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Mortality Studies Suggest Obamacare’s Death Panels May Be Moving Forward

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Researchers are busy creating computer models and testing hypotheses to see if they can predict mortality accurately–as a way, I suspect, of justifying health care rationing.

My concern was heightened by a study just published as a letter in the March 6 Journal of the American Medical Association, in which the authors claim that they were able to predict likely mortality 10-years out. From “Predicting 10-Year Mortality for Older Adults”:

Extending the index from 4 to 10 years did not diminish the model discrimination (validation cohort,C statistics 0.817 vs 0.834; P= .35), suggesting that the risk factors important for 4-year mortality prediction are also important for 10-year mortality prediction. The model compares favorably with other mortality indexes that predict mortality beyond 7 years…Patients identified by this index as having a high risk of 10-year mortality may be more likely to be harmed by preventive interventions with long lag times to benefit, whereas patients identified as having a low risk of 10-year mortality may be good candidates for such interventions.

Thus, (say) if a colonoscopy is identified as not having a positive cost benefit for seven or more years (as the article indicates), such screening for those whom the computers predict are likely to die within ten years might not be covered.

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Magic Johnson: Obamacare IS Working (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

During a recent interview, Former NBA star “Magic” Johnson tells MSNBC host Alex Wagner ‘ObamaCare is working. I talk to a lot of CEOs of hospitals, it is working.’…

Johnson went on to say that he’s glad Florida’s Republican Governor Rick Scott decided to change his position and accept ObamaCare because once again, quote: ‘It will work.’

Watch video here:

Report Puts Obamacare’s Cost At $30.8B, 114 Million Paperwork Hours

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Photo Credit: José Goulão

Obamacare has so far cost $30.8 billion and 111.4 million hours to complete paperwork to individuals, healthcare institutions, and small businesses, according to a new report.

The American Action Forum, a Washington-based advocacy group that has long opposed the health law, said 55,742 employees — working 2,000 hours per year — would be needed to process all the red tape associated with Obamacare.

The report cites several examples of excessive costs from each category. In most cases, neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor the Congressional Budget Office has provided cost estimates, the organization said.

In the healthcare market, for instance, the Obamacare rule on “preexisting condition exclusions” is costing institutions $4.9 million and 38,000 paperwork hours, the group said.

Regarding premiums, the organization surveyed healthcare costs in five cities — Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Phoenix, and Milwaukee. “The results are sobering: young and healthier individuals, including small employers, can expect a 169 percent premium increase, averaged across the five cities,” the report concluded. “Consumers in Milwaukee could experience the greatest sticker shock, with a 190 percent increase in 2014.”

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Please, Democrats: Go Ahead and Embrace Obamacare (+video)

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ObamaCare

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The problem with Obamacare is not that it is being badly presented; the problem is that there is a limit to how well you can present a law that is this bad.

It’s like trying to put a positive spin on having your leg bitten off by a shark: sure, yes, in the long run you’re going to see a 50% saving on socks, but that’s not exactly comforting news while you’re watching the water around you go pink…

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Senate Refuses to Ban Former Illegal Aliens from Healthcare Benefits

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

The Senate rejected an amendment to the budget that would have banned illegal immigrants from qualifying for “ObamaCare” and Medicaid during the period of legal status.

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Session (R-Ala.) introduced the amendment, which failed on a 43-56 vote. His amendment would have prohibited illegal immigrants, who later gain citizenship, from getting healthcare coverage under the Affordable Care Act or through Medicaid.

“My amendment would simply say if you are here illegally and then get lawful status, you do not qualify for ObamaCare and Medicaid,” Sessions said ahead of the vote early Saturday morning.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) offered a counter amendment that restated current law, which says undocumented people cannot receive federal benefits. His amendment passed by voice vote.

“Current law already explicitly excludes undocumented people from receiving benefits,” Menendez said. “This is not a great way to do your outreach to the Hispanic and immigrant community.”

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News Editor’s Note: Both of Alaska’s Senators, RINO Lisa Murkowski and liberal Democrat Mark Begich voted to allow former illegal aliens medical benefits.

The ‘Uncle Tom-ing’ Of Ben Carson Begins (+video)

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Photo Credit: breitbart

MSNBC host and commentator Touré fired a clear and distinct shot at Dr. Ben Carson Friday, hammering the African-American Presidential Medal of Freedom winner for daring to challenge the Obamadoxy parroted by Touré and progressive journalists bent on supporting the President’s policies at all costs.

Dr. Ben Carson splashed onto the national stage with his blistering criticism of ObamaCare last month at the National Prayer breakfast, with President Obama seated just a few feet away. Carson is a heroic surgeon, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, who performed groundbreaking medical miracles at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is a brilliant and passionate advocate for free market principals, individual responsibility, and the freedoms and liberty embodied in resistance to bloated big government programs like ObamaCare. He also happens to be black. Therefore, he must be stopped, now.

Like Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice, Colin Powell (until he got the message) and Herman Cain before him, Carson will now be the target of the most vile and reprehensible kinds of criticism from black progressives like Touré and his colleague Al Sharpton. A black man who doesn’t blindly support the president and the big government programs that has created a dependency on government that has crippled America’s underclass is susceptible to name calling that, otherwise, would not be tolerated in American political discourse.

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Senate Republicans Willfully And Knowingly Lie To Their Constituents

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Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Last night, having noted the list of Republicans in the Senate who voted to fund Obamacare in yesterday’s Morning Briefing, I went through a series of emails from readers.

Readers from Texas, Kentucky, Utah, South Dakota, and Georgia all had the same story. They’d called the offices of Senators Chambliss, Cornyn, Hatch, Thune, McConnell, and Isakson to object to those senators funding Obamacare. They were all told by these Senate offices that these Senators had voted to defund Obamacare or, in the case of Senator Cornyn’s office, that there had been no vote on defunding Obamacare.

These Senators and their staffs are lying. They voted to fund Obamacare. More troubling, they know they did it.

Yesterday, on the floor of the Senate, Mitch McConnell again said, “Obamacare is a colossal mistake for our country. . . . We need to start all over. This bill needs to be repealed and it needs to be replaced. . . . And anyone who thinks we’ve given up this fight is dead wrong.”

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Obama Promised To Personally Use Obamacare, But Don’t Hold Your Breath

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Photo Credit: AP

If President Barack Obama wants to make good on a promise to become one of Obamacare’s first customers, he’ll have to take a route most Americans are unlikely to choose.

He’ll have to enroll in a health plan that lacks a taxpayer subsidy, even though he has access to generous coverage through his day job.

In the days following the passage of the health law in March 2010, the White House confirmed that Obama planned to walk the walk by enrolling in one of the health insurance exchanges his law created, assuming his reelection

“The president will participate in the exchange,” an administration spokesman told USA Today at the time, rejecting Republican efforts to compel the president to do so by law.

It would be a purely symbolic gesture — much like his decision to cast the first early ballot by a sitting president last year — in part because he’ll still have access to the White House Medical Unit and the official physician to the president, an office that has served every executive since the Revolution. According to a White House description of the medical unit, the office “provides worldwide emergency action response and comprehensive medical care to the president, the vice president and their families.”

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Bachmann: Obamacare ‘Literally Kills’ People (+video)

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Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said on the House floor Thursday that Obamacare would kill women, children and senior citizens — “literally.”…

“That’s why we’re here: Because we’re saying let’s repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens,” Bachmann said. “Let’s not do that. Let’s love people. Let’s care about people. Let’s repeal it now while we can.”

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Sen. Hatch: Left Conspired to Ensure Obamacare Fails So That Government Takes Over All of Healthcare (+video)

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Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said Democrats set up the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, to “fail” in order to establish a single-payer health care system, “where the government controls everybody’s lives.”

“Let’s just be honest about it, the bill hasn’t triggered yet fully,” Hatch said of Obamacare, during a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. “And it doesn’t until the 1st of next year.”

“When the young people in this country find out that they are going to be the generation of debtors and there’s no way they’re ever going to get out from underneath this kind of stuff—I’ve got to tell you, people don’t even realize how crushing it’s going to be after the 1st of this next year,” he said.

“And I’ll predict that within that year—now I may be wrong on this—but within the immediate future the Democrats are going to throw their hands in the air and say, ‘It’s not working. It’s unaffordable. And we have to go to a single-payer system,’” Hatch said, adding, “where the government controls everybody’s lives.”

“That’s what’s behind all of this. And they know it’s going to fail,” he said. “It’s already failing, and it hasn’t even triggered yet, the big expenses.”

Watch video here:

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