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Obama Wins Politifact’s ‘Lie of the Year’ Award (+video)

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Screen shot 2013-12-14 at 1.16.51 AMIt was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic change to America’s health insurance system.

“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” President Barack Obama said — many times — of his landmark new law.
But the promise was impossible to keep.

So this fall, as cancellation letters were going out to approximately 4 million Americans, the public realized Obama’s breezy assurances were wrong.

Boiling down the complicated health care law to a soundbite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief.  Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.

For all of these reasons, PolitiFact has named “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” the Lie of the Year for 2013. Readers in a separate online poll overwhelmingly agreed with the choice. (PolitiFact first announced its selection on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper.)

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Uh oh: Only 5-15% of enrollees have paid their first month of premiums in some ObamaCare plans

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

A good way to tell whether a media outlet is serious about ObamaCare reporting is to see if they cover this bombshell as a corollary to the new enrollment data. If 365,000 have “signed up” but only one-tenth of them, say, have paid their first month of premiums to activate their new coverage, how many people are really “enrolled” in ObamaCare plans right now?

Last week an insurer in Indiana told CNN that one of their plans had received payment from only 20 percent of people who signed up so far. According to Charles Ornstein’s sources, that insurer was doing relatively well.

“There is also a lot of worrying going on over people making payments,” industry consultant Robert Laszewski wrote in an email. “One client reports only 15% have paid so far. It is still too early to know for sure what this means but we should expect some enrollment slippage come the payment due date.”

Another consultant Kip Piper, agreed. “So far I’m hearing from health plans that around 5% and 10% of consumers who have made it through the data transfer gauntlet have paid first month’s premium and therefore truly enrolled,” he wrote me…

Blue Shield of California said it has sent out thousands of payment request letters…

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Congressional Staffers Told Not to Trust ObamaCare Site Info

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Congressional staffers were warned Wednesday not to rely on information provided by the ObamaCare exchange website, in an email alert informing them they might not be enrolled for coverage even if they technically signed up.

The “very important” message, sent to Capitol Hill officials Wednesday afternoon, is the latest sign that the government has concerns about the reliability of the system. Despite improvements in the basic operation of the exchange websites, and increased enrollment, there are lingering concerns about whether those signing up will actually be covered on Jan. 1.

“Please DO NOT ASSUME you are covered unless you have seen the Confirmation Letter from the Disbursing Office!” the email to staffers said.

The email urged staffers who have signed up via the DC Health Link — the health care exchange for the District of Columbia — to double check with the office that they’re enrolled.

“Do NOT rely on your ‘My Account’ page or other correspondence from DCHL,” the message said.

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Proposed State Law Aims to Nullify Obamacare

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

South Carolina lawmakers have a proposal in their legislative pipeline that would nullify the federal Obamacare law.

Observers say the state likely will be the first in the nation to exempt citizens and businesses from participation in Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Critics already have declared the bill is racist and argue that federal law trumps state law. They charged that state lawmakers can’t opt out of the law because they don’t like President Obama.

The South Carolina bill prohibits state agencies and officers from implementing any portion of the federal mandate, outlaws state insurance exchanges and directs the state attorney general to sue over selective enforcement of the Affordable Health Care Act.

Supporters of the bill contend it aligns with a Founding Father’s solution for states confronted by an unwarranted federal law.

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PPP: GOP Leads Michigan Senate Race to Replace Democrat, ObamaCare to Blame

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A new poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP) finds the Michigan GOP Senate candidate, Terri Land, taking the lead over Democrat Rep. Gary Peters in the race to replace retiring Sen. Carl Levin. Land trailed Peters by 7 points in October, at the height of the government shutdown. She now leads Peters by two, 42-40, a nine point swing in less than two months.

“The declining popularity of President Obama and the Affordable Care Act seems to be making life harder for Democrats here, as we’re finding in other key Senate races,” the Democrat polling firm writes in a memo. Although Obama won Michigan by 9 points last year, his approval ratings are now underwater. Just 47% of Michiganders approve of the job he is doing, while 51% disapprove. Michigan voters also oppose ObamaCare by a 14-point margin.

The big shift in the Michigan race is due largely to Independents. A few months ago, Land and Peters were basically tied among Independents. In the latest poll, Land has opened a massive 17-point lead with the critical voting block.

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Cruz Releases Report Slamming President’s ‘Lawless Acts’ in Implementation of ObamaCare

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U.S. Senator Cruz speaks during the fifth annual Washington Ideas Forum at the Newseum in WashingtonTed Cruz may no longer be the solicitor general of Texas, but the Republican senator has penned a legal memo about the White House’s “lawless acts on Obamacare.”

The Daily Caller was provided an early look at the memo, set for release Monday. This is the second time Cruz has released a report for his “The Legal Limit: The Obama Administration’s Attempts to Expand Federal Power” series.

Senator Cruz on Obamacare

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Just a PR Problem? ObamaCare Architect Claims ‘Big PR Campaign’ Needed

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

The federal health care overhaul was central to President Obama’s two campaigns for the White House, and has been the defining achievement — for better or worse — of his presidency.

But one of the architects of ObamaCare, in a heated interview on “Fox News Sunday,” argued that the reason young people are not signing up in droves for coverage under the law is the administration hasn’t promoted it.

Ezekiel Emanuel, a former health adviser to the president (and the brother of former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel), argued the administration has been too caught up with fixing HealthCare.gov to give the law the proper promotional push.

“No one has launched a big PR campaign to get these people signed up because of the problems with the federal website,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “We are about to launch a big PR campaign, and that, I think, is going to persuade a lot of people to sign up.”

He noted the administration still has “four more months to go until the end of March,” when penalties kick in for those who haven’t gotten coverage.

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Obama Reveals How A Future GOP President Can Gut ObamaCare

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606x404-2efe36e30370e6ba74d76342f78fc799I owe Mitt Romney an apology. During the 2012 Republican presidential primary season, I repeatedly criticized Romney — and personally challenged him during his editorial board meeting with the Washington Examiner — for promising that if elected, on day one of his presidency, he would grant Obamacare waivers to all 50 states.

As I reported, under the text of the law, the ability to offer waivers to states was subject to many restrictions and wouldn’t even be an option until 2017, four years after his hypothetical swearing in.

Though I still believe I was right about what the statute said, as it turns out, I was being old-fashioned by taking the letter of the law so literally.

Having watched President Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius over the past several months unilaterally alter or outright ignore major portions of the law, I now believe that a future Republican president would have greater latitude to gut Obamacare than I once thought possible.

The changes instituted by the Obama administration in response to implementation snags have ranged from perfectly legal areas of administrative discretion stemming from the vast regulatory powers granted to the HHS secretary under Obamacare, to more creative interpretations of that discretion, to Obama simply choosing to ignore parts of the law that became inconvenient.

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Seven in 10 Doctors Boycotting California’s ObamaCare Exchange

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8729726d-de13-4db0-9949-6544f13748a1Another glaring example of why the ‘if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor’ mantra President Obama and other ACA enthusiasts touted is simply false:

An estimated seven out of every 10 physicians in deep-blue California are rebelling against the state’s Obamacare health insurance exchange and won’t participate, the head of the state’s largest medical association said. “It doesn’t surprise me that there’s a high rate of nonparticipation,” said Dr. Richard Thorp, president of the California Medical Association.

Thorp has been a primary care doctor for 38 years in a small town 90 miles north of Sacramento. The CMA represents 38,000 of the roughly 104,000 doctors in California.

“We need some recognition that we’re doing a service to the community. But we can’t do it for free. And we can’t do it at a loss. No other business would do that,” he said.

California offers one of the lowest government reimbursement rates in the country — 30 percent lower than federal Medicare payments. And reimbursement rates for some procedures are even lower.

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Emails Show Feds Knew Months Ago ObamaCare Site Headed for Delay

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Newly released emails show officials designing the main ObamaCare exchange knew as early as August that the website catering to small businesses might have to be delayed — though the administration did not announce the delay until shortly before the Oct. 1 launch.

In one of the August emails, HealthCare.gov project manager Henry Chao responded to a proposal to delay the launch by writing: “Can we sign this with blood?”

The details were included in a handful of emails released Friday by Republican lawmakers probing the troubled launch. The lawmakers charged that the communications offer more evidence that the administration kept quiet for months about urgent problems with the website.

“As the paper trail broadens, we see more and more evidence that the administration was fully aware its signature health care law was not ready for prime time,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said. “The documents we are now reviewing tell a much, much different story than what officials testified to Congress.”

The emails pertained to the online SHOP Marketplace, which is meant for small businesses and has suffered a series of setbacks. The administration announced in late September that it was pushing off the launch until mid-November. But then one day before the Thanksgiving holiday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it would push off online enrollment by another year.

Read more from this story HERE.