| Healthcare Bill Part III; Obamacare | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 3 2014, 02:20 PM (48,595 Views) | |
| kbp | Feb 24 2015, 05:08 PM Post #1651 |
|
Yeah, I hate going there to add to #1 Barry Butt Kisser's head count! |
 |
 
|
| kbp | Feb 24 2015, 05:09 PM Post #1652 |
|
http://spectator.org/print/61855 No, Mr. President, Obamacare Isn’t Working Every news cycle brings more evidence that PPACA is a failure By David Catron – 2.23.15 Last week, the White House took to Twitter for purposes of publicizing its latest Obamacare enrollment blarney. Far more informative than the tweet’s fictitious sign-up numbers was the schmaltzy video to which it was linked. Staged in the Oval Office, this one-act farce features a simpering HHS Secretary briefing our Thespian in Chief, who then delivers the following soliloquy: “The Affordable Care Act is working. It’s working better than we anticipated. It’s certainly working a lot better than many of the critics talked about early on.” In Obama’s 27-word script, “working” appears three times. The President doth protest too much, methinks. But don’t take my word for it. Ask the folks who learned last Friday that Obama’s bureaucrats sent them erroneous tax information relating to PPACA. The Associated Press reports, “Officials said the government sent the wrong tax information to about 800,000 HealthCare.gov customers, and they’re asking those affected to delay filing their 2014 returns.” And, as with most government blunders, the price will be paid by those who can least afford it. Robert Pear points out in the New York Times, “[T]housands of lower-income Americans who qualified for subsidized insurance had hoped for tax refunds and now must wait for weeks to file their taxes.” If the plight of these latest Obamacare victims fails to convince you that the President’s hammy Twitter performance is an exercise in Orwellian propaganda, perhaps you should have a conversation with one of the thousands who were unable to enroll in an insurance plan because Healthcare.gov is still infested with bugs: “In the final day leading up to Obamacare’s sign-up deadline, the website was once again hit with technical glitches that prevented people from signing up for health insurance.” Healthcare.gov was completely off line for five hours and plagued by intermittent software failures of various types for the remainder of the day. Obama and his minions will, of course, rewrite PPACA’s tax and enrollment provisions in yet another attempt to contain the political damage wrought by the disastrous “reform” law. This is nothing new. It will merely be the latest of nearly 50 emergency revisions to which Obamacare has been subjected since it was signed into law. Prior to February’s pratfalls, according to a tally kept by the Galen Institute, “47 significant changes already have been made to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: at least 28 that President Obama has made unilaterally, 17 that Congress has passed and the president has signed, and 2 by the Supreme Court.” In fact, emergency repairs to Obamacare go all the way back to April of 2010, just a month after it was signed into law. But their number and frequency picked up significantly when the 2012 presidential election appeared on the horizon. This is when the Obama administration began making unilateral and legally dubious changes designed to ameliorate the pain PPACA was about to inflict on crucial voter blocs. To avoid angering seniors, for example, HHS issued “a reprieve from some of the most controversial cuts in President Obama’s health care law.” This “reprieve” deferred Obamacare’s cuts to the popular Medicare Advantage program. It was during this period that the IRS revised its original interpretation of PPACA’s subsidy language, which provided for tax credits only through exchanges established by states. In May of 2012, after the White House realized that the structural incentives meant to induce all the states to create Obamacare “marketplaces” had failed to work, the IRS announced that subsidies would also be available through federally created exchanges. This “fix” removed an election year problem for the President, but it also led to King v. Burwell, the potentially lethal statutory challenge pursuant to which the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next week. Obama administration lawyers are, of course, defending the illegal IRS edict. But some provisions of Obamacare were so obviously unworkable that even the White House didn’t fight repeal. One of these was the CLASS Act. This boondoggle was put to rest in January of 2013 because Obamacare’s authors didn’t bother to fund it. Another unworkable PPACA provision that was repealed without a fight was the notorious “1099 mandate.” This would have forced businesses to track and report to the IRS all purchases over $600. It was repealed in a 2011 bill signed by a relieved President who didn’t want to defend it in his reelection campaign. There are, of course, countless unworkable Obamacare provisions that have yet to be repealed due to Obama administration intransigence. One of the most obvious of these is the employer mandate, which is universally reviled by policy experts of all political persuasions. As I wrote in this space last year, even the left-leaning Urban Institute has called for its repeal in a report titled, “Why Not Just Eliminate the Employer Mandate?” Likewise, Obamacare-friendly policy wonks such as Professor Timothy Jost admit that the mandate’s 50-employee threshold has constrained job growth and forced some employers to “cut the hours of part-time employees.” The complete list of such counterproductive provisions is far too lengthy to cover in a single column, but there are enough to guarantee that PPACA will never work. Yet, even as the news was breaking about the law’s latest failures, HHS Secretary Burwell published a column in USA Today in which she offers this all too predictable assurance: “The Affordable Care Act is working.” The public isn’t buying it. A recent AP survey shows that only 26 percent of adults support Obamacare. Why so few? Because, no matter how often the President, his bureaucrats, or the media tell us otherwise, it’s blindingly obvious that Obamacare just isn’t working. |
|
|
|
| kbp | Feb 24 2015, 05:31 PM Post #1653 |
|
No Theda, the "technicality" your side is looking for ambiguity that creates enough excuse for the inability "of statutory interpretation" of plain text. Recall Theda put together the damning study of the CBO data which she did not understand! You have to love that the strategy of the left is now to pre-blame the right for not solving the problem created by the left. Edited by kbp, Feb 24 2015, 05:31 PM.
|
|
|
|
| wingedwheel | Feb 24 2015, 09:18 PM Post #1654 |
Not Pictured Above
|
That's saying a lot then because there are some pretty bad ones out there. |
|
|
| LTC8K6 | Feb 24 2015, 09:28 PM Post #1655 |
Assistant to The Devil Himself
|
You gotta' hang out in bad places to truly know Vox. Places like Mos Eisly Spaceport. |
|
|
|
| LTC8K6 | Feb 24 2015, 10:27 PM Post #1656 |
|
Assistant to The Devil Himself
|
H&R Block reporting that more than half will have to repay Obamacare subsidies Confirming Jackson Hewitt numbers... http://twitchy.com/2015/02/24/hr-block-reporting-that-more-than-half-will-have-to-repay-obamacare-subsidies/ Also: More than 4.5 MILLION Americans with Obamacare subsidies will have to pay back an average of $530 – and they're all poor or middle-class taxpayers http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2967463/More-4-5-MILLION-Americans-Obamacare-subsidies-pay-average-530-poor-middle-class-taxpayers.html |
|
|
|
| wingedwheel | Feb 24 2015, 10:43 PM Post #1657 |
|
Not Pictured Above
|
0bama will probably write a executive order saying they don't have to pay. |
|
|
|
| kbp | Feb 25 2015, 06:55 AM Post #1658 |
|
Tax revenue law must be introduced through the House... never mind! |
|
|
|
| kbp | Feb 25 2015, 07:44 AM Post #1659 |
|
...13 million people would lose an average of $4,700 a year, and health-care providers would certainly fight to protect some $60 billion a year in subsidies (The CBO estimate used here is worthless!) The problem we face is the economic damage that results from Obamacare... the tax increases, regulations, increased spending, private sector costs... This solution would eventually kill Obamacare with the mandate gone, but that is just pushing the problem down the road with a bandage and then we'll next be debating on how to solve that problem... which the GOP would then own. This is a RINO solution full of FREE MONEY spending. From the RINO Rules Longstop posted in another thread:
. |
|
|
|
| kbp | Feb 25 2015, 08:00 AM Post #1660 |
|
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/06/24/what-the-supreme-courts-greenhouse-gas-ruling-should-mean-for-obamacare/ What The Supreme Court's Greenhouse Gas Ruling Should Mean For Obamacare The Supreme Court yesterday issued its decision in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, a case concerning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide. The ruling is highly technical and somewhat narrow as evidenced by the fact that both side are claiming a victory. However, I believe that the court’s ruling may have a far more important result than most people realize. Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA may have just gutted the Affordable Care Act. Let me quote three sentences from Justice Scalia’s decision:
These cases make the simple point that the statute limited subsidies to State exchanges. The Obama administration claims that Congress assumed every state would set up its own exchange, but it turned out that only about half the states did. Because trying to bribe states into cooperating with the implementation of Obamacare did not work, the Obama administration simply reinterpreted the statute because otherwise it would not work in practice. This seems to be exactly what the Supreme Court said is impermissible. In Halbig v. Sebelius, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has already ruled against the plaintiffs in one such suit, with the judge determining that extending the subsidies is a reasonable way to reach the policy goals of the statute. However, this new ruling on greenhouse gas emissions would seem to be tailor made for the anti-Obamacare cases focusing on the subisidies offered on the federal exchange (the infamous healthcare.gov). The myriad changes made to Obamacare would seem ripe for a challenge that quoted the exact language above from the ruling on the EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gasses. Michael Cannon has made the same point in regards to the Appeals Court ruling on Halbig v. Sebelius here. According to the Galen Institute, the Obama administration has made twenty-three significant changes to the Affordable Care Act without legislative approval by Congress. The Obama administration has been clear that these changes were made in order to help achieve the goals of health care reform. Yet, it appears that is not a constitutionally acceptable action to take. If the administration cannot ignore the language of a law just because it will not work as written, the administration is in big trouble on Obamacare. An enormous amount of the regulations written to implement the Affordable Care Act appear to ignore or reverse parts of the original Act. The Obama administration has been arguing that it is following the intent of the law and lower court rulings have come down on both sides so far on the constitutionality of these extra-statutory actions. [...] |
|
|
|
| kbp | Feb 25 2015, 08:24 AM Post #1661 |
|
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/233459-governors-lobbying-congress-for-obamacare-scotus-fix Republican governors lobby Congress for ObamaCare fix |
|
|
|
| kbp | Feb 25 2015, 08:50 AM Post #1662 |
|
From DailyMail:
I suspect this will be a BIG deal. It will be close to half of the final head count for enrollees by the end of this year. This is a group that can't afford the out-of-pocket and are exempt from the mandate tax. Why should they stick with it? I have quite a few renters that get behind just before Christmas and catch up with their tax return (FREE MONEY) in about February every year, like clockwork. They count on that FREE MONEY in their holiday budgets. This will hurt the HHS head count, but no problem, they will not accurately report the number of no-pays dropping out. . Edited by kbp, Feb 25 2015, 08:52 AM.
|
|
|
|
| kbp | Feb 25 2015, 09:05 AM Post #1663 |
|
She is holding a pair of deuces! ...“massive damage” that could not be undone by executive action. It was "executive action" that created the problem! . |
|
|
|
| kbp | Feb 25 2015, 09:32 AM Post #1664 |
|
“We know of no administrative actions that could, and therefore we have no plans that would, undo the massive damage to our health care system that would be caused by an adverse decision.” Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Secretary of HHS They played their cards using the IRS. The States had no good reason to establish an exchange. It's possible they might have had some luck using the card the first year and revising it soon after when they knew this would come before the courts. With all the EO's throwing money out there, they might have been able to resolve this better. The amazingly ironic issue is that if the ruling puts the tax credits back on the table as an incentive for States to establish an exchange, there is NO MONEY left to help the States do such. The administration improperly shifted all those funds over to pay for the federal exchange because the States did NOT have any incentive to use it as it was appropriated for. Too bad... . |
|
|
|
| kbp | Feb 25 2015, 09:42 AM Post #1665 |
|
"...without tax subsidies, healthy individuals would be far less likely to purchase health insurance, leaving a disproportionate number of sick individuals in the individual insurance market, which would raise the costs for everyone else.” Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Secretary of HHS ...tax subsidies ...healthy individuals ...disproportionate number of sick ...raise the costs for everyone else Charting quite a bit of redistribution there. Taxes from various "others" carry the heaviest load of the lower income > Healthy people mandated to redistribute health costs within the "pool" >The poor having to pay some portion of a premium to help others >Fed assuring profits for the insurers. |
|
|
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| Go to Next Page | |
| « Previous Topic · LIESTOPPERS UNDERGROUND · Next Topic » |
11:54 AM Jul 13