Posts

More Obamacare Heartache: Tally Rises for Americans Losing Their Health Insurance

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: heritage.orgBy Marguerite Bowling.

The hype and dream are fizzling out with the Administration’s big promise on Obamacare—that every American who liked his or her health plan could keep it. According to a new tally, nearly 1.5 million customers in the individual insurance market have lost their current health plans.

They’re losing coverage that many of them liked, with one woman in Florida saying the new option under Obamacare would cost her more than 10 times what she currently pays in monthly premiums. David Hogberg breaks down the insurance cancellations to date at the National Center for Public Policy Research:
-800,000 in New Jersey.

-119,000 from Blue Shield in California.
-160,000 from Kaiser in California.
-300,000 in Florida.
-24,000 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
-13,000 in central and eastern Pennsylvania.
-76,000 from CareFirst in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia…

Read more from this story HERE.

______________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: westernjournalism.comWhite House Extends ObamaCare Enrollment Period

Americans now have an additional six weeks in which to enroll for a government-mandated healthcare plan without incurring penalty charges.

In the wake of ObamaCare’s rising unpopularity and a website that does not function for the vast majority of users, White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed Monday that the enrollment deadline has been extended to March 31. Last week, Carney indicated the administration would work to fix the litany of issues plaguing healthcare.gov.

After sending Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on a whirlwind tour to put a positive spin on the site’s malfunctions, the Obama administration apparently decided damage control was not working.

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaskan Company Suspends Obamacare Enrollments, Cites Faulty Subsidy Calculator

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Wonderlane/flickrEnroll Alaska, an organization that was specifically created to aid Alaskans in enrolling for Obamacare, has thrown in the towel, at least for the time being.

As the Peninsula Clarion reports, Enroll Alaska has been able to enroll a grand total of only three people since the launch of the health-insurance marketplaces on October 1. It has now given up entirely on that goal, at least until Healthcare.gov, the federal health-care exchange, gives Alaskans accurate figures on the subsidies they’re eligible for.

Read more from this story HERE.

Middle Class Get ObamaCare Sticker Shock

/6 Comments/in , /by

Thousands of Californians are discovering what Obamacare will cost them — and many don’t like what they see. These middle-class consumers are staring at hefty increases on their insurance bills as the overhaul remakes the healthcare market. Their rates are rising in large part to help offset the higher costs of covering sicker, poorer people who have been shut out of the system for years.

Although recent criticism of the healthcare law has focused on website glitches and early enrollment snags, experts say sharp price increases for individual policies have the greatest potential to erode public support for President Obama’s signature legislation.

“This is when the actual sticker shock comes into play for people,” said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “There are winners and losers under the Affordable Care Act.” Fullerton resident Jennifer Harris thought she had a great deal, paying $98 a month for an individual plan through Health Net Inc. She got a rude surprise this month when the company said it would cancel her policy at the end of this year. Her current plan does not conform with the new federal rules, which require more generous levels of coverage.

Now Harris, a self-employed lawyer, must shop for replacement insurance. The cheapest plan she has found will cost her $238 a month. She and her husband don’t qualify for federal premium subsidies because they earn too much money, about $80,000 a year combined.

“It doesn’t seem right to make the middle class pay so much more in order to give health insurance to everybody else,” said Harris, who is three months pregnant. “This increase is simply not affordable.”

Read more from this story HERE.

‘SNL’ Hits Sebelius, HHS for Abysmal Healthcare.gov Launch (+video)

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller On Saturday’s broadcast of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” Kate McKinnon played Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in the show’s cold open and took on this month’s Obamacare rollout, which has been plagued by website troubles since its launch.

“Hi, I’m Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health under President Obama. Now, a lot of folks have been talking about our new health care enrollment website — how it’s been crashing and freezing and shutting down and stalling and not working and breaking and sucking,” McKinnon’s Sebelius said. “Well, tonight, I have a number of friendly tips to help you deal with those technical problems.

Read more from this story HERE.

Killing Obamacare

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: GARY LOCKEThe recent government shutdown illustrated a lot of political truths. For starters, people are unhappy when the government is shut down, and they naturally tend to blame the party of less government. The media instinctively help them conclude that the Republicans are at fault.

But the shutdown also illustrated just how unprepared the Republican party is to deal with the threat of Obamacare. Even though the law is unpopular, Republicans failed to convince the country of how great a threat it poses to the public good. Poll after poll shows that only a minority thinks the law will make them worse off, despite growing evidence that Obamacare’s side effects are serious and far-reaching. “Shutdown theater” did nothing to alter that attitude, which reflects poorly on the Tea Party backbenchers who wanted this fight and the leaders who prosecuted it. And now it appears House Republicans intend to deemphasize Obamacare and focus again on cutting traditional spending.

This is a mistake. The fight against Obamacare cannot be pushed to the sidelines. If the shutdown failed to notch any victory against it, then conservative leaders need to rethink their tactics and try something different. The easiest path to victory against the law, at first glance, is to win total control of the government in the 2016 elections. But a closer look at the law, especially in historical context, indicates grave risks associated with that approach: Obamacare may do much damage by that point, and it may be substantially more difficult to undo four years down the road.

Obamacare is, of course, a liberal law, as all agree. But its place within liberalism is a peculiar one, and worth investigating in some detail. When we think about the modern American left, we often think of the provision of benefits, suggested by Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. It is that third freedom that American liberals have focused on for generations, giving us Social Security, Medicare, aid to education, and so on. Four Freedoms liberalism has been decidedly rights-based.

Read more from this story HERE.

Reagan’s Daughter: Why Am I Losing My Health Insurance?

/7 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: New England SecessionFormer President Ronald Reagan’s liberal activist daughter Patti Davis is asking just what many other people across the United States want to know — why she’s losing her insurance.

“Could the president please explain why I and others are losing our health ins. plans? Wasn’t supposed to happen!” Davis posted on Twitter Friday afternoon.

Davis, of course, isn’t the first to want to know what’s happening to her insurance in the wake of Obamacare. Others have been dropped as large employers such as IBM and others opt to have their employees get their coverage through state marketplaces rather than to keep up their coverage.

Davis also has been speaking about her disappointment with Obama in recent weeks, particularly when it comes to the government shutdown.

“We all remember your campaign tag of “no drama Obama,” she wrote in an open letter to the president on her website on Oct. 13. “Interesting that there has been one drama after another in your presidency, this last one really tipping the scales.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Get Ready to Talk About your Meds, Guns and Lifestyle

/15 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND Americans are increasing their calls for lawmakers to fight Obamacare because of worries over an abundance of personal information that soon will be in the government’s hands.

The Healthcare.gov website calls for information such as name, address, Social Security number and income, while Obamacare will implement online medical records that include details about ailments, conditions, mental state, drug use, gun ownership and other personal details.

That has people worried that the sum total of information could be mishandled by the government, or worse yet, be let loose. There were more than 12.6 million victims of identity theft in the U.S. last year, and the federal government’s collection of Americans’ personal health and financial data offers a treasure trove of possibilities for criminals.

This week, the Los Angeles Times reported an Alahambra, Calif., medical clinic admitted that two laptops that contained more than 700,000 patient medical records were stolen during an office break-in.

The thieves have not been caught.

Read more from this story HERE.

President Embraces Role as ‘Salesman’ for Obamacare

/0 Comments/in /by

Photo Credit: AP/Charles Dharapak)President Obama in his weekly address Saturday said he was proud to be a “salesman” for Obamacare despite criticism over the glitch-filled rollout of the law’s insurance exchanges.

“Some people have poked fun at me this week for sounding like an insurance salesman. And that’s okay,” said Obama. “I’d still be out there championing this law even if the website were perfect.”

Obama’s comments came after another week of withering criticism over the administration’s rollout of a new website designed to enroll consumers in the health care law’s public insurance exchanges.

Obama said at an event Monday that he is frustrated with the website and vowed it would be fixed, but also defended the health care law as a “good deal” for the public.

Opponents of the health care law criticized Obama, saying he was forced to resell the public on supporting his signature legislative achievement.

Read more from this story HERE.

Kudlow: Don’t Delay Obamacare, GOP; Let the Democrats Hang Themselves

/13 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Scott ClarkOne huge political question surrounds the catastrophic launch of Obamacare: Will the cancelled insurance contracts for millions, terminated doctor-patient relationships, sticker shock from higher premiums and deductibility, damage to job hiring and economic growth and the administration’s double-talk get the GOP off the shutdown hook for the 2014 midterm elections?

That is the question. Donald Rumsfeld would call it a known unknown. And right now nobody knows the answer.

But Christopher Ruddy, founder and CEO of Newsmax, makes an interesting point about this: “The key to stopping Obamacare is for its opponents to win in congressional elections in 2014. Delaying Obamacare only helps the Democrats who support this boondoggle.”

So far, with all the problems plaguing the Obamacare website, Senator Marco Rubio is leading the Republican charge to delay the March 31 enrollment deadline and tax penalty. And a lot of Republicans are lining up behind him. But is that the right tactic? On the Democratic side, Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and nine of her colleagues are urging the White House to push back the same deadline.

But is that just to save their re-election hides next November?

Read more from this story HERE.

Is Mark Begich Becoming a “Knucklehead?”

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APFairbanks, Alaska. — U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller is pleased to learn that Senator Mark Begich has apparently changed his mind and now embraces delaying Obamacare’s individual enrollment mandate. According to news reports, Begich has joined with other “red state” Democrat Senators – who are coincidentally up for re-election next year – in signing a letter to Kathleen Sebelius calling for an open-ended delay in the deadline to enroll for Obamacare until the much-publicized website problems are resolved.

One of the Republican compromise proposals to fully fund the government earlier this month called for a one-year delay in the individual mandate. Senator Begich called those who offered this compromise “a small band of knuckleheads” who are “holding the country hostage over the health care law.”

Miller said, “I am happy to learn that Senator Begich has taken off his rose-colored glasses long enough to see one of the glaring flaws of Obamacare. Interestingly enough, the senator promised the people of Alaska that the healthcare exchange would function like buying airline tickets on Expedia. Well, let’s just say that was a little overly optimistic.”

Over two weeks after the launch of the exchange, not a single Alaskan had been able to sign up. Now after nearly four weeks, major systemic problems continue to plague the Obamacare website.

Miller opposed the passage of Obamacare because it created another entitlement program the federal government did not have the Constitutional authority to undertake. Further, with the nation already experiencing trillion dollar plus deficits, it could in no way afford the program. The so-called Affordable Care Act also did not address rising healthcare costs. Instead of introducing more free market principles into the heavily regulated health insurance industry, Obamacare does just the opposite, adding over 20,000 pages of new regulations to-date.

“If the federal government cannot even set up a website, why should the American people have any confidence it can oversee healthcare for an entire nation? Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman’s words come to mind: ‘If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand,’” said Miller. He added, “Too bad Mark Begich could not have been more of a ‘knucklehead’ back in 2010 when he was the 60th and deciding vote for Obamacare’s passage.”