While announcing – as “breaking news” – that ObamaCare has supposedly reached its goal of 6 million so-called enrollees before March 31, Ed Schultz went full-metal-jacket Ed Schultz Thursday.
The ever-cranky host of The Ed Show said the feat is even more amazing given the “jihad” that “right-wing radio” has waged against ObamaCare.
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…Will Brooke in Alabama has the right idea about destroying Obamacare. And I love his appreciation of the 2nd amendment.
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“Mr. President, the junior senator from Wyoming has come to the floor several times recently talking about the fact that examples that he and others Republicans have given dealing with ObamaCare, examples that are bad, I’ve called lies. Mr. President, that is simply untrue,” Reid said.
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Photo Credit: AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
Senate Democrats, facing an increasing threat of losing their majority in November, rolled out an ambitious and populist legislative agenda on Wednesday that aims to rally their base and divert voter attention away from the unpopular health reform law.
The agenda, which includes a minimum wage bill and legislation to ensure women and men are paid equally by making it easier for employees to file lawsuits, has no chance of becoming law because the Republican-run House will not take up any of the proposals.
But Democrats hope to benefit from the effort by contrasting themselves against Republicans, who they portray as a party that only cares about big corporations and the rich.
Democrats are calling their plan the “Fair Shot for Everyone” agenda.
“While Republicans defend a system that benefits huge corporations and a few at the top, Democrats will go on offense with a positive agenda that has broad support among liberals, conservatives and moderates,” Democratic leaders announced in a press release issued before they addressed reporters on Wednesday.
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Democrat Tells Americans: You’re Too Stupid to Use Our Wonderful Healthcare.gov Website
By Bryan Preston.
When it debuted in October 2013, Healthcare.gov wasn’t finished. The backend that verifies payments didn’t even work. It had major security flaws. It could not handle even a trickle of the traffic that its designers, the U.S. federal government, should have anticipated.
But Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) has a message for Americans who’ve had trouble using that site: It’s your fault.
“We have hundreds of thousands of people who tried to sign up who didn’t get through,” he said. “There are some people who are not like my grandchildren who can handle everything so easily on the Internet, and these people need a little extra time. It’s not — the example they gave us is a 63-year-old woman came into the store and said, ‘I almost got it. Every time I just about got there, it would cut me off.’ We have a lot of people just like this through no fault of the Internet, but because people are not educated on how to use the Internet.” Emphasis added.
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“This is really one of the most audacious changes so far because several committees in Congress have been looking at all these delays and all these changes. Secretary Sebelius was asked point blank, ‘Will you extend the deadline past the March 31 enrollment date?’ And she said, ‘No, we will not,’” said Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner.
“In a separate hearing she said, ‘We don’t believe we have legal authority to do that.’ But that’s what they’ve done anyway. So they’re basically going before Congress that people have until March 31. Clearly, they’re not getting the enrollment they wanted. Therefore, they’re going to ask people, ‘Well, did you try to enroll? Did you have any trouble? If so, then we’ll extend the deadline for you. Rules mean nothing to this administration,” Turner said.
After initially stating that seven million sign-ups were needed, the administration has lowered the target goal to six million and stated that more than five million have signed up. However, neither Sebelius nor any other administration official will confirm how many Americans have actually paid their first month’s premiums. Sebelius said she doesn’t know because private insurance firms have that data. Turner isn’t buying it.
“I don’t believe that she doesn’t know. She hides behind the fact that they don’t have any way of knowing that. Part of it is because the website is still not built, as far as being able to allow people to pay. But I think if they knew and that were a big number, we would hear about it,” said Turner, who noted that House Republicans are now going directly to the insurance companies to determine how many enrollees have actually paid their premiums.
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He was responding to the administration’s announcement on Tuesday evening that people who had begun the process of signing up for insurance through the federal exchanges would have until mid-April to do so, instead of March 31.
The Speaker called the move “another deadline made meaningless,” adding it to a litany of unilateral changes that the administration has made to the law.
“This is part of a long-term pattern of this administration manipulating the law for its own convenience,” Boehner said. “It’s not hard to understand why the American people question this administration’s commitment to the rule of law.”
The Speaker mocked the use of the “honor system” to determine who was eligible for an extension after the administration said it would make no effort to ensure that people had actually begun the process of signing up by March 31.
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Photo Credit: AFP
Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post broke the story. Goldstein reports that the revised deadline “will apply to the federal exchanges operating in three dozen states” and extend for two to three weeks.
On the spectrum of things that the White House has pushed back or changed about Obamacare, this is a relative tweak. The original open enrollment period for the first year of Obamacare was set up to last for six months; instead it will last for 6.5 months. Unlike some of the clearly illegal extensions and delays that the White House has put forth, this one appears to be legal; the text of the Affordable Care Act doesn’t specify how long the open enrollment period should be, leaving that task to the regulators at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
CMS: ‘We don’t actually have the statutory authority’ to extend deadline
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A President Obama-aligned group trying to drum up enrollment for ObamaCare is giving away bumper stickers that spoof the Gadsden flag — a symbol informally adopted by the Tea Party movement and, for that reason, long derided by Democrats.
Photo Credit: OFAThe stickers are a marketing ploy by Organizing for Action, an advocacy group which helped Obama win reelection in 2012. The stickers feature a doctor’s stethoscope, instead of the coiled rattlesnake on the original golden-colored flag.
“This is for everyone who’s tired of hearing the other side talk smack about health care reform that is helping millions of Americans get affordable, quality care,” OFA Executive Director Jon Carson said in announcing the free stickers through Facebook…
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Photo Credit: Cain TVBy Herman Cain.
Cancer centers opt out, including the one that saved my life.
I saw recently that several cancer centers in this country have decided to opt out of taking ObamaCare-insured patients. One of them is M.D. Anderson in Houston.
That hit home in a very personal way, because it made me realize something. If ObamaCare had been in place in 2006, I would now be dead. (Let’s see if Harry Reid, or Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, want to try to call me a liar for this.)
Eight years ago this month, I was diagnosed with cancer. The first opinion I received was not encouraging. Not at all. So I sought a second opinion. Fortunately, the nature of my insurance at the time was such that I had the freedom to choose who I would see, and I chose the outstanding Dr. Lloyd at Houston’s M.D. Anderson. He believed I could beat the cancer, and I then had the freedom to begin seeing an Atlanta-based oncologist who helped get me on the path back to health.
Today I am cancer-free.
Now let’s say I had been relying on an ObamaCare insurance policy, which would mandate that all my treatment take place within its own network. In that case, I would not have had the freedom to go to M.D. Anderson and I would never have seen Dr. Lloyd.
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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueObamacare’s Regulatory Costs More than Double Benefits
By Sarah Hurtubise.
The annual costs of Obamacare regulations come in at $6.8 billion a year so far — around 2.5 times the total benefits of its heavy-handed regulations, according to study released Monday.
The federal government’s estimates of Obamacare’s regulatory “benefits” — what they project in increased efficiency or productivity due to streamlined processes and standards — clock in at just $2.6 billion annually, as opposed to the cost of complying with all those regulations, which is almost $7 billion.
By 2014, when all but those delayed parts of the Affordable Care Act have been implemented, regulations have imposed over $27.2 billion in costs upon the private sector and $8 billion in unfunded state burdens, the report by free-market think tank American Action Forum (AAF) found.
A large portion of the costs come from the paperwork burden that Obamacare places upon states and private companies. Implementing the law takes 159 million paperwork hours a year for state governments and the private sector — an amount that would take close to 80,000 employees, working 50 weeks per year full-time. (That’s 40 hours per week, not Obamacare’s 30-hour work week threshold for full-time.)
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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Larry Downing Sunday marks the fourth anniversary of Obamacare’s signing on March 23, 2010. Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said that at this point Democrats “have a really good story to tell.” But Americans outside of Washington, D.C. are also telling their own stories about the health care law.
To commemorate the anniversary, Republican Ohio Rep. Bob Gibbs this week asked people on his Facebook page to share how “this law has impacted your life.” A few of the answers to Gibbs’ question are presented below.
Please mark this anniversary by sharing your own stories about Obamacare impact in the Comments section. The president might not see them, and the mainstream media sure won’t report on them, but we will.
“My Premiums have gone up around 20% a year, my deductible has gone up by $6000 (not a typo). My wife had to change her doctor, I was unable to keep the plan I liked because my company didn’t want to pay a ‘luxury tax’. We’re still waiting to see if my children have to change pediatricians. Small businesses are being decimated in my area, in part because of this and in part because of the lack of a coherent economic policy. I had to have some tires put on a my car the other day and the mechanic was saying that things haven’t been this bad since 1981…you know, when President Carter had just completed his term and President Reagan took on that mess. We need that kind of leadership now.”
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