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Krauthammer: Obamacare Delays Stuff of ‘Banana Republic’

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Photo Credit: Screenshot The latest delay in the Obamacare employer mandate is more like something done in a “banana republic” than in a democracy, says conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer.

Appearing on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” on Monday, Krauthammer was part of a panel discussion on Monday’s delay of the employee mandate for yet another year, taking the issue past this year’s midterm elections.

“The whole idea here that the administration is trying to promote that it’s a timing issue and we’ve got to ease them into this is a farce, ” Krauthammer said. “It’s the substance of it.” In the end, he said, the White House may have to cancel the mandate altogether because it will increase joblessness.

“Generally speaking you get past the next election by changing your policies, by announcing new initiatives, but not by wantonly changing the law lawlessly,” Krauthammer said. “This is stuff you do in a banana republic. It’s as if the law is simply a blackboard on which Obama writes any number he wants, any delay he wants on any provision.”

The Affordable Care Act has seen so many changes that no one even notices or complains anymore, he added. If complaints had started with the first “arbitrary changes,” Krauthammer said, perhaps they could have been stopped.

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Parallels to ObamaCare Site Woes Seen as Vets Try to Get Benefits Online

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Photo Credit: REUTERSThe glitches and other problems with the ObamaCare website that sparked a national firestorm are similar to those military veterans using the federal government’s online benefits system have routinely faced for about the past 18 months.

Eric Jenkins, a veteran and American Federation of Government Employees representative, recently told Congress that during January the Veterans Benefits Management System crashed about once a week with downtimes ranging from one hour to multiple days.

“The constant … technical issues and frequent shutdowns make it difficult for me and others to serve veterans,” Jenkins told a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee.

The $537 million system went online in fall 2012 at a Department of Veterans Affairs office in New England and is now in all 56 regional offices.

The change to a paperless system was a major part of the Veterans Affairs’ goal of eliminating a massive backlog of compensation claims by 2015, with 98 percent accuracy.

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Demonomics

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This week the big story was the tag end of the old JournoList gang trying to spin gold out of the dross of the Congressional Budget Report. The CBO report projected that by 2021 under ObamaCare more than 2 million full-time workers will find it financially advisable to quit work entirely or switch to part-time jobs in order to get more subsidies for healthcare insurance. To most of us who studied real economics or just paid attention to human nature, subsidizing indolence means you’ll get more of it.

But to the airheads on the left and their JournoList spinmasters — the very people who believed in their hearts that young, healthy workers would willingly pay more for their health insurance to subsidize older, sicker Americans and learned nothing from the failure of that prediction, this devastating CBO report spelled out a wonderful new world of possibilities for American workers at the bottom rungs.

1. Job Lock

Working their dreidels overtime, the gang argued that the CBO report was going to end job lock — long a Republican goal — but as “Ignatz” posted on Just One Minute: “I believe the Republican idea was to decouple insurance from employment, not decouple the employee from employment”

Nancy Pelosi, the JournoList band leader on this less-is-more score taunted: “The GOP seems to have forgotten that ending ‘job-lock; has been an avowed Republican goal for years — even a highlight in the Republican Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential race.” Her claim was a gross misrepresentation:

“Job-lock” itself is a different problem. Instead of effectively paying people to work less, as Obamacare does, conservative proposals would end federal preferences for employer-based insurance, allowing Americans to take insurance with them from job to job. People would not be stuck with a specific employer because they want to stay insured.

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Rand Paul Op-Ed: When Will Obama Start Caring?

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Photo Credit: APJust when you thought Obamacare couldn’t get any worse, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported on Tuesday that the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs will be lost due to Obamacare.

We can’t afford to lose any more jobs.

These numbers are calculated according to how many work hours the CBO estimates will be lost in the coming decade. Reuters reports, “In its latest U.S. fiscal outlook, the nonpartisan CBO said the health law would lead some workers, particularly those with lower incomes, to limit their hours to avoid losing federal subsidies that Obamacare provides to help pay for health insurance and other healthcare costs.”

Reuters continues, “Work hours would be reduced by the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs in 2024, said the agency, which earlier predicted 800,000 fewer full-time jobs by 2021. The bottom line would be a slower rate of growth for employment and compensation in the coming decade, according to the report.”

This is yet another example of the damage Obamacare has continued to inflict since its implementation.

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Should this Senator be Awarded ‘Lie of the Year’?

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Photo Credit: SenateDemocratsIn an interview with Bill O’Reilly last Sunday, Barack Obama doubled down on the IRS cover-up, claiming that there was not so much as “a smidgen of corruption” in the rogue agency’s clear political profiling of conservative groups.

Nothing could be further from the truth. How do I know this? Because just a few months ago, IRS officials apologized, and the President himself called the behavior “outrageous and unacceptable.”

Now we’re supposed to believe those who demand answers are acting out in bad faith and fabricating “phony scandals.” All this has prompted some to suggest that the Mr. Obama should be in the running for his second consecutive “Lie of the Year” award.

If you recall, the “Lie of the Year” last year was “if you like your health plan, you can keep it.” Problem is, Barack Obama should have had to share the award with Democrat Senator Mark Begich, because he sold Alaskans the same bill of goods.

Turns out Mr. Begich has not been honest about his voting record in Washington, D.C. either. After spending the last year telling Alaskans he was “as independent as Alaska,” Congressional Quarterly reported this week that the junior senator voted with Barack Obama 97% of the time in 2013. Now that’s what I call a whopper!

But that’s not all. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office is now projecting total jobs lost due to the passage of Obamacare to reach 2.5 million, according to Forbes online. This stands in stark contrast to Mark Begich’s 2009 claim that Obamacare would be good for small business.

Mark Begich could have saved Alaska from the train wreck we call Obamacare, but instead chose to hand his 60th and deciding vote over to Harry Reid and the Democrat Majority.

It’s time to send a clear and unequivocal message to the Washington elites. Obamacare must go. Whether it’s by repeal or through defunding, it’s time to kill Obamacare and put America back to work.

I can’t do this alone. But together, we can make a difference.

In the fight,

Joe Miller, candidate
United States Senate

CBO Report Fallout: Specter of Welfare State Jolts Democrats

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Photo Credit: Charles DharapakThe White House and congressional Democrats are trying to limit the fallout from the politically damaging conclusion in a Congressional Budget Office report that the Obamacare entitlement creates a major incentive for some people not to work.

While some critics focused on a finding by the CBO that Obamacare will result in 2.5 million fewer workers over a decade, conservatives said the bigger fundamental issue highlighted in the report is one familiar to the welfare state — that taxpayer-funded government subsidies provide disincentives for full-time work.

“People used to be stuck in jobs because they needed the health insurance,” said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a practicing physician and a specialist on health care policy at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “Now they’re going to be prevented from taking jobs because they need the subsidies.”

The CBO forecast continued to reverberate across Capitol Hill on multiple issues. The nonpartisan budget agency’s prediction that the U.S. jobless rate likely will stay above 6 percent through 2016 was revealed as Senate Democrats were preparing a push for another extension of benefits to the long-term unemployed, raising the prospect that the government will face much higher benefit costs over the coming years.

The Senate is expected to stage a test vote Thursday on extending the long-term jobless benefits.

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Could Another ObamaCare Extension Be in the Works Going Beyond 2016?

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Photo Credit: Fox News Following a string of setbacks, the Obama administration reportedly is considering yet another extension of existing individual health insurance policies in an effort to smooth the transition to the federal exchanges under the Affordable Care Act.

Aetna Inc. Chairman and CEO Mark Bertolini told analysts during a conference call he heard the plans could be extended. So did Avalere Health CEO Dan Mendelson.

Meldelson said the Obama administration may decide to let policyholders keep their coverage for an additional three years but refused to confirm if a decision had already been made on the subject.

Avalere Health is a market analysis firm, but Mendelson said his company was not advising the administration on exchange policy. He said he has had informal discussions with administration officials about the extension, but he didn’t identify them.

Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the administration was “continuing to examine all sorts of ways to provide consumers with more choices and to smooth the transition as we implement the law.”

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ObamaCare Could Lead to Loss of Nearly 2.3 Million US Jobs, Report Says

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe long-term effect of ObamaCare on the U.S. economy was rewritten Tuesday with the Congressional Budget Office issuing a revised projection that nearly 2.5 million workers could opt out of full-time jobs over the next 10 years — allowing employers to wipe 2.3 million full-time jobs off the books.

Budget experts say that because ObamaCare offers an insurance alternative to employer provided coverage, many Americans who hold full-time jobs may decide to work part-time — or not at all — and get their coverage from the exchanges.

Following the release of the report, House Speaker John Boehner said the report showed how “the middle class is getting squeezed in this economy.”

The report drew immediate reaction from GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker John Boehner who said the report indicates ObamaCare is only making it harder for middle-class Americans to survive in the bad economy.

Others, like Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., weighed in.

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Ted Cruz Changes His Mind About Obamacare

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

During the summer and fall of 2013, Texas senator Ted Cruz repeatedly warned that it would be impossible to repeal Obamacare once Americans began receiving subsidies on January 1, 2014.

In the new year, Americans would become “hooked on the subsidies, addicted to the sugar,” Cruz told a Tea Party gathering in his home state on August 19, according to the Texas Tribune. “If we get to January 1, this thing is here forever.” This belief was a main justification for the last-ditch campaign to fund the government if, and only if, Obamacare was defunded.

But on a conference call Wednesday afternoon, a month after Obamacare subsidies began flowing, Cruz told reporters that he no longer believes that January 1 was the deadline to stop Obamacare. “I believe we will repeal Obamacare,” he said.

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Coburn Says ObamaCare Cost him Coverage for Cancer Doctor

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn revealed Tuesday that his ObamaCare insurance plan does not cover his cancer specialist, forcing him to pay out of pocket — in the latest reminder of complications with the health law as President Obama prepares to address the nation.

The Oklahoma senator, who has been suffering from a recurrence of prostate cancer and plans to retire at the end of the current session, briefly discussed his personal situation in an interview Tuesday morning.

“I’m doing well from a health standpoint, got great docs and fortunately, even though my new coverage won’t cover my specialists, I’m going to have great care and I have a great prognosis,” he said.

Politico reported that Coburn’s office confirmed his coverage was cut and he lost coverage for his oncologist. However, Coburn reportedly will pay out of pocket in order to keep seeing the specialist. Coburn spoke earlier on MSNBC.

Like other congressional lawmakers, Coburn, 65, was required to go on the ObamaCare exchanges. Coburn’s case is one of many that will hang over the president as he delivers the State of the Union address Tuesday evening. While Obama plans to focus on economic issues — and especially agenda items like the minimum wage — lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are not letting him forget about the widespread and bipartisan concerns with the health care law.

Read more from this story HERE.