure, they need beans to count, and to have beans to count, they have to have records, and to have records—they can’t be in a safe paper chart in some doctors office, they need to be electronic and available, hence the advent of the EHR (Electronic Health Record). Nobody honestly finds this actually facilitates patient care (everyone I talk to finds that all this data entry increases the time need to see one patient), but it sure gives the government beans to count.

Now for them to sell us on this idea, they had to create the illusion of protecting the privacy of medical information when in reality the foxes were just letting themselves into the hen house! Remember, the “P” in HIPAA does not stand for privacy like they want us to believe, but for portability, so it’s easier for them to access. The government now has an information highway to the most private thing you have, your own medical record. And remember, next time you sit down with your doctor in confidence, you may look up and find they have invited themselves to sit in, after all, “they can learn so much!” Welcome to the 21st century and a brave new world (soon to be ‘Logan’s Run’).

_______________________________________________

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to respond to concerns raised in response to the above article regarding the Joint Commission. Let me clarify, JCAHO was not originally created by the Federal Government nor is it directly funded by Federal moneys. And if my use of the term “agent” created that misunderstanding, I extend my apologies, that was not my intent. Rather my intent is to point out that Joint Commission has become a tool of the Federal machine. Joint Commission accreditation has become a primary measure by which health organizations can qualify for Medicare participation and, in many states, Medicaid participation as well. Medicare funds are clearly of Federal origin, and to put it simply, a health organization which doesn’t have Joint Commission accreditation or, worse yet, fails their accreditation will find it very difficult to access those Federal moneys. Thus, JCAHO is operationally an agent of the Federal system, and reflects Federal intrusion. One cannot deny that Joint Commission is required to comply with Federal regulations in its reporting and that Joint Commission reflects the requirements of CMS (Center for Medicare Services) standards, thus playing a regulatory role for the Federal government.

Affordable Care Act to be Unaffordable to Many Low Income Employees

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Leader Nancy Pelosi

It’s called the Affordable Care Act, but President Obama’s health care law may turn out to be unaffordable for many low-wage workers, including employees at big chain restaurants, retail stores and hotels.

That might seem strange since the law requires medium-sized and large employers to offer “affordable” coverage or face fines.

But what’s reasonable? Because of a wrinkle in the law, companies can meet their legal obligations by offering policies that would be too expensive for many low-wage workers. For the employee, it’s like a mirage — attractive but out of reach.

The company can get off the hook, say corporate consultants and policy experts, but the employee could still face a federal requirement to get health insurance.

Many are expected to remain uninsured, possibly risking fines. That’s due to another provision: the law says workers with an offer of “affordable” workplace coverage aren’t entitled to new tax credits for private insurance, which could be a better deal for those on the lower rungs of the middle class.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Left Speechless Without Prepared Remarks on Health Care (+video)

/11 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Evan Vucci

President Obama was left stranded without a copy of his speech Friday as he prepared to give a short presentation about the importance of Californians enrolling in his health-care program.

As Mr. Obama walked on stage at the event in San Jose, Calif., he immediately noticed that a paper copy of his speech wasn’t on the podium with the presidential seal. The president was working without a teleprompter, and he tried to stall for time until aides could rescue him.

“Good morning everybody, it is wonderful to see all of you,” Mr. Obama said to the audience. “I want to thank everybody who is here. I think there’s only one problem, and that is that my remarks are not sitting here.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Most Uninsured Don’t Know if they’ll use Obamacare, Most in US Think Healthcare Will Suffer

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: CNBC

There’s no assurance folks will be buying insurance under Obamacare, and that could spell trouble for the Affordable Care Act.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans who currently lack health insurance don’t know yet if they will purchase that coverage by the Jan. 1 deadline set by the ACA, a new survey revealed Monday.

And less than half of those in the survey released by InsuranceQuotes.com think they’ll get better health care after Obamacare takes full effect. Nearly 50 percent believe the ACA will make it more difficult for them to get tests and procedures done in a timely manner, according to the phone survey of 1,001 adult Americans conducted in early May.

And a whopping 68 percent of low-income Americans aren’t sure they qualify for tax credits that would subsidize their purchase of health insurance—despite they fact that they almost invariably will qualify, the survey found. That population is most likely to benefit from government subsidies under the health-care reform law.

Laura Adams, senior insurance analyst at InsuranceQuotes.com, said public uncertainty about Obamacare—particularly a lack of commitment to signing up—could end up driving up health-insurance costs under the program because not enough healthy people will participate to offset benefits payouts.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Lied: Obamacare Will Result in Insurance Plans Being Cancelled

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: NObamaNoMas

New health insurance rules under ObamaCare could lead to a host of personal insurance plans being canceled as early as this fall, a scenario expected to cause consumer confusion.

Under the federal overhaul, those policies that cannot meet new insurance plan standards may be discontinued. This means individuals, and some small businesses, that rely on those plans will have to find new ones.

The goal is to ensure that most insurance policies offer a basic set of coverage, as part of the Obama administration’s plan to cover most of the nation’s 50 million uninsured.

Yet it also seems to run afoul of one of the president’s best-known promises on the law: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.”

In fact, state insurance commissioners largely are giving insurers the option of canceling existing plans or changing them to comply with new federal requirements.

Read more from this story HERE.