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Most Uninsured Don’t Know if they’ll use Obamacare, Most in US Think Healthcare Will Suffer

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Photo Credit: CNBC

There’s no assurance folks will be buying insurance under Obamacare, and that could spell trouble for the Affordable Care Act.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans who currently lack health insurance don’t know yet if they will purchase that coverage by the Jan. 1 deadline set by the ACA, a new survey revealed Monday.

And less than half of those in the survey released by InsuranceQuotes.com think they’ll get better health care after Obamacare takes full effect. Nearly 50 percent believe the ACA will make it more difficult for them to get tests and procedures done in a timely manner, according to the phone survey of 1,001 adult Americans conducted in early May.

And a whopping 68 percent of low-income Americans aren’t sure they qualify for tax credits that would subsidize their purchase of health insurance—despite they fact that they almost invariably will qualify, the survey found. That population is most likely to benefit from government subsidies under the health-care reform law.

Laura Adams, senior insurance analyst at InsuranceQuotes.com, said public uncertainty about Obamacare—particularly a lack of commitment to signing up—could end up driving up health-insurance costs under the program because not enough healthy people will participate to offset benefits payouts.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

By Matt Cover. In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year.

Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS.

The IRS’s assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan.

The examples point to families of four and families of five, both of which the IRS expects in its assumptions to pay a minimum of $20,000 per year for a bronze plan.

“The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000,” the regulation says. Read more from this story HERE.

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Two-Thirds of Americans Don’t Know If They Will Insure Under Obamacare

By Dan Mangan. There’s no assurance folks will be buying insurance under Obamacare, and that could spell trouble for the Affordable Care Act.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans who currently lack health insurance don’t know yet if they will purchase that coverage by the Jan. 1 deadline set by the ACA, a new survey revealed Monday.

And less than half of those in the survey released by InsuranceQuotes.com think they’ll get better health care after Obamacare takes full effect. Nearly 50 percent believe the ACA will make it more difficult for them to get tests and procedures done in a timely manner, according to the phone survey of 1,001 adult Americans conducted in early May.

And a whopping 68 percent of low-income Americans aren’t sure they qualify for tax credits that would subsidize their purchase of health insurance—despite they fact that they almost invariably will qualify, the survey found. That population is most likely to benefit from government subsidies under the health-care reform law.

Laura Adams, senior insurance analyst at InsuranceQuotes.com, said public uncertainty about Obamacare—particularly a lack of commitment to signing up—could end up driving up health-insurance costs under the program because not enough healthy people will participate to offset benefits payouts. Read more from this story HERE.

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ObamaCare Bait and Switch: The truth about those rate increases in Oregon and California

By The Wall Street Journal. Liberals have spent years claiming that “rate shock” under the Affordable Care Act—the 20% to 30% average spike in insurance premiums that every independent analyst projects—is merely the political imagination of Republicans and the insurance industry. So they immediately claimed victory when California reported last month that the plans that will be available on the state’s new insurance exchange next year would be cheaper than they are today.

Except now it emerges that California goosed the data to make it appear as if ObamaCare won’t send costs aloft as the law’s regulations and mandates kick in. It will, by a lot. And now liberals have suddenly switched to arguing that, sure, insurance will be more expensive but the new costs are justified. Needless to say that was not how Democrats sold health-care reform.

California reported that the rates would range from 2% above to 29% below the current market. “This is a home run for consumers in every region of California,” said Peter Lee, the director of the state exchange. “These rates are way below the worst-case gloom-and-doom scenarios we have heard.”

But Mr. Lee and his fellow regulators were making a false comparison. They weren’t looking at California’s lightly regulated individual insurance market that functions surprisingly well. They were comparing ObamaCare insurance to the state’s current small-business market where regulations similar to ObamaCare have already been imposed.

In other words, California wasn’t comparing apples to apples. It wasn’t even comparing apples to oranges. It was comparing apples to ostriches. Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Lied: Obamacare Will Result in Insurance Plans Being Cancelled

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Photo Credit: NObamaNoMas

New health insurance rules under ObamaCare could lead to a host of personal insurance plans being canceled as early as this fall, a scenario expected to cause consumer confusion.

Under the federal overhaul, those policies that cannot meet new insurance plan standards may be discontinued. This means individuals, and some small businesses, that rely on those plans will have to find new ones.

The goal is to ensure that most insurance policies offer a basic set of coverage, as part of the Obama administration’s plan to cover most of the nation’s 50 million uninsured.

Yet it also seems to run afoul of one of the president’s best-known promises on the law: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.”

In fact, state insurance commissioners largely are giving insurers the option of canceling existing plans or changing them to comply with new federal requirements.

Read more from this story HERE.

By 22-Point Margin, Voters Favor Obamacare’s Repeal

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard It would be a major understatement to say that Obamacare has had a bad spring. Around the time of Lincoln’s birthday, registered voters told Fox News that, by a margin of 6 percentage points (48 to 42 percent), it would “be better to go back to the health care system that was in place in 2009” than it would be “to leave the new health care law in place.” Three months later, as we head into Memorial Day, nostalgia for the good ol’ days of 2009 now beats Obamacare by a whopping 22 points (56 to 34 percent).

That’s saying something, because, back in 2009 — largely as a result of Republicans’ refusal to do much of anything on health care in the nearly decade-and-a-half between their defeat of Hillarycare and their defeat at the hands of Obama — Americans clearly weren’t very happy with the health-care status quo. Every one of the half-dozen polls published by RealClearPolitics in the first half of 2009 — before Obamacare clearly took shape — showed Americans favoring efforts to reform our health-care system. Now, Obamacare is even more unpopular than the unpopular pre-Obamacare status quo — and that has been true for nearly four years.

None of this, however, should lull Republicans into thinking there’s no need for them to advance conservative, limited-government reforms in lieu of Obamacare’s liberal, big-government model of centralized control over American medicine. For at least two main reasons, it’s crucial that the GOP push not only for the full repeal of Obamacare, but also for real reform.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Will Bring Drug Industry $35 Billion In Profits

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Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Despite expiring patents on blockbuster drugs and a wave of new regulation from the Affordable Care Act that will cost drug makers, the pharmaceutical industry will reap between “$10 billion and $35 billion in additional profits over the next decade,” a new analysis shows.

The health law, which will bring millions of uninsured Americans health benefits beginning in January 2014, will be a critical boon to pharmaceutical industry balance sheets, increasing revenue by one-third by the end of the decade, according to a new report from research and consulting firm GlobalData of London. That means the U.S. pharmaceutical industry’s market value will mushroom by 33 percent to $476 billion in 2020 from $359 billion last year…

“The (Affordable Care Act) represents a dramatic transformation in the fortunes of pharmaceutical companies in what is the world’s largest market for prescription drugs,” said Joshua Owide, head of GlobalData’s industry dynamics team in a statement to Forbes. “This reform was inevitable in the US, and while a number of the changes will negatively impact pharma’s fortunes, the overall balance could be positive, thanks to an additional 32 million formerly uninsured citizens becoming potential customers, resulting in up to $115 billion of new business over a period of 10 years.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Exclusive: Inalienable Rights Sabotaged

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Photo Credit: Adam GlanzmanAnyone still question whether or not IRS abuse exists? The IRS has been too onerous and too powerful for much too long. But you haven’t seen anything yet! As Obamacare unfolds, tax collection will become subordinate to information gathering but will remain the mechanism for intimidation and bullying used by the ‘service’. Recently they asked us, some of us, for the content of our prayers. Here’s what’s in my prayers Mr. Taxman, I pray to God that the IRS dies as we know it and is replaced with a simple fair tax structure requiring little if any oversight.

Who is tasked with ensuring that Obamacare is implemented? That’s right, the IRS. Obamacare was designed as the most powerful weapon to date to be used by the government against the people! The House of Representatives has voted 37 times to repeal Obamacare but the Speaker would have us believe that nothing can be done, ”its the law of the land”, another martini please. The fact is that defunding Obamacare or ‘Obamatax’ is possible. If we don’t defund and then repeal Obamacare soon, great hardship awaits us all, compliments of the IRS!

No one in support of or supported by the Obama administration purports to know much of anything about the various scandals they’ve created, especially not our darling President! Be it the present IRS scandal, Fast and Furious or Benghazi, Mr. 0 says he’ll get to the bottom of ”it” so that ”it” never happens again. What this means is that ‘low’ and ‘high’ level officials in his administration whether guilty or not of wrong doing will be re-assigned, promoted, offered early retirement or otherwise NOT be held accountable in any meaningful way for anything. This while innocent lives are lost due to the ignorance, ineptitude and corruption of the fools running Washington DC. What will it take to alert Americans smitten with this ‘cool’ President to the fact that he and his socialist crooks are burning this country to the ground! America is changing into something we’ll all regret if we don’t reverse course soon!

Which rights were sabotaged by the IRS? Surely rights declared in the first and fourth amendments to the US Constitution were. In the first amendment, freedom of speech was sabotaged. Oh we could speak, but an IRS audit was initiated based solely upon key words we used such as ‘Tea party’ and ‘Patriot’. These and other triggers were used to target specific conservative groups and individuals for audits and other nefarious purposes, any of which should be abhorred. As for the fourth amendment, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures was sabotaged. In the electronic age though, there’s no need for any IRS goon to come knocking at your door. Agents simply commit sabotage through the internet or postal service.

Many of us paying attention to the various scandals brought to us by the Obama administration may be asking ourselves, what’s next? Which new scandal will erupt and temporarily overshadow the previous one? Don’t people working at the IRS recognize what we see? All of this results from either stupidity and ignorance, or worse. We the people aren’t going to allow the destruction of America at the hands of foolish, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.

Increasing Numbers of Unions Now Publicly Oppose Obamacare

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Photo Credit: altheadlinesLabor unions are breaking with President Obama on ObamaCare.

Months after the president’s reelection, a variety of unions are publicly balking at how the administration plans to implement the landmark law. They warn that unless there are changes, the results could be catastrophic.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) — a 1.3 million-member labor group that twice endorsed Obama for president — is very worried about how the reform law will affect its members’ healthcare plans.

Last month, the president of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers released a statement calling “for repeal or complete reform of the Affordable Care Act.”

UNITE HERE, a prominent hotel workers’ union, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters are also pushing for changes.

Read more from this story HERE.

Businesses Already Boosting Employee Premiums, Co-Pays for Obamacare

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner Already hit with cost increases to cover minor Obamacare demands, businesses are boosting employee payments through higher insurance premiums and doctor visit co-pays in advance of the bulk of the health reform law’s rules taking effect Jan. 1.

A sweeping survey of several hundred U.S. businesses by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans found that their costs have already jumped because of a rule requiring them to cover employees’ children up to age 26.

To prepare for the full impact of Obamacare, said the foundation, employers are implementing “diverse cost-management initiatives.” Some 43 percent are boosting premiums, 34 percent are increasing employee dependent coverage costs, and 31 percent are raising co-pays or “out-of-pocket limits.”

Read more from this story HERE.

We Must “Politicize the Hell” out of Benghazi, Obamacare Shakedowns, AP Records Grab and IRS Abuses

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Photo Credit: TownHallBy Kurt Schlichter. Some establishment types are shaking their heads as they warn conservatives that we must not politicize the Administration’s Benghazi bungling, its Obamacare shakedowns, its AP records grab or its IRS abuses.

Like hell we mustn’t. We must. Big time.

The last couple weeks’ revelations of fresh and compelling examples of the kind of duplicity and petty tyranny we conservatives have been screaming about for five years have presented us with what military folks call a “seam.” A “seam” is the border where two different units meet, and it is generally the kind of weak point you want to drive your forces into in order to split your opponent’s front and rout him. These latest scandals have revealed a seam between two elements of the liberal coalition, the liberals who actually believe some of what they say and the cynical leftists who merely crave power.

Let’s split that seam.

But to do so, conservatives must ignore the voices of the fussy and the fainthearted and ruthlessly exploit it. We can and should – and must – politicize the hell out of these shameful imbroglios. Read more from this story HERE.

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AP president rips ‘unconstitutional’ Obama administration investigation

By Jeff Poor. On this weekend’s broadcast of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Associated Press President and CEO Gary Pruitt ripped the Obama’s administration’s Justice Department for the tactics it used in its investigation into leaks about a foiled terror plot in Yemen and the use of the Stuxnet virus against Iran’s nuclear program.

According to Pruitt, the government investigation overstepped by casting such a broad net under a veil of secrecy.

“Under their own rules, they are required to narrow this request as narrowly as possible so as to not tread upon the First Amendment,” Pruitt said. “And yet they had a broad, sweeping collection, and they did it secretly. Their rules require them to come to us first, but in this case they didn’t, claiming an exception, saying that if they had it would have posed a substantial threat to their investigation. But they have not explained why it would and we can’t understand why it would.” Read more from this story HERE.

Democrat Baucus Warns: More to Come Out on IRS Scandal

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Photo Credit: Center for American Progress Action FundSenior Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, who recently slapped Obamacare as a “train wreck,” believes that the IRS scandal is just beginning and that “a lot more” damaging information will be revealed, likely at congressional hearings.

“I have a hunch that a lot more is going to come out, frankly,” Baucus, whose pending retirement seems to have freed him up to speak bluntly, told Bloomberg Government’s “Capitol Gains” TV show.

“It’s broader than the current focus. And I think it’s important that we have the hearings, and I think that will encourage other information to come out that has not yet come out. I suspect that we will learn more in the next several days, maybe the next couple three weeks which adds more context to all of this,” added Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Read more from this story HERE.