Tag Archive for: Obamacare

All Those Obamacare Stories You Told Us Were Untrue

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“There’s plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue.” – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

“Many of the tall tales that have been told about this law have been debunked.” – President Barack Obama

Amy Payne from Heritage writes, “Last week was ‘victory lap‘ week for liberals on Obamacare. After years of telling the American people that we just don’t understand the health law enough to love it properly, the president and his allies are now crowing that all debate should be over. Our readers have told us about Obamacare’s effects in their lives—hiking their insurance costs and canceling many of their plans. I guess Harry Reid thinks you guys made these up.”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/UNeHvIJ1CmU[/youtube]

Payne notes:

But he didn’t stop with insulting everyday Americans. Reid took a dig last week at Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), himself a doctor who is resigning from the Senate to continue cancer treatment.

Coburn initially lost his cancer specialist when he was forced into the Obamacare system. But when Coburn voiced concern—from experience—about the lack of cancer treatment centers covered under Obamacare, Reid said he was just “getting into the weeds” and that “I think we need to look at the overall context of this bill.”

The editorial board of Investor’s Business Daily marveled :

We recently called Senate Majority Leader Reid “delusional” on another topic, but to that we can now add “callous” and “insensitive” — in his disregard of cancer sufferers and the hardships imposed on them by administration politics and ObamaCare.

… Reid coldly dismisses people such as Edie Sundby, a stage four cancer patient, who was told that the plan that had paid out $1.2 million and helped her survive all these years was substandard and would be canceled because it didn’t contain the one-size-fits-all coverage mandates of ObamaCare.

Meanwhile, President Obama exulted in claiming that the “tall tales” about Obamacare “have been debunked.” Was he talking about Obamacare’s job-killing effects? Its limiting of patient choices? Its forcing all Americans into a one-size-fits-all health care model?

Thankfully, this isn’t the end of the story. In the same week, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) released a blueprint for health care reform. Heritage experts have been working on patient-centered solutions for years. Americans know that the horror stories are real, and that there has to be a better way to go.

Obama’s War on America is His Top Priority

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We all know that the “sanctions” Obama has placed on a few of Putin’s pals thus far and those Obama wants the European Union to impose will have no effect whatever on Putin’s decision to annex the Crimea from Ukraine.

One of Obama’s solutions to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty includes giving it a billion dollars because Russia has raised the price of the natural gas it sells to the Ukraine. This means Putin just made a billion while reacquiring Crimea.

One way to bring Russia to its knees would be for Obama–if he could–to impose the same things he is doing in America on the Russian Federation:

  • Require Russia to adopt Obamacare.
  • Ban the mining and use of coal in Russia.
  • Do not allow any drilling on Russian publicly-held land.
  • Redefine the Russian work week to 30 hours.
  • Raise the Russian minimum wage.
  • Mandate overtime pay for Russian government workers.
  • Demand that Russia pay welfare benefits to its illegal immigrants.
  • Require Russia to enact the same regulations as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
  • Increase the Russian national debt by $6 trillion dollars.
  • Require Russia to reduce all elements of its military force and capabilities by reductions to its military budget.

These policies since 2009 have weakened the United States and, if applied to Russia, they would have the same effect. It’s bad enough what Obama has done and is doing to the U.S., but neither we nor the rest of the world would be better off with a weak Russia. Its economy is too tied into the world’s.

Putin insists that it was the West led by the U.S. that resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 after seventy years of communist rule, but it was Communism that brought it to its knees. The other element was a decline in the prices of oil and natural gas–still the primary source of income for the Russian Federation—that undermined its economy.

While a panoply of experts keeps talking about the prospect of Russia aggression toward its former satellite nations in Eastern Europe, the simple fact is that Putin’s reacquisition of the Crimea just added to Russia’s financial pressures. He can barely afford Crimea. All the hand-wringing about its annexation ignores the fact that it was part of Russia for hundreds of years.

Ruchir Sharma, the head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, recently spelled out Russia’s economic woes in a Wall Street Journal commentary titled “Putin’s Potemkin Economy.”

“Mr. Putin’s real power base, the economy, is crumbling,” says Sharma. “Russia’s economic growth rate has plummeted from the 7% average annual pace of the last decade to 1.3% last year,” adding that “the Central Bank of the Russian Federation has been fighting to prevent a ruble collapse since the Crimean crisis began.”

Does that sound like a Russia that wants to invade its neighbors at this time?

“The result,” says Sharma, “is that the Russian state has few new sources of income outside of oil and gas, at a time when it is taking on more dependents” in Crimea. As for the rest of the Ukraine population, it’s only the younger generation that did not grow up under the oppression of the former Soviet Russia that thinks giving up its sovereignty is a good idea. Ukrainians with a memory of the pre-1991 days know better.

Europe, much of which depends on Russian gas, will be in no hurry to punish Russia beyond a few relatively meaningless sanctions. It’s all a charade.

It’s true that Europe went to war twice for far less reason than the Crimean annexation, but its present leaders have no wish to repeat that error for all the talk about international law.

What is being debated now is whether Putin will, for whatever reason, invade Ukraine. Only Putin knows that and the decision would be a bad one for him and everyone else.

As we strive to survive Obama’s war on the U.S. economy and the current havoc resulting from Obamacare, it is doubtful that even Obama has any inclination to see Russia collapse and could not reverse the Crimean situation even if he cared about it.

He doesn’t seem to care about what he’s doing to the rest of us so it’s the war at home which we have to survive.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Obama suggests people cancel cable and cell phones to afford Obamacare

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According to President Obama, low-income families may have trouble affording Obamacare premiums because they simply do not know how to spend their own money. Last week, during a town hall meeting for Spanish language media where Obama was promoting enrollment, a viewer challenged the economics of it for low-income Americans now forced to buy health insurance, according to Hot Air.

The president responded that “if you looked at their cable bill, their telephone, their cell phone bill… it may turn out that, it’s just they haven’t prioritized health care.” He added that if a family member gets sick, the father “will wish he had paid that $300 a month.

Not that the father has any choice in the matter, considering the government is forcing him to buy it.

No Sir, it just means they haven’t prioritized spending on the health care you’re shoving down their throats. The hypocrisy never ceases to amaze. While the “era of austerity is supposedly over,” it’s clearly over for the federal government only.

Once again, President Obama finds someone else to blame for the failures of his own policy — which is so unappealing he keeps delaying it piece be piece. Ironically, cell phones are okay if they’re given away “free” at the expense of the hard-working American taxpayer, but not if you want to buy one yourself.

Daniel Garza, Executive Director of The LIBRE Initiative said of Obama’s remarks, “If the president actually believes that a family earning less than $40,000 per year can afford nearly $4,000 in health insurance premiums, then he truly does not understand middle-income families. Americans do not need the President to tell them how to budget their households. People are already cutting back on things like cable television and cell phones, just to compensate for an awful economy. This president promised he would deliver on affordable health care. Instead, premiums are up, out-of-pocket expenses are up, and overall cost of living is up. The president simply doesn’t get it. And his condescending attitude adds insult to injury.”

Once upon a time, families had the choice of using Healthcare Savings Accounts (HSAs) to spend pre-tax money on routine care and smaller emergencies, while using so-called catastrophic insurance to deal with serious illness requiring hospitalizations. But as part of Obamacare, HSAs are now taxed as well. So much for freedom of choice.

Perhaps we should take away Obama’s cell phone (and pen, while we’re at it) so the politicized executive orders will stop.

Obama is trying to convince Americans that the unaffordability of the Affordable Care Act isn’t his fault. It’s the fault of the states (run by those rascally Republicans) that won’t expand Medicaid. And it’s the fault of those selfish, irresponsible folks who’d rather have cable and cell phones.

If you like your iPhone, you can’t keep it. Period.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/ijQIJAK0NFA[/youtube]

 

RELATED COLUMN: Delaying Obamacare’s Individual Mandate Due to ‘Hardship’ — Caused by Obamacare

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

Difference Between God And Obama

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Last night the most trending hashtag on Twitter was #DifferenceBetweenGodAndObama. Our Twitterer-in-Chief, Comrade General Secretary, posted these contributions, only scratching the surface:

God didn’t have a “Previous Administration” to blame
On the seventh day God rested; Obama rested for the other six
God spake unto Moses; Obama spake unto giggling college students
God commanded not to covet thy neighbor’s property; Obama commands to covet and redistribute it, too
God doesn’t force you to sign up for his religion and tell you “If you like your commandment, you can keep it”
God told Noah to build an ark; Obama told Noah “you didn’t build that”
God unleashed ten plagues on Pharaoh; Obama just signed him up for Obamacare
God’s chosen people wandered in the desert for 40 years; Obama’s people wandered in healthcare.gov for 40 weeks
God told Mary she was blessed with a child; Obama said she was punished with a child
God banished Lucifer; Obama’s mentor dedicated a book to him

Feel free to add your Difference Between God and Obama as a comment at the end of our column.

“Oops-care” by George C. Leef

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Obamacare victimizes Americans, but politics means never having to say you’re sorry.

Remember the glowing, utopian talk about the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” back in 2009–10? We heard constantly that it was the solution to a national crisis, carefully contrived to guarantee high-quality insurance for virtually everyone without making anyone worse off.

And so the great mountain of a bill was quickly passed while the Democrats held unchallengeable control. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi breezily said, “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.” Now we know that she actually meant, “We have to pass this before people find out what it will do to them.”

Day by day, we discover what is in Obamacare—pain and angst for many ordinary Americans as the law’s numerous edicts kick in. The February 24 Wall Street Journal featured an article right on point, “Obamacare and My Mother’s Cancer Medicine” by Stephen Blackwood. (Disclosure: I know Mr. Blackwood, but this piece would be exactly the same if we had never met.)

The article shows how damaging the law has been to his mother, who is stricken with carcinoid cancer. She had been covered by a Blue Cross/Blue Shield policy for 20 years and it served her needs well. “It was expensive,” Blackwood writes, “but given that it covered her very expensive treatments, it was a terrific plan. It gave her access to any specialist or surgeon, and to the Sandostatin and other medicines that were keeping her alive.”

But then Obamacare came crashing down, requiring BC/BS to cancel Mrs. Blackwood’s plan last fall. Since that time, she has been through a nightmare trying to find new coverage. The plan she eventually had to go with seemed satisfactory, but just before she had surgery on February 12, she was informed that the insurer would not, in fact, cover her medications. Mrs. Blackwood is living on the precipice, and turmoil over insurance is the last thing she needs.

Why would the Congress and President Obama put a sick person through such difficulty? Why did they inflict what Blackwood aptly calls “a Procrustean disaster” on the many Americans who have had stable and satisfactory medical care arrangements shredded by government meddling?

Of course, none of the backers of the hilariously misnamed PPACA meant to harm people like Mrs. Blackwood. They meant well—or so they all say. They wanted to solve the problem of people who had to get by without health insurance. The bill simply had to be passed immediately.

Consequently, there couldn’t be any of the customary hearings on legislation that would have allowed experts to carefully examine the bill’s workings and think through the likely results—not just the nice-sounding intended ones. Slow, deliberate debate over the bill’s provisions would no doubt have revealed that it would have lots of harmful side effects, like the cancellation of plans that cancer patients were relying on.

Rushing Obamacare into law was the governmental equivalent of a doctor giving a patient a completely untested drug.

Any Democrat in Congress could have said, “I don’t care if my party’s leadership insists on this, I won’t vote for it until the bill has been carefully examined, and since it’s over 2,500 pages, that can’t be done quickly.” Too bad that there were no “profiles in courage” who stood up for caution and common sense.

Once the severe side effects began to manifest themselves, President Obama gave an interview in which he offered a wishy-washy pseudo-apology to the people victimized by his Great Leap Forward. “I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurance they got from me,” he said. I’m sure that the Blackwood family and many others found those words to be soothing.

Let’s think about this situation from a different angle. Suppose that you had a problem at your house—a shaky shelf in your garage. Your neighbor noticed it one day while the two of you were talking in the driveway. The next day, unbidden, he came over, entered your garage, and tried to fix the shelf. But in doing so, he caused it to collapse on your car. Tools and cans of paint fell on it, doing considerable damage.

What would you expect him to do?

You would expect him to apologize sincerely for the intrusion, make amends for the damage he caused, then meekly promise not to bother you again. Most Americans, acting as regular people, would behave just that way.

Obamacare is like the busybody neighbor’s unwanted “help.” Unbidden, a group of arrogant politicians, supremely confident that they knew how to improve society through a maze of taxes and mandates and prohibitions, has harmed many of the people they supposedly represent. But don’t expect any apologies, much less a making of amends, and much, much less a promise to leave you alone in the future.

Politicians almost never act like, as Obama might say, “regular folks.” They don’t apologize and make amends. The President isn’t really sorry about messing up the lives of people like Mrs. Blackwood; all he is sorry about is that some Americans now realize they’re the eggs to be broken so he can make his omelet.

Other politicians responsible for giving us Obamacare are just trying to change the subject. Here in North Carolina where I live, Senator Hagan avoided Obama when he visited the state recently and is running smiley face ads telling voters that she’s in favor of “investing in education.”

I cannot remember any instance when a politician owned up to a mistake and said to his constituents, “I supported that bill (or that war, or that appointment), but now I can see what a blunder it was. I’m sorry and will try to undo the damage I have caused.”

Politicians almost never admit their mistakes and correct them, which is an excellent reason why we should keep politics out of as much of life as possible.

ABOUT GEORGE C. LEEF

George Leef is the former book review editor of The Freeman. He is director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is from Shutterstock on the Foundation for Economic Education website and is reposted with permission.

Michelle Obama: Hey You Young “Knuckleheads” Sign Up for Obamacare

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First Lady Michelle Obama called young people “knuckleheads” on her February 20th appearance on The Tonight Show.

The First Lady was promoting Obamacare for 20-somethings, who Obama described as at risk from cutting themselves cooking or injuring themselves while dancing. The discussion on Obamacare starts at 1:58 in the video.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/hazIopgMSQw[/youtube]

Check Out: The Patient-Centered Alternative to Obamacare

Host Jimmy Fallon told Obama that a lot of people “don’t have money to spend on [Obamacare.]”

She then pointed out that insurance is available for as little as “$50 a month — less than the cost of gym shoes.”

Obama failed to mention that some individuals have seen their health insurance costs skyrocket since Obamacare went into effect. Some are paying more than $500 a month and seeing price increases in the hundreds of dollars.

Read More: They Liked Their Health Plans, But Can’t Keep Them

After the interview segment, Obama participated in a skit with Fallon and Will Ferrell to promote her “Let’s Move” campaign, which is gearing up this week.

EDITORS NOTE: This story was produced by The Foundry’s news team. Nothing here should be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of The Heritage Foundation. The featured image was taken by My Hobo Soul and is is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic. My Hobo Soul in no way endorses the author, The Foundry, Heritage Foundation or positions taken in this column. 

Report: As Many as 165,000 Jobs Lost Because of Obamacare’s Medical Device Tax

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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius may want to take back her claim that there is “absolutely no evidence” that Obamacare has caused any job losses. If the Congressional Budget Office report earlier this month wasn’t enough, the medical device industry delivered some troubling news about the effects of the health care law’s medical device tax.  The Daily Caller reports:

Obamacare’s medical device tax has already created a job loss of 33,000 in the medical device industry and 132,00 more job losses are expected, according to a new report from the industry trade group the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), obtained by the Daily Caller.

The AdvaMed survey breaks down the job losses from the first year that the medical device tax has been in place along with its broader job effects:

The tax has resulted in employment reductions of approximately 14,000 industry workers and forgone hiring of 19,000 workers. The total job impact of the tax on industry employment was approximately 33,000.

Independent estimates of the relationship between direct employment in the industry and indirect employment among suppliers and in the general economy found a ratio of four indirect jobs for each direct job.

Applying this ratio to jobs lost or foregone suggests that the impact of the tax on indirect employment would be approximately 132,000 jobs, for a total job loss due to the tax of as many as 165,000 jobs.

Apparently for Secretary Sebelius, job losses in the medical device industry don’t count.

The survey also finds that because of the tax:

  • 75% deferred, cancelled, or reduced investments and employee compensation.
  • Over 30% said they cut research and development.
  • Nearly 10% said they moved or expanded manufacturing outside the United States.

If it remains on the books, device makers say the medical device tax will continue hurting employees and innovation:

58% of respondents said they would consider reducing employment if the device tax were not repealed.

50% said they would consider reducing R&D investment if the device tax were not repealed.

A Gallup poll finds that jobs are the most-important issue for Americans. We must help put people back to work by lifting the barriers to hiring and investment. Repealing the harmful medical device tax would be a good step.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/TBu_dmoqzSU[/youtube]

EDITORS NOTE: Featured image courtesy of the Chemical Heritage Foundation. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.

Are you trapped by Obamacare? So are 2.3 million other Americans!

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Americans for Prosperity has a new video titled “Trapped by Obamacare.” AFP notes, “First Obama told the Lie of the Year. Now CBO reports, Obamacare will shrink the workforce by the equivalent of 2.3 million full-time jobs.”

Learn more at http://www.lieoftheyear.org/

[youtube]http://youtu.be/XgULqwIBxXsH[/youtube]

Time to impeach?!

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Matthew Burke Delivers the National Weekly Tea Party Address 2-2-2014 and calls for the impeachment of President Obama.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/-I6Y5ZTot2M[/youtube]

Below is an article written by Patriot and Tea Party supporter Stephen Schimmel. Each of us has the responsibility to do everything we can to educate and inform those we can on the fundamental issues facing our nation and we are grateful for submissions such as this in that effort.

Dear Tea Party and Citizens of America:

We are very concerned citizens,  who have a deep respect for our founding fathers and what they tried to structure back in 1789.

We have seen since 1932 an attempt to violate and stress the structure of our founding fathers, forces of ideologist who have professed to know better than our founding fathers and tamper with the very words and procedures of their product.

We now see what can happen  when we violate such a Godly document and the wisdom to protect the freedom that was envisioned  by what we have today, a Government and economic system totally in Chaos and the arrogance and selfishness of its leaders, not serving us but taking advantage of us. It is wisdom to put into place a plan to overcome not just our Demagogic President Obama, but to put the whole nation back in order:

“Wake up America” should be the TEA PARTY theme 

Facts and Premise:

  1. Money does not grow on trees and never did; The Tea Party needs to teach lessons in basic Economics to the citizens in TV Ads and on the internet.
  2. Wealth needs to be created not printed as proven by our history of our success of inventors.
  3. Environments need to encourage Wealth Creation; articulate what this means and what specifically has discouraged wealth creation, not just regulations the worst of a all.
  4. Environments need to encourage freedom for all of us; articulate  how our Constitution was designed to do so and what has become of our Freedoms since Roosevelt in 1932.
  5. Government cannot produce wealth nor allow to be self serving; articulate why and how the culture has produced  this in Washington.  As Kings went bankrupt for lack of wealth, so can the US Government.
  6. Governments need to set the example for its citizens and not spend more than what they have nor what do not have, using the Assets vs Debt formula= true spending power. Notice we are not talking about balancing a budget.  We are talking about a bankrupt ability to spend anymore.
  7. Governments need to have a service mentality, not a providing mentality; articulate how this has not been the case since 1932
  8. Governments need to be defined as to what they are expected to do defined by our Constitution; articulate to the people what those definitions are and how our present Government has violated all this.
  9. Government need to be fully accountable to its citizens  and expected to tell the truth in all cases What keeps any man honest and on tract to what he swore to do is exposure. What a Man says needs to be the truth and nothing but the truth. What a man says, he needs to be accountable for, every one of his words in speeches to its citizens.  Obama has not been held accountable for any of his promises and words found to be untrue in 98% of the cases.  He has become an outright liar and taken on demagogue deceitful , manipulative conniving image with no referencing to his purpose and duty in Office of the President
  10. Governments  require trust and integrity and service to be any good to a society

WHAT ARE THE FACTS IN THIS ELECTION:

  1. Our Currency is threatened by the US debt and no plan has been in place since 1993 to pay off the debt.
  2. Our mindset has been most irresponsible, thinking of what the Government can do for you, but not what you can do for the Country. This has generated a mentality of selfishness and unproductive citizens who have hindered Wealth Creation and threatened the very integrity of our Financial System.
  3. Our Political System is threatened by confusion, lies and selfishness and unrealistic burdens put on its citizens.
  4. Our Government is no longer working for the people but for the ideologies of a few and the interests of those who have the authority over its people.
  5. Our Laws are so over regulated as to stifle wealth creation, and imprison needless citizens to a Nation of Criminals.  See the CBN story on this and pick it up on their website under the 700 club.
  6. Our Nation is being threatened by a Health Care law it cannot afford nor is consistent with the freedoms offered or envisioned by the US Constitution.  Romney needs to make this a campaign issue for his vote
  7. Our Lobbyist System needs to be fixed, so that those in Congress cannot become Lobbyist and have a conflict of interest.  Our laws through the years have been manipulated by a System of Lobbyists that threaten even the security of our Nation and compromise the Governments ability to serve Rich and Poor.
  8. Our Constitutional right to free speech and religious liberty has been muzzled by Political Correctness and bad rulings from the Supreme Court.  This needs to be fixed. Example there is no such thing as Separation of Church and State in the Constitution.  It is a big lie and no one seems to have the courage to challenge this lie.
  9. A balanced budget Amendment prohibiting any Congressional Spending over 20% of GDP in any one year using Assets minus Debt as a formula of the 20% GDP spending limit.  No loop holes allowed.  No laws valid that violate this rule.
  10. A plan to pay off the debt needs to be a priority and cuts to the Government needs to be as dramatic as needed to meet this plan to pay off the debt in a 15 year limit.   A plan to pay off the debt  is to create a trust fund from all energy reserves,  and use all proceeds from these reserves, gas or oil to exclusively pay off the existing debt.  Congress could not raise the debt limit ever without a vote of their citizens. Nor could Congress take any of the funds from the Trust to use for self serving purposes.
  11. .We have to put laws in place that will protect the people from future political timidity in the Congress. We need a system for the States to pass Amendments or laws on their own to get around the timidity and self serving behavior of our politicians, give the citizens more power over their politicians to be accountable. Notice how difficult it is to get our Politicians to Act on Amendments.

Article 5 of the Constitution provides a vehicle to allow the States to Act on their own with 2/3rds of the applications of the  States to act on their own, much like the California proposition system presently in place. Again this will allow the citizens of the State to over rule or make accountable their politicians.

For those who have ears let them hear.

God Bless all of my fellow Citizens

Stephen H. Schimmel
Newport Coast, Ca.

Blame Cronyism for Obamacare Website Disaster

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As we all know, the launching of the Affordable Care Act was a colossal disaster. We won’t even talk about the content of the law and the incredible burden it has placed upon health care providers, insurance companies, and worst of all, American consumers. We’ll confine this article toward analyzing the web site boondoggle which began on day one, October 1st.

Consider this: Before computers existed, the United States and its allies won a major war on two fronts on planet Earth, one against Nazi Germany and the other, imperial Japan in a period of 3 ½ years. That’s roughly the same period of time that was afforded the Obama administration to get a website in place for Obamacare.

But it failed.

Besides all the verbal tap dancing, has anyone in the administration competently explained how and why this happened?  Has anyone been held accountable for the wasted expenditure of $678 million which, along with three years of preparation, should have been ample resources to launch a new web site?  Have we been able to pinpoint the source of the incompetence?

Maybe the mainstream media won’t touch the subject, but the answer – or a good part thereof – is pretty clear. Start with Michelle Obama and that dreaded tag: Cronyism. That’s right, the company that earned the contract for building the website for 2/3 of a billion dollars was CGI Federal, whose senior vice-president is Toni Townes-Whitley. Whitley and Michelle Obama were friends and classmates at Princeton and both are members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni. It has been reported that Townes-Whitley and her husband spent Christmas at the White House with the Obamas in 2010, shortly after the contract award. That must have been a helluva toast.

What makes it more audacious is how the Obamas by-passed the normal government process of sending out specifications for bid, then evaluating and assessing all the companies that apply until the most experienced, most competent, most deserving and most cost effective win the bid.

But that didn’t happen in the Obama dynasty. While the House Committee on Energy and Commerce learned that four companies were prepared to bid for the contract, only CGI was considered, and then awarded the contract – No Bid! No competition.

There is no other explanation. It was a fix.

Not only did the administration employ incompetent people to set up a crucial website, they were equally responsible for failing to abide by the process that is supposed to prevent corruption in the system and assure Americans their tax dollars are well applied.

Where is the outrage by the mainstream media?

Sure, Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius is on the hot seat at all the hearings, and she should be fired as well. But don’t count on it. When the heat dies down, she’ll likely get a loyalty promotion much like Susan Rice who lied through her teeth to five television stations following the Benghazi fiasco. Fact is, Sebelius is a convenient distraction from getting to the truth.

Since the cat is out of the box, we have come to learn that if the web site was constructed by a few computer-savvy technicrats, they could have put it together in three days, not three years, at a fraction of the cost. But who was looking? (see link, below)

That might be a stretch, but I’d easily bet that a competent team who was properly vetted could have had the site up and running in a matter of weeks or months, regardless of complications.  But that was not on the agenda for the Obama dynasty.

It is utterly amazing that this president skids scot-free on every scandal that points directly to the Oval Office, and never held accountable.

This one is obvious.  Maybe, too obvious.

Yet, we – the American taxpayers – are, and will remain, the loser.

RELATED COLUMNS:

Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate was Obamacare website builder | The Daily Caller

Michelle Obama’s ‘no-bid’ friend spent Christmas at the White House – BizPac Review

Three 20-Year-Olds Make Their Own WORKING Obamacare Site – In Just Three Days | Ben Swann Truth In Media

Americans get scrooged as Obamacare deadline shifts again

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Ask most Americans what today is and they’ll reply the eve of Christmas Eve, and many are out completing their last minute shopping.

Today was supposed to be the deadline to sign up for Obamacare in order to make the January 1 cutoff. But you can chalk up today to yet another failure – as administration officials have quietly extended the deadline 24 hours to Christmas Eve, according to the Washington Post.

As reported by Fox News this morning:

A series of administration fixes and delays is turning the milestone into a day that for many Americans will underscore the uncertainty about the future of the law. The original plan was simple — that Americans who enrolled in Obamacare, online or otherwise, by Dec. 23 and paid in full would have insurance when coverage kicks in New Year’s Day. But the disastrous Oct. 1 start for the federal website and some state-run sites — marked by crashes and the dissemination of incorrect information — sent President Obama and other top administration officials scrambling to change the law in hopes of bolstering enrollment numbers.

Obamacare is fraught with fundamental problems — not just the website — but the overall premise, and even yesterday Democrat Senator Joe Manchin, whom I thoroughly respect, recommended this whole thing be delayed, particularly the individual mandate tax.

Many economic forecasters and market analysts agree we have yet to see the full impact of Americans losing their coverage. Next year could be even more horrific because of the employer mandate which was “unconstitutionally” delayed by President Obama.

Just last week, as we reported, Obama issued another change decree stating that those who had lost their insurance coverage — because of his own mandate — could retain their previously declared “substandard, junk plans” and not be subject to the individual mandate tax.

Obamacare is NOT a law. Let me state this again, Obamacare IS NOT A LAW. It is the whimsical design of deviant minds that will destabilize one-sixth of our economy for their own political and ideological gain.

Just yesterday, President Obama again evidenced his delusion as he restated his case that Obamacare is on the right track and urged those who had yet to enroll to do so by Monday. “The law is working,” he said in a statement. “If you don’t have health insurance, go to [the site] right now and sign up. If you do it before December 23rd, you can be covered on the first day of the New Year… I’m asking you to spread the word about getting covered.”

If the “law is working,” then why grant yet another exemption before he whisked off on vacation to Hawaii? Obama delivered yet another lie when he stated, “I completely get how upsetting this can be for a lot of Americans.”

The upsetting part is that these Americans were fine with their plans until his imperial excellency decided he knew what was best for them — and then proceeded to hose it all up.

Those Americans who lost their plans will not be able to restore comparable pricing, due to the administration’s upheaval of the industry and the ever expanding pool of high risk, elderly, and indigent onto the insurance rolls After all, someone has to subsume the costs and subsidize the system.

According to Fox, while enrollment is ticking upwards,

Several underlying problems persist, including the accuracy of the numbers and how many of those enrolled have in fact paid for their policies. Such problems could create far more serious consequences in the coming weeks should people who think they have insurance under ObamaCare go to a pharmacy or doctor’s office and find out otherwise.

But of course when that happens, the insidious blame game will kick in and the insurance companies will take the hit from President Obama. Robert Moffit, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Health Policy Studies, spoke with FoxNews.com on Friday and explained it this way,

“The complexity of the law, including who is exempt from what, will continue to confuse Americans. This whole thing has turned into a rat’s nest of rules and regulations. Who would have thought Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would grant so many hardships? … This administration is under the mindset of how America is supposed to work, which has nothing to do with how it really works.”

As esteemed author and conservative philosopher Thomas Sowell put it, “We have traded in that which works, for that which sounds good.”

Merry Christmas America from President Barack Hussein Obama. You get a lump of coal, and he is the one who’s been naughty.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

PODCAST: How Mother Nature will Accelerate the Looming Fiscal Avalanche

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Many are writing about the looming fiscal cliff that Congress and the Obama administration will deal with upon return from the Thanksgiving break. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) warns of a looming fiscal avalanche.

In After Fiscal Cliff Comes Fiscal Avalanche, Rejection of U.S. Debt, Senator Lee writes, “While Washington is preoccupied with the so-called fiscal cliff, little attention has been given to the fiscal avalanche that will occur if we continue down an unsustainable, long-term path, causing markets to turn sour on U.S. debt and leading to a spike in interest rates.”

Senator Lee states, “The Congressional Budget Office projects that under the most likely policy scenario, in 30 years, net interest payments on the debt could total $3.8 trillion in today’s dollars. That is more than total government spending for 2011.”

Robert Wiedemer co-author of America’s Bubble Economy – Aftershock wrote America has suffered through a number of financial bubbles and the aftershock following each. To date each of these bubbles, the most recent being the housing bubble, have burst and fallen onto two other looming bubbles. These two bubbles are the “dollar bubble” and the “debt bubble”. Wiedemer predicts these two bubbles will burst when pricked by the pin called “inflation”.

The government fiscal policies which have lead the US to the fiscal avalanche may be helped along by mother nature.

Relying heavily on the research of experts globally, as well as his own original research that correctly predicted the change in the Sun’s behavior, Mr. John L. Casey has spelled out in his book Cold Sun a convincing case that a new cold era has arrived. In Cold Sun, Mr. Casey presents the evidence showing:

1. Global warming ended years ago.
2. The Sun has entered an ominous state of ‘hibernation.’
3. The Earth’s ocean and atmospheric temperatures are dropping rapidly and are now on a long term decline for the next thirty years.
4. Glacial ice worldwide is growing again and the threat of rising sea levels is over.
5. Why we should be preparing now for the coming cold and its ill-effects including record earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions as well as global agricultural devastation.

Mr. Casey’s predictions of mother nature taking her own course fly in the face of current government policies at the national, state and local levels. In this exclusive interview Mr. Casey explains how mother nature will have her way no matter what we try to do:

While government is focused on reducing CO2 emissions to prevent global warming, the earth is in fact cooling. According to Casey this cooling will shorten the growing season causing food prices to increase, require more fuel and energy to heat homes and businesses. The US will experience an increase in the number of natural disasters costing human life loss and property damage on a grand scale. The US ability to recover from such natural disasters here and globally will be restricted by our debt and cost to service that debt in the long term.

The world’s growing population depends on food. Brian M. Carney in his article for the Wall Street Journal asks, “Can The World Still Feed Itself?“. Mr. Carney interviews Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman of Nestle’ the world’s largest food-production company. According to Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe, “Politicians do not understand that between the food market and the energy market, there is a close link.” That link is the calorie.

Carney reports, “The energy stored in a bushel of corn can fuel a car or feed a person. And increasingly, thanks to ethanol mandates and subsidies in the U.S. and bio-fuel incentives in Europe, crops formerly grown for food or livestock feed are being grown for fuel. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent estimate predicts that this year, for the first time, American farmers will harvest more corn for ethanol than for feed. In Europe some 50% of the rapeseed crop is going into bio-fuel production, according to Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe, while “world-wide about 18% of sugar is being used for bio-fuel today.”

What does this all mean?

If John Casey is correct in his predictions, and SSRC always is, then cold weather brings with it a shorter growing season and increased demand for fuel to keep people warm. Therefore, we must have policies that increase calories, not decrease the food supply.

These natural events will occur during the same 30 year period where our payments on the national debt will increase to $3.8 trillion.

RELATED COLUMN: Are we living in the Hunger Games?

Florida: Rubio warns taxpayers on the hook to bail out insurance companies for Obamacare enrollees

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Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)

As of November 2nd, 2013, Florida has the highest number of enrollees in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act with 3,571 having selected a plan. Florida is one of thirty-six states with a fully or partially run federal insurance exchange. In Florida 123,870 submitted complete applications with 93,456 eligible to enroll in a plan. Texas is second with 108,410 applicants, 80,960 eligible and 2,991 who selected a plan.

But there is a problem with who will pay for the coverage.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) writes, “Buried deep in the Department of Health and Human Services’ press release that accompanied the president’s Nov. 14 speech was this sentence: ‘Though this transitional policy was not anticipated by health insurance issuers when setting rates for 2014, the risk corridor program should help ameliorate unanticipated changes in premium revenue. We intend to explore ways to modify the risk corridor program final rules to provide additional assistance.’”

“Risk corridors are generally used to mitigate an insurer’s pricing risk. Under ObamaCare, risk corridors were established for the law’s first three years as a safety-net for insurers who experience financial losses. While risk corridors can protect taxpayers when they are budget-neutral, ObamaCare’s risk corridors are designed in such an open-ended manner that the president’s action now exposes taxpayers to a bailout of the health-insurance industry if and when the law fails,” notes Rubio.

Rubio raises a red flag noting, “Subsequent regulatory rulings have made [it] clear that the administration views this risk-corridor authority as a blank check, requiring no further consultation or approval by Congress. A final rule handed down in March by HHS and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services states: ‘Regardless of the balance of payments and receipts, HHS will remit payments as required under section 1342 of the Affordable Care Act.’”

On November 14th, the American Academy of Actuaries issued a press release saying that President Obama’s plan to reverse health-insurance cancellations “could lead to negative consequences for consumers, health insurers, and the federal government.” More specifically, the academy said, “Costs to the federal government could increase as higher-than-expected average medical claims are more likely to trigger risk corridor payments.”

Rubio concludes with, “It is a damning indictment of ObamaCare’s viability when the president’s only response to people losing their health insurance plans entails putting them on the hook for bailing out insurance companies. The American people are already being directly hurt by ObamaCare’s early failures, and it is unconscionable that they be expected to bail out companies when more failures emerge.”

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Americans Don’t Think Health Care is Government Responsibility

No. 2 House Dem: Obamacare Attempt to Change ‘Value System in Our Country’ (+video)

A government shutdown is a good thing!

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shutdown if that is what it takes signThe government shutdown at midnight is a “sequester” of non-essential government employees. That is a good thing according to Brian S. Wesbury.

According to Brian S. Wesbury, Chief Economist for First Trust, “It looks like House and Senate won’t come to a budget agreement by midnight and, as a result, the federal government is going to partially shut down starting Tuesday morning. Run for the hills? Armageddon: right? Nope!”

Westbury notes, “As we said a few weeks ago, a shutdown is not as scary as it seems. Money still flows into the Treasury Department and money still flows out, for Social Security or to make interest payments on the debt, for example. The military, border control, food inspections, air traffic, prisons, weather service, and post office, all keep going. And, as long as the Treasury Department has room to continue its ‘extraordinary measures’ or if the debt limit goes up in the meantime, Treasury still pays the debt as it comes due, without missing a beat.”

There have been many government shutdowns.

“Some pundits and analysts say a shutdown will hurt the economy, but it’s hard to say that based on history. The Washington Post recently listed every shutdown from 1976 to 1996. There were 17 shutdowns totaling 110 days. Out of those 110 days, only 6 days were during recessions. That’s very few given that we were in recession about 14% of the time during that twenty–year period,” writes Wesbury.

The last and longest shutdown doesn’t appear to have hurt the economy either writes Wesbury.

“That was the three-week shutdown from mid-December 1995 to early January 1996 under President Clinton. Real GDP grew 2.3% in the year before the shutdown, a 2.9% annual rate in Q4-1995 and then at a 2.6% pace in Q1-1996, despite the shutdown and the East Coast Blizzard, a multiple day massive snowstorm in January that was followed by large floods,” states Wesbury.

So getting rid of the government fat is a good thing for the economy. Perhaps Washington, D.C. staffers and government workers will now understand what their Main Street counterparts are facing.

Senator Rubio supports the House plan to defund Obamacare

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defundrallycruz

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) at Defund Obamacare rally.

The Washington Post reports, “House Republican leaders announced Wednesday morning that they would take a risky double-barreled attack on President Obama’s health-care law, making it the cornerstone fight over government funding due to expire Sept. 30 and the effort to lift the Treasury’s borrowing authority.

Paul Kane, Ed O’Keefe and Zachary A. Goldfarb from the WP state, “Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), flanked by his leadership team, told reporters that the stopgap government funding bill that they will advance Friday would yield to conservative demands of including a rider to block funding for the law commonly known as Obamacare.”

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) issued the following statement regarding the announcement:

“The American people have made clear they want Washington to keep the government open but also need protection from ObamaCare’s harmful effects. Today’s announcement would accomplish what the American people have been asking of Congress.

“A solution is within sight in order to avert another crisis of Washington’s creation. President Obama and his allies in Congress should abandon their threats of shutting down the government and instead work with Republicans to pass this proposal that would keep government open while preventing taxpayer dollars from being used to inflict ObamaCare’s damage on people’s jobs, incomes, current health plans and doctor relationships.”

As previously reported on WDW – FL, this plan has been pushed by conservative groups like Heritage Action. Jim DeMint, President of the Heritage Foundation, said at a defund Obamacare event it Tampa that Republicans took the House of Representatives in 2010 and retained the majority in 2012 on the promise of repealing Obamacare. Either Republicans keep their promise or go home and explain why they lied.

DeMint noted that repealing Obamacare is not enough. The House has had numerous votes to repeal the law, but the chances of statutorily repealing the law decreased once President Obama won a second term. Those who oppose Obamacare, he said, cannot wait another three and a half years to “begin dismantling Obamacare; they need to leverage current opportunities to defund using ‘must-pass’ spending bills.”

DeMint said time and again, it is now or never. Apparently the people’s House is listening.

Rubio noted, “The president’s basically looking for a political win and I guess his political people have told him that this is a political win: shut down the government and blame the Republicans. The problem is that’s not the Republican position.”

EDITORS NOTE: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) can be defunded by attaching a legislative rider to a “must pass” bill (e.g. debt limit, annual spending bill or continuing resolution to fund the government) that:

  1. Prohibits any funds from being spent on any activities to implement or enforce Obamacare;
  2. Rescinds any unspent balances that have already been appropriated for implementation; and
  3. Turns off the exchange subsidy and new Medicaid spending that are on auto-pilot.