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Proof of Obamacare’s Intentional Deception

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Photo Credit: WND A group that has been the driving force in branding Obamacare has recommended a series of phrases, some deceptive, that the White House and Democrats have used to sell the health-care law to the public, WND has found.

The little-known Herndon Alliance has been behind the marketing of Obamacare since the inception of the legislation.

It was the group that crafted President Obama’s false claim that Americans can maintain their “choice” of doctors and insurance plans.

Along with advising the Obama administration, Herndon has been providing strategy to Enroll America, the main organization pushing for the uninsured to sign up for Obamacare. Enroll America’s executive director, Ron Pollack, was a founding member of Herndon.

The Herndon Alliance is “the most influential group in the health arena that the public has never heard of,” reported Politico in 2009.

Read more from this story HERE.

Health-care Law has Changed Game for Democrats Looking to Retake the House in 2014

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Photo Credit: APFew places may better explain how the bungled launch of President Obama’s health-care law has scrambled the political landscape for Democrats than this hamlet north of Philadelphia.

Democrats have been hoping to capitalize on the political fallout for the GOP from the recent government shutdown. If they can do so anywhere, it should be in the suburbs north and west of the city where three adjoining congressional districts represent a confluence of Democratic Party ambitions for the 2014 midterm elections.

The 13th District is represented by Allyson Y. Schwartz, a popular five-term Democrat who is the leading candidate for governor against a Republican incumbent widely regarded as the most vulnerable in the country.

The two other districts are held by moderate Republicans: Rep. Patrick Meehan in the 7th and Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick in the 8th. Obama won both in 2008 and lost both by less than one percentage point in 2012. If Democrats are going to get anywhere near the 18 seats they need to take control of the House in 2014, these two are must-wins, and a few weeks ago, with the GOP suffering in public opinion polls, everything seemed possible for Democrats.

The Affordable Care Act may have changed that.

Read more from this story HERE.

Will this Court Case Destroy Obamacare?

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Photo Credit: WND

The Obama administration may be alarmed over the dismal number of people signing up for Obamacare, the rising health-care costs for Americans, the legal challenges to the religious discrimination embedded in the law and other problems.

But all of that would be of no consequence if a lawsuit in federal court in Washington succeeds. It alleges senators overstepped their authority in creating the Affordable Care Act and the law, therefore, is null and void.

The case argues that since the U.S. Constitution requires that revenue-raising measures originate in the U.S. House and Obamacare was created in the Senate, the law is unconstitutional. The case is headed toward the Supreme Court.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has been leading the Obamacare charge since its inception, took a House-passed bill, deleted its contents and then substituted the Senate’s 2,000-page bill.

Now dozens of members of the U.S. House of Representatives are signing onto the battle, claiming the Senate didn’t have the authority to pass the bill.

Read more from this story HERE.

If You Like Your Insurance, You Can Rent It… Maybe

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Jonathan BachmanThe main reason I left the insurance industry years ago was the fatigue of marketing a product that is misunderstood by the vast majority of its customer base, not to mention the majority of functionaries inside the industry. I was a lousy agent frankly, but for some reason, the concepts were very intuitive to me. I was the high scorer in of all of those licensing and continuing-ed type classes, but those don’t pay the bills, so for reasons of money and sanity, I left.

Alas, this escape was only temporary, as we all now live in a country where the industry is being seized by a president who remains totally oblivious to its realities. Yet he insists on occupying the position as grand poobah CEO of all of it, and ruling by edict. And his epic “fix” can be translated this way:

If you like your coverage, you can rent it. Maybe.

There are so many problems with what he said, it’s hard to know where to start — so let’s start with the absurdity of a one-year fix. That’s no fix. Even terminal cancer caregivers score being “fixed” in terms of a five-year survival. Besides, Obama’s 29 public pronouncements that you can “keep your insurance” were never mitigated with a “sell by” date. He hasn’t fixed Obamacare, and in fact, he hasn’t even fixed his “incorrect promise” by this. That promise depends, I guess, on what the meaning of “period” is.

And let’s consider this startling confession from the smartest man, the man with the sharpest pant crease — the most brilliant man to ever sit in the Oval Office — or for that matter, trod the soil of this humble planet: “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.”

Shazam! Who knew?

Read more from this story HERE.

Serious Talk of Repealing Obamacare Now Surfacing

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Photo Credit: Natural News During the recent government shutdown, both Democrats and Republicans who disagreed with the Tea Party tactic of defunding Obamacare said it couldn’t be done because, hey, Obamacare is the law of the land.

Shortly after the 2012 presidential election, House Speaker John Boehner said in an NBC News interview, “It’s pretty clear that the president was reelected, Obamacare is the law of the land.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, head mistress over the worst website roll-out ever, has said: “This is no longer a political debate; this is what we call the law. It was passed and signed three years ago. It was upheld by the Supreme Court a year ago. The president was re-elected. This is the law of the land.”

That’s all we’ve heard since Obamcare was declared “constitutional” and “upheld by the Supreme Court,” so it’s the “law of the land.”

That is, until it gets repealed, which sometimes happens to bad laws.

Read more from this story HERE.

Krauthammer: Democrats Are Now Panicked About ObamaCare (+video)

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Photo Credit: John Shinkle/POLITICO By Fox News Insider.

Liberals Are Worried About the ‘Train wreck’- Krauthammer on The Kelly File

On Friday, Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in the House to pass a measure that would restore health insurance policies canceled by ObamaCare. Charles Krauthammer believes the Democratic support is a sign that the party is panicked about the law.

Tonight on The Kelly File, he explained why there’s a lot at stake for the left. “Obama’s an extremely ideologically ambitious president.”

Read more from this story HERE

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Krauthammer on Krauthammer

By Hadas Gold and Dylan Byers — Politico

Charles Krauthammer was surprised when President Barack Obama invited him to the White House last month.

Since Obama took office, the columnist and Fox News contributor has been among the most forceful critics of the president’s policies. Krauthammer’s long been widely read among conservatives, but has recently raised his prominence with unrelenting and searing attacks on the president’s health care plan, proclaiming earlier this month that the “unraveling” of Obamacare, the administration, and the Democratic Senate majority could amount to nothing less than “the collapse of American liberalism.”

With Obama’s approval rating at an all-time low, and the Republican establishment at odds with the conservative base, Krauthammer had become more than “critic in chief.” Blending high-mindedness with strong conservative values, he has commanded respect on both the extreme and moderate sides of the spectrum, becoming the closest thing the factionalized GOP could have to a spokesperson, a de facto opposition leader for the thinking right.

But on that October day when a small group of conservative writers gathered for an off-the-record session with Obama, Krauthammer checked his criticism at the gates to the White House.

Read more from this story HERE.

Healthcare.gov in Violation of FTC?

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Photo Credit: National Review Prosecute HealthCare.gov?

Conservatives often argue that the federal government should function more like a private business. Obamacare supporters should be grateful it does not, because otherwise HealthCare.gov would almost certainly run afoul of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as of the recently established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Orson Swindle, who served as an FTC commissioner from 1997 to 2005, says there are a number of practices that, if HealthCare.gov were a private entity, would result in its being “taken to the shed and horsewhipped” by government regulators.

President Obama’s oft-repeated falsehood, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” — something the administration knew was untrue — would almost certainly be a textbook case of deceptive advertising, punishable under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practice in or affecting commerce.” This includes a “representation, omission or practice that is likely to mislead the consumer,” such that the consumer would be “likely to have chosen differently but for the deception.”

Other examples of potentially deceptive practices include the apparently deliberate decision to withhold information from HealthCare.gov visitors as to the actual prices of the policies offered via the exchanges. In fact, users aren’t told how much those policies will cost until after they have created an account, which requires giving a slew of personal and financial information.

Read more from this story HERE.

Thousands of Doctors Dropped by Insurer After Obamacare Funding Cuts

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Newsmax Wires.

United Health Group has dropped thousands of doctors from its networks in recent weeks, leaving many elderly patients unsure whether they need to switch plans to continue seeing their doctors, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

The insurer said in October that underfunding of Medicare Advantage plans for the elderly could not be fully offset by the company’s other healthcare business.

The company also reported spending more healthcare premiums on medical claims in the third quarter, due mainly to government cuts to payments for Medicare Advantage services.

“Medicare Advantage, an alternative to traditional Medicare, combines hospital and doctor coverage and often includes prescription drugs and perks like gym memberships,” the Journal explained. “Enrollment has more than doubled since 2004 to 13 million in 2012, which represents about 27 percent of Americans on Medicare.

“The federal government pays private insurers a per-capita fee to manage the benefits. The rate is currently about 12 percent more than the average Medicare patient spends annually. The Obama administration plans to cut those extra payments to insurers by about $150 billion over the next 10 years to help pay” for the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Why the Obamacare Insurance Delay Isn’t Legal

By John Yoo.

I agree with Adam below that President Obama does not have the legal authority for his health care decision yesterday, though the issue is not easy to resolve. The legal complexity might allow the White House to get away with another lawless act—as it has with the delay of the employer mandate, the waiving of welfare work rules, the free pass for marijuana users, and the non-enforcement of immigration laws.

The President announced on Thursday that, for the next year, anyone can keep the health plans that they held before the passage of Obamacare. Obamacare requires all individual to purchase health care. The problem is that the Administration, acting pursuant to the Affordable Care Act, has the authority to define what qualifies as health insurance. The Obama administration notoriously defined acceptable health care policies to only include those that met minimum requirements, including prenatal care (even for men). Pre-existing health care plans will be lost, because most of them do not meet these criteria.

Initially, Obama’s decision might seem to rely on the safe ground of the delegated authority under the ACA to define insurance policies. Obama could just order HHS to alter its regulation so that any and all insurance policies could meet the insurance mandate.

The problem with Obama’s suspension, as I understand it, is that any regulation must undergo what is known as “notice-and-comment” under the Administrative Procedure Act. All regulations—issued pursuant to authority delegated to the executive branch by Congress—must first be publicly proposed, and then wait for a period of time for the public to make comments. Then the agency must issue the regulation with reasoned explanations for its policy choices. Changes to existing regulations usually must undergo the same process.

Obama’s decision yesterday, however, apparently is not to forego “notice-and-comment” rulemaking. If the President wants to snuff out the raging political fires engulfing his Administration, his one-year delay has to have immediate effect. Obama cannot wait around for the normal procedures required by the Administrative Procedure Act.

Read more from this story HERE.

You Can’t Fix Stupid… Or Crazy

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Photo Credit: Townhall Let’s get this out of the way right now—there is no Obamacare fix.

Repeat after me—there is no Obamacare fix.

Obamacare is not an epic failure simply because of its incompetent implementation best symbolized by a $94 million website that doesn’t work. Rather, Obamacare’s incompetent implementation is a symptom of its real disease.

That real disease is this: Obamacare cannot possibly work because it operates outside the natural laws of economics, and it’s another ham-fisted attempt by government to do something that is outside of its God-given (or Constitutional) jurisdiction.

In other words, Obamacare is magical thinking. It’s tilting at windmills, or the legislative equivalent of howling at the moon. It’s an attempt to ignore reality, which is to say its sheer lunacy. And you can’t fix crazy anymore than you can fix stupid. This was never going to work. It was always going to start and end like this, and therefore any earnest or well-intentioned attempts to put lipstick on this turd will just make the foul stench surrounding it all the worse.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Lawlessness

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Photo Credit: National Review By Andrew C. McCarthy.

Obama claims a power to enforce laws selectively under the doctrine of “prosecutorial discretion.” This is merely an allocation doctrine, however: a commonsense acknowledgment that finite resources make it impossible to enforce every law equally. An administration, for example, might say, “DEA has finite resources, so we’re going to focus on heroin trafficking rather than marijuana possession.” This does not mean the administration is saying marijuana possession is no longer a crime; just that it has higher enforcement priorities and a limited budget. To the contrary, Obama has distorted the doctrine to claim, in effect, that illegalities he unilaterally chooses not to police are somehow no longer illegal — at least until the “waivers” he grants expire. (I would call the waivers capricious, but there really is a rigor to them — they expire after Election Day to protect Democrats from political accountability.)

Prosecutorial discretion is the fig leaf Obama uses to rationalize his noxious decision to relieve corporations, political cronies, and members of Congress from their Obamacare burdens while the rest of us are crushed under ours. It is also the hocus-pocus behind his latest fix. Panicked by millions who’ve lost coverage, sinking poll numbers, and jittery Democrats, the president is now purporting to allow insurance companies to ignore the law and reissue the policies Obamacare’s mandates forced them to terminate.

But here is the problem: This “waiver” is irrelevant. Even if it were constitutionally proper for a president to flout Congress in the executive branch’s enforcement practices, all that means is that the Obama administration will give insurers a pass until 2014. The Obama “waiver” does not change what Congress’s law actually says, and therefore it has no bearing on the legal obligations attendant to the relationship between the insurer and the insured.

As a practical matter, it is nearly inconceivable that insurance companies would be able to reissue the canceled health-care plans. The process, as Avik Roy expertly explains, is too extensive and complex to complete in the few weeks between now and Obamacare’s coverage deadline — something that an administration that can’t, after three years, get a functioning website running should know. But even if it could be done, the insurance companies would be insane to offer plans that failed to comply with the letter of the Obamacare statute. Similarly, the state insurance commissioners would be insane to permit them, and Americans would be insane to buy them. The policies would be legally unenforceable.

Read more from this story HERE.